Absolutely! Our occupying forces leave Iraq. Soon afterward, Iran takes advantage of the chaos and anarchy to ally with its neighbor, helping to rebuild Iraq right where we left off. These two powers quickly amass and send troops into Kuwait. Suddenly, Iran controls the vast majority of oil in the Middle East. After that, extreme sanctions on oil exports to the US and its staunchest allies causes economic havoc. Not only would the US be hit hard as a direct result of the sanctions, but indirectly as well, since the economic turmoil in our foreign business partners would be reflected back upon us.
Firstly, your premise is faulty. No reasons were given for a withdrawal. The post to which I replied simply stated that Congress had failed to effect a withdrawal. Since there was no specific points of argument to counter, I was forced to counter the broad point of argument-- that being the necessity of a swift withdrawal from Iraq.
Secondly, the case of the metaphor is no different than the situation in Iraq. Whenever opponents are engaged in a conflict, the cessation of aggression on the part of one participant does not magically cause the conflict to end. We can choose to pick up and stop fighting if we so desire, but that does not mean our enemy will follow suit.
There's much more to a conflict than combat. If we simply pick up and leave, we allow economics to be rebuilt and alliances to be reformed. Pretty soon, instead of dealing with a battered opponent who just has a helluva lot of heart, we start dealing with a strong group of opponents that can choke us from overseas through economic sanctions and strategic alliances.
Which is to say, pretty much what we did with Germany after World War I.
You have an interesting view of how to end a conflict. Let's put this in perspective: two people are engaged in a brawl with one another for quite some time. Your suggestion for ending the brawl is to have one of these people just stop fighting. Unfortunately, when that guy stops fighting, the other guy won't. Suddenly, the guy who turned pacifist is left wondering, "Where did I go wrong?" while his opponent beats the snot out of him for letting his guard down.
Now, we can argue over the justifications or the fault in starting Iraq till the cows come home, but that has nothing to do with how a conflict should be ended. Whether or not the war was initially justifiable, we are now involved in a lasting conflict.
On a different note, I also find it rather ironic that your suggestion for halting the war in Iraq is for everyone to just stop working, and yet you seem to be worried about an impending economic crash.
...and I'm pretty sure 70% of the nation is so brain dead they would probably be against anything the President said.
Wow! Blanket generalizations are easy to make! Throw in a couple pop-culture references to Guantanamo and Iraq, and now you can justify any negative sentiment about the President without having to rely on any legitimate argument!
This isn't a Merit Badge for not doing something. It's a Merit Badge for taking the time to learn about the laws of the nation in which one resides-- lots of precedence for this in other Scouting Merit Badges.
How can one determine how "dark matter and light matter have been forced apart" when we haven't even conclusively determined the EXISTENCE of dark matter?
Isn't that a bit like someone saying, "I've discovered why the Sasquatch hides from mankind?"
Right. Because Sci-Fi is so very limited in the possibilities it allows. No one ever heard of an alternate reality in Sci-Fi. And there's never been any wildly popular Science Fiction that's done something ridiculously out-of-line in comparison to known laws of physics.
Fantasy worlds have to make just as much sense as Sci-Fi universes; conversely, Sci-Fi universes often make just as little sense as Fantasy worlds.
Major League Gaming is notorious for not actually paying out its prize money. Amongst their Tekken 5 tournaments, alone, there are guys still waiting to be paid for tournaments they won nearly a year ago (http://tekkenzaibatsu.com/forums/showthread.php?t hreadid=85134)
This is very true. Take the game Hitman 2, for example. It used a number of Open Source components (ie, Freetype) and credited them without ever GPL'ing the majority of the game's source.
However, read over the code even briefly and compare it to the GPL'ed Quake1 source code and there's no denying that the entire base of HL2's code is a direct evolution of Quake. Now, it's well known that they licensed the Quake engine for Half-Life, but does that license extend to the game's sequel? I would think not. If not, and if iD did not grant a new code license for HL2, it would seem that Valve IS in violation of the GPL.
Those, however, are two very big "if's."
