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| An eye for an eye. If you commit murder, you should be executed. Period. | | 6 | | I support it in some cases of 1st degree murder when there's extra violent/malicious extenuating circumstances. | | 8 | | I don't support it. Killing someone because they killed someone makes no sense. | | 5 | | | 5 |
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Grognard fantôme
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| Roadkill (11/18/2007)
-You(CIA) funded the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan, who established the Taliban state. You deposed Mohammed Mosaddeq and instated shah Pahlavi who ruled the country in a fashion that fuelled the 1979 revolution, instating a islamic theocracy. You supported Saddam Hussein's coup in 1963. You supported Pol Pot, and you supported just about everyone in Vietnam. You overthrew a democratically elected Chilean government and instated Augusto Pinochet. You overthrew the democratically elected government in Guatemala and instated Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas. Should I go on?And the U.S. is _single-handedly_ responsible for what all those folks did. Soviet Union had _NUUTHIN!_ ta do with it  Nuthin.
-You've pretty much hampered democracy wherever you found it, instated and supported every ruthless dictatorship in modern history. Oh yeah . . . I had forgotten how the U.S. had hampered democracy in France, Italy, West Germany, the Low Countries, and NORWAY!  . . . and Mexico! . . . and Brazil! . . . and oh yeah! Japan! . . . and oh yeah! The Chang Kai Shek guys lost to the Communists because the Americans actually had a clever ruse to trick them! *Awl yur base are mine*  . . . and ONE MORE THING! The Korean War was actually the result of the U.S. demilitarizing so much of Southeast Asia! Without all those American troops in Japan and Korea, it created a veritable "vacuum" effect. The Red Chinese and North Korean commanders didn't actually WANT to start a war. 135,000 of them were just inextricably SUCKED across the border like Dorothy and Toto were sucked into the Land of Oz, creating the perfect illusion of a well-orchestrated sneak attack! That's what I love about the internet! All ya gotta do is spout some de-contextualized, revisionist history drivel and you can get away with bigotry and falsehood as bad as any seen during the last century. |
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"'The front' is wherever you stop running away. Get used to it. This is what modern warfare looks like." K T Cat
Edited: 11/18/2007 4:23 PM by Scipio Africanus |  |  |
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Udderly ridiculous
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| Ahhh.. more anti-U.S. babble. This debate wasn't quite complete without Roadkill slipping that in to yet another thread that has nothing to do with that subject. I guess you haven't said that enough times and feel the need to slam the US again? All the bad in the world is to blame on the U.S. and any good the U.S. does isn't really a credit the U.S. at all, because the good would have happened without the U.S.'s help anyways.
This reminds me of the World War 2 garbage that has spewed here on 1BC a few times, where some American guys seem to want street-credit for the U.S. helping liberate Europe from the Nazis 60+ years earlier, and some other non-Americans accompanying the argument with their own drivel of how Europe was doing just fine before the U.S. got into it and could have won without America's help. Blah blah blah. Ridiculous on both arguments. Those 2 arguments probably say a lot about how arrogant the U.S. is perceived when Americans argue that and how anti-US much of the world seems to the U.S. when the help of sooo many Americans were lost defending a foreign land that we could have stayed out of. A sad, but perhaps perfect example right there of both.
"Thank you" Scipio for mentioning that tiny nation of the USSR who at least played heavily into those scenarios mentioned by Roadkill.
I guess the U.S. had nothing to do with the Soviet Union's downfall either? Perhaps that was Norway's doing or it just would have magically disolved by itself. Not to say it was *solely* the U.S.'s doing, but surely the cold war and the arms race and Ronald Reagan's charismatic dealing with Gorbachev, etc. was at least a large part to do with this. At least a far bigger influence than anything else. Don't say 'economy' because thats part of it with the U.S. out-spending the Soviet Union in an arms race.
To sidetrack myself, I think people like a villain to dislike and complain about. You see it in so many things. Baseball comes to my mind as a perfect example, especially with the New York Yankees. Bear with me a sec, and I'll explain. The Yankees are historically a juggernaut of a baseball team and have won it more than anyone and seem to always be there in the playoffs, etc. Now they out-spend everyone so much that there is almost a question of not playing fair compared to the other teams. So, in my experience, you find a lot of Yankees fans all around the U.S. and a lot of people who absolutely detest the team for the same reasons above. People like a villain and they like a Goliath to boo and hiss at and love it when the little guy beats the big guy in pretty much any venue. I believe the anti-US drivel really picked up after the USSR fell, which if there is any validity to my theory, makes perfect sense as the US filled in as the new Goliath. The U.S. ISN'T an angelic nation and there are many problems from high crime to some arrogance in leaders, etc, but most Americans who have been to several other nations wouldn't trade it for anything and the amount of Americans emigrating elsewhere is probably as small as anywhere in the world because of all the good reasons that people never mention in their anti-US drivel/babble and with most of the people spewing it having never been here. The 'good' use of military is never mentioned when people bash a few of the U.S.'s military involvements that aren't so black and white.
