Comments on: Military Dominance in Mideast Proven a Costly Myth

By: Yanaar

Yanaar — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 16:37:24 +0000

C’mon, these are economic/oil wars. They’ll go on as long as the world is oil dependent. Focus on energy alternatives… that’s the best way to defeat these insane wars.

By: bozh

bozh — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 16:36:18 +0000

danny,
you are cheeky,
by dwelling on ripples and not on tsunamis.
aggression is by far worse crime; causing other tsunamis, waves, and ripples.
natch, it is preferable for s’mone who approbates s’mbody’s crimes to dwell on victims faults, cruelty, etc.

yet even islamic shamanism is better than the judaic and christians.
islam does not call for destruction of human specie while christianity and judaism do.
ok, islam treats their women much worse than other two shamanistic cults.
but the crimes against islamic land by judeo-christian lands/empiers are much greater than vice-versa.
tx for your cheekiness.

By: danny ray

danny ray — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 16:04:24 +0000

I live in fear of you bozh :-)
Barry, we do build roads, and Muj blows them up. we do build schools and Muj disfigures little girls who dare go to them, we do work on the electric grid, and guess what? muj considers it an honor to shut it down. we do build clinics and as soon as we leave muj shows up and kills the staff and any patients there are tortured. If some gilzai starts a factory they are extorted by Muj until they have to close down and God forbid that, some Tajik or worse Hindu or Christian try to set a factory up. Then it’s a bloodbath.
Muj is not the freedom fighter you seem to think he is, he is a theocratic asshole who thinks its ok to kill children for a cause, or to kill his wife if she objects to anything he does or to kill a woman for adultery because six guys from a village down the road held her down and raped her. Or what about killing your little girl because she did not want to marry a 40 year old man. Barry if you think these are the fucking good guys you are out of your fucking mind. This may not be a cowboy movie but we are there to save a people from a bunch of savages. I know you hate America so do a lot of people but if you think The stand was a paradise before we got there you got a warped perspective.

By: bozh

bozh — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 15:13:25 +0000

hi rayo, thnx for full quote,
i am still at sea about even with the full quote. i expected you’d respond and if you had been silly i wld have wanted to slap you across your cheeky cheeks.

stuart is overgeneralizing; generalizations cannot be proven wrong or right.
i still say one has to defend self when attacked and even kill if one sees [{in}correctly] that one is going to lose one’s life. thnx

By: Barry

Barry — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 14:40:17 +0000

I WISH the military’s hands were tied. To the extent that they are tied – good. The US is NOT the ‘good guy.’ This is not a cowboy movie. There are no ‘bad guys’ hiding in churches. They are not hiding at all – it’s their country. The best thing the US could do now in Afghanistan is build roads, build schools, set up cell phone service, complete an electricity grid, set up clinics, and buy everything that nascent Afghani industries produce. And draw down the troops to zero asap. And go home.

By: danny ray

danny ray — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 23:37:36 +0000

Sorry bozh, Maybe the full Quote will help.

But war, in a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing is worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice – a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice – is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.

By: danny ray

danny ray — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 23:32:25 +0000

No worries about that my friend.

By: bozh

bozh — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 23:28:38 +0000

rayo, stuart mills may have said that. but has he foud such a person that is the question?

and he says, does he, that war is not the worst thing; there are some minor occurrences that are worse than a war.
but did he name a war, any war of his choice, that was better that 1,2, 3 … people [how many did stuart discover?] who thought that “nothing is worth war” .
was stuart considered a smart person? from that quote he appears of quite low intelligence.
btw, does stuart quote a person who actually uttered that nothing is worth war and having written/said that, this constitutes a graver act than a war; which one, of aggression or defence?
how about the trojan war? was it worse to let paris have helen the whore than to get the whore back by waging a war for her?
mind you, i do not know that she was a whore; maybe, she was a virgin but for my purpose virgin or whore will do. thnx, rayo, that was amusing; keep it up!
you can better that quote by quoting papa benedicto, hitler, falwell, bush, sharon, mcarthur, petraeus, hillary, et al.
but whatever you do, don’t you quote me; i’ll do that.

By: danny ray

danny ray — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 22:49:18 +0000

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
John Stuart Mill

By: danny ray

danny ray — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 22:34:44 +0000

The real problem with the wars in Iraq and the Stan is the same as with any war where the politicians retain absolute control over the fighting force. The militaries hands are tied. No where can the US military bring enough force to bear to finish the fight without some weak kneed Politian screaming “you could hurt someone doing things like that” . No one in power understands the abiding factor of use of military force, and that is the Army is supposed to kill people and break things. You win a war by killing enough people and breaking enough things that the other side says it’s not worth it anymore. You cannot win a war by being nice to the other side. I am NOT saying we need reprisals but if the bad guys hide in a church the church needs to be knocked down. I was in the sand box when the Shia started clearing the Sunni out of Bagdad, we knew where their leader was and could have killed him in a min but the brass and national command authority said that it was too risky we might have hurt some of the people with him. so we let things get to a point that we can’t d any thing about. If you hang out with a mad dog don’t think it a surprise when a 500 pounder falls thru your roof.

And while we are on the subject the other reason we are not winning ( I believe we are but I will not argue the point) is that we have lost the Information war. We cannot print a body count. ( I can tell you we have killed a damn site less than a million) And every time we drop on a cluster of the bastards they shout it was a wedding. Every time we engage they run away and hide in some civilaian farmers and we are not allowed to go get them.

By: bozh

bozh — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:37:07 +0000

a question is cropping in my brain, Will the planners [whoever they may be? does anyone know?] give up the occupation of iraq, afgh’n, palestine, or even pak’n?

will the war planners flinch back from any difficulties anent continuance of the occupations and throwing missiles on houses?
not likely, huh? aren’t they quite comfortable and well paid and with faces to save.

as they say, the soldiers volunteered for, among things, also for combat bombings, and missilings.

so what’s a losing a few thousand more of the uneducated/dumb amers to the ruling class?
we are now PlanetUSA. natch, people must die for the acquisition of it. natch, planners knew that!?. thnx