I apologize for identifying you with pacifists. You made the argument that sometimes it is better to die than defend yourself, which is as non-violent as non-violent comes. Frankly, I am a little perplexed by this statement. My father, a self-described pacifist, peace-nik, and hippie owns a rifle for self defense and has since 1964. Your position seems even more extreme than his, yet you say you made arguments against pacifism. I fail to see how you are not one, but I apologize for jumping to the conclusion that you are a pacifist.
Well, AQI is doing pretty well against us without the H-bomb. Clearly that is not neccessary to take on the U.S. military. I would say automatic weapons and possibly grenades or in the hands of ordinary citizens would be enough to take on the government while not posing a risk too large that other citizens couldn't counter. Keep in mind that having the weapons would be enough to stave off a revolution. The military would not wage war with citizens armed with belt-fed machine guns.
Referring to how better men than you died is hardly an unwarranted insult in a discussion about the merits of violence and pacifism. It was part of reductio ad absurdam argument as to why not using violence to defend yourself is pointless (since people are ALREADY using violence to defend you, and without which we'd all be dead). Your remarks about my being mentally deficient are ad hominem attacks, nothing more. They are completely tangential to the point at hand and do not serve to make your argument. I can take attacks just fine when they are part of the argument at hand. I just have a problem when your response has all the intellectual rigor of, "Yeah, well, yer MOM!"
You accuse others of exactly the things you do, and try to take the moral high ground. I guess the irony is lost on you here. Too bad. It's pretty funny.
Because you seem like a whiny four year old to me Which is completely different than calling me retarded, questioning my service, and using fuck every other word. Again, the irony.
For people of limited mental capacity such as yourself, the world must be reduced to black and white And anyone who has a different world view than your own must be retarded. So much for subtlety and nuance. I guess if you can't argue the point, just resort to ad hominem attacks. Very nice. Let me guess, you're with the party of tolerance, right?
Mmm, no I haven't conceded anything. I just got tired of explaining the same thing over and over again. I said 3, maybe 4 times now, that I explained in another post how I understood the main point, understood how the experiment was different, and was discussing this as a related topic. None of which you even acknowledged ("no you didn't, you just stumbled in and started yelling" etc). I realize I didn't SPECIFICALLY say that I was referring to something offtopic, but I didn't realize I needed to precede it with WARNING: OFFTOPIC. I realize(d) that anti-hydrogen will not rise in the experiment due to escape velocity, but merely brought it up as another factor, perhaps even as an interesting point of discussion since no one else even mentioned that it is a factor on which way gas particles move.
The part about falling upwards still leaves me in amazement. I used it as a metaphor (I thought an obvious one), instead of just saying hydrogen rises. The fact that everyone argued why hydrogen doesn't ACTUALLY fall upwards seems pretty, well, retarded.
I don't feel any apologies are in order. I got modded for my comments as did everyone else and I'm tired of explaining them.
What do most of the major world religions and non-religious philosophies say about ending violence? I'd care more about this answer if any of it worked. Ghandi's nonviolent means worked eventually, but I'd hardly ask a Christian for advice in nonviolence. And Islam, the so-called religion of peace? Please.
Some times, being willing to die rather than lift a finger to defend yourself is the best course That's great advice. Let me know how it works out for you. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll carry an extra mag with me in case I have to defend you too. That way you won't have to defend yourself. I already served my country in the Marine Corps so you could be a pacifist, so it's no big deal. I mean, if it weren't for better men than yourself who are willing to put the welfare of others before themselves, you and and your family would have been killed a long time ago, but hey, as long as you get to be a pacifist, it's all good.
rejecting violence when at all possible is the only thing that can reliably reduce the world wide level of violence. Or make you even more of a target for those who want to eat your lunch. To paraphrase a famous saying, in a world of pacifists, the guy with a knife is king. There will never be a world without violence, just as there will never be a world without viruses, thieves, or con artists.
Yeah, I got that. And he was making fun of how violence is not the solution to violence, which is that to which I was replying. And in your scenario, water is the solution to fire, not more fire. What is its analog when it comes to violence? What is the solution to violence if not more violence? I'm all ears if you have an answer.
