Scrotar: Yes. Sometimes you can break things you don't have the power to fix.


I wouldn't trust this president with a puzzle meant for a five year old.

"But let's try it your way. What would that be, BTW?"

To not fight unnecessary wars under false pretenses.

alidade

Worked pretty good on the Japanese. Beat the snot out of the Confederates and preserved the Union. But let's try it your way. What would that be, BTW?


I say we post you to the front lines and have you bore the everliving f*ck out of them with your ignorance. Job farking done.

HotWingConspiracy: To not fight unnecessary wars under false pretenses.

But we're liberating the Iraqis! Liberating them to component atoms, if need be ;)

xria

Give us some numbers of how many civilian deaths would have brought peace and democracy in Iraq, when it would have been best to kill them, and what methods might have proved effective in keeping them in line.

What are you, an accountant?

Numbers aren't what I am aiming for. When they can't fight back then enough have been killed. Pretty simple concept really.

alidade - Yeah, we should have killed Iraqis by millions, until they decided that it's better to be conquered than it is to be dead. What would the rest of the world have done about it? Nothing, that's what! Unless they wanted a have an atomic smackdown bestowed upon them.

Rivers that glow in the dark. Funny looking kids.

alidade
Worked pretty good on the Japanese. Beat the snot out of the Confederates and preserved the Union. But let's try it your way. What would that be, BTW?

Not invading Iraq in the first place. It was a stupid choice... this was my opinion when the invasion was first suggested it is still my opinion. How do we fix it? We don't... we hand Iraq over to the UN and/or the Arab League to manage the problem. Then we prosecute the ones who dreamt this misadventure up (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bush), and let their fate be an example to any idiot who might come after them with similar notions of empire.

Code_Archeologist: How do we fix it? We don't... we hand Iraq over to the UN and/or the Arab League to manage the problem


With all the love Bush & Co. have given the UN, I don't really see them stepping in to fix our mess. When it's one little country of lunatics doing it to another little country of lunatics, maybe. But a country of our size & power should've known better.

r-tard

alidade
Numbers aren't what I am aiming for. When they can't fight back then enough have been killed. Pretty simple concept really.

Lets do a little thought experiment then... if the roles were reversed. If the US were invaded how many of the 250,000,000 Americans currently living in our country do you think would need to be killed before the rest would stop fighting the invaders?

ahahaha, all you morans and idiots who wanted this war.....

IXI Jim IXI
With all the love Bush & Co. have given the UN, I don't really see them stepping in to fix our mess.

You are likely correct... we are probably going to have to wait for February 2009 before any positive moves are made in Iraq.

Fark really needs a limit on how much horizontal space your pictures can take up.

alidade

What are you, an accountant?

Numbers aren't what I am aiming for. When they can't fight back then enough have been killed. Pretty simple concept really.

Ok then, ignore numbers, so what methods should be used? Shoot up some civilian vehicles at random? Drop bombs on houses in areas where the resistance is more active? Line up civilians and execute a dozen for every bomb let off by the insurgents?

Any idea where killing lots of Iraqis is going to work and breaking the enemies will to fight for the US when the Israelis have been trying this technique for decades with no end in sight?

xria: so what methods should be used?

carpet bombing hanoi.

Well obviously we can’t ever leave then, the not so subtle message of this article...

Yay! I came 3 posts too late to make this 200+ post thread readable!

Moran, indeed!

SlothB77: pakistan

hehe!

wth! the pictures are wrapping FINE on firefox, but IE is putting them all horizontal! gaaaaaaaaaaah!

crap! I farked fark!

Code_

If the US were invaded how many of the 250,000,000 Americans currently living in our country do you think would need to be killed before the rest would stop fighting the invaders?

What's with the numbers? Who could quantify that? The end result I am suggesting is degrading the enemy's ability and will to fight by killing as many as required. When it's all over I guess you could get some numbers. I'm not talking about daily body counts like in Viet Nam. It's conceptual not a specified number of "kills". Another factor is a pourous border situation on either side of Iraq. The fight is being suppported by Iraq's neighbors. The Iraqis themselves aren't so much the problem as the Iranian and Syrian proxy armies (al-Sadr et al)fighting in Iraq. They are using Iraqis to fill these 'militias', but they are supported from without. Those are the one's to kill until they stop fighting. In the process the civilians who are providing 'aid and comfort' have to go as well. The majority of the country is not in this fight, just certain key areas. This may be enough to acheive their objective though if not put out of business. I am not recommending the wholesale killing of everyone in Iraq, even though you would like to peg me with thought.

alidade: The end result I am suggesting is degrading the enemy's ability and will to fight by killing as many as required.

damn. if they'd only thought of this masterstroke 3 years ago.

