Is this a serious post or irony?

Oh, you didn't state it as such, so I had no idea that's what you were doing.

I'd also like to point out that we are not at war with Iran, and (imo) we are unlikely to be at any point in the near future.

Ah the think-of-the-brown-children moral superiority meme comes out in record time. Didn't you just say that you supported us going into Afghanistan (as did RP)? So what is your big quibble that gives you moral superiority here? That we didn't bring the troops home fast enough and leave a giant power vacuum and a de-stablized country? Too much droning and not enough troops on the ground? Something else?

I have a magic rock that prevents tiger attacks.

I was very appreciative when I moved to California and people were not allowed to smoke in bars/restaurants/nigthclubs. It was a pleasure going out dancing and hitting and girls and not having to suffer through all the smoke and come home with my clothes reeking, like I did in Chicago.

So, if I had a choice between a government that maximized personal liberty, and a government that maximized enforcement of all the rules and regulations I personally agree with and not any that I didn't, I'd probably choose the latter. But, given that tailoring the world to the whims of Daniel DuBois is not a logically consistent nor politically feasible option, I'd rather choose a) liberty over b) the government imposing a luicrously large pile of laws and regulations on everyone that are essentially impossible to follow.

suzzer,

i just asked a question. not sure why you are freaking out over moral superiority. would a loved one or son/daughter of someone you care about dying or being maimed in combat in afghanistan or potentially iran make the light-bulb flicker a bit wrt our empire-building aggressive foreign policy?

re: afghanistan. if you do not see a stark difference between authorizing force to go after bin laden in afghanistan and what has actually taken place in afghanistan now for OVER TEN YEARS and what is continuing indefinitely then i don't really know what to tell you.

but i can say that thinking it is some sort of 'gotcha!' against ron paul or myself is pretty ignorant and i recommend as a friend that you should come up with a new line of defense for your support of the military-industrial complex.

This is really interesting. What's your basis for thinking Gary Johnson won't get the popularity of Ron Paul? What's the real reason he's so popular?

Of course you aren't dumb that's why you and suzzer just slip on jokes and sarcasm rather than have a serious discussion. The pattern is take a cheap shot make jokes retreat and repeat. Also its not like sexual harassment laws are a great tyranny that Paul is trying to end but.they are illogically inconsistent and tend to get misused and seem to do more harm than good.

wait, actual declared war? or do any unconstitutional bombing or aggressive involvement count?

do you like to gamble?

Can you understand the argument that once we went into Afghanistan, we had to topple the Taliban and at that point we couldn't just leave? Did RP get duped into thinking the mission was to just get OBL and leave the Taliban intact? What exactly is your position on what we should have done there or being doing there now - other than "Afghanistan bad, RP would bring the troops home"?

Let's establish that then we can worry about the appeals to emotion and "you have blood on your hands" arguments.

If hypothetical president RP is going to be cool with say going into Afghanistan after 9/11, but then get fed up and leave the country in chaos after a couple years, can you see how that could be much much worse than never going in the first place?

Snaggle, are you alleging that we are at war with Iran? If so, what war-like things have we done?

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don't waste your time

Not worse at all, and very possibly much better off.

While I agree that sometimes laws and regulations can get out of hand, I don't think the only solution is to just scrap the whole system altogether. In case you haven't noticed we've had the biggest boom civilization has ever known since WWII, concurrent with this supposedly economy/liberty-choking mushrooming of laws and regulations. So I think it's missing the forest for the trees to just assert that things are going to hell in a hand-basket wrt to regulations, as libertarians often do.

In before correlation != causation, even though that's not my point at all.

no i am not. i would be willing to gamble on the future

I would like to put Suzzer in a time machine to tell those 8 year olds that they better start training for their 18th birthday to get those terrorists who just attacked us. Oh, that main guy is dead and their organization is considered effectively inoperable by that time? Nah, shut up kid, it's for my freedoms. Just never expect me to leave my computer to ever fight myself.

So again, please specify what you're saying. We should have gone into Afghanistan, should have toppled the Taliban, but then should have pulled out when?

So their policies are the same but Paul is more prone to shrill hyperbole about the state of the economy and thats why he gets our support? A lot of you do thing the world is ending but I wouldn't expect that to keep you from supporting one of the few candidates that will do exactly what you want if elected. Personally I'm very optimistic and short gold.

See you always assert this like we should be tailoring every policy around not pissing off future terrorists.

We did more atrocities in Vietnam than anywhere in the Muslim world combined. And we don't have Vietnamese lining up to terrorize us. Why is that? Maybe just maybe it's not 100% about pissing them off. Maybe it's more about the culture these people live in, the fact that their govts manage to deflect a lot of the hatred that should be directed at their own country to the US, and mostly the lack of economic opportunity.

And maybe some people are going to be pissed at us no matter what we do. What exactly did we ever do to piss OBL off besides fund his ass then get in the way of his dreams for an Islamist empire?

Well I won't make a bet because it's very easy to see any number of scenarios in which it wouldn't be clear who has won the bet.

But I'm fairly confident that we will not launch any military campaigns against Iran in the next three years or so.

someone is already at war with Iran to some extent, maybe Israel, maybe USA, maybe both

It's interesting rhetoric to make a flawed argument. Then say "in before someone points out he glaring flaw in my argument that even I could see."

As a libertarian maybe you should put more emphasis on the personal responsibility of any adult that signs up for the American military in the year 2011.

we can use the language from the similar intrade contract for an air strike against iran by the us/isreal:
seems pretty clear cut imo

Going into Afghanistan is fine, toppling the Taliban is fine, spending a couple of years using the full resources of our military hunting down and killing as much of AQ and the Taliban as possible is fine (note I say the full force of our military, none of this wasted security bs, we're there to kill the people who started a war with us). Then we leave...

Now what? It's actually pretty simple, there would probably some sort of civil war, followed by another two bit dictator. All of which is fine. Dictators tend to not be crazy bastards, at least not in the "I'm going to martyr myself for some greater good crazy". They like power, and will do what is necessary to hold onto power.

Once we set the precedence that we will come in and destroy your two bit dictatorship if you, or people you protect, **** with us, most dictators will do whatever they need to do to not get hunted down like a wild dog. Including not allowing a bunch of crazy ****ers to have training camps on their soil if they can at all stop it.

Instead, we spend a decade not fighting a war, but rebuilding a country (two actually). Because of those policies we are weaker than we've ever been. The rest of the world knows that we can't handle another decade of war/nation building.

Would like to hear libertarian theories on this myself actually.