i want this in the open.

[Ridd1ck]

My friends are still in the army, to date over 4 years in service. They are not doing it for the money. They are doing it for the passion maintaining peace, and getting to blast anyone who threatens it.

People are only trying to kill you because you are invading onto their land. If you come into my house uninvited, you will surely die or be prosecuted without a limb or two. (and Australia doesn't have guns). It is simple, if you invade someone pride and joy, they will defend it with everything. Thus, you can never fully stop a rebellion.

As to the UN, USA is not the UN.

Ive said and will keep on saying, the UN denied permission for an invasion. Full stop.
Added to this, i dont see the sense in asking permission from the start - If you were going to invade it no matter what UN said, why bother to ask? Maybe to justify it?

Well, the fact is you cant.

Well for your information, and another thing the Media won't tell you, is 99% of the terrorists we are fighting both here and Afghanistan are not from either country. Most are Iranian, Syrian, Pakistani, Egyptian(very few) and even Chetchnian(however you spell that one). So your friends either never went out on real patrols or were fed bogus info...

I've been out among the actual Iraqi people on a daily basis and the Afghani people both tours I did there. I talk to them and they are HAPPY to have us here and they ARE afraid they will lose what they have gained under OUR protection.

And the USA IS the UN or should I say always the BULK of any UN venture. Without the support and power of the USA the UN would cave inside of 2 years. Maybe we should pull back and let the world fend for themselves. And totally cut off all relations with the ENTIRE global population. Seal our borders completely and have 0 traffic in OR out of the greatest country ever to exist on the face of the Earth. I'd give you 18 months MAX before everyone is crawling back BEGGING for us to come back and bail their sorry butts out of trouble again.

[Jack]

Guys, you should just ignore Sandman. He's not exactly worth it, he has proven time and time again to be completely and utterly brainwashed by the media.

[Locutus]

i hate the media and what it stands for its a waste of usefull information that is twisted so that we want to believe what is being said by reporters unless u have served in a war STHU u are waisting my time by reading your crap that dont make sense

[Jack]

i hate the media and what it stands for its a waste of usefull information that is twisted so that we want to believe what is being said by reporters unless u have served in a war STHU u are waisting my time by reading your crap that dont make sense

What's worse then the media, is the idiots that insist on blindly spewing the same crap whilst refusing to think for themselves.

[[KMA]Avenger]

ok, guys as i have already said, i have great respect for service men, and i may have chosen my words poorly with regards to service men/women's courage...however...everyone here seems to be under the mistaken belief that America is waging so many wars for other country's safety...

anyone here heard of "The Empire Of The City"?

if not, i suggest you all go find out why it is that more wars have been fought in the past 100 years than in all of mans history.

@jack, with regards to the Lusitania, nice to see info coming from other's for a change (not that i didnt know of the Lusitania).

[Mister Sandman]

Guys, you should just ignore Sandman. He's not exactly worth it, he has proven time and time again to be completely and utterly brainwashed by the media.

I think for myself im anti media in many aspects. Also, the media is pro iraq war, and for that i can bring up many many cases.

Well for your information, and another thing the Media won't tell you, is 99% of the terrorists we are fighting both here and Afghanistan are not from either country. Most are Iranian, Syrian, Pakistani, Egyptian(very few) and even Chetchnian(however you spell that one). So your friends either never went out on real patrols or were fed bogus info...

I've been out among the actual Iraqi people on a daily basis and the Afghani people both tours I did there. I talk to them and they are HAPPY to have us here and they ARE afraid they will lose what they have gained under OUR protection.

And the USA IS the UN or should I say always the BULK of any UN venture. Without the support and power of the USA the UN would cave inside of 2 years. Maybe we should pull back and let the world fend for themselves. And totally cut off all relations with the ENTIRE global population. Seal our borders completely and have 0 traffic in OR out of the greatest country ever to exist on the face of the Earth. I'd give you 18 months MAX before everyone is crawling back BEGGING for us to come back and bail their sorry butts out of trouble again.

A few points,
1. Terrorists are not 'terrorists' redefine what you have:- they are not terrorist rather they are religious extremists. (In technical fact if you want to call them terrorists, your a terrorist because you do insite fear).


2. It doesnt matter what country they were originally from. They are defending the country. Take this for example, if you were born overseas from America, and there was a war in your land, you would defend it even though you are not legally American. :- The only matter is that people are fighting agaisnt your capitalist invasion.


3.It is easier to act happy than fight most of the time.

4. Learn your acronyms, your organisations and logic. The fact is the US isnt the UN that is commen sense. It doesnt matter that the capital injection may be the bulk. Becuase money is technically nothing these days.

