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So let me guess.
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What makes you think that I believe everything Bush says?
Oh wait, that's just your way of trying to duck out of a failed argument.
And if you had an iota of common sense, instead of your heaping mounds of partisan logic, the answer to your question would be as clear as crystal.
What are you blathering about? How does this have anything to do with who/what causes suicide bombers?
It seems to me to be an obvious conclusion that it takes a lot more courage and belief in your principals to blow yourself into a billion pieces then it takes to not bother showing up for your flight physical after the taxpayers spent a $1 million training your ass to be a jet fighter? It may not be too smart, but it still takes courage and principle.
Like it or not, that the way it seems to me?
Lemon law
Lifer
We have the following statement----About 400 suicide bombings have shaken Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003, and suicide now plays a role in two out of every three insurgent bombings.
So presumably there are 400 dead suicide bombers---and they hardly even make a big dent in the 3600 plus US troop deaths. Dead is Dead is Dead---no matter how you cut it---and my point is that its one thing to decide to commit suicide and take some of your enemy with you, its another thing to partake in combat knowing that at any moment you could accidentally trigger a bobby trap or catch a bullet--even though you hope to live, and its another thing to send young men off to take part in an optional war where many of them will die or be wounded while the sender stays safe at home.---and cuts funding for GI benefits and hospitals.
So presumably there are 400 dead suicide bombers---and they hardly even make a big dent in the 3600 plus US troop deaths. Dead is Dead is Dead---no matter how you cut it---and my point is that its one thing to decide to commit suicide and take some of your enemy with you, its another thing to partake in combat knowing that at any moment you could accidentally trigger a bobby trap or catch a bullet--even though you hope to live, and its another thing to send young men off to take part in an optional war where many of them will die or be wounded while the sender stays safe at home.---and cuts funding for GI benefits and hospitals.
You mean like the Islamic terror organizations who recruit young men on the basis of ideology, strap bombs to them, tell them they are going to heaven, then send them off to kill women and children in schools and hospitals, while the senders stay safe at home?
Is there a limit to how stupid you can make yourself look? You're definitely approaching critical mass.
-------------------------------------------
Personal attacks are not welcome
Senior Anandtech Moderator
Common Courtesy
Lemon law
Lifer
To jrenz,
Who asks me---Is there a limit to how stupid you can make yourself look? You're definitely approaching critical mass.
Is that the only rebuttal you can come up with??---why don't you at least make a stab at refuting what I say about Bush & Cheney? Or is there no limit on how naive you can be? But I do agree that those that send out suicide bombers are as morally bankrupt as GWB&co.
Who asks me---Is there a limit to how stupid you can make yourself look? You're definitely approaching critical mass.
Is that the only rebuttal you can come up with??---why don't you at least make a stab at refuting what I say about Bush & Cheney? Or is there no limit on how naive you can be? But I do agree that those that send out suicide bombers are as morally bankrupt as GWB&co.
So, if I throw a rock through a window, I didn't cause it to break, because there were broken windows before I threw the rock?
Love the righty's logic.
If you think he meant ONLY Bush and Cheney policies cause suicide bombers, it's even worse. No reasonable person could think he meant that. Not many unreasonable ones could either.
StageLeft
No Lifer
Uh, that's incredibly negative, Harvey. What with the troop surge merely days away from securing Baghdad and a fully-represented, democratic government now paving the way for a greater wave of freedom across the middle east, all fomented by the insight of George W. Bush Jr. I don't know how you can say such a thing.
Please just make sure I have at least 10 business days before this happens so that I can get the new HELOC closed to cover $250/tank of gas, ok?
That's because you're not rational on the issue.
You mistake what the left actually says for some confused version of it.
The topic that triggered that is one I agree with - the one that disagrees with the right when they keep referring to the suicide bombers as 'cowards'.
I understand there's *some* logic to the point because of the 72 vergin thing, but it's not a solid claim at all.
Liberals will largely agree with various criticisms of the suicide bombers. Unlike the right, they'll often have some understanding of the reasons that people don't like to be occupied.
For example, if, to make up numbers, 5% of insurgents are about 'war for Ilams ruling the world' and 25% are about revenge for family and friends killed by the US and 70% is about not wanting to be occupied, the left isinterested in that information, while the right tends to dehumanize all of them, paint them with one broad brush as 'crazies who want to kill all Americans and rule the world', and sputter about the need to torture them if caught but we shouldn't capture them because we should shoot them if they try to surrender.
I exaggerate - slightly.
Back to the point that triggered this, would you rather fight - loyalty aside - on the American side with the great equipment, training, supplies, and high rate of getting home safely, or would you rather join the insurgents who have almost none of those things while fighting the US, and whose head to head battles often have casualty lists like "US 0, insurgents 200"? The US soldier can't begin to argue that he's fighting on any 'level' playing field, as soldiers did in all wars before around Korea. And the insuregents are COWARDS?
A more logical argument could be made that the US soldiers who have huge advantages over their enemy are the cowards compared to insurgents - but that's not fair.
Neiher side are 'cowards'. I can see the argument regarding people who place bombs for remote detonation - though US bomber crews are equally vulnerable on that.
And being involved even in IED's is hardly a safe activity, with the US constantly hunting such people down, and the other risks, including getting caught placing them.
Why does the right call them cowards? Not because it's true or even rational, but because it's propaganda, it's a nasty word, so they use it. The left is better with the truth.
The left can look at a suicide bomber and make a lot of *accurate* criticisms. The left is also less hypocritical, and can realize how fast many of these same right-wing criticis would become terrorists themselves if they were in the same situation, if their city in America were occupied by a foreign Muslim power's far more advanced military, if their friends and family had casualties from that military, if one eighth of their city had fled the US for Mexico, and they wouldn't call themselves evil terrorists. That's a sensible thing.
The logic Palehorse defends here is one in which, say, the question is raised, do the insurgents like to have sex with dogs? The Palehorse answer would be "yes", because that's the answer that puts them in a bad light. When the liberals say, "actually, that's against their religion, and they don't do it", Palehorse could come back and say the liberals would like a national day of remembrance for suicide bombers because they like them so much.
That literal example doesn't happen, but it's the same bad logic Palehorse uses when he equates the liberals not agreeing with the wrong statements against suicide bombers with not seeing the actual problems, and thinking the suicide bombers' activities are just wonderful in every case (or to use his words, "for every suicide bomber who ever strapped on a vest".)
Palehorse fails to realize how it's his side's lack of understanding of the situation on both sides that contributes to the problems, increasing the conflict and violence.
Liberals are more than able to oppose the 'legitimate' threats; Palehorse falls into being an apologist for an agenda it seems he doesn't understand that often wrongs others.
Palehorse isn't just wrong; he's right on some things, there is *some* legitimate threat (thogh he has exhibited no knowledge of the west's role in its creation, as England and later the US organized the very worst Muslim extremist groups like the Muslim brotherhood, when they wanted to use them to 'divide and conquer' the region, as a force against the Arab nationalists - I wonder what it would take to get him to read a book like "Devil's Gate" and get informed on that).
And I even give him credit for being less one-sided than some. It's hard for someone to sacrifice so much for a war effort as he has, and for them to be fair to the 'other side', since that tends to make his sacrifice seem less constructive, if not downright on the side of injustice - it takes a lot for a person to see and admit that (see, for example, Gen. Smedely Butler). A lot of people are simply convinced they're doing good, because that it a lot easier. I recently watched "Winter Soldiers", about the Viet nam vets who were testifying about the atrocities they had committed and seen, and even they kept saying over and over how sure they had felt that they were on the side of right while over there, some of them even re-enlisting. So I give Palehorse credit for some of the balsnce he occassionally shows. But I also see the danger in people who have that bias having say in policy. Every military, incluiding the insurgents', thinks they're right; even the Nazis and Japaanese in WWII generally seemed to think so. You did not see the Japanese say they wouldn't commit atrocities because it was wrong too much, did you?
You need to start paying more attention to what some of your "members" have to say, which you obviously aren't.
Not a solid claim? Well I guess that's all the argument you need to dismiss something...
No, I understand perfectly. We should spend more time empathizing with our enemy. After all, they want to kill us for noble reasons. What right do we have as a people to try and ensure our survival?
The left's "understanding" of our enemy is a thinly veiled excuse used to claim America as the source of every problem in the world. They claim that we can't secure Iraq, and then refuse to let us do what is necessary to secure it, to include throwing soldiers and Marines in prison based on stories concocted by our enemy. The left is more inclined to listen to anything our enemy would say over anything our own fighting men would say. You don't have to argue that, because it's been shown a fact.
By the way, the irony of:
is too good to pass up.
Do you know how many civilian casualties there have been in Iraq? Wait, of course you do, the left LOOVVEESSS to bring up that hundreds of thousands, if not billions of innocent civilians have died since we got there. Wonder who's killing them? That's right, your heroes. The majority of suicide bombers target *unarmed civilians*, not our soldiers. IEDs kill our soldiers. Suicide bombers kill their own people (other than in the case of foreign nationals fighting... but of course they don't exist right?)
Cowards because we take extra care not to harm civilians or damage infrastructure? Because we do everything possible and then some to avoid collateral damage... including putting ourselves in more danger than already are? You're deluded.
I'm too upset right now to even come up with words. I don't think words exist for this level of arrogant asshattery.
HA. Wow. I can't believe you said that. Now I know... am I on hidden camera?
You mean we'd run into shopping malls and blow up our friends? You're the master of false arguments.
The login the hyper-left (You included) likes is one in which, say, 40 civilians are killed by a suicide bomber of unknown origin. The response would be "It's America's fault, that bomber was reacting to his circumstances." When the *sensibles* on either side would realize that this bomber was trained, equipped, indoctrinated with Islam, and sent from a secure area to kill as many random people (civilians) as possible in order to destabilize Iraq and continue the bloodshed, while his master sits back and recruits more. At this point, Craig et al. would quickly jump in and make the point that anybody who says this has something to do with Islam is a bigot and a fool.
My example is a bit more realistic in that it happens on a regular basis.
It's the hyper-left's REFUSAL to accept the situation for what it is on both sides which contributes to the problem. Instead of taking something for what it is, it's your goal to come up with another problem and attribute that as the cause, ignoring reality because reality is offensive to one or more people. Case in point, "Islam has nothing to do with terrorism".
Sensible people are more than able to oppose the 'legitimate' threats; Craig falls into being an apologist for an agenda it seems he doesn't understand that often wrongs others.
Wow... see how much better that sounds?
Even now, you *have to* launch into an explanation of how it's really the west's fault. Everything that happens is because of us. Somebody made a bomb and blew it up in a hospital? It's because of something Europe did 50 or 100 or 200 years ago, and not because of that person.
You're pathetic, Craig.
[/quote]
You say that every side thinks they are right. That doesn't mean every side is right. Were the Nazi's right? The left is constantly fighting to show that America is wrong, in everything. You've been doing it in this thread to excess. We're fighting a war against religious extremists and you're sitting back here lecturing us on how we're wrong, and we need to stop trying, and our enemy is great, and our enemy is brave. You'd be happy if we left tomorrow and invited every extremist home with us, because then we'd truly be able to *understaaaaand* them. The sooner you stop trying to distort reality with your own agenda of who's to blame, the sooner we as a world will be able to deal with this very real threat.
You don't have to bother replying, I can go look back at a few of your other threads to get the gist of what you'll say.
Lemon law
Lifer
To jrenz,
Who totally fails to understand the human concept of war as he spends all his energies comparing the relative merits of the front line basic grunts on both sides. And then ascribes all the evils of the worst to all those opposed to us.---while implying we are wonders of human compassion---even though its already documented that there are Lyndie Englands, Charles Grainers, still among us also.
But your main defect is that you still can't come to grips with the real problem---and the real problem is GWB who has gone to Iraq putting our troops in harms way----its not that those people are coming here---its we who are going to them---and because they don't have the blessings of modern tanks and stealth high tech aircraft---they fight with the weapons they have.
And we would not have these problems if GWB&co. had the brains to not invade Iraq----and if you think Iraq had ANYTHING TO DO WITH 911-----please excuse us while we all
wonder where your brains are.
Sooner or later---despite your deep denial---you are going to have to confront and honestly answer the GWB complicity argument----your its too absurd to contemplate deflection fools no one but yourself.
Who totally fails to understand the human concept of war as he spends all his energies comparing the relative merits of the front line basic grunts on both sides. And then ascribes all the evils of the worst to all those opposed to us.---while implying we are wonders of human compassion---even though its already documented that there are Lyndie Englands, Charles Grainers, still among us also.
But your main defect is that you still can't come to grips with the real problem---and the real problem is GWB who has gone to Iraq putting our troops in harms way----its not that those people are coming here---its we who are going to them---and because they don't have the blessings of modern tanks and stealth high tech aircraft---they fight with the weapons they have.
And we would not have these problems if GWB&co. had the brains to not invade Iraq----and if you think Iraq had ANYTHING TO DO WITH 911-----please excuse us while we all
wonder where your brains are.
Sooner or later---despite your deep denial---you are going to have to confront and honestly answer the GWB complicity argument----your its too absurd to contemplate deflection fools no one but yourself.
I understand your need to dehumanize the enemy. My Dad still thinks the Japs are a bunch of savage barbarians and I don't blame him a bit for that. He used to have to kill them in order to stay alive.
Luckily not everyone has to be on the front line or there would never be a peace settlement reached until one side completely anihilated the other.
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