Senate Foreign Relations Committee votes to give President Obama the power to launch

[Orruar]

Originally Posted by gotrocks [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The smart weapons America is using today have reduced shrapnel. The casings on the bomb itself are designed to be vaporized in the explosion. I think we can agree to disagree here, though - you can feel free to die by nerve gas, and I'll take a bomb blast to the face [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Umm, you do realize that the shrapnel deaths are not necessarily from the bomb itself, but from whatever it is the bomb hits? When a bomb blows up inside a house, the house becomes one giant grenade.

So.... we should just never act against atrocities and horrible people? War should just disappear and we should all hold hands and kiss and love each other?

Dude, we are totally in the same boat here. I agree 100%. I truly wish we could never drop a single bomb again, disarm our entire arsenal, and use our m4's and 16's as coat hangers, but that's never going to happen. Not anytime soon, anyway. We're going to have to drop bombs, and we're going to have to shoot missiles, and you had better believe the INTENT to only kill the bad guys makes a helluva fucking difference when you compare it to someone dropping a low yield nuke or chemical weapon and wasting an entire city. Outcome is NOT the only thing that matters, it's only part of the equation. Even if it was, the outcome of using a chemical weapon will always be FAR worse than a conventional explosive tipped warhead. Period.

You've bought into the bullshit first peddled by Bush and now Obama. We don't need to be a part of the killing that is going on. "Fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" was a jingoistic slogan when the Bush admin created it and it's just as jingoistic now that the Obama admin is using it. Syria is of 0 threat to the US.

The only acceptable justification for intervention in all these various countries is to help the people and reduce the suffering in the world. And while I support this goal 100%, it should be abundantly clear to anyone who hasn't been living in a cave for the past 12 years that our military does an exceedingly poor job at achieving this goal. The countries we have become involved with have quickly deteriorated into an orgy of violence and bloodshed. We need to be looking for other ways, but instead our only solution is "bomb group A, give more weapons to group B". If you support this kind of action as a solution for the killing that is going on, you're either evil or an idiot.

[Peatree]

I think we should just give every monkey in the world a knife and a hand grenade. This should solve everything.

[Daldolma]

Originally Posted by aowen [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I have a theory. Daldolma's sensibilities are offended by the smell of pork. The color of money in any country is what wet's his appetite. In fact he conducted a study to find out which currency, if any, has its worth in actual metal. Saturdays are his stay-in days. When he pulls up next to children in a van, he tells them to go easy on the candy, shit ain't free you know. His favorite movies are by the Cohen Brothers.

As for Israel, I don't believe there's much middle ground. Capital flows from the US to Israel, not the other way. We get nothing in return. Lot of help Israel was in Iraq. Lot of help they are with Hezbollah etc. No, they incite violence, and for every enemy they step on, they create a few more. The U.S.'s proud tradition of backing dictators with strategic positions while touting democratic and humanitarian values has proven to play out only in the short term, and hypocritical/detrimental in the long run. Israel is the UK's and US's brainchild, I wonder what other stupid ideas we have hidden up our ass, please don't let bombing Syria be the next.

newp. pras jesus. i simply concur with american policy re: israel

if i were a jew i'd probably hate israel, it's too easy of a target

ps you're a bigot

[Estolcles]

Originally Posted by Stinkum [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It's an illustration of how everyone imagines you look like anytime you post your warped, morally autistic political opinions.

My "warped, morally autistic opinions" are influenced by several friends of mine who are Gulf War vets who are looking at being deployed AGAIN because of this bullshit. The "Glass Project" being a direct quote.

[Lojik]

+10 internets to ahldagor for posting Sherman. I think it's often lost how awful war is, and that only truly righteous causes warrant aggression. You must be sure 100% that what you're doing is necessary, because war is hell, and cornered dogs will do anything to survive. If you're not willing to do whatever it takes to win that war, it's probably not worth fighting. What is one way of killing vs. another.

[Stinkum]

Originally Posted by Daldolma [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

ps you're a bigot

if anything you come off as the bigot in this thread but lets not sink to that level

[Orruar]

Originally Posted by Lojik [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

+10 internets to ahldagor for posting Sherman. I think it's often lost how awful war is, and that only truly righteous causes warrant aggression. You must be sure 100% that what you're doing is necessary, because war is hell, and cornered dogs will do anything to survive. If you're not willing to do whatever it takes to win that war, it's probably not worth fighting. What is one way of killing vs. another.

My sentiments exactly. We've been half-assing wars for decades now and failing every time. The only way we should ever fight war is all out, and only when absolutely necessary. Syria doesn't seem to fit the bill. Iraq didn't fit the bill. Afghan kinda did, but we didn't even bother half-assing that one. Maybe quarter-ass if you're being generous.