For any blaming of the U.S. for stuff like Roadkill mentions, there is never any positive mention from things as far back at WWII, to helping South Korea, to helping the USSR fall, to U.S. gathering dozens of nations to "liberate" Kuwait in 1991 (though 90+% of the units were 'ours)', etc. We all know that the U.N. wouldn't have done anything unless the U.S. took initiative in that one. Maybe in Norway people don't think about countries under durress like that and "accept this because it has little impact on your personal lives" but I'd bet if you were Kuwaiti, you'd sure be happy with the U.S. not sitting idle like most nations when they perceive injustice happening. Or if you were South Korean in decades past. Or if you were in any of the Allied European nations in WWI or WWII that Americans paid with our blood over, despite not being directly threatened in Europe. Or if you were Chinese, Russian, Phillipine, or several other Asian nations when the U.S. was fighting their oppressors (Japan). I can only assume how the Israelis feel about the U.S.'s military help in general when they are not only surrounded by nations that seem to hate them, but ones that have attacked them multiple times in their new nation's relatively short history (current state of Israel, not the historical, or Biblical, etc obviously).
Most nations do nothing when they see injustice and see the potential for involving their military and probably their own soldier's deaths. We can debate how 'just' some wars are, like Vietnam as Roadkill mentioned, or some other actions, but for all the many faults the U.S. has, it usually doesn't sit idle when it see injustice, slaughter, etc, though most of the world DOES. I might mention that the U.S. didn't take any land after any of those wars, despite all the anti-U.S. babble about U.S imperial conquests. Utter B.S.
In other presidencies, the U.S. would have gotten involved in Darfur. I would think if we weren't involved in Gulf War II or whatever you want to call it, "we" probably would have and I think maybe even *should* have anyways. Where was the rest of the world to stop the slaughter of close to half a million people? Sitting on their PCs in places like Norway from the comfort of their homes complaining about the US and our Imperialistic ways. If the U.S. doesn't take a lead in things like that, the world does absolutely nothing 99 out of 100 times. For all the babble, if in 10 years, there is a new aggressor in that part of the world and Norway is attacked, you KNOW the U.S. will come to their aid, no matter how many other nations do or don't. If the opposite were true, people like Roadkill and others might be smirking at how the mighty have fallen and do nothing and perceive it as karma or justice or whatever. You can say 'no' but I believe that would likely happen if the U.S. was in trouble and called for help.
Again, the U.S. has many faults and has been involved in some bad deals, but 'we' usually act when many don't have the courage to. I am sorry to ramble, but I usually don't respond much if at all to this garbage when its spewed here, and its pathetic that even in a debate like 'death penalty' you can count on the same characters bringing it up YET AGAIN. Sheesh. Like THIS stuff isn't old yet. |
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"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bow-lines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain"Don't ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." -Harold Thurman Whitman |  | |
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General
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| The reason I said in my last post "and that I can guess what you think of the US system, the point is moot, and is therefore, indeed babble," was my attempting to avoid the next bit...ah well.
The internet, every day making me wish I was an isolationist... To be fair, we were speaking about the US system, I brought it up...but as I said, I knew Roadkill's opinion on that matter so wasn't looking for a reiteration. But it *did* have a place here, since I brought it up in my statement about real good. To Roadkill: You got the reaction you wanted...happy now? *wanders off* Seeya guys, done with this topic |
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Any word you had to look up in a thesaurus is the wrong one. | | | |
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Hewhocannotbenamed
 
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Elite Pathogen
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| | This was a great debate, though I am not finished and will likely address some of the things Rabi brought up once I'm not so busy, but why do all these end up on some off topic rant about how destructive America really is? Here's an idea. If you see a little chance for a big tangent, instead of biting and sending the topic into the Offtopicsphere, just resist the urge and keep, in some way, to the topic at hand. Seriously, if you think America is the "Great Satan"... make a new thread. What does that have to do with the Death Penalty, for Heaven's sake? |
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-A government that is powerful enough to do anything for us is powerful enough to do anything to us. -Fred Thompson
-There are two races of people, the decent and the indecent. - Victor Frankel
-They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security. - Benjamin Franklin
Consequences
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Grognard fantôme
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Radical Centrist
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Elite Pathogen
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