The whole purpose of the 2nd amendment is to ensure military-grade weapons (flint-lock muskets at the time) remain in the hands of ordinary citizens. Today, that would include a lot more than just hunting rifles. It may seem scary to have such powerful weapons in the hands of ordinary citizens, but to me the opposite is much scarier: a disarmed, helpless society unable to defend itself from its government. Much is made of the growing trend of government intrusion into our privacy, warrantless arrests, et al, using quotes like, "When they came for___, I said nothing." Well, when they come for you, what are you going to do?
And yet you make no mention of how many Iraqis must feel every day Over 60% don't want us to leave. That's how they feel.
nd the damage we cause on a scale a thousand times worse just in terms of body count to the Arab psyche? You know, it's funny. Liberals didn't give a flying fuck about Iraqi citizens getting killed during the 8 years Clinton bombed them using mostly inaccurate dumb bombs. Nobody cared when Clinton bombed Iraq in 1998 without a U.N. sanction. Somehow, Clinton's military operations (the most for any president) were all good. When Clinton connected Iraq to WMD and Al Qaeda, everything was hunky dorey. But Bush? He MUST be lieing about everything.
And I'll tell you something, our children will not be dealing with terrorists from Saudi Arabia, but with the children of Iraqis and Palestinians for generations to come. That may be true. But they will attack us NO MATTER WHAT WE DO. Watch and see if they stop attacking us if we get a Democrat president. See what happens when we pull out of Iraq. As I mentioned in another post, no matter what we do we are vilified. Hell, America-haters like yourself get upset when the government accurately reports on what's going on in Iraq. What could possibly placate you?
OK, so we helped brutal dictatorships at various points of our past. Before moving on to the next point, let me just say there only a few options for dealing with brutal dictatorships, and we've been hated for doing them all. We can support them (both in the name of stability and because our interests may align), we can ignore their abuses and do nothing, we can use empty words to decry their actions, and we can force their demise. We've done them all and been hated no matter what. When we stay out of internal affairs, we're hated for not doing something to help one side or the other. When we step in, we're hated for siding with someone and meddling with internal affairs. Considering the ill consequences of the other options, sometimes the best thing to do is probably just support dictatorships until they collapse on their own. Which option do you think we should do?
Now, in the case of AL Qaeda you say we should have realized what would happen when we helped the Mujahadin because of what happened when we supported the Shah et al. In the case of Afghanistan, we were trying to PREVENT a brutal dictatorship, namely the Soviet Union. We did not violently occupy them; we were trying to stop a violent occupation. What should we have done instead? Done nothing to help freedom fighters as they fought the bigger enemy in a key part of the world? In the case of Iraq, I think you're mostly right. We should leave. A unified and stable Iraq will be able to fight us better than what they've got right now. We should let Al Qaeda and Iran fight it out without us. That being said, the situation over there is actually MUCH better than what your news is depicting.
PS The global war on terror only started when we started paying attention. Al Qaeda attacked us regularly during the Clinton years, and we did nothing. UBL himself said he needed to conduct 9/11 because Americans wouldn't listen to anything else. YOU are what he is talking about. No matter what we do, they are going to try to kill us. Instead of feeling sorry for ourselves and apologizing for the mistakes of the past, we need to realize we are at war.
Al Qaeda is so radical that even the majority of Sunni's don't like their oppressive form of Islam. What the Iraqi Sunnis really don't like about AQI is their penchant for killing innocent Iraqis along with Americans. By and large, it is not anything religious.
It may be propaganda based in fact, but it is propaganda... information released with the intent of influencing discourse about the war. I am utterly baffled by this statement. There are Sahwa movements. The government can either factually report on their existence and be vilified for promulgating propaganda, or they can refuse to report on them and be vilified for withholding information. Is there any course of action the government could take where you WOULDN'T vilify them?
My point is that the government created the very "problem" that they are now telling us to worry about. Sure, hindsight armchair generals like yourself can point out this was a bad idea, but how was anyone at the time supposed to know what would happen? The stinger missiles we gave them had a very short lifespan (on purpose) so they wouldn't be able to stockpile them and use them against us. But no one seriously expected a bunch of ragged goat-herders to wage an unrelenting global war on us.
