THAT'S fighting? Let's keep this argument in the real world, OK?
Killing law enforcement officers is fighting. But, of course, that was my whole point. The Taliban were defeated in Afghanistan. The fact that they are still attempting to get the land back, only a few years after their defeat, is no more significant than the fact that Canadian Indians are still having to fight for their land. The Seminoles have done nothing I am aware of in two hundred years, but still proudly point to their lack of acquiescence. The Taliban do mount attacks, and they get killed en masse each time they do. This will go on for a while, but eventually they will fade into complete insignificance - as the Canadian Indians have as a fighting force.
Indian resistance in Canada, Catholic resistance in Northern Ireland and Seminole Resistance in Florida all together don't add up to a tiny fraction of the daily violence in Iraq.
Not any more. The Irish got tired of constantly dying, but it took about 80 years. The IRA violence prior to about the 1990's was as bad as anything we see in the middle east today. That, again, is my point. Resistance will continue for decades, in some cases centuries. The military situation in Iraq is very touchy because of the potential (indeed I would say the probability) of a large scale civil war when we leave. Afghanistan less so, but neither country is what anyone would call stable. That does not equate to the US getting their "asss kicked." It equates to people resisting an occupying army. That's a fact of life. Again, if we use the schoolyard metaphor, we may take a few punches, but you should see the other guy.
My conclusion is that wars are fought nation-to-nation, not nation-to-regime. My conclusion is that you are incapable of making the distinction. For some reason you want to consider a victory over the regime as a victory over the nation, probably because you know you will never be able to claim the latter. What's particularly ludicrous is that when the nation finally ends up victorious and expels or kills the invaders and all their collaborators, the regime that you now claim was "toppled" may very well be reinstalled.
Actually, it is you that is incapabble of making the distinction between conquering a nation and conquering a government. Both objectives have historical precedent. But again, your military knowledge is lacking. So I suppose we failed in Panama because we only toppled Noriega and didn't actually make Panama our "19th Province." Come to think of it, the whole American Revolution was an abject failure because we failed to conquer England. Well, God save the Queen. Conquest is not always the aim of war. The Arabs in the middle east want to conquer and retake Israel. We had no desire to own Iraq, only to depose the Ba'athist regime. The chances of that regime returning are extremely slim. The chances of Saddam returning are right up there with that 12th Imam.
You deliberately chose to ignore the argument that the U.S.A. failed in Iraq by failing to achieve its objectives and focused instead on the tone of the argument, the BWAHAHAHAHA in particular. A matter of no substance whatever.
I did no such thing. You deliberately choose to ignore any response I give that does not fit your theory.
Bullshit. Again you are pulling your old trick of ignoring the substance and focusing on the style, then blithely asserting that (presumably because you failed to address it) the substance was lacking from the outset. Fooling no one, I might add.
I cannot ignore substance that does not exist. As to fooling no one, that comment betrays a lot about your ego.
You accuse me, perhaps appropriately, of an ad hominem attack. >>
Not even.
So when you said "Nice smear attempt" that was not an accusation of an ad hominem attack? You're whining because I am calling you out for acting like a child. It's the way you debate when you start to lose. Now you complain about my ignoring the substance of your argument. Nonsense. i have addressed all of your points ad naseum.
Oh, PLEASE show me one instance in which I "mischaracterized or misinterpreted" any of your responses.
I'll be damned it I am going to waste my time going back and rehashing the arguments I have just made again and again. I have to continually clarify what should be simple points because you take them to mean something completely differnt from what I intended. Then you base a response on your interpretation rather than my intent. Foremost among those sorts of things (of which there have been numerous in this thread) was your assertion that I did not understand the unity of the Iranian people and how that differed from the factionalism in Iraq
even though I had pointed exactly that out in the post to which you were responding. moi??
Oui, vous!
Oh for God's sake.
How about ROTFL? Is ROTFL OK? How about ROTFLMFAO? Is that sane enough for you?
Actually, the "little but crazy" part was intended to be humorous.
Geeze, I'll try to watch myself in the future. What's a nice way to say "fucking war criminals?"
"having sex with Hitler and Saddam?"
These debates are a little rougher than the ones I normally engage in, but there's an anonymity here which is liberating in the sense that the normal civilities of daily life exercised between people who know one another are dispensed with, but I think a more honest exchange results. For example, there is an emotional component here - - anger, which IMHO is fully justified by the scope of the atrocities, killings, suffering and misery unleashed by one powerful and wealthy country for absolutely no good reason on a tiny country not even one-tenth its size which has the God-awful misfortune to rest upon the world's second biggest proven oil reserves. I hope if you get even a tiny smidgen of the anger that I and millions of others feel at the depredations of American power all over the world, the lawlessness, the defiance of established international order, the contempt for the UN's efforts to build a system of international justice, then you will have learned much more from the debate here than if you had read a dozen closely reasoned, politely worded essays about the topic. You'd do a lot better to focus on what's behind the cuss words, the sarcasm, etc. and pick up on the underlying emotions. And ask yourself, if this is coming from a bystander, a guy who basically doesn't give a shit, has no relatives or family on the receiving end of the shit-storm, what kind of anger is coming at us from people whose country has been invaded, whose kids have been blown to bits, or who hear about this every fucking day in their mosque in Jakarta or Tirana or Istanbul or even Los Angeles?