Slashdot Mirror
Absolutely! Our occupying forces leave Iraq. Soon afterward, Iran takes advantage of the chaos and anarchy to ally with its neighbor, helping to rebuild Iraq right where we left off. These two powers quickly amass and send troops into Kuwait. Suddenly, Iran controls the vast majority of oil in the Middle East. After that, extreme sanctions on oil exports to the US and its staunchest allies causes economic havoc. Not only would the US be hit hard as a direct result of the sanctions, but indirectly as well, since the economic turmoil in our foreign business partners would be reflected back upon us.
Firstly, your premise is faulty. No reasons were given for a withdrawal. The post to which I replied simply stated that Congress had failed to effect a withdrawal. Since there was no specific points of argument to counter, I was forced to counter the broad point of argument-- that being the necessity of a swift withdrawal from Iraq. Secondly, the case of the metaphor is no different than the situation in Iraq. Whenever opponents are engaged in a conflict, the cessation of aggression on the part of one participant does not magically cause the conflict to end. We can choose to pick up and stop fighting if we so desire, but that does not mean our enemy will follow suit.
There's much more to a conflict than combat. If we simply pick up and leave, we allow economics to be rebuilt and alliances to be reformed. Pretty soon, instead of dealing with a battered opponent who just has a helluva lot of heart, we start dealing with a strong group of opponents that can choke us from overseas through economic sanctions and strategic alliances. Which is to say, pretty much what we did with Germany after World War I.
You have an interesting view of how to end a conflict. Let's put this in perspective: two people are engaged in a brawl with one another for quite some time. Your suggestion for ending the brawl is to have one of these people just stop fighting. Unfortunately, when that guy stops fighting, the other guy won't. Suddenly, the guy who turned pacifist is left wondering, "Where did I go wrong?" while his opponent beats the snot out of him for letting his guard down. Now, we can argue over the justifications or the fault in starting Iraq till the cows come home, but that has nothing to do with how a conflict should be ended. Whether or not the war was initially justifiable, we are now involved in a lasting conflict. On a different note, I also find it rather ironic that your suggestion for halting the war in Iraq is for everyone to just stop working, and yet you seem to be worried about an impending economic crash.
...and I'm pretty sure 70% of the nation is so brain dead they would probably be against anything the President said.
Wow! Blanket generalizations are easy to make! Throw in a couple pop-culture references to Guantanamo and Iraq, and now you can justify any negative sentiment about the President without having to rely on any legitimate argument!
This isn't a Merit Badge for not doing something. It's a Merit Badge for taking the time to learn about the laws of the nation in which one resides-- lots of precedence for this in other Scouting Merit Badges.
How can one determine how "dark matter and light matter have been forced apart" when we haven't even conclusively determined the EXISTENCE of dark matter? Isn't that a bit like someone saying, "I've discovered why the Sasquatch hides from mankind?"
Right. Because Sci-Fi is so very limited in the possibilities it allows. No one ever heard of an alternate reality in Sci-Fi. And there's never been any wildly popular Science Fiction that's done something ridiculously out-of-line in comparison to known laws of physics.
Fantasy worlds have to make just as much sense as Sci-Fi universes; conversely, Sci-Fi universes often make just as little sense as Fantasy worlds.
Major League Gaming is notorious for not actually paying out its prize money. Amongst their Tekken 5 tournaments, alone, there are guys still waiting to be paid for tournaments they won nearly a year ago (http://tekkenzaibatsu.com/forums/showthread.php?t hreadid=85134)
This is very true. Take the game Hitman 2, for example. It used a number of Open Source components (ie, Freetype) and credited them without ever GPL'ing the majority of the game's source. However, read over the code even briefly and compare it to the GPL'ed Quake1 source code and there's no denying that the entire base of HL2's code is a direct evolution of Quake. Now, it's well known that they licensed the Quake engine for Half-Life, but does that license extend to the game's sequel? I would think not. If not, and if iD did not grant a new code license for HL2, it would seem that Valve IS in violation of the GPL. Those, however, are two very big "if's."