Violence begets violence, it is as simple as that. That may be true. If you punch me, and I have reason to believe you're going to do it again, I'll you hit you back so hard you won't ever consider punching me again. So violence begets violence. Do you have something else in mind that can stop violence? We are facing a group of supremely dedicated individuals, who will resort to anything, including suicidal bombings, to kill any and all Americans, who will not stop until there is no more America. Besides violence, what will stop them? Peace signs? Well-wishing? A promise of change?
If you believe the propaganda coming out of Iraq, the US government has been able to find support among the Sunni's to fight al Qaeda because moderate, mainstream Sunni's didn't like the radical form of Islam that al Qaeda was trying to hoist upon their society. It is to laugh! Propaganda, huh? I was personally involved with providing intelligence to, um, unconventional units that tracked down AQI/ISI (Al Qaeda in Iraq/ Islamic State of Iraq). I followed Awakening movements (Sahwa, or Sahawa), which we later called Sons of Iraq for some unknown reason. And I can tell you there really are Iraqi Sunnis that are rejecting Al Qaeda's grip on their communities and are fighting back, quite successfully in some areas.
Where did al Qaeda come from? The US government built it to fight the Soviets. Well, we funded some mujahadin who later turned their attention to us. But we didn't "build" it. In any case, what's your point? Some of our allies in the past are now our enemies and vice versa. So what?
Al Qaeda gets support because they have legitimate gripes, namely that the United States is intefering in the internal affairs of Muslim nations. Higher on their list of gripes is our support of Israel, the plight of Palestine, our presence in Saudi Arabia, not to mention the fact that Saudi Arabia asked us to push Saddam out of Kuwait and not UBL's Mujahadin. The war in Iraq is their latest excuse to kill Americans. When we leave, they will continue to find ways to kill us, as long as we both exist.
Also, we didn't want Jewish refugees in our backyard. Neither did Europe. Maybe. But there many reliable accounts that Truman approved the recognition of Israel for moral reasons.
We're better than Imperial England? I think we are when it comes to such things as the oil industry. BP was one of the worst when it came to forcing governments to sell oil rights cheap, lieing about reserves, keeping local workers in appalling conditions, etc. The British government bought 51% of BP and ran it like their own personal company. The atrocities they committed to make a buck make our own oil initiatives look like childsplay.
We only care about justifying our Middle East policy anymore because of the resources we're trying to take from them. I'm going to have to ask for a citation at this point. How much oil have we "taken" from anyone? Paid for, yes. Helped drill, absolutely. But take? Iraq makes billions a year from the sale of their oil, and we have not taken a drop except in the imagination of Bush-haters. If we wanted to "take" oil, we wouldn't have to try very hard.
I agree that what we did to Padilla was wrong. He should have been tried in court. BTW, I hope you know one doesn't have to actually be caught in a crime to be charged. One could be charged with conspiracy to commit a crime, which has the same punishment as the crime itself. IANAL, but conspiracy is the planning of a crime with one or more other people. If you get pulled over in your car with a buddy, and you have loaded guns, ski masks, bags, and a map to a bank, you're probably going to face charges for conspiracy to commit armed robbery. Padilla came back to the states with plans for a dirty bomb after meeting known terrorists in Afghanistan. I don't think it's too much to ask that he be charged with conspiracy to commit murder in court and let a judge sort it out, not rot in jail without a lawyer or charges being pressed. Charging people with conspiracy to commit a crime may sound like "pre-crime persecution" to you, but this has been a staple of the American judicial system long before Bush and 9/11.
We need terrorism. Without it, we have no plausible reason to maintain a military presence near valuable US business interests in the middle east. That's not quite true. We supported Israel in 1947, not because of terrorism, but to counter-balance the presence of Islamic governments in the Middle East (as opposed to the colonial governments before them). We had bases in Saudi Arabia in case Saddam invaded again, which probably would have happened if we weren't there. We've justified a military presence in various parts of the Middle East without terrorism for at least 50 years.
Our involvement in the middle east has been a disaster for ONE HUNDRED fucking years. As opposed to our outstanding foreign policy in Latin America, Africa, Asia, etc. We pretty much fucked the goat on middle east foreign policy, no argument there. I will say, though, that our policy pales in comparison to the British policy towards controlling its oil and other interests. We look like pillars of moral purity compared to what they did, not that that excuses anything.