5. If the US becomes economically isolated they wont last as long as the rest of the world since, US does not produce the needs of the world. The fact is the world can function without the US, but the US cannot function without the world.



Overall i am not criticising the troops but the politicians who sent you, my brothers and my sisters, do die for their cause, to increase the GDP.

[Brdavs]

And the USA IS the UN or should I say always the BULK of any UN venture. Without the support and power of the USA the UN would cave inside of 2 years. Maybe we should pull back and let the world fend for themselves. And totally cut off all relations with the ENTIRE global population. Seal our borders completely and have 0 traffic in OR out of the greatest country ever to exist on the face of the Earth. I'd give you 18 months MAX before everyone is crawling back BEGGING for us to come back and bail their sorry butts out of trouble again.

Well thats the funnies thing I`ve read on these forums all year lol.

Nvm the simplistic take on worlds economy which could win the cretin award of the year, particulary given this past few years/months in RL. Nor the unique view on worlds history lol.

The underlined bit takes the cake. You have no idea how nazi that actually sounds, don`t you lol? Pardon me, it`s not agressive nationalism over in your world, its "patriotism" lol.

And the ultimate kick: 3 out of the top 5 worlds problems would very very likely go away if you were to do as you say.
So please, do vote libertarians. Yankee do go home allready.


And then you peeps call others brainwashed, you`ve had more spin-cycles in the old "stars`n`stripes FTW, USA USA USAAAAA" machine than a human brain ought theoretically handle. 20k warheads don`t scare me as much as the thought that Lonewolf1968 is representative of your population heh...

[[KMA]Avenger]

ok, the last thing i want in this thread is for people to start having a go at each other for ANY reason!
this is an intelligent discussion and is not meant to either patronize or anger anyone, so leats be a bit more respectful to each other please, (and yes, i include myself in that statement as well).

Brdavs is correct when he says Americans have been "brain-washed", but its not just Americans who have been "brain-washed", its the entire Globe, and if someone (like me) simply asks that people question their Govt more and look into things a bit deeper, we are branded by the populace as "Mad" or "crack-pots" or "disillusional" or "anarchists", when all we ask is that you open your minds, look and THINK.

i know its not easy to swallow the fact that our Govts dont represent us and that our leaders are traitors to not only those they supposedly serve but are in fact traitors to the entire human race and further more, DO NOT have ANY loyalties to ANY nation but are the pawns of the banking elite, thats no exaggeration, our leaders have sold us out and i have the proof, a 700 meg file of original declassified documentation which shows we have been sold out to the banking elite by those we put in power.


and for those who dont believe what i say then pay close attention!

the US declared itself bankrupt in 1933, thats just 20 years after the fed was created under the guise of stabilizing the economy, i say again, the fed bankrupted the US within 20 years...and that's fact!

the UK also declared itself bankrupt but i dont have the exact date to hand, i think it was in the 50's sometime but dont quote me on the date...

now i ask you...how can a nation 1, go bankrupt, and 2, who is it our nations owe money to, and 3, why the hell should ANY nation owe money to ANY bank???

for those who call themselves "Patriots", you need to stop looking at people like me and accusing us of being "mad" or "anarchists" and start looking at your leaders and ask why you should go to some god-forsaken country and give your lives!!!

true patriots need to do a couple things:

1, go find out about "The Empire Of The City".

2, find out who owns our national/central banks.

[Taure]

This is a bit of a bump but what the hell...

To those who say "dispute the ideology of a war all you like, but don't hold the soldiers on the ground responsible for their actions":

What would you say if this was turned around and used to justify the actions of the Holocaust? That the Nazi soldiers at concentration camps were "only following orders", and that they had no responsibility for the deaths of millions of innocents which they enabled?

You would reject it out of hand. Or at least I would hope you would.

Ultimately, each person must be responsible for their own actions. You can't pass the buck.


Secondly, to the argument "I'm here on the ground and all the Iraqi's love us":

1. Every Iraqi you spoke to could love you and it would still be a tiny sample of the population as a whole. "The media" (and the idea that the media is unified is laughable) has access to a much broader sample of the population via polling agencies which guarantee anonymity. You can't argue with the stats.

2. What else do you think they're going to say when they're face to face with an armed occupying soldier.

Thirdly, to the argument that the Iraq war was/is just:

It may be the case that Saddam Hussein being ousted was justice.

However, the ousting of Saddam Hussein was not what the war was there to do. Moreover, even if Saddam Hussein was a terrible ruler, the war and its effects led to a massive drop in the quality of life for the Iraqi citizenry, a drop which they are only now, 6 years later, beginning to regain. And that's not even mentioning the massive amount of civilian death. Democracy is only superior to dictatorship in so far as the people actually are better off under it.

