trexmeyer wrote:
Shame on US for thinking we could change centuries old bias in under a decade. When has that ever worked?

 Torga_DW wrote:

Ensis Ferrae wrote:Actually... Iraq has almost never been "friendly" to America. (in fact, when Iran and Iraq went to war, we sided with Iran (and, according to wikipedia, so did North Korea ), whereas Kuwait was somewhere between ambivalent and friendly with us, til Saddam invaded them.


You got no argument from me that removing Saddam has lead to a destabilization in the region. However, we did TRY to get a working government set up and running, just those idiots over there simply cannot/will not think outside their own religious points of view (shia=bad, sunni=good, and vice versa)

You might want to re-read that wiki, because america was on the side of iraq. You tried to get a working *american* government setup there, the problem is iraq isn't america. What works in america doesn't always work in the rest of the world. And the difference between sunni and shia is a really big and important one as far as religions go.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Torga_DW wrote:

Ensis Ferrae wrote:Actually... Iraq has almost never been "friendly" to America. (in fact, when Iran and Iraq went to war, we sided with Iran (and, according to wikipedia, so did North Korea ), whereas Kuwait was somewhere between ambivalent and friendly with us, til Saddam invaded them.


You got no argument from me that removing Saddam has lead to a destabilization in the region. However, we did TRY to get a working government set up and running, just those idiots over there simply cannot/will not think outside their own religious points of view (shia=bad, sunni=good, and vice versa)

You might want to re-read that wiki, because america was on the side of iraq. You tried to get a working *american* government setup there, the problem is iraq isn't america. What works in america doesn't always work in the rest of the world. And the difference between sunni and shia is a really big and important one as far as religions go.

Iran-Iraq War: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War

Notice the bit on the right hand side?? In the "Iran" column, you have Iran, with a couple of three letter groups as the "belligerents" with Support from Syria, USA, Israel, and North Korea

 Torga_DW wrote:

NuggzTheNinja wrote:The decision to stop Saddam's invasion of Kuwait in 1991 wasn't exactly "random."

Things only appear to be simple to you because your understanding of the Middle East and America's involvement there is simple. It's not random - it's all about the oil. It was about oil in 1991 and it was about oil again in 2003.

Note that I don't have a problem with this at all. We need it, they have it, and people in that region have demonstrated time and again that they don't know how to behave like civilized human beings. The only thing that they respect and understand is force, which brings us to the "blowing things up" part.

Never a truer word was spoken, although that applies to america more than anywhere else. America wants the oil so badly, it needs to conquer these oil-producing countries and make them part of america. Its a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

 Torga_DW wrote:
Thats a nice strawman you've presented there. If america wants to randomly blow things up in the middle east and backstab allies every chance they get then have fun. Chickens come home to roost, though.

 Torga_DW wrote:
Thats a nice strawman you've presented there. If america wants to randomly blow things up in the middle east and backstab allies every chance they get then have fun. Chickens come home to roost, though.

 Torga_DW wrote:
Thats a nice strawman you've presented there. If america wants to randomly blow things up in the middle east and backstab allies every chance they get then have fun. Chickens come home to roost, though.

 Frazzled wrote:

 trexmeyer wrote:
Shame on US for thinking we could change centuries old bias in under a decade. When has that ever worked?

Worked pretty damn well in Japan.

squidhills wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 trexmeyer wrote:
Shame on US for thinking we could change centuries old bias in under a decade. When has that ever worked?

Worked pretty damn well in Japan.

Actually, the attitudes of the military and government (the same thing, really) in Japan during WWII were only around 20 years old at that time. The rampant militarism which siezed the country developed as a philosphy only after WWI. Sure, the Japanese thought they were better than everyone else (every country thinks that to some degree at some point) but the death-before-dishonor "bushido" code of the military wasn't a part of their military until the interwar years. Looking back at Japanese history, and the Sengoku period in particular, it is clear that actual samurai never bought into that whole bushido business, at least not while they were actually fighting actual wars.

 Grey Templar wrote:

squidhills wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 trexmeyer wrote:
Shame on US for thinking we could change centuries old bias in under a decade. When has that ever worked?

Worked pretty damn well in Japan.

