here is the thing...we go to war and purposely handcuff ourself while the enemy plays every dirty tactic in the book to great effect....it started in vietnam...we were so concerned with public opinion....look our spec ops trained these taliban and al qaeda members back when the soviets were our enemy...pull the conventional troops out and send the operators in with one rule....there are no rules...they can use whatever tactics necessary and this would have ended the wars long ago...lets have them running for dear life...inglorious basterds is kind of a odd example but the theory is sound...return their cruelty back on them and watch them collapse...itll be hard to explain to the followers when an ied that brother mohammed built ended up on his doorstep and leveled him and his home...the people the taliban recruit arent military...they are farmers and generally poor uneducated masses to be their soldiers while the leaders hide... oh and screw the moral high ground...we arent fighting nazi's we are fighting a enemy that cares little for women/children/young/sick/old/white/black/asian/etc...first off the media needs to get lost when it comes to the wars...they have done nothing but complicate matters...like cnn posting and airing every extremist or terrorist video...all you are doing is giving these groups a voice and promoting their ideals...like when anderson cooper ran a propaganda video of how al qaeda snipers were killing our troops...oh cnn said well we didnt show them hitting the ground...no but you did just show someones dad or husband or son getting popped by haji and dying on national television...just like the anti war wackjobs who say we support the troops but we dont support what they are doing....if you support us you support what we do...you cant pick and choose what and as for the homeland secretary...everyone is condemning the intel agencies for not jumping on this one piece of intel...alot of times they are going through piles and piles of rough information trying to vett it to find the credible threats...we cant jump at every shadow because we might turn our back to the one shadow that is out to get us...though this is the same homeland secretary that called members of the military brown shirt terrorists....how we would become the next timothy mcveigh there are some groups who you dont want to alienate...the military is one such group...and calling us terrorists isnt the best way to gain our favor to vote in your favor
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.
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."
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: