suzzer,

you can keep trying to use those rationalizations to tell yourself that people are wrong and that you are morally equivalent (or superior) to libertarians who are disgusted with the wars, aggressive occupation, murder, and empire building that has taken place by the united states in recent history, but you aren't fooling anyone and it doesn't make your water-carrying for the democrats and obama on these actions any less disturbing.

Suzzer:

Recommend you read this:

Just and Unjust Wars by Michael Walzer

ffffffffuuuuuuu

All the more reason to keep republicans out of office.

agree, vote ron paul 2012

I don't disagree with a lot of this. But the question we're discussing is murdering brown people (either in Afghanistan or drone strikes I guess). My contention (with which at least Riverman agrees) is that sometimes you have to fight a war outside your borders. And always there are going to be civilian casualties in war - whether it's drone strikes, or bombs, or cruise missiles, or soldiers on the ground or whatever.

So I get a little weary of the whole "You support murdering brown people" constant barrage. When in reality - when you break it down it comes down to something more like "While I do recognize that in some cases there are going to be civilian casualties, I don't agree with this war or this tactic" which doesn't have quite the same self-righteous ring or emotional impact.

Or unless you want to go the or "I don't care what happens to people outside or inside our borders (via terrorism) as long as we don't kill one innocent civilian through collateral damage. This includes the Holocaust." as RP seems to support. So if you got this route, I don't know how you can really claim the moral high ground on saving a few civilians, when you say you wouldn't even use the US military to prevent a genocide.

Because we now have a broadening "war on terror" -- despite OBL being killed and Al Qaeda being "operationally ineffective" according to a U.S. official -- and this broadening war is led by a super duper secret drone program that is not acknowledged to exist, despite being conducted in six muslim countries, from the most transparent administration ever.

So we are still killing brown people despite all of that -- and in an earlier post you even mentioned things like Saddam invading Kuwait, OBL being pissed off at us for being in Saudi Arabia -- you are completely unwilling or unable to connect the dots between our actions in the Middle East and the blowback they eventually cause, such as arming a man such as Saddam or pissing off the citizens to the point where they will kill themselves (or convince others) to get us as in OBL. Or that these young men who see their friends and families dying from sky robots someday might want to kill those who come from the land of the sky robots?

Wars will happen and innocent people will die. Did you know Ron Paul voted to go into Afghanistan after 9/11 to get those responsible? He did not vote to nation build for 10 years, and to not continue an incredibly loosely defined war over the entire battlefield EARTH!

So just to clarify - you don't think we should have gone into Afghanistan, even after 9/11 when the Taliban refused to give up or hinder OBL's base there? That's empire building to you?

Lol so RP voted for us to go into Afghanistan, but anything bad that happens there now is MURDERING BROWN PEOPLE? Er, ok.

As far as the other stuff we really should do a whole thread where we try to all be calm and me and Mayo (and maybe iron) will have to battle everyone on this.

But briefly, I totally agree about blowback and we should seriously look at the ways we helped create Saddam and OBL and hold people responsible. But at the same time you can't just bury your head in the sand and not do anything about them once you create them.

Many libertarians on here espouse the idea that if we just get completely out of the Middle East and "simply trade with them" all our enemies over there will stop trying to hurt us. That's beyond naive. As is the idea that we should just let some entity like Saddam or OBL start toppling country after country and building a Middle East Empire.

There's another argument that certainly rings true to me - and that's by taking the fight to them and keeping them on the run, it makes it much harder for them to to business, plan attacks etc. Maybe that's just a bunch of propaganda but I think it's worth at least considering in all this. There are a lot of bad people in this world who understand only one thing - getting hit in the mouth. All the appeasement in the world isn't going to slow them down.

Also no president has ever been *transparent* about war. You simply can't. There's too much risk in giving up sources, tactics, etc. I'm not saying that absolves everything. But I think for most of this stuff history ends up being the judge when everything comes out. Or maybe in some cases history won't judge anything because Al Awaki never went on to be the next OBL. But if we had a chance to get him and passed (like we did with OBL a few times early on), history would judge that.

History certainly showed Bush to be completely FOS on Iraq and is judging him harshly for it. I firmly believe Gore wouldn't have gone into Iraq and that's one big reason I won't vote republican. But I'm still morally defective because I'm not going to posture on the internet about someone who has zero realistic chance of becoming president and has plenty of moral flaws of his own.

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/u-s...rican-citizen/



You are OUTRAGED which kids that age get raped in Penn State's showers, but are A-OK with killing one, a US citizen no less, via drone, 'cause well gotta trust 'em!

Yeah and if I post some poor kid in India being sold into sexual slavery or forced to make soccer balls all day, you and your ilk are the first people to scream sarcastically "Think of the children!" and accuse me of appeal to emotion. Drone strikes are the only acceptable place for "Think of the children!" in Politics apparently.

You do know he wasn't the target right? He went to find his dad and was with a bunch of Al Queda, and looked like an adult from the air I'm sure.

Do you want me to start posting all the kids who died in 9/11 and scream about how could you advocate not doing everything to keep that from happening again? No, because that would be a ridiculous appeal to emotion.

but some experts think 9/11 was blowback from similar foreign policies which you currently support, so you would kind of just be owning yourself

So if he died in a firefight between the US and Al Quaeda would that be ok? I'm still struggling to find where you draw the line to get on your moral high horse. You already said it might be ok to fight wars on foreign soil. We know there is going to be collateral damage, sometimes even kids, in any war.

There's just so much fail in your entire post. You just cannot put two and two together when it comes to foreign policy, especially if it's conducted by a guy with a big D next to his name. But to remark on this sentence, how can you not see that it is acceptable for brown people collateral damage when getting the guys who committed the acts of 9-11 and the brown people collateral damage now occurring due to nation building and extremely loosely defined terrorists who had nothing to do with 9-11?

If it's not Fly, it's suzzer.

Although suzzer will acknowledge blowback and that our actions could have caused 9/11, he will still support all actions in present day that could lead to future terrorists and terrorist acts (at least as long as it is done by a Democratic administration).

I understand this. But what exactly are you saying? Should we or should we not have gone into Afghanistan in your opinion? Should we never use drone strikes under any circumstances (even if say we could have gotten OBL pre-9/11)?

It's a lot easier to just scream morality when you never really have to define your own position farther than "drone strikes bad", "war bad", "killing brown people bad".

See my questions to snaggle above. It seems like you are trying to use potential blowblack as a complete blocker to any kind of military action. If not please define which recent military actions you think have more risk of blowback than is worth the potential positives in damaging our enemies.

If someone has their fingers in their ears, it doesn't matter how persuasive your argument is.

I just completely do not get you people.

Obama didn't start any nation-building, he just finished one and is working on finishing the other.

Al Quaeda had nothing to do with 9/11? They have nothing to do with ongoing terrorist attacks in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan?

suzzer,

fourfins is doing a good job and saving me some typing and i agree with his points throughout this topic.

but to answer your question, yes i think it was justified going after OBL and into afghanistan under the assumption that the information i currently have is more or less correct.

pre 9/11? i dunno that one depends on a number of things that i will never be able to know.

there are some other things that could have been done pre-9/11 that possibly would have prevented the attacks from ever being conceived and attempted in the first place

Lol at Santorum rising to 4% being some kind of surge.

Btw I asked wookie to split the recent tangent off into drone/brown people/whatever thread so as to stop trolling the RP thread.