State of The Asstard
 

"This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we're in." W.

That has got to be one of the lamest excuses I've ever heard. Only a Maggie L. could not interpret that statement as anything but the most cynical insult to our citizens, let alone the friends and families of the war dead.

"There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring them on."

This is the fight that this administration (not "we") CREATED!

We, the people, not necessarily you or me, gave them, our elected officials, the power they used to start the war. So to some degree or another, we, the people, including you and me, are responsible.

Any suggestions on how we make them fix the problem? How should we punish them for abusing our trust?

I can think of some drastic solutions to either, but I doubt enough of us are prepared to pay that price.

(aren't those quotes from older speeches?)

No way, we the people are NOT responsible for this. This is an abuse of their position.

Responsibility, along with its good friend guilt, is both transitive and diffuse.

I don't think they feel guilty. I'm damn sure I don't.:flipbird:

Not only did "We the People" not stop him, "We the People" reelected him. That makes 'We the People" responsible. :2cents:

So what're you the people going to do next time then? (obviously GWB can't go again, but one of his mates will and he/she will probably have the same influences)

I totally did not vote for him.

People get the government they deserve. This works for Iraq and the United State(s).

But you are not "We the People", nobody is. The "We the People" allowing the whole fiasco, is the majority.

This is an exellent example of why the Bill of Rights, preventing the majority from imposing on the minority, is so important.:2cents:

Pangloss, explain something: just where in your (poorer than mine) thinking is any consideration that our foes hit at us repeatedly, and lethally, over the span of eighteen years before we replied to any effect? Since you seem to need a reminder, these were Beirut 1983, WTC 1993, USS Cole, the embassies, and finally 9/11. Our longsufferingness gives us enormous virtue, my friend. They woke the giant, and they better own that.

These people really really really wanted a war. We Americans have no business complaining if at too long last they got one. So what the hell do you think you're accomplishing but aid and comfort to foes who deserve neither?

They are people too UG.

Basically what America does is beat the living shit out of someone and complains if they fight back. Right now, we are opressing the Middle East and even though I strongly disagree with terrorism, I understand why they are pissed off.

BushCo. is a cancer.
We need to get out, without their oil.

If we were invaded and occupied how many of you would be gorilla insurgents? I sure as hell would be.
They are within their rights, and legal by international law (meaning native Iraqis, not foreigners just coming in to kill Americans)

Pierce: I disagree with terrorism more strongly than you, and I think my level of disagreement is about the minimum.

I won't argue about them being people, but I require all of them to behave like humans. Don't, I say, fall short.

What is behaving like humans? Fighting for what you believe in? Please look from their prospective once in a while.

Let's see: they believe in sequestering women. They believe they must murder all unbelievers. They believe the total of human knowledge should be contained in the Holy Quran -- as if it were big enough. They believe Israel shouldn't exist, and don't take the Jews into proper account in this -- hey, if not Israel, then where, again? They believe another genocide of the Jews would be just the thing -- as if anybody has done anything much with that parcel of territory before a bunch of Jews moved in and made a success of the place. Seems to me the Jews are doing a better job. They believe that the solution to the Jews doing a better job is to be at perennial feud with the Jews. My God.

Et cetera, et bloody cetera.

I shall not look from their perspective, because I've never seen anything in their radical-Islamist perspective that is any good.

Muslims who don't commit any of the above are not the ones I turn my fire against.

I gave up moral relativism of your sort many years ago. Until you depart from it also, you haven't got much to teach me. Moral relativism is not a tool whereby you can make such elementary distinctions as good from evil.

Godamn, Muslims do not want to commit genocide on the Jews. Israel was forced upon them, they just want their land back. If Israel was placed in South America, the Middle East wouldn't care about it.

Their land, gotcha.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has said that it's better if the Jews gather in one single nation because then they can be gotten all at one time.

Oh, great, another person speaking of this as if it were WWII and the US has come to save the world from the great evil. This is getting really old.

Fixed that.

It musta been "Ouija People" because I had nothing to do with electing him! ;)

Who are "these people"? Who were you going to go to war against in 1983? Oh, yeah - Grenada - thanks, Dutch, nice response to the attack in Beruit. What nation attacked us in 1993? Who could we invade? The USS Cole attackers were identified after Bush took office, Who should he have invaded? Afghanistan was a legitimate target. Iraq is/was not. The majority of the 9/11 attackers came from Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan is a hornets' nest that supports the Taliban, and should have been considered before Iraq.

