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If you could get the wars not approved by the UN down to 0 (year in year out) then I'll support any proposal you care to name.

That woman's teeth are too good. I don't honestly believe she's british. Plus, her eyebrows aren't pitched at an angle that makes her seem constantly cynical or miffed.

Excised for trolling. -Mannahnin

Byte: So you're saying we should invade brazil?


Reference to troll post excised. -Mannahnin

The uniform of the day in such an invasion shall be speedos or thong bikinis

That sounds like the plot to a porno...

Operation" Big Thunder Down Under"

Melissia wrote:Byte: So you're saying we should invade brazil?

If nice looking bikini clad females is incentive for invasion... we failed.

Right, for our political elite, it should be bikini-clad males.

Mr Hyena wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:Pakistan is an enormous and complicated country, where SOME of the people genuinely hate us and/or are working with Islamist militias or terrorists. It's also got a lot of good, decent people.

I call bs. Thats a cop-out excuse.

Call it whatever you like. Initiating a war of choice, one not based on self defense or to put a stop to genocide, is the second-greatest evil a country can commit. Right after genocide. But that's just the moral side. That's not even getting into the practical side. It's a country of 177 million people which has nuclear weapons, our military and our economy are already over-strained from our expenditures of military force over the last decade. Even if we WANTED to fight Pakistan, it'd be an incredibly bad idea. If they were in some way directly attacking us as a country, we would do it because we had to, and all our allies would aid us. And we would win. But it would be incredibly costly, and most likely result in the deaths of millions.

Right now relations are strained, and many people there DO hate us. But you can't go around the world killing everyone who hates you. You just make everyone else hate you too. We need to (and our foreign policy in general is based around) win them over with trade, communication, and cultural exchange. We need to make our existence and interaction with us be a benefit to the countries which hate us. Extremist priests and nationalist leaders may rant against us, but if the people have more food on their tables and happier lives due to interacting with us, they're not going to want to kill us. The modern world is as peaceful, civilized, and prosperous as it is exactly because of this idea. England and France (as a classic example) were able to get past centuries of war and mutual hatred and now are strong trade partners and friendly neighbors. The world will be a better, happier, more stable and more prosperous place when India and Pakistan are someday able to achive the same.

Only a profoundly ignorant, stupid, and immoral person could sincerely advocate going to war with Pakistan at this point.

I'm going to assume you are not deeply stupid or actually evil, so your posts in this thread have just got to be trolling. And will be treated as such.

Melissia wrote:Right, for our political elite, it should be bikini-clad males.

Brazil it is!

My biggest fear?

In a word: China. If anyone is going to start with 'us' (meaning the western allies), it's going to be them. And the catalyst could very well be North Korea invading Taiwan.

Yep, THAT particular scenario puts the bejeezus into me.

And then there is Iran which I think have had a 'thing' with North Korea for a while now (strange how they went through the nuclear testing stage at the same time followed by the "well we've got them now so there, what yer gonna do about it?" shenannigans).

Creeeepy.

China has nothing to gain from North Korean aggression. China is actually worried about North Korea getting curb stomped in a war resulting in millions of North Korean refuges flooding across the North Korea/China border.

schadenfreude wrote:China has nothing to gain from North Korean aggression. China is actually worried about North Korea getting curb stomped in a war resulting in millions of North Korean refuges flooding across the North Korea/China border.

But on a larger perspective, China wouldn't be very happy with a large western presence in the Korean Peninsular and could easily get very nasty very quickly over the matter. Don't underestimate China. As much as it troubles me to say this, they will be the next world Superpower who will take over from the U.S just as the U.S took over from the British Empire. One would have to be blind or in denial not to see that. Peace mmmkay?

This sums up the stupidity of the circumstances pretty well. Try, try again is not a great idea in certain situations.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/02/1046112/-Sensible-thinkers?via=blog_736099

A lot of people are saying that we're already at war with Iran, of course, and I suspect this will be a topic of more cartoons to come in the New Year. For the moment, I'm just astonished that as we finally limp home from Iraq, people are seriously discussing the need to start a new war of choice.

The penultimate panel refers to a recent poll which found that half of Americans support military action to stop Iran's nuclear program if sanctions fail, all of which sounds insanely, depressingly familiar.

schadenfreude wrote:. Maybe our new year's resolution should be to aim for a lower number than 5 for the year 2012.

Maybe the rest of the world should resolve to stop being naughty.

Just a thought.

If you're concerned about US foreign relations and potential new conflicts you might want to catch Frontline tonight.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/afghanistan-pakistan/secret-war/what-kind-of-an-ally-is-pakistan/

What Kind of an Ally Is Pakistan?
January 3, 2012, 3:13 pm ET by Azmat Khan

Tonight, along with our new film Opium Brides, FRONTLINE will rebroadcast Secret War, a revealing look at the CIA’s drone program in Pakistan and covert support for elements of the Taliban by the Pakistani military and its intelligence service, the ISI. Check your local listings or watch it online.