Actually, the attitudes of the military and government (the same thing, really) in Japan during WWII were only around 20 years old at that time. The rampant militarism which siezed the country developed as a philosphy only after WWI. Sure, the Japanese thought they were better than everyone else (every country thinks that to some degree at some point) but the death-before-dishonor "bushido" code of the military wasn't a part of their military until the interwar years. Looking back at Japanese history, and the Sengoku period in particular, it is clear that actual samurai never bought into that whole bushido business, at least not while they were actually fighting actual wars.

I think he was alluding to the Emperor worship and the fanatical devotion to him.

Not everyone followed Bushido, but just about everyone was down for fighting to the last for their Emperor.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Emperor worship did, but the code of Bushido as instructed by the WW2 military was a new invention, a perversion of the original honor code. That code is gone, but much of Japan, including the divinity of the Emperor remains intact.

 easysauce wrote:
So, ISIL's twitter is claiming they have dirty bombs apparently.

sauhwq wrote:
such fertile ground for the seeds of torment. Your're so ripe, Joey. And it's harvest time. Save your tears. We'll reap your soul slowly. We have centuries to discover the things that make you whimper.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 Torga_DW wrote:
Thats a nice strawman you've presented there. If america wants to randomly blow things up in the middle east and backstab allies every chance they get then have fun. Chickens come home to roost, though.

It's not random at all. You are just too simple-minded to see the pattern. It's really a very basic pattern - America has interests. It uses military force to secure and protect those interests. One of those interests is oil. The Middle East contains a significant portion of the world's oil reserves. Therefore, America's interests lie in the Middle East.

There's no randomness involved here.

 DarkLink wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 Torga_DW wrote:
Thats a nice strawman you've presented there. If america wants to randomly blow things up in the middle east and backstab allies every chance they get then have fun. Chickens come home to roost, though.

It's not random at all. You are just too simple-minded to see the pattern. It's really a very basic pattern - America has interests. It uses military force to secure and protect those interests. One of those interests is oil. The Middle East contains a significant portion of the world's oil reserves. Therefore, America's interests lie in the Middle East.

There's no randomness involved here.

Actually, just so you know, the USA didn't, and still doesn't, get very much oil from Iraq (http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/2014/06/23/where-the-us-got-its-oil-from-in-2013/). The majority of our oil from the middle east comes from Saudi Arabia. Most of Iraq's oil goes to Europe. Leading up to the 2003 invasion, Saddam tried bribing us with cheap oil (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1446152/Saddam-offered-Bush-a-huge-oil-deal-to-avert-war.html) to convince us to not invade (Saddam was in a bad position in that the main thing preventing a war with Iran was the rumor that Iraq still had WMD's, but at the same time if he did have WMD's then the US would invade). Obviously, we turned down that offer. Post-invasion, Europe swooped in and got an even larger share of Iraq's oil production. Incidentally, we did find WMD's in Iraq (http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/10/16/new-york-times-reports-wmd-found-in-iraq). If we were only concerned with oil, then we would have threatened Iraq into a deal that got us cheap oil, left Saddam in power to ensure the middle east wouldn't crumble the way it has and threaten the existing status quo that was quite beneficial to us from a monetary perspective, and Saddam would still be alive.

Just sayin'. Of all the possible reasons why we invaded Iraq, securing our oil supply was not one of them.

 DarkLink wrote:
Actually, just so you know, the USA didn't, and still doesn't, get very much oil from Iraq (http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/2014/06/23/where-the-us-got-its-oil-from-in-2013/). The majority of our oil from the middle east comes from Saudi Arabia. Most of Iraq's oil goes to Europe. Leading up to the 2003 invasion, Saddam tried bribing us with cheap oil (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1446152/Saddam-offered-Bush-a-huge-oil-deal-to-avert-war.html) to convince us to not invade (Saddam was in a bad position in that the main thing preventing a war with Iran was the rumor that Iraq still had WMD's, but at the same time if he did have WMD's then the US would invade). Obviously, we turned down that offer. Post-invasion, Europe swooped in and got an even larger share of Iraq's oil production. Incidentally, we did find WMD's in Iraq (http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/10/16/new-york-times-reports-wmd-found-in-iraq). If we were only concerned with oil, then we would have threatened Iraq into a deal that got us cheap oil, left Saddam in power to ensure the middle east wouldn't crumble the way it has and threaten the existing status quo that was quite beneficial to us from a monetary perspective, and Saddam would still be alive.

Just sayin'. Of all the possible reasons why we invaded Iraq, securing our oil supply was not one of them.

As the release of a report on the CIA's use of torture in a previous war against terrorists consumed Capitol Hill on Tuesday, a key Senate committee began debate on a resolution authorizing a much newer counter-terror campaign: President Obama's military offensive against the Islamic State.

Secretary of State John Kerry testified before the Senate panel he once led—the Foreign Relations Committee—to urge lawmakers not to constrain the president as he wages war against ISIS terrorists in Iraq, Syria, and wherever he needs to follow them. Though Obama has stressed repeatedly that the new conflict will be limited, and the U.S. would not be "dragged back" into another quagmire in the Middle East, the authorization his administration is seeking could allow for a much broader war.

Specifically, Kerry asked his former colleagues not to limit the use of military force to those two countries where Obama already has launched airstrikes, nor to bar the president from deploying combat troops on the ground, despite his repeated assurances that he will not do so. "In our view, it would be a mistake to advertise to ISIL that there are safe havens for them outside of Iraq and Syria," Kerry said. On the use of ground troops, the secretary reiterated Obama's policy that "U.S. military forces will not be deployed to conduct ground combat operations against ISIL." But he doesn't want Congress to put that in writing. "That does not mean," Kerry said, "we should pre-emptively bind the hands of the commander-in-chief—or our commanders in the field—in responding to scenarios and contingencies that are impossible to foresee." As examples, he said the administration needed flexibility to execute hostage rescues or respond if ISIS acquired chemical weapons outside the region.

Kerry was testifying about an authorization proposal drafted by his Democratic successor as chairman of the committee, Senator Robert Menendez, which includes no geographic limitation but precludes the deployment of ground combat troops. It would last for three years, with the possibility for extensions. Kerry said the plan was "very close" to something Obama could accept, but he objected to the limitation on forces and other, more minor, provisions. In a moment of unusual friction between the two Democrats, Menendez bristled at Kerry's critique and said his authorization would allow "everything [the military] is doing now and then some."

"I reject the characterization of my text as something that is constraining to the president," Menendez said. "My text precludes America from being dragged into another unlimited, unending war in the Middle East." He suggested that if the Obama administration wanted an unlimited authorization, "it should ask for it."

The exchange underscored simmering tensions between the administration and members of both parties on Capitol Hill over its prosecution of the war against ISIS and the need for a new resolution authorizing military force. While Obama has said he would welcome congressional action as a sign of bipartisan unity and legislative support for the mission, he doesn't think he needs it: The administration maintains that the George W. Bush-era authorizations from 2001 and 2003 against al-Qaeda give the president just about all the power he needs to go after ISIS. Top Republicans, including House Speaker John Boehner, have pushed Obama to draft specific language and send it to Congress for approval early in the next Congress. "I told him that if he does, House Republicans will be ready to work with him to get it approved, and thus far, we’ve seen no urgency on the part of this White House," Boehner complained last week.

On Tuesday, Kerry outlined what the administration wants and said he'd be more than happy to work with Congress on an authorization, but he wouldn't commit to sending up a proposal. "You don’t have anybody over there who can type that up real quick?" rejoined Senator Marco Rubio.

The House has no plans to act before adjourning for the year, but some Democrats in the Senate, on the verge of losing their majority, are pushing to have a vote on Menendez's proposal this week, whether or not Obama supports it. Senator Rand Paul, prepping for a likely presidential bid, has introduced his own resolution that contains a formal declaration of war. "This is a threat to humanity that I don’t think humankind has ever seen before," Senator Barbara Boxer said after reading accounts of the Islamic State's brutal treatment of women. "I need to be on record because of what I am learning."

 Frazzled wrote:

 trexmeyer wrote:
Shame on US for thinking we could change centuries old bias in under a decade. When has that ever worked?

Worked pretty damn well in Japan.