Regardless of what conservatives think, and regardless of the casualties SO FAR, Al Qaeda is in fact actively trying to build multiple nuclear weapons. We KNOW they have already acquired the weapons-grade uranium, and are simply working on the devices themselves and logistics. Care to guess what the casualties will be when they detonate one or more nuclear weapons in major cities in the U.S. and other western nations? I'm guessing more than lightning strikes.
Terrorism was a law enforcement issue under the Clinton administration, and it was a total disaster. We were not able to stop attacks, merely prosecute people after they already attacked. State sponsorship was not pursued in domestic terrorist attacks. Leads were lost. When it is a law enforcement issue, all we can do is arrest people when they break the law. When it is an intelligence issue (not military), we can track bad guys and stop attacks. This doesn't necessarily mean we use intrusive and warrantless measures. Most of these people are non-U.S. citizens to begin with.
In the case of the first WTC attack in 1993, state sponsorship was not pursued. Evidence the CIA needed to show links back to Iraq was held by the FBI as evidence in court and was unreleasable. Meanwhile, Abdul Rahman Yasin, who admitted to mixing chemicals for the bomb, fled back to Iraq using his Iraqi passport with the help of the Iraqi government. The Clinton administration did nothing. It's because of cases like this as well as 9/11 that terrorism became an intelligence matter vice a law enforcement matter in the Bush administration.
Having studied both terrorist doctrine and soviet doctrine (OK, so I joined after the fall of the SU, so sue me), I have to say radical islamic extremism is scarier for two main reasons.
One, the Soviets fought like they trained and trained in the open. We knew with exquisite precision how an infantry division would form up in rough terrain in the attack, or an armor brigade would form up in the defense, etc etc. Terrorist groups vary too much and adapt too fast to really know what they're up to or what they're going to do next.
Two, the Soviets were not hell-bent on annihilating us, contrary to what many would have you believe in the days of McCarthy. Radical Islamic groups, OTOH, have stated they will not stop, "until the flag of Islam flies over the White House," as more than one terrorist leader has put it. They have vowed to use biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons to those ends and seem to be following through on those promises.
I'm no fan of the Patriot Act and other encroachments on our rights to privacy, but I genuinely believe these things are done because of a very real threat. Fight warrantless domestic surveillance. But don't think for a second the threat isn't real.
I stand corrected on the falling off the desk test, then. In addition to the weather and dusts tests, there's also vibration, which I failed to mention. Military grade rugged computers and PDAs have to withstand a great deal of vibration from riding in helos, planes, tanks, Hummers, etc. I don't know about the EEE, but most laptops probably wouldn't have a long shelf-life at a tank battalion.
Uh, no. There are no military-grade UMPCs available. Try that EEE mod then drop from shoulder height on concrete and let me know how it works out for you. Toughbooks get dropped out the back of C130s and survive. The EEE would probabky shatter if it fell off my desk. And that's not even getting into the water, dust, shock, freezing tests.
Working in the intelligence community, having deployed to Iraq et al, and being a former Marine, I've seen a lot of the systems we use. For rough field use, there's the toughbook, and pretty much very little else. There have been some attempts at deploying a rugged PDA-type device to troops, but technical difficulties and cost, among other things, have kept them from gaining widespread use. I have seen some, uh, unconventional forces use the Sony Vaio Micro PC 280P in a padded case. For light field use, it gets the job done, but it's hardly rugged. I happen to have one myself, and I wouldn't imagine dropping it or getting it wet.
I hope as these UMPCs or MIDs become more powerful and more popular, we'll see some rugged versions designed for military use. There's so much we could use them for. It might even spur the use of Linux in DoD, godforbid.
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Whatever. I got modded troll and flamebait so it appears justice has been done. Now goaway.
I apologize for identifying you with pacifists. You made the argument that sometimes it is better to die than defend yourself, which is as non-violent as non-violent comes. Frankly, I am a little perplexed by this statement. My father, a self-described pacifist, peace-nik, and hippie owns a rifle for self defense and has since 1964. Your position seems even more extreme than his, yet you say you made arguments against pacifism. I fail to see how you are not one, but I apologize for jumping to the conclusion that you are a pacifist.