As the U.S.-Pakistan relationship continued to descend to new, new lows over the past year, the U.S. has become increasingly vocal in expressing frustrations with its supposed ally in the fight against terror — and vice versa. Here are a few recent reports that explore the latest tensions in this troubled relationship.

Lots more articles on this topic at the link provided.

BrassScorpion wrote:If you're concerned about US foreign relations and potential new conflicts you might want to catch Frontline tonight.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/afghanistan-pakistan/secret-war/what-kind-of-an-ally-is-pakistan/

What Kind of an Ally Is Pakistan?
January 3, 2012, 3:13 pm ET by Azmat Khan

Tonight, along with our new film Opium Brides, FRONTLINE will rebroadcast Secret War, a revealing look at the CIA’s drone program in Pakistan and covert support for elements of the Taliban by the Pakistani military and its intelligence service, the ISI. Check your local listings or watch it online.

As the U.S.-Pakistan relationship continued to descend to new, new lows over the past year, the U.S. has become increasingly vocal in expressing frustrations with its supposed ally in the fight against terror — and vice versa. Here are a few recent reports that explore the latest tensions in this troubled relationship.

Lots more articles on this topic at the link provided.

but what if you're concerned we're not aggressive enough? When will Canada be called to account for its rampant fearmongering, conflating inferior "Canadian" bacon with the epicurean heaven that is our fair American (HURR!) bacon?

This article about "How Two Wars in the Greater Middle East Revealed the Weakness of the Global Superpower" should hopefully deter a few people from wanting to try that again. Of course, some people never learn.

Debacle!
January 3rd, 2012 3:50 PM

How Two Wars in the Greater Middle East Revealed the Weakness of the Global Superpower

By Tom Engelhardt

Crossposted from TomDispatch

It was to be the war that would establish empire as an American fact. It would result in a thousand-year Pax Americana. It was to be “mission accomplished” all the way. And then, of course, it wasn’t. And then, almost nine dismal years later, it was over (sorta).

It was the Iraq War, and we were the uninvited guests who didn’t want to go home. To the last second, despite President Obama’s repeated promise that all American troops were leaving, despite an agreement the Iraqi government had signed with George W. Bush’s administration in 2008, America’s military commanders continued to lobby and Washington continued to negotiate for 10,000 to 20,000 U.S. troops to remain in-country as advisors and trainers.

Only when the Iraqis simply refused to guarantee those troops immunity from local law did the last Americans begin to cross the border into Kuwait. It was only then that our top officials began to hail the thing they had never wanted, the end of the American military presence in Iraq, as marking an era of “accomplishment.” They also began praising their own “decision” to leave as a triumph, and proclaimed that the troops were departing with -- as the president put it -- “their heads held high.”

...Remainder of article at the following link. Please do not quote long articles in their entirety mid-thread. A full article can work as the first post and topic of a thread, but breaks the flow of a thread mid-stream.-Mannahnin

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/debacle

BrassScorpion wrote:This article about "How Two Wars in the Greater Middle East Revealed the Weakness of the Global Superpower" should hopefully deter a few people from wanting to try that again. Of course, some people never learn.

Debacle!
January 3rd, 2012 3:50 PM

How Two Wars in the Greater Middle East Revealed the Weakness of the Global Superpower

By Tom Engelhardt

Crossposted from TomDispatch

It was to be the war that would establish empire as an American fact. It would result in a thousand-year Pax Americana. It was to be “mission accomplished” all the way. And then, of course, it wasn’t. And then, almost nine dismal years later, it was over (sorta).

What if the "lesson learned" is not not 'stay out,' but 'pre-emptive nuclear strike on all major points of communication?'

Frazzled wrote:

BrassScorpion wrote:This article about "How Two Wars in the Greater Middle East Revealed the Weakness of the Global Superpower" should hopefully deter a few people from wanting to try that again. Of course, some people never learn.
...
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/debacle

What if the "lesson learned" is not not 'stay out,' but 'pre-emptive nuclear strike on all major points of communication?'

I think, or at least I hope, that the lesson learned is "stop posting whole articles from michaelmoore.com." Particularly when the articles are of marginal relevance to the thread.

Seriously BrassScorpion, this is obnoxious.

biccat wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

BrassScorpion wrote:This article about "How Two Wars in the Greater Middle East Revealed the Weakness of the Global Superpower" should hopefully deter a few people from wanting to try that again. Of course, some people never learn.
...
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/debacle

What if the "lesson learned" is not not 'stay out,' but 'pre-emptive nuclear strike on all major points of communication?'

I think, or at least I hope, that the lesson learned is "stop posting whole articles from michaelmoore.com." Particularly when the articles are of marginal relevance to the thread.

Seriously BrassScorpion, this is obnoxious.

Well, clearly that lesson has not been learned.

BrassScorpion wrote:This article about "How Two Wars in the Greater Middle East Revealed the Weakness of the Global Superpower" should hopefully deter a few people from wanting to try that again. Of course, some people never learn.

