Most liked posts in thread: The System Worked!

I think the liberal argument is that they support the soldiers and what they do, but they don't necessarily agree with or condone it.

Similar to a situation where your best male friend has decided to marry a mean, abrasive woman. You support your buddy, and you support him doing what he has chosen to do because he's your best friend and he has the right to do what he wants, but you don't agree with, or condone his decision. You'll support him, you'll be there for him on his wedding day if he needs you, but your personal opinion is that she isn't good for him.

 

well the problem is in the same breath with we support the troops...comes out your a baby killer or some such nonsense...had some woman in san diego tell me that because i got off work and stopped by the mall to pick up a copy of Metal Gear Solid 4 i preordered last year and i was in uniform still...this is how she said it


Ya know i really support the troops...but how does it feel to kill someones kid? Do you have a hard time sleeping at night?

i mean really...and ya know what the best part was...not a single person in that mall around her raised even a word of protest for what she said...i was dumbfounded by it that i was speechless

 

Well that's just ignorant on their part. There's bound to be countless idiots on any side of a discussion. I just think it's entirely possible for some rational people to support troops without agreeing with war. That doesn't mean there won't be idiots like the woman you ran into, unfortunately. I'm sorry you have to put up with people like that.

I personally don't agree with the war itself, but I have the utmost respect for the soldiers and what they go through for our country.

 

Wow man. You just compared women to Taliban and Al Queda. I just might need to issue you a strike before our female membership gets offended.

Roger, I get asked that once in a while. My answer? "Very satisfying. Because if I didn't, he would have killed me instead." Then I put on my best war face and scream out: "You don't know, you weren't there!".

That usually ends the conversation.

 

Here is a question for you all to ponder:

Who opposes a war (any war) more:

a) A soldier fighting it and getting shot at
b) someone with very strong opinions. Strong enough to walk down the street and voice them.

 

I drew an analogy between the situations, not the subjects

 

Still, you probably could have done better. I think you might have some unresolved issues. opcorn:

 

Good thing for her that I wasn't standing there, I would have enthusiastically taken your back.:mad5: There are way to many folks these days that do not appreciate the sacrifice made by the thousands upon thousands of soldiers that have put themselves in a living hell to defend us and this the Democracy called the United States...

I thank you and your families for what you do!

 

There are probably as many liberal arguments as there are liberals. The one that I've heard (and makes sense to me) is, "I support the troops, but not the politicians who sent them into a war we shouldn't be fighting." Another would go something like, "Sending troops in to risk and possibly sacrifice their lives for a dubious cause, not supplying them with the needed equipment, and treating them poorly when they return wounded, is not supporting them."

 

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPFdbKLUmQk[/ame]

 

I'm not so sure your tactics would work. It is just as likely that tactics with no moral restraint would just backfire and be a recruiting aid for the extremists. At this stage I tend to think General Petraeus has a better strategy.

If you are talking about the beginning efforts in Afghanistan, in hind-sight, I think the problem was with letting them flee into Pakistan. There they found safe haven and continued to cause problems for us, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Letting them flee into a fragile nation with nuclear weapons was not a good move. If we had prevented that, and helped Afghanistan restore order after the Taliban, we would have saved ourselves a lot of grief. Instead, we went into Iraq.

 

Lets be clear. We didn't 'let them flee'. We thought we killed OBL and crew in Tora Bora. It wasn't until later that he turned back up across the border in South Waziristan, an autonomous region not under the control of the illegal military junta in Islamabad under Pervez Musharraf. We bought Musharraf's support through aid and legitimization - he wasn't considered a rightful leader until 9/11 and we needed him.

 

Was this before or after the Liberals were for the Wars before they were against it?

Or is this the dead on right plan that comes from hindsight?:lol:

 

Perhaps the Bin Laden escape was unavoidable. I do think that pulling resources out of Afghanistan--so we could invade Iraq--was a mistake.

 

1000% agree. Iraq was a folly and an unwelcome diversion from the real mission. Keep in mind though....we didn't pull troops out. The majority of our forces in Afghanistan were SOCOM or Agency and fewer regular troops. Iraq was mostly the opposite.

 

Perhaps it is more accurate to say that resources needed to stabilize Afghanistan were not available because it was given a lower priority than Iraq. However, I was under the impression that troops were pulled out Afghanistan and sent to Iraq.

 

No, the presence of a multinational coalition meant the number of troops we've ever had in Afghanistan was somewhat lower. I was in Afghanistan in 2005 and while all the media was paying close attention to Iraq at that point (to the point where I just gave up on the news as friends I lost only got a passing mention just after the big story about Iraq that night), we did however have many large developments, a small surge in support of the elections and got what I felt was a lot accomplished.

 

I was talking about the early period 2003-2004 when the Iraq war was starting. In 2005 a lot may have been accomplished, but it wasn't enough to stabilize Afghanistan. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been in such bad shape before Petraeus took over.

 

Lest we forget that if a certain American President had had the testicles too have taken Bin Laden when he was offered to us and then steam press his clothes with him in them, this whole conversation would be completely different..

In any war and make no mistake of it, we are at war, battles are won and lost, mistakes are made and large victories achieved. To nic pic and through hindsight go back and pick little windows of time and the results obtained in that window of time to fit a certain opinion is counterproductive to winning a war..:nonod:

 

Which war, which liberals? Many liberals were against the Iraq war from the beginning. I thought it was folly. I was for the Afghan war. I thought that invading Iraq would jepordize our efforts in Afghanistan, and that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. That is not hind-sight. This is the position I took at the time when discussing it with friends.

Some liberals were for the Iraq invasion because they believed what they had been told about Iraq having weapons of mass distruction. They changed their minds when they found out they had been lied to.

Wait, you are complaining about using hind-site, yet you are using hind-site?

Isn't looking at mistakes, analyzing them and correcting them, how wars are won?