The given justification for the war was a) That Iraq was a haven for terrorists and enabled 9/11 and b) that Iraq had WMDs that were a threat to the West.

Both of these justifications turned out to be false at best, deliberately fabricated at worst.

It was not a just war.

[Kit-Fox]

A lot of those 'nazi' soldiers (and i'm not talking about the SS before you mention them, not all camp guards were SS you know & not all german soldiers were either) your talking about had no choice in the matter, if they didnt do what they were told then they would have been shot by germans more loyal to the cause, and as well as that consideration you must factor in that if they didnt do what they were told their families also suffered (shunned by neighbours, communities, unable to buy things from local shops), some just disappeared in the night (and we'll never know where the gestapo buried them)

So before you go condemming all german soldiers who just 'followed orders' in the war, you might remember that. Oh and the US under Bush withdrew from adhering to the Geneva convention as it opened up soldiers who had 'just followed orders' to prosecution.

[Taure]

There's always a choice, even if it's a choice between two bad things.

And the soldiers who would have been tasked to shoot them in turn are responsible for their own actions.

If everyone took responsibility there wouldn't have been the problem.

Hitler only came to power because the German people allowed him to. The final check on any government is the people.

Note that in our modern justice system, blackmail is not a defence. If you kill someone when blackmailed to do so you will still be held responsible.

[Kit-Fox]

Sorry but i've got to call BS on that one, if a soldier was holding a gun to your sons/daughters heads and told you to kill a complete stranger or your children would die you would kill the stranger to save your family.

And dont say something stupid like you'd turn the gun on the soldier or something equally silly.

Have a care, or you might find yourself condemned by your own words in the future you know.

EDIT: oh and a so called 'choice' between two evils isnt a choice at all.

[CRASSUS]

German soldiers were hardly blackmailed, but it's hardly fair to somehow hate them for defending their country, they made an oath to follow their leaders orders and they did, it was a war, not some contest to see who was morally in the right.

[Taure]

You missed my point.

if a soldier was holding a gun to your sons/daughters heads

If all soldiers took responsibility for their actions, this wouldn't happen, because the soldier blackmailing you would also be responsible.

if a soldier was holding a gun to your sons/daughters heads and told you to kill a complete stranger or your children would die you would kill the stranger to save your family.

Probably. It doesn't absolve me of responsibility though. At best it's a mitigating circumstance.

German soldiers were hardly blackmailed, but it's hardly fair to somehow hate them for defending their country, they made an oath to follow their leaders orders and they did, it was a war, not some contest to see who was morally in the right.

Hate? No. Hate requires a certain proximity to the issue which I don't possess. It's not personal enough for hate.

However, I still hold them responsible. Following orders is not a defence.

The Nuremberg Defense is a legal defense that essentially states that the defendant was "only following orders" ("Befehl ist Befehl", literally "order is order") and is therefore not responsible for his crimes. The defense was most famously employed during the Nuremberg Trials, after which it is named.

Before the end of World War II, the Allies suspected such a defense might be employed, and issued the London Charter of the International Military Tribunal (IMT), which specifically stated that this was not a valid defense against charges of war crimes.

Thus, under Nuremberg Principle IV, "defense of superior orders" is not a defense for war crimes, although it might influence a sentencing authority to lessen the penalty.

For a contemporary re-statement of the applicability of this:

Ehren Watada refused to go to Iraq on account of his belief that the Iraq war was a crime against peace (waging a war of aggression for territorial aggrandizement), which he believed could make him liable for prosecution under the command responsibility doctrine. In this case, the judge ruled that soldiers, in general, are not responsible for determining whether the order to go to war itself is a lawful order - but is only responsible for those orders resulting in a specific application of military force, such as an order to shoot civilians, or to treat POWs inconsistently with the Geneva Conventions. This is consistent with the Nuremberg Defense, as only the civilian and military principals of the Axis were charged with Crimes against peace, while subordinate military officials were not so charged.

[CRASSUS]

Look the SS guards deserved to be charged with war-crimes, as did any soldier who committed them. But thats probably less then 3% of the total German Armed Forces in World War 2. What people always fail to realize in my opinion is that it was not some great force of evil that was Nazi Germany, it had some severe problems (the holocaust for example) but it was a sovereign government and they declared war and were declared war upon, the german veterans of World War 2 deserve just as much respect as Allied ones in my opinion. And a vast vast vast majority are as far from War Criminals as you are.