Indeed, some people never learn that Afghanistan is not part of the Middle East.

Truthfully, only racists who see "brown" and "Muslim" before geography classify it as Middle Eastern.

dogma wrote:

BrassScorpion wrote:This article about "How Two Wars in the Greater Middle East Revealed the Weakness of the Global Superpower" should hopefully deter a few people from wanting to try that again. Of course, some people never learn.

Indeed, some people never learn that Afghanistan is not part of the Middle East.

Truthfully, only racists who see "brown" and "Muslim" before geography classify it as Middle Eastern.

Well considering there's several different interpretations over what countries do and don't belong to the Middle East isn't it a bit ignorant to be calling people who think Afghanistan is part of the Middle East "racist"?

And this is what the war on drugs in Afghanistan has done to the farmers and their daughters. They are forced to "trade" their daughters to avoid having their families killed outright. Horrible unintended consequences once again the result of trying to tinker with another country.

Coming January 3rd, FRONTLINE reports on the unexpected collateral damage of the counter-narcotics effort in Afghanistan.
In Opium Brides, airing Tuesday, January 3, 2012, at 10 p.m. ET on PBS (check local listings), award-winning Afghan journalist Najibullah Quraishi takes viewers deep into the remote Afghan countryside to reveal the deadly bargain local farm families have been forced to make with drug smugglers in order to survive.

And you people who don't think my posts are relevant to the thread apparently didn't read the topic title, "Should the USA's new year resolution be less than 5 wars for 2012?" I don't see where that's restricted to the Middle East. If you missed the fact that we've been at war in Afghanistan for 10 years and that it is a war, there's something seriously wrong with your perception of reality.

I never said Afghanistan was in the Middle East. If you were trying to look clever, you failed miserably just like your phoney "news" source. Stop baiting and trolling for the sake of pushing your crazy agenda that all wars are good and that the US never makes a mistake. Yeah, Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan, that's all worked out really well for so many people. Well, it worked out well if you work for Halliburton. :(

As for sources, I'll take a well thought out editorial posted on Michael Moore's site over any of the lies others are posting from a certain propaganda channel on TV any day. You get your news from a channel that lies every day and is so irrational it thinks the Muppets are communists or that something like that is worth using to distract people from the truth. If you don't have a rational argument with facts to back it up, please refrain from posting, but you might want to apply for a job with Rupert Murdoch.

BrassScorpion wrote:As for sources, I'll take a well thought out editorial posted on Michael Moore's site over any of the lies others are posting from a certain propaganda channel on TV any day. You get your news from a channel that lies every day and thinks the Muppets are communists. If you don't have a rational argument with facts to back it up, please refrain from posting.

You can hate on CNN all you want. Just stop posting articles that take 5 minutes to scroll through.

BrassScorpion wrote:I never said Afghanistan was in the Middle East. If you were trying to look clever, you failed just like your phoney "news" source. Stop baiting and trolling for the sake of pushing your crazy agenda that all wars are good and that the US never makes a mistake. Yeah, Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan, that's all worked out really well for so many people. Well, it worked out well if you work for Halliburton.

So, in addition to unilaterally getting us into Iraq, Halliburton also managed to knock down the Twin Towers causing 9/11, and now evidently, was behind the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Halliburton is a regular bad mo-fo, sort of like corporate Hitler. Has BrassScorpion stumbled upon SPECTRE, at work?

Just stop posting articles that take 5 minutes to scroll through.

If you post a link without an article, someone invariably posts a request for the article because they don't want to follow links to more sites. I see it in the Rumors section here all the time and I don't see why the Off Topic area should be any different. You don't have to read it, especially if you have an aversion to facts. Which brings me to your other comment and attempt at being clever, yeah, that was at the level of the channel in question and it's not CNN.

BrassScorpion wrote:

Just stop posting articles that take 5 minutes to scroll through.

If you post a link without an article, someone invariably posts a request for the article because they don't want to follow links to more sites. I see it in the Rumors section here all the time and I don't see why the Off Topic area should be any different. You don't have to read it, especially if you have an aversion to facts. Which brings me to your other comment and attempt at being clever, yeah, that was at the level of the channel in question and it's not CNN.

ODG you're in the Rumors section too? Now there really is no reason for the OT. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. Shut 'er down Malfred, someone has escaped the dungeon of the crazies finally...

Cheesecat wrote:
Well considering there's several different interpretations over what countries do and don't belong to the Middle East isn't it a bit ignorant to be calling people who think Afghanistan is part of the Middle East "racist"?

It was a joke about BrassScorpions other postings.

But, to the topic, no one calls Afghanistan part of the Middle East except people that have political reasons to do so, or people that don't know what the Middle East is.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

BrassScorpion wrote:
If you post a link without an article, someone invariably posts a request for the article because they don't want to follow links to more sites.

Use discretion, man. An article that you think will take up most of a page on this forum should not be posted to it.