Well, AQI is doing pretty well against us without the H-bomb. Clearly that is not neccessary to take on the U.S. military. I would say automatic weapons and possibly grenades or in the hands of ordinary citizens would be enough to take on the government while not posing a risk too large that other citizens couldn't counter. Keep in mind that having the weapons would be enough to stave off a revolution. The military would not wage war with citizens armed with belt-fed machine guns.
Mmm, no I haven't conceded anything. I just got tired of explaining the same thing over and over again. I said 3, maybe 4 times now, that I explained in another post how I understood the main point, understood how the experiment was different, and was discussing this as a related topic. None of which you even acknowledged ("no you didn't, you just stumbled in and started yelling" etc). I realize I didn't SPECIFICALLY say that I was referring to something offtopic, but I didn't realize I needed to precede it with WARNING: OFFTOPIC. I realize(d) that anti-hydrogen will not rise in the experiment due to escape velocity, but merely brought it up as another factor, perhaps even as an interesting point of discussion since no one else even mentioned that it is a factor on which way gas particles move.
The part about falling upwards still leaves me in amazement. I used it as a metaphor (I thought an obvious one), instead of just saying hydrogen rises. The fact that everyone argued why hydrogen doesn't ACTUALLY fall upwards seems pretty, well, retarded.
I don't feel any apologies are in order. I got modded for my comments as did everyone else and I'm tired of explaining them.
Yeah, pointy sticks can be misused too. You could poke an eye out!
Dictators use whatever means at their disposal to control their people.
Details at 11.
Yeah, I got that. And he was making fun of how violence is not the solution to violence, which is that to which I was replying. And in your scenario, water is the solution to fire, not more fire. What is its analog when it comes to violence? What is the solution to violence if not more violence? I'm all ears if you have an answer.
Yeah, like when we used violence to end slavery, fascism, Nazism, etc. Or would you prefer we did nothing to stop Hitler?
The whole purpose of the 2nd amendment is to ensure military-grade weapons (flint-lock muskets at the time) remain in the hands of ordinary citizens. Today, that would include a lot more than just hunting rifles. It may seem scary to have such powerful weapons in the hands of ordinary citizens, but to me the opposite is much scarier: a disarmed, helpless society unable to defend itself from its government. Much is made of the growing trend of government intrusion into our privacy, warrantless arrests, et al, using quotes like, "When they came for___, I said nothing." Well, when they come for you, what are you going to do?
OK, so we helped brutal dictatorships at various points of our past. Before moving on to the next point, let me just say there only a few options for dealing with brutal dictatorships, and we've been hated for doing them all. We can support them (both in the name of stability and because our interests may align), we can ignore their abuses and do nothing, we can use empty words to decry their actions, and we can force their demise. We've done them all and been hated no matter what. When we stay out of internal affairs, we're hated for not doing something to help one side or the other. When we step in, we're hated for siding with someone and meddling with internal affairs. Considering the ill consequences of the other options, sometimes the best thing to do is probably just support dictatorships until they collapse on their own. Which option do you think we should do?
Now, in the case of AL Qaeda you say we should have realized what would happen when we helped the Mujahadin because of what happened when we supported the Shah et al. In the case of Afghanistan, we were trying to PREVENT a brutal dictatorship, namely the Soviet Union. We did not violently occupy them; we were trying to stop a violent occupation. What should we have done instead? Done nothing to help freedom fighters as they fought the bigger enemy in a key part of the world? In the case of Iraq, I think you're mostly right. We should leave. A unified and stable Iraq will be able to fight us better than what they've got right now. We should let Al Qaeda and Iran fight it out without us. That being said, the situation over there is actually MUCH better than what your news is depicting.
PS The global war on terror only started when we started paying attention. Al Qaeda attacked us regularly during the Clinton years, and we did nothing. UBL himself said he needed to conduct 9/11 because Americans wouldn't listen to anything else. YOU are what he is talking about. No matter what we do, they are going to try to kill us. Instead of feeling sorry for ourselves and apologizing for the mistakes of the past, we need to realize we are at war.
