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Pariah said:
We will never have the right to "fix" other countries--No one has that right, not even your precious UN. That's just absurd. And if that's what this nation decided to become, I'd make sure to burn it down to make sure the world, as influenced by Western culture, stood a fighting chance against such tyrrany.


But that's what we're doing now. We're trying to force feed our political system to the middle east. They have obvious flaws in their governments. If we wanted them to truly improve we would stop giving money and support to their worst leaders (Saudi Arabia), stop fueling the jingoism of their worst leaders (Iran) and just let them sort it out. Once you remove the western influence that we force on them through overt and covert actions you remove the enemy that unites them. that allows them to improve upon themselves and allows us to improve upon ourselves. But Bush wants to "fix" Iraq since his daddy didn't and make it America jr.

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We act on our own interests--We invade countries (and in the case of Iraq, we also stabiliaze) in the pursuit of our own interests.


We didn't actually stabilize Iraq. Saddam had it stabilized and under control and we had him neutered enough that he couldn't be a real threat. All we did was remove him (instead of letting the people of Iraq get fed up and revolt) and now we've turned the country into a focal point for terrorists.
Under our control Iraq has less reliable electricity and water (Bush was told that he needed to maintain those systems right away and he ignored it) and they have more violence.
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Im Not Mister Mxypltk said:
Yeah, the difference is in who you ask. If you ask them, it's a Holy War.



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Pariah:
You and I know better.


Bush has called it a crusade, said the democracy we're bringing is "god's gift." He's making it a holy war as well.

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Someone:
Listen, do you think the kid who gets his family blown apart gives a shit about the noble causes the US had for dropping that bomb? When someone comes offering him a way to punch back, how could he say no?



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Pariah:
By actually analyzing the difference between the two cultures?


So your family is killed violently and suddenly by a French soldier and you're going to sit down and compare their art and culture and laws to our own? You're going to do a statistical analysis of all their laws and history and then say "yeah, I should support the people who killed my family not this guy who speaks my language and looks like me."

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I hold no ill will towards other countries that committed certain acts against American forces in the past because what they did was commit acts of war that are offensive to me only as a nation. I wouldn't take the torture of American soldiers or their deaths personally because they died in a war during wartime (although I would be saddened). If America was the one who got atomic bombs dropped on its cities by a warring country, I wouldn't have held it against the country even if I would defend my nation against them to the death.


Then why don't you join the army? You seem to love war and think it's such a great way to go about international relations. Why haven't you joined up? Or is it just easier to support the war from the safety of your mom's basement?

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If that kid actually understood the ways of war rather than acted out of blind rage, he definitely could say no. In which case, I don't find your example to be any kind of excuse even if it is a reason.


So then you must clearly feel that the people who joined the army in response to 9/11 weren't thinking rationally?

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And because of our more properly alligned perceptions, we can honestly say that we're right and they're wrong AND fucking crazy.


How can we absolutely say we're right and they're wrong? We're all only human, flawed as we are? Has the great Pariah never made a misjudgment, never been wrong once in his life?
How can you say that we are somehow the absolute end all be all of human potential?

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Just because there's two sides to the argument, that doesn't mean there's not an absolute answer. You can't say I'm close-minded just because I believe something that the other side doesn't.


But that's the whole point, isn't it? You're on one side of the debate claiming that your side is right. And somewhere there is a guy on another messageboard denouncing America as a corrupt place of sin and saying he is right.
god hasn't smited either of you yet, so how can you say absolutely that you are right?

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The Middle East wasn't the problem at the time. And I never presumed to say it would work on them. I fully realize that their zealousness is so impressive that death doesn't scare them. At the same time, I think that's all the more reason to wipe them out if they become our enemies.


You find their willingness to die impressive? I find it sad that any person is at that point.
I'm not sensing a whole lot of christian love, Pariah. In fact for someone who is getting into heaven (because your own rulebook says you are) you don't seem like a very positive or compassionate person.

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That, to me, is the real problem we're facing right now; America is not respecting the Middle East enough to understand that they can't be pacified. They are, quite frankly, a diseased limb that the world refuses to amputate. The only reason China and Russia won't do it because they're so good at distracting/splitting the US.


They are the spawn of the "holy land" so....
The fact that you see any race or nation as being in need of total destruction is just so sad. Every culture has it's value. Even with terrorists, the middle east has many positive things. And there are the majority of people there who have never harmed another person, but you would see them killed?
I personally have known some muslims who were bright people and had extremely similar religious views to the christians i've known. I've known muslims who denounced the violence in their home countries the same way there were russian who denounced the USSR.
Every culture has value, every country has value. I would hope that one day when America isn't quite so strong militarily that someone doesn't come along and look at our bloody history with the indians or our bloody present in terms of crime and poverty and say we need to be amputated.

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It's not a matter of wiping the people out, it's a matter of wiping out the culture. The death is an unfortunate but unavoidable bi-product since the only way the culture survives is through those people. Would I be prepared to nuke all of the Mid East if I had the chance? I'm not particularly sure that I would. However, I will admit that I would be vastly tempted seeing as how the entire region can be justifiably described as socio-cultural virus that destroys and perverts all it touches (see also: Europe, Australia, the Crusades, America).


That's right they were responsible for the Holocaust, and for our treatment of the Indians, and for Pearl Harbor, and for Kennedy being killed, and Vietnam, and for the 600,000 who died in our Civil War, and for every violent murder that happens every day in this world, and for the IRA, and Apartheid (sp?).
Or maybe violence is used by members of every culture and every race. And they're just the ones using it now. And maybe like all the enemies we've had in the past 200 years (Indians, Germans, Russians) we'll be at peace with them in 50 years.

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Then the rest of the world will turn against you. Fuck, I'll sign up to fight you myself. What then? You gonna nuke us too? The way you're handling this, it's never gonna end.



Considering detterents are still in place, I doubt the world would turn against us if we actually do grow the balls to wipe them out and then stand up to the UN to boot. But I'm not gonna bother with that line of argument since you obviously wrote it out of anger.


Bow ties are coool.