Better late then never...
Sorry I\'m late; I know you\'ve all been on the edge of your seats waiting for MY opinion.
First off, I\'m totally against war, which I\'m pretty sure every sane person on here is. I think what we are REALLY discussing here is if it is NECESSARY? In most cases I feel it is, as it was in WWII. Now we get into a fuzzy grey area… is it justified?
Do we need to stay in Iraq NOW that we’ve turned the whole place upside down? Of course we do; we would be morally bankrupt to walk out on them now. Should we ever have gone in? Aye… there’s the rub.
Do I feel the people of Iraq, and the whole Middle East for that matter, will be better off in the long run? Absolutely! However, we are imposing OUR belief system on a foreign culture. We don’t have a king… so why not take down every country with one? Communism isn’t what WE are about, so let’s take on Korea and all the others that aren’t doing it ‘right’. Do you see my point? Of course bringing civilization to the unwashed masses of the world is a good thing… do any of you Americans remember the commercial with the crying Indian standing on the side of the littered highway?
Someone mentioned earlier the fact about history being written by the winners, and it is a VERY good and valid point. As long as we always win we are always going to be the good guys. Do you think Hitler thought he was the bad guy? Had Germany won the history books would be telling a way different story now, about how the wonderful Furor destroyed the inhuman Jews and crushed the evil that is communism. How about Attila the Hun? Genghis Khan? What of Alexander? He brought the wonderful Hellenistic culture to so many… weather they wanted it or not.
Before all of our forum military members start attacking me, let me just say I’m not against what we are doing… just the reasons we are doing it. Telling us you are going in to look for WMD’s, and then changing the reasons to humanitarian ones mid-stream is just insulting to my, nay, THE WORLD’S Intelligence.
EvilDave is at least honest about it. We pick our battles. Why? Because why should we do anything that doesn’t benefit us in some way? Harsh, but accurate.
The atom Bomb thing I covered in the 11/11 thread, and I won’t rehash it here. Suffice it to say that the bomb is a necessary evil, without the threat of which we and the Soviets would have turned on each other like animals, using conventional weapons to cause far more destruction in the long haul. Fear is a good thing; it keeps us safe.
In summation, I am neither pro nor con. I wouldn’t say I’m a fence sitter either, more a normal human being that is torn between right and wrong, sacrificing so many now to build a better future. The scary thing is, who’s version of the future are we heading toward?
Our Constitution grants the Gov’t the right to keep an army for the common Defense. To say we are ATTACKING someone before they attack us is called a pre-emptive strike. Justifiable under law, but that’s just a matter of semantics. To say the Taliban attacked us first, and therefore opened up the door for attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq is one thing, but I’m very interested to see how we are going to explain going into N.Korea; until then I’m reserving judgement.
The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the leader.
Proverbs 22: 7