What happened to "speak softly and carry a big stick"? We do the exact opposite now.

[Daldolma]

Originally Posted by Orruar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

"Uncontrollable" is not accurate. It's not like chemical weapons just run off in a random direction and hit people miles away. They hit a much larger area, and they disperse based upon wind patterns, but that doesn't mean they're uncontrollable. You still chose the location you want to affect. If chemicals truly were uncontrollable, farmers wouldn't bother spraying crops with airplanes because the pesticides are uncontrollable. And as I've pointed out numerous times now, it's not clear that chemical weapons are that much more cruel than conventional weapons. We only accept death by metal or fire because it has been around for much longer and we've become accustomed to that method of death. But if given the choice, I'm not sure if I'd choose to have half of my intestines ripped out by shards of whatever structure I was living in, then lay in agony for an hour or longer. And as far as chemical agents go, sarin is actually not nearly as bad as some.



Again, I'm not sure if the people living in Pak/Afgh really see a big difference between what we do and what the terrorists do. And I'm not denying that terrorism is flat out unacceptable from a moral standpoint. My point is that killing tens of thousands in the middle east is no more morally acceptable in my view. You see, when I compare what we do in some way to terrorism, it's not because I see terrorism as perfectly fine. It's because I see what we do as perfectly wrong. Finally, it's not clear that the 9/11 terrorists were targeting purely civilians. Look at what they attacked: The centers of our economic (WTC) and military (pentagon + white house) power. The notion that terrorists just go after whatever innocent people they can in order to instill fear is a rather childish view. Most of us figured this out shortly after 9/11.

by uncontrollable, i don't mean random. i mean literally uncontrolled. we all know that our bombs and bombers are imperfect, but we have the technology to hit targets within a few yards. there is a degree of precision with conventional weaponry that isn't there with chemical weapons. by their very nature, chemical weapons are attacks on civilians

and i understand your point re: intention, but it does matter. if it didn't matter, there's no reason for restraint. in a moral vacuum, terrorists use chemical weapons and america carpet bombs the region. it's a lose-lose. the restraints of respect for civilian life hamper both the powerful and the weak, but i believe they are far more limiting for the powerful

[Orruar]

Originally Posted by Daldolma [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

by uncontrollable, i don't mean random. i mean literally uncontrolled. we all know that our bombs and bombers are imperfect, but we have the technology to hit targets within a few yards. there is a degree of precision with conventional weaponry that isn't there with chemical weapons. by their very nature, chemical weapons are attacks on civilians

and i understand your point re: intention, but it does matter. if it didn't matter, there's no reason for restraint. in a moral vacuum, terrorists use chemical weapons and america carpet bombs the region. it's a lose-lose. the restraints of respect for civilian life hamper both the powerful and the weak, but i believe they are far more limiting for the powerful

So by "uncontrollable", you actually meant "wide area" or "imprecise". They're not the same thing. Try and use more precision with your words, else I might think you're trying to create the text equivalent of chemical weapons. Come to think of it, your posts do tend to make the eyes bleed...

I don't think intentions are completely irrelevant, but that they are given far too much consideration. Many people will simply accept any action as long as it has good intentions without fully understanding the consequences. To my mind, that is far more dangerous than willful acts of evil.

[aowen]

Originally Posted by Daldolma [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

newp. pras jesus. i simply concur with american policy re: israel

if i were a jew i'd probably hate israel, it's too easy of a target

ps you're a bigot

I am a bigot? I was making a joke. You support a nation that has forced people, ironically, to live in UN and charity subsidized camps for decades, done false flag operations in other countries to support movement to their own (fucking nutty zionism), massacred civilians (Sabra and Shatila Massacre as one example), elected one of the guys who did it as president (Bibi the Butcher Netanyahu), refuses to negotiate for peace, and builds a wall reminiscent of the Berlin wall. I don't give a shit about strategy at that point, I am not going to support a place like that, and neither does the international community. And you can sit here and point fingers at the rest of the dirtbags in the region, 1 we dont support them, 2 that hatred has been bred out of desperation and asinine policy. The U.S. doesn't even agree with a lot of the shit they do for obvious reasons, and I haven't even mentioned their reactionary bombing campaigns or continuing settlement of land that isn't theirs. The U.S. is the only reason Israel isn't sanctioned by almost everywhere in the world, much less a crater. There is no way to say that having that piece of shit on our side is a good strategy, they contribute absolutely nothing, and have caused us more than enough grief. I have no bleeding heart for that place.