SlothB77
Yet another of the 0 countries America has successfully converted in its storied history from totalitarionism to a peaceful westernized democracy.

I have never seen a statement that could be any more wrong.

Pardon me while I examine your list...

japan: had a functioning democracy prior to WWII
s korea: had a constitutional monarchy prior to WWII
germany: had a functioning democracy prior to WWII
turkey: that was a British success story
poland: they formed their own democracy without direct US intervention
ukraine: they formed their own democracy without direct US intervention
Czechoslovakia: they formed their own democracy without direct US intervention
belarus: they formed their own democracy without direct US intervention
bosnia: they formed their own democracy without direct US intervention
egypt: that was a British success story
lebanon: that was a British success story
pakistan: that was a British success story
russia: they formed their own democracy without direct US intervention
france: had a functioning democracy prior to WWII
italy: had a functioning democracy prior to WWII
spain: Formed a democracy upon the final order of Franco
belgium: had a functioning democracy prior to WWII

nuke em from orbit

its the only way to be sure

Spaz-master:
Future generations will be even more pissed that they had self hating idiots back home who refused to look deaper at a situation than they felt they had the backbone for. Soldiers like myself are upset that while we're over here doing what we do... you sit on the couch berating us and our actions...

Nothing in his frustrated rant had anything to do with the soldiers fighting the war but rather the civilian administration who made the ill considered decision to put you there to begin with.

Do me a favor and never speak for a soldier, never speak on behalf of a child, never speak in the name of peace, because you obviously can't be supportive of any of them.

If you're actually a soldier, didn't you swear an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States? Isn't the first amendmend to that document the right to free speech?

Be more upset over why we haven't listened to General Sada, or that the 5000 pounds of enriched uranium that was in iraq when we arrived was somehow no longer considered a WMD

If there were 5000 lbs of enriched uranium why did we not secure it? The answer can be laid at the very same feet that was being criticized i.e. the civilian leadership who started the clusterfark to begin with and then ignored our military experts, disbanded the only security force in Iraq and tried to do everything on the cheap.

/yellowcake biatches!

alidade
What's with the numbers? Who could quantify that? The end result I am suggesting is degrading the enemy's ability and will to fight by killing as many as required.

That is all well and good when you are fighting an organized military force. But that formula does not function in asymetric warfare. You do not defeat insurgents by killing them, you defeat them politically by capitulating to the demands you are able to live with so as to marginalize extreme elements away from more moderate elements.

alidade

What's with the numbers? Who could quantify that? The end result I am suggesting is degrading the enemy's ability and will to fight by killing as many as required.


Isn't that basically the technique that Russia tried to apply to Afghanistan and Chechnya? What makes you think that putting that much blood on American hands is a way to do anything other than make everyone hate you more?

xria

Drop bombs on houses in areas where the resistance is more active?

I could go for that one. Fight where the enemy is. When the locals get tired of the militias hiding out in the mosques and schools they will help eliminate them. But everytime this is tried those without the fortitude to fight start screaming "civilian casualties!!". Decisions like letting al-Sadr survive Fallugah was a bad choice. Had he been killed when that campaign was over, he wouldn't be fighting now, would he? The military did not decide to let him go. That was purely a political decision. Wait till the war is over before you establish a new government.

alidade
Drop bombs on houses in areas where the resistance is more active?

I could go for that one. Fight where the enemy is. When the locals get tired of the militias hiding out in the mosques and schools they will help eliminate them.

BBBZZZZTTT! Wrong, thank you for playing. General retaliation against civilian targets for insurgent actions actually galvanizes civilian opinion for the insurgents. This has been the case for every occupying force that has had to fight insurgent forces in an asymetric situation.

FriarTuck: repeated and bolded for emphasis:

2) The age of US military dominance is officially over- but we were defeated by our own weak stomachs. We have lost 3,000 people in a country the size of France over a period of 4 years. But cut a few heads off on TV (gladly aired on CNN on a 60 minute loop) and we're looking for the nearest chopper on an embassy roof. We simply will never be able to win a real war if we can't handle 3000 Americans dead. America should seriously consider a position of official foreign neutrality because of this.

Stabbed in the back!

alidade

I could go for that one. Fight where the enemy is. When the locals get tired of the militias hiding out in the mosques and schools they will help eliminate them.


That doesn't work, and never has. People tend to get pissed off with the ones dropping the bombs on them, not the people fighting the ones dropping bombs on them.

We shouldn't have gone there to begin with....we shouldn't be there now. Let the damn Iraqis figure it out for themselves...

I'm so sick of hearing about this bloody Iraq 'war'. "Are we winning? What will it take to win?" Do we even know what the freaking objectives are?? How can we say we are 'winning' when nobody will state what it means to win?

