ivan

speaking of balls, any dick-head can complain about the status quo - what would you have done differently? fuck, the history of the middle east is a multi-millennial story of one despot after another, as regular as shark teeth. momentum means something in the social sciences as well. only a retard in love w/ the illusion of america could think we would ever be able to change that.

destabilization is inevitable in a dictatorship - the despot can only keep the balls of crazy in the air for so long to stay in a man's country after he asks you to leave is unconscionable, especially after your presence was the principal cause of a civil war beyond anything our country has ever experienced - while you may not have agreed w/ the masses, the majority of americans did in fact want us out of iraq - obama campaigned on it and no one who voted for him expected anythign else there is no foreign policy that's going to make this monkey show any less fucked - staying out of this situation as much as possible was the logical and correct choice - what would you have proposed we do differently over the past 5 years and what realistically do you think would have been the result?

gudacanal diary by richard tregaskis - super quick and enjoyable read, published in the midst of ww2 - knew a good bit about guadacanal but enjoyed reading a first hand account of a feller who spent the first 2 months of what was a half-year adventure there - sparse story-telling - everyone of us lost in the immensity of a great event we can't help but understand only the tiniest toe of... big boy rules by steve fainaru - the story of the kidnapping and murder of american "mercs" in iraq during the early days of the war there - war made into a for-profit exercise - "like being in the army minus all the bullshit" - when the laws of nations and of militaries can't touch you, all there is are "big boy rules"

wasn't it promoted