Will you stop playing cute? Unless you want to tell me that oppression of women and total restrictions on liberty is better than civil rights and liberties enshrined by the government, we all know that Western-style government is much better than some fundamentalist Islamic state.m3thod wrote:
Deluded. There was never any chance to winning the war...military you can pummel anyone. The war of changing mindsets and intrinsic behaviour is more or less unobtainable.ATG wrote:
Yes .
Nothing short of total victory will do.
Bush will go, another asshole will come and go.
We are going to win this war because our values and respect for human dignity and freedom are better.
It's been said, this is a generational war.
Respect human dignity and freedom are better? Better than who? This is at best just a matter of opinion.
"blah blah blah I'm so smart you're all dumb stupid sheep blah blah blah Bush sucks blah blah blah"hey haven't figured out yet that their government is based on slogans. That "preserving freedom" is code for "preserving some fat cat military industrialist's bank account". They're mindlessly repeating the memes of "this side is a traitor!", "this side hates Freedom!", "this side thinks more...because they said so!"
Nobody seems to have guessed now that "the troops" are tools to be used by those in power. Some of us trust that they will always be used responsibly. Some of us have been in for long enough to know that this is not always the case. Soldiers don't have a choice in where they go and what they do. Everyone understands this. Nobody is blaming soldiers, nobody is "hurting soldiers", nobody wishes harm upon our good soldiers...except those that use them irresponsibly.
The thing is, our good soldiers have won the war. I was there, I won it too. I got the medal and the T-shirt. Now we are in an occupation. The thing about occupations is that you don't "win" or "lose" an occupation. There's 2 outcomes from an occupation..."withdrawal of the occupying force" or "annexation and assimilation." We tore the lid off a giant civil war that had been in progress for almost a century, and now we sit there struggling to keep the lid on not understanding a damned thing about their culture or motives or most importantly, history. Some of us still think "they hate us for our freedoms".
Some us just want to cosole ourselves in talking points and seeking out an external enemy because the horror of knowing that you've been used as a tool is just too much to contemplate. The horror of knowing that a leadership you put so much faith in has betrayed you would shake your sense of self to the very core. So you goose-step forward like obediant little lemmings, not realizing you've sold yourself to mental slavery, closed out sunlight, and placed chains on your mind voluntarily! And all for what? So the most corrupt, incompetent, and evil administration ever to disgrace our founding principles can use you as tools to enrich themselves and run, leaving their allies the fundamentalists in charge while they kick it in their South American resorts or little man-made islands in Dubai when they've ransacked the treasury and your collective dignity?
The only way a man can be controlled to blindness like this is through fear...so what are you so afraid of that you would sacrifice the very meaning of being an American in order to serve more these men that truly care nothing for America?
Can we post a sticky that contains standard talking points for each side of an issue? We all basically just say the same old crap anyways so it'd save a lot of people a lot of typing.