This whole Iraqi thing is enough to keep me from voting Republican for the rest of my life...if the government re-instates the draft to fight this Oil War, I will gladly sign my expatriate papers because this country has completely lost its collective mind.

// ahh I feel better now

Code....

you defeat them politically by capitulating to the demands you are able to live with so as to marginalize extreme elements away from more moderate elements.

Capitulation. That's a great plan. So how's the Quran lessons going? You learn to speak Arabic yet? Will you convert to Islam to meet their demands? When the other side wants you to die or convert, what is the bargaining stance to take when we start this negotiation? Just kill some of us and we will convert those that are left? We'll get rid of the homo's and those dirty joos and put those uppity women in their place...burka dat biatch.


The liberal answer to every problem....Grab the ankles.

I'm sure you'll love living under sharia law, dhimmicrat.

Spaz-master
just not sure what a sniper does with a degree in meteorology...

At least as a meteorologist, it's ok to miss...

/Good luck to you

alidade: I'm sure you'll love living under sharia law, dhimmicrat.

alidade

The liberal answer to every problem....Grab the ankles.


The retard answer to every problem....drop more bombs.

"The liberal answer to every problem....Grab the ankles."

Why won't you address his full statement?

Code_Archeologist

japan: had a functioning democracy prior to WWII
germany: had a functioning democracy prior to WWII

I agree with most of yourself.. But technically we did convert these two from Totalitarianism to Democracy, their democratic programs had failed and converted to Totalitarianism. The fact that once, historically, they had a functioning democracy does not change the fact that our intervention had something to do with turning them back.

Plus, I would be hesitant to call the Taisho Democracy in Japan that functioning, it had some serious problems.

HotWingConspiracy: Why won't you address his full statement?

Because that's the neocon answer to every problem...quote out of context and conveniently forget about the parts that they can't defend.

lilplatinum: The fact that once, historically, they had a functioning democracy does not change the fact that our intervention had something to do with turning them back.

it does when the intent is making a comparison to present circumstances...where a prior inclination towards democratic programs are not present.

FriarTuck: This was one of those odd threads where the rants were so crazy and tangental I wondered if there was something wrong with the site itself- other than the fact that it is populated by hateful misanthropes who post incessant pictures of their cats.

Not in this thread. After all,

lilplatinum: I agree with most of yourself.. But technically we did convert these two from Totalitarianism to Democracy, their democratic programs had failed and converted to Totalitarianism. The fact that once, historically, they had a functioning democracy does not change the fact that our intervention had something to do with turning them back.

Although, it wasn't exactly just us over there doing those things. We had help :)

alidade
As most who know me on Fark will tell you, I hate using ad hominems... but damn, you're dumb. Go run along and get Weaver95 or Shut......Up, if I am going to engage in a battle of wits with somebody I would rather they be armed.

alidade

You don't even know why we're there anymore, do you? What are the objectives of this 'war'? What does it mean to win? If it means creating a stable, peaceful country, our presence is prohibiting that because the insurgency is directed solely at us and those that support us. If it means creating a democracy, then we have to yank the current president and regime because we planted it there. If it means getting a strategic foothold in the Middle East for future military operations we will not accomplish this by maintaining a police state with our military.

A majority of Americans are against Bush right now. Should the United Nations send an occupying force to the U.S. to ensure regime change? When that's done, are we going to just accept the government the UN recommended (and made as only one of the few available parties for election)? Of course there's an insurgency because nobody wants a foreign body occupying their country. I'm not saying that kidnapping and beheading civvies is acceptable, but the anger and bitterness towards an occupying force is understandable....remember Red Dawn? (had to throw that in the mix)

If the majority of Iraqi people want a backwards, neolithic theocracy that is based on Islam, LET THEM DO IT. The population has to learn on their own why it's a bad thing, and if the U.S. and other republics and 'democracies' make good examples of themselves rather then playing the global imperialists, eventually it will rub off.

Macinfarker: You don't even know why we're there anymore, do you? What are the objectives of this 'war'?

Hell...Miss Cleo couldn't figure out the objectives of this war...

War Cats!

Let's take over IRAN now! :P

Alidade raises some good points.

The only thing we can stomach less than American casualties is inflicting civilian casualties on the enemy. It doesn't take a very long memory to recall all the press about "surgical strikes" and "minimizing collateral damage" and not bombing mosques, etc.

For all the talk about Vietnam, the one lesson that is never bought up is our inability to defeat an enemy that seamlessly integrates into the civilian population. If we can't figure that out, we have no choice but to destroy their hideouts, wherever they may be. Sucks, but that's the reality.