UGADawgs wrote:
Point&Shoot wrote:
br4vo.f0xtrot wrote:
Pointing out our "short-comings" is like me telling all of your friends (the american people), about your (america) little weewee (short-comings). its just disrespectful. this may not make sense to you, but sure as hell makes sense to me.
You missed my point,
I am disrespecting the US. Under their current government, both on a social and economic level, the US is in a tailspin and is going to take out everyone else when she craters.
My dis-respect is not targeted at the individual US citizen, but the US government and the society that supports it. If that offends you personally because you blindly support the US government, good.
The sooner that the US, as a society, can recoqnize this, the sooner they can fix it and become a true leader of the world. Not through military might, but through social progress.
The US isn't in the best of times but it's not in a tailspin. I'm not surprised that you're against the war in Iraq, but I'm really surprised that you don't favor the war in Afghanistan. We knew that the planners of 9/11 were in Afghanistan, and we went in there and established a government unfavorable to terrorism. The whole operation now is keeping the government in power and finishing off the Taliban. I don't see how you would be in favor of an Afghanistan back under the Taliban.
It's not fair to take away the British's honor of being the only nation to capture Washington, you know. Don't forget that we torched Toronto, the colonial capital, and we even used American troops for it.
Torching Toronto is actually doing the rest of Canada a favor (an opinion shared by almost all Canadians who don't live in Toronto a.k.a. the centre of the universe). So a tip of the hat to US forces is due in that respect.
As for Afghanistan, I really have trouble understanding the reasons for the invasion. Yes, a lot of reasons have been spouted, none of which are out-right lies, but I don't think the public has been given the whole picture, at least not in totality. The perpetrators of 9/11 were, I believe, mostly Saudis not Afghans, so it's not like Afghanistan can be accused of breeding terrorists. As for the Taliban being in favor of terrorism, I think that idea stems back to their protection of bin Laden. The idea that the Taliban is protecting bin Laden comes from their refusal to extradite him to the US for bombing US embassies, because the US was unable to come up with enough evidence to warrant extradition. I for one can't blame them because in Canada, sometimes extradition to the US can be fought because in some cases the accused are facing the death penalty when they are tried in the US.
When the Taliban took power, they brought long sought-after peace to their country, after many years of war. They also cut down their opium production so much, that according to some people in the field of drug enforcement, struck the biggest blow to the trafficking of heroin since the inception of the DEA. No, living under an Islamic fundamentalist government isn't the best way of life, particularly if you're a woman, but it was without constant conflict. Now that they are gone, they are plunged back into war.
The unfortunate thing about most middle-east nations is that they only seem to thrive when they are governed by oppressive and even tyrannical governments. From Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan who are/were strong right-wing governments to Saudia Arabia and Kuwait who live under monarchies...maybe democracy doesn't work in all places. Hell, the US gave up on it years ago, and just stuck the final nail in that coffin when Bush got another term. As for why democracy doesn't stick, it may be due to the vast numbers of different cultures and tribes in such small areas of land that they can't get along.