So effectively, you think it is perfectly OK to call me a "fucking war criminal" and act like a kid instead of choosing a rational debatge style (which, apparently, you DO choose to do when faced with a possible personal response) because of your anonymity. We fucking war criminals call that cowardice. It takes little courage to call someone a name over the internet. It takes more to call them something to their face. But what takes more courage than either is to engage someone courteously even when you are angry, to treat other human beings with the decency you demand when there is no other motivation for it than decency and to look - as you advice - to the motivation behind someone else's actions. I could go on about the fiasco that is the United Nations. I could talk about how much the US has done for the world in the twentieth century and how much good will, blood and treasure of ours has been wasted in the effort. If millions are angry at American actions, millions of Americans are fed up with third world nations that scream for our foreign aid, beg us to solve their problems and then bitch when we get involved (or when we stay uninvolved). I don't really care about your opinion of America. I don't buy your rationalizations, based on personal bigotry, about your warped perception of American actions. I give you the courtesy of debate because I am here, and you are here, and I have an interest in the topics you engage. When you choose to debate rationally, it is a pleasure to exchange views with you. I disagree with much of what you say, but it is a learning experience and an interesting discussion nonetheless. Your intellectual capabilities are not in question. When we disagree it is ususally, as I have pointed out, because we have different experiences. (You denied that point, but you make basically the same point when you say i ought to consider the perspective of the people who are affected by US actions.) But when you choose a style that devolves into schoolyard brawling, then you call for respectful consideration of your points, it is a waste of my time. Worse, it often brings me down to the same level. That's not only a waste of time, it is a waste of spirit.
Wow, talk about misrepresenting responses. I defy you to find one word of moral outrage in what I wrote. I was laughing at you for being as stupid as the Nazis and in exactly the same way - - feeling that you had solved the problem represented by a deadly and determined enemy by laughing them off as vermin, with a pejorative name to go with. It's a common failing of authoritarian militaristic personalities that cannot accept the equality of their opponent. Psychologically, the opponent must be dehumanized and belittled, calling them "roaches" or "desert rats" is the tell-tale sign of the mindset.
If you want to characterize your response as ridicule rather than outrage, i will concede the point. Beyond that, your response is nonetheless exactly what I said it was. You had no objection to my use of the metaphor over several posts, then you jumped on it - and misrepresented it - as an example of dehumanizing the opposition, rather than making a metaphor.
The reason being, the metaphor was immaterial to the argument until now. At this point, you failed to deal with my argument that you did NOT have the situation on the ground in Afghanistan under control or that you had not "toppled" the now-resurgent Taliban. You pointed to the "disarray" of the Taliban as proof that you did, and when I attempted to show that the disarray you were citing actually signified nothing more than a wise choice of tactics, you then chose, not to acnowledge or counter the point, but to compare the tactics to vermin and predict that, just as vermin would be exterminated despite the tactic, so too was the Taliban. Your argument was just as foolish as Rommel's and your belief in ultimate victory over those whom you chose to characterize as "cockroaches" was bound to follow the fate of your fellow fascist's prediction of victory over the "desert rats." That is why at this point in the thread, I chose to call attention to the cockroach metaphor - - just to show similar thinking on the part of the Nazi general, equally deluded, equally misguided, equally doomed to failure.
Wrong. I used the metaphor in a post to which you responded. I said it was LIKE roaches. You cannot kill all of them, but you can CONTROL them. You responded DIRECTLY to that metaphor. You said that we had not CONTROLLED them. You raised no objection at that time to the metaphor itself. I CLARIFIED the METAPHOR by saying that by"control" I simply meant that while you might see an occasional flare up of activity, to which a remedial response is required, the problem was under control (those weren't the exact words, but that was the gist). I was pointing out that complete annihilation of the Taliban was not possible and that there were bound to be flare ups of activity, but that did not mean that the Taliban was not defeated. The Nazis were defeated, but there are still Nazis in German to this day - and some are up to their old tricks. So, like roaches, some will survive and you will have to deal with them, but you can keep them under control. (Just ask any restaraunt owner about pest control.) That is not - to use your words - "characterizing them as roaches." That is only choosing a metaphor to which some might, understandably object. But if you found the metaphor ridiculous, it was no less ridiculous when I introduced it than when I clarified it. You just had to ignore my direct response to your point by ridiculing the metaphor.
That's total bullshit. They want you out of their face and off their land, but they don't want to kill you unless you don't want to stop interfering in their affairs and occupying their lands. As far as enslaving their own people, that's a huge laugh. You could not be more hypocritical if you tried. It is Amerikkka that enslaves those people through corrupt puppet governments all over the Middle East and also through supporting the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. At best you are rival slave-masters to the Taliban and the Iraqi Resistance, but in fact these people want an Islamic Republic or a Caliphate which leaves them more freedom than they presently have and in addition leaves them as sole owners of their own oil.
That, sir, is bullshit. But of course the Taliban denies their women education and destroys ancient artifacts of a rival religion because of US interference in their lives. Iran executes gays because of those damned Americans, Saddam gassed the Kurds because of that bastard Bush. It's amazing how you whine about the US and blame them for the world's ills. But you completely ignore what those poor innocents Muslim fanactics are up to.
Tell us about it. And yet you wonder why they have no problem killing your kind of human being. Unbelievable.
I don't wonder why. I don't care. Any more than I care why a rapist feels the need to control his victim or a serial killer is so angry. The fact that there are millions of people in the world, including in the US, who object to US policy and actions is a matter of concern. When thousands protest in the streets, someone should be listening to what they have to say and deciding whether it has merit, or warrants a change in policy. But when people fly planes into buildings, strap on bombs and walk into discos or takeover schools and murder children - we should respond in kind. I don't like Muslims oppressing women - millions object to it including millions of Islamic women. But I wouldn't have the slightest objection to executing any who condoned suicide bombing Mosques to end that oppression. The fact that many choose to murder because they feel their opinions are not getting through does not mean we should acquiese to their demands.