:lol2: :thumb2:

Fighting illegal occupiers of your sovereign nation is not terrorism.

There is no "They", not all Muslims hold those beliefs.
Not everyone believes in "Evil", especially evil people. We are all capable of the same things, good and bad.

We
 

I actually think Spex did a good job of explaining the situation. I think you and some others have conflated "The Terrorists" with "Those swarthy Muslims." When you say we should "hit them" I suppose that includes all the civilian men, women, and children, that have and will continue to perish? The damage we have wreaked is out of all proportion to the violence perpetrated against us. And as my initial post inplied, I'm a bit pissed off that W essentially says "Hey. I didn't expect it to get so bad (remember Katrina), but now that it is, let's send in more soldiers."

He's in a bubble.

Lets say you're walking one day and you step in a hornet's nest. But rather than sting you, somehow the hornets politely ask you to leave, repeatedly. Then they sting you a few times so you get the picture. But since they asked you to do so, you would lose face by actually moving your foot, so you stay. Well, finally, they get fed up and a massive cloud of them rises and starts stinging the FUCK outta you. Should you honestly blame the hornets?

What you don't ever seem to be able to grasp, UG, is that we can't fight terrorism. We can't. We can prosecute those that perpetrate acts of terrorism, in a just and legal fashion, but to fight the ideal, the institution, the very concept of terrorism? The only way to do that is to IGNORE it, to not let it TERRORIZE us, to rise above it and keep the moral highground. Trying to crush terrorism beneath combat boots and tank treads only increases the problem, exponentially. To 'win', as you put it, we need to educate, help, and otherwise improve the state of those who would terrorize us, we need to give them nothing to terrorize us about, and we need to above all feel no terror at their attempts. If they have us running scared, like they do, running scared straight towards them, they have won.

See above.:p

Right on, let's kick some terrorist butt! Oh wait, we can't. Bush has the military tied up with his vendetta in Iraq.
By the time the next President extracts the troops from that quagmire, I'm afraid the public will have lost their enthusiasm for going back to Afghanistan and actually fight terrorists.:(

Why oh why must you all think with only two digits of your respective IQ and believe I cannot tell one sort of Muslim from another? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Oh for some real intelligent discourse!

Try mensa.com UG. They'll give you a run for your money. :) Unlike all the mental midgets here.

While I do not disagree in general with your point about us having been repeatedly struck with little to no response, I still need to know where the unequivocal link to Iraq is, here. Don't get me wrong...Saddam was scum, and I'm glad he's dead. But aren't we now going to have to kill *every* despot that rises to take his place? I mean, no one seriously believes that there's going to be a kinder, gentler Muslim world now that he's gone, right? Right?

Shouldn't we be kicking the snot out of the guys who actually claimed responsibility? Wouldn't we be doing a better job of that if we were out of Iraq and crawling up Bin Laden's ass with a Tomahawk right now?

We're done in Iraq, we need to go. It isn't stable with us there, and it isn't going to be stable when we're gone. Meanwhile, the guys who actually said they pulled off 9-11 are still crawling around the Middle Eastern baseboards like the cockroaches they are.

Whoops. I see Bruce beat me to it.

Went to a couple of meetings, did not enjoy it, nor was I challenged.
Came across as a silly puzzle/trivia club.

A tad sooner but not nearly as well. :notworthy

Permit me to set you permanently straight, then: I have never conflated the two and never will. You can search every post I've ever written should you require further proof. Conflation is and remains completely absent, though the more frantic of my opposition may choose to read it into some things I've written. But then, they're trying too hard.

Thing is, guys, you persist in assuming I'm not too bright, in the face of any and all evidence. What does this say about your own powers of intellectual penetration? Does this perhaps say something about why I burst into disbelieving, disparaging laughter at some of your remarks? Is a poorly-founded yet perennial assumption the other guy has to be dim not itself a sign of some stupidity?

Mensa does need to be handled right -- my very bright mother-in-law, rest her soul, tried a few Mensa meetings herself and found them mainly exchanging recipes. Very disappointed, she was. Clearly there are better ways to run Mensa chapters than that -- continuing education or something.

Perhaps you should offer your higher intellect to mensa and tell them how they should run their organisation UG. I'm sure they'd be very impressed with your input. :)

Now there's a notion. And I can offer recipes, too! ;)

You're my hero UG. :love2:

:vomit:

<uploads Pepto-Bismol (tm) to poor Kitsune>