>> ^lesserfool:
In reply to this comment by Pprt:
[...]
I'm asking anyone who questions the USA's action: do you think your armed forces exist to harm you... or to protect you?
The armed forces exist to protect US interests. This doesn't mean that they always do that in effect. It also does not mean that they are making me safer.


As I said in my original post, lesserfool, the US is at war with people who don't wear a uniform. They are unidentifiable.

The conception of "war" must change. We aren't in WWI trenches with bayonets here, we're dealing with anonymous individuals operating in frequently independent cells. At times, extraordinary measures must be taken in order to gather information from detainees. Logically, it may be worth the risk to harm an innocent man than to permit the death of dozens of innocents.

Undoubtedly, some sadists have been put into circumstances when they have abused their authority, and they are not without accountability. Martial law is usually more severe than civilian.

Soldiers and those who have chosen a military volition are willing to sacrifice their lives for their country and for you. I return to my original question: do you trust that your military force is working for you, or against you?

Must watch Sift, especially before the upcoming elections. Makes you wonder if WWI could be fought longer if it could've avoided WWII? I wonder.

"The only unlimited power". Scary.

Oh wow. I mean, even the footnotes to this thing are unbelievable: the brother of the Chief of the Fed during WWI was the Chief of intelligence in Germany. AAAAAAAhahahhahahha. This place is as fucked as any has ever been before. Such a shame, too; it had some pretty good masonry at its foundation. (If you got that reference, you win the big brain booby prize).

Odds are, Blizzard is working on either Diablo 3 or World of Diablo at the moment and may just announce it at the next WWI in June if the stars align.

Besides all the incessant rumours, they just bought up diablo3.com (which used to be a fan site), and they'd bought up similar domains for different languages before that too.

Then again, as I remember they bought starcraft2.com a considerably long time before they announced anything regarding it. At the very least there are tons of hints that whether or not we'll get it in the next 3 years, they're up to at least something with that IP <_<

I wouldn't call it Australia's Alamo, it's more like Australia's Dieppe. Which, coincidentally, the Brits ran with all Canadian units. But you do have to hand it to the Brits: they did fight WWI to the last Indian...

>> ^kulpims:
^no, they wouldn't. not for Balkans. but they would for Caspian oil


I think that was a reference to WWI. Of course, we don't have empires now in this age of The United Nations, right?

Yes, I've read Naomi Wolf. Cheney took advantage of 911 like Hitler took advantage of the Reichstag fire, but Clinton/Obama seem different. During the previous Clinton administration not one American claimed we resembled post-WWI Germany, though 9/11 itself was blowback from Clinton and pre-Clinton policy. I never supported nuclear proliferation, nor threats designed to prevent it. Nukes are safe in India's hands, but not with Pakistan or Turkey. I never supported "pumping Iraq full of money and weapons". You are putting words into my mouth. Somebody has to stop the sectarian death squads in Iraq. Replacing US troops with UN peacekeepers is good because it would calm some of the jihadists. Total immediate withdrawal would probably lead to a 3-way civil war between the Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites and an eventual 3-state schism, and Iraqi Kurd independence would lead Iran and Turkey into the fray, and I can't say for certain that the total death toll of that would be higher than UN peacekeeping over festering wounds of sectarian violence, but it probably would. I wish the Iraqi Kurds could get a free state without Turkey&Iran making a fuss about the precedent that sets. Kurdistan is the most peaceful and least fundamentalist part of Iraq. I'm sufficiently uncertain about the difference in eventual effect between gradual withdrawal & UN peacekeeping vs. total immediate withdrawal that it's not really the most important difference between the candidates. The biggest problem in Iraq is the damn fundamentalist religion. They prefer to just blow each other up over an argument that started with who should succeed the ancient impostor Muhammad. Most Iraqis oppose total freedom of religion, even the ones who are afraid of being oppressed by a majority of the opposite sect. It's madness. Some days I wish someone would translate the complete works of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and Richard Dawkins into Arabic and air-drop 100 million copies.

post WWI Germany?? WTF dude. We ARE post-WWI Germany? Are you that ignorant of history. Guess what led to Hitler rise to power? Economic crisis and scapegoating fictious "bad people". Do I need to be more specific on the parallels or do you really honestly think the US is in Iraq to rebuild like Japan?

Do you know how long Japan reconstruction took? Do you know how much money has been spent towards "Iraq reconstruction"? How exactly does US occupation entail "taking it slow" or "letting things cool down". You are an lacking logical thoughts if you think pumping Iraq full of money and weapons and arming all the local militias (who currently are helpful) is a good idea. What about $200B in arms to Israel and then a matching $200B to Saudis? Is that helping cool things down?

How is giving nuclear technology to India, Turkey and Pakistan helping? You honestly can't see the bigger picture? How is threatening Iran fall under the "letting things cool down" picture?

Any (sane) person who joins the military knows there's a chance they will die in the line of duty.

Acmetech, I think you're confusing trustworthiness with submissiveness.

The stop-loss program and all other forms of conscription are slavery (therefore prohibited by the 13th amendment). Laws against desertion also constitute slavery and a violation of the 13th amendment. I would encourage soldiers who want to avoid getting called up again to flee to a more civilized country in the EU. A truly volunteer military would effectively give the soldiers veto power over unjust war by allowing them to leave. No true war of defense would lack volunteers.

The fact that hundreds of times more Americans are dying from McDonalds than from the war in Iraq is another reason not to spend so much time glorifying soldiers who died for Dick Cheney's sake.

At least Obama voted against the authorization for the Iraq war. If we pulled out all troops immediately, there might be anarchy and more genocide. Clinton/Obama are just saying take it slow and let things cool down (like we did with Japan/Germany after WWII) USA did a pretty good job of reconstructing Japan back in the day. If we fuck it over like post WWI Germany, there may be somebody even worse than Saddam Hussein in charge in 2020.

Giuliani is one fascist bastard. This combination of hate, nationalism, pride and war mongering is quite similar to the garbage that made Hitler appreciated in Germany.

If the American economy crashes, many Americans will look for a strong leader. People like Giuliani will always be present, catering to people who feel humiliated -- exactly like the Germans felt after losing WWI and being left with a messed up economy.

I hope Americans have the strength to reject this ideology.

Dogfighting + WWI ??? Automatic upvote !!

Hitler came into post-WWI Germany and told the people exactly what they wanted to hear. That's how he got into power.
Is this guy really comparing Hitler's fascist dictatorship to the US today? Seriously?
He's got a lot of good facts in there. For a while I thought he was going to go off on some "We have no more rights, let's go assassinate the government" tangent, but he stayed pretty straight and taught a good lesson. I hold off on my vote for now though, in the hopes that he wasn't comparing the US to Hiter's regime.

That cost a lot of lives, says DrPawn. Wow. I mean wow.

Why don't you freaking look up the WWI casualties sometime. I'll give you one number, almost 1.5 million french soldiers. That's 1.5 million french pussies I guess? What an ignorant twit.

They're soldiers for f**k sake didnt they know what they were getting into when they took the job?

Why should they have known that they were getting into this? Name another American military excursion similar to what we're doing in Iraq. Vietnam? No, there was a draft for that. Korea? Draft. WWI, WWII, draft draft. The military entanglements we've entered without the draft have been either smaller in scale or far more brief than the present quagmire.

Given that this is a volunteer army, many (most?) of the soldiers in Iraq right now are people who either A) needed the money (due to a lack of other jobs, or for future schooling) or B) truly believe in the value of service to country (nothing wrong with that IMHO). Members of the military disproportionately come from lower-income areas / families and rarely from the richest or most politically powerful. The people who encouraged, and continue to support, this useless war have little at stake personally, little or no "flesh in the game."

Our soldiers had no reason to expect a protracted occupation in an unstable country without adequate resources. Those in the Reserves and National Guard certainly had no reason to anticipate extended, recurring deployments outside of the US. The financial, emotional, and health strains placed on our most loyal citizens are immense in any war. When the war is of dubious merit and may end up being a near-complete waste of resources (money and lives) the stress frequently comes coupled with anger and/or indignation for those most closely affected.

I for one agree with the caller in this clip. If our continued occupation of Iraq is so terribly important that stressing our military and our economy in this way is justified, then service shouldn't be entirely voluntary. If our country truly needs to do this, then we should all be expected to do our fair share to assist. Either re-institute the draft or end the mission. I'd prefer to see the latter given that I'm of selective service age and in relatively good health. Really though, I can't imagine the war would last much longer once those in power actually had to risk seeing a loved one endanger their life fighting it.

War = failure. Every war. No exception. How can we make it worse? Just keep doing it.

People like to point to the US revolution and WWII as "good" wars. I still say no. WWII was the result of the failure of the "victors" of WWI to realize that a perpetually humiliated and insolvent Germany would grow desperate and crazy like a caged dog poked with sticks all day long. It took a whole extra war to realize that real victory requires a Marshall Plan, not pointier sticks. Blame Chamberlain? It was already too late no matter what that guy did.

And the American revolution? Did all that violence (which includes 1812) really leave us better off than the Canadians, Australians or New Zealanders are today? It did enable the US to keep slavery legal for much longer than in the commonwealth though.

And the "unmistakable legacy of Vietnam?" Please. Guess what, we lost in Vietnam and what difference did it make? None. The dominoes didn't fall and the world didn't end (but the Cold War did). You can now vacation in Ho Chi Minh City. How much better off would we be now if we had stuck with it long enough to "win"? None--probably less. Piles of dead civilians afterwards? Yes. But we killed many more civilians over the many years we were there (estimated at 5.1 million) than were killed in the aftermath of our exit. What produced those killing fields and boat people? The war itself. None of that would have happened if the US had never intervened on behalf of French colonialism.

Saddam is dead. Whatever. I, personally, am ready to declare Iraq a total victory and George W. Bush an unprecedented genius--exceeded only by the enormity of his own (not gay!) penis. Fine. Let's all go home.