I agree that what we did to Padilla was wrong. He should have been tried in court. BTW, I hope you know one doesn't have to actually be caught in a crime to be charged. One could be charged with conspiracy to commit a crime, which has the same punishment as the crime itself. IANAL, but conspiracy is the planning of a crime with one or more other people. If you get pulled over in your car with a buddy, and you have loaded guns, ski masks, bags, and a map to a bank, you're probably going to face charges for conspiracy to commit armed robbery. Padilla came back to the states with plans for a dirty bomb after meeting known terrorists in Afghanistan. I don't think it's too much to ask that he be charged with conspiracy to commit murder in court and let a judge sort it out, not rot in jail without a lawyer or charges being pressed. Charging people with conspiracy to commit a crime may sound like "pre-crime persecution" to you, but this has been a staple of the American judicial system long before Bush and 9/11.
No, I meant the Marine Corps where I served as an intelligence analyst.
Regardless of what conservatives think, and regardless of the casualties SO FAR, Al Qaeda is in fact actively trying to build multiple nuclear weapons. We KNOW they have already acquired the weapons-grade uranium, and are simply working on the devices themselves and logistics. Care to guess what the casualties will be when they detonate one or more nuclear weapons in major cities in the U.S. and other western nations? I'm guessing more than lightning strikes.
Terrorism was a law enforcement issue under the Clinton administration, and it was a total disaster. We were not able to stop attacks, merely prosecute people after they already attacked. State sponsorship was not pursued in domestic terrorist attacks. Leads were lost. When it is a law enforcement issue, all we can do is arrest people when they break the law. When it is an intelligence issue (not military), we can track bad guys and stop attacks. This doesn't necessarily mean we use intrusive and warrantless measures. Most of these people are non-U.S. citizens to begin with.
In the case of the first WTC attack in 1993, state sponsorship was not pursued. Evidence the CIA needed to show links back to Iraq was held by the FBI as evidence in court and was unreleasable. Meanwhile, Abdul Rahman Yasin, who admitted to mixing chemicals for the bomb, fled back to Iraq using his Iraqi passport with the help of the Iraqi government. The Clinton administration did nothing. It's because of cases like this as well as 9/11 that terrorism became an intelligence matter vice a law enforcement matter in the Bush administration.
Having studied both terrorist doctrine and soviet doctrine (OK, so I joined after the fall of the SU, so sue me), I have to say radical islamic extremism is scarier for two main reasons.
One, the Soviets fought like they trained and trained in the open. We knew with exquisite precision how an infantry division would form up in rough terrain in the attack, or an armor brigade would form up in the defense, etc etc. Terrorist groups vary too much and adapt too fast to really know what they're up to or what they're going to do next.
Two, the Soviets were not hell-bent on annihilating us, contrary to what many would have you believe in the days of McCarthy. Radical Islamic groups, OTOH, have stated they will not stop, "until the flag of Islam flies over the White House," as more than one terrorist leader has put it. They have vowed to use biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons to those ends and seem to be following through on those promises.
I'm no fan of the Patriot Act and other encroachments on our rights to privacy, but I genuinely believe these things are done because of a very real threat. Fight warrantless domestic surveillance. But don't think for a second the threat isn't real.
I stand corrected on the falling off the desk test, then. In addition to the weather and dusts tests, there's also vibration, which I failed to mention. Military grade rugged computers and PDAs have to withstand a great deal of vibration from riding in helos, planes, tanks, Hummers, etc. I don't know about the EEE, but most laptops probably wouldn't have a long shelf-life at a tank battalion.
Uh, no. There are no military-grade UMPCs available. Try that EEE mod then drop from shoulder height on concrete and let me know how it works out for you. Toughbooks get dropped out the back of C130s and survive. The EEE would probabky shatter if it fell off my desk. And that's not even getting into the water, dust, shock, freezing tests.
Working in the intelligence community, having deployed to Iraq et al, and being a former Marine, I've seen a lot of the systems we use. For rough field use, there's the toughbook, and pretty much very little else. There have been some attempts at deploying a rugged PDA-type device to troops, but technical difficulties and cost, among other things, have kept them from gaining widespread use. I have seen some, uh, unconventional forces use the Sony Vaio Micro PC 280P in a padded case. For light field use, it gets the job done, but it's hardly rugged. I happen to have one myself, and I wouldn't imagine dropping it or getting it wet.
I hope as these UMPCs or MIDs become more powerful and more popular, we'll see some rugged versions designed for military use. There's so much we could use them for. It might even spur the use of Linux in DoD, godforbid.
Uh, wrong kind of flash? If that was a joke, it was a bit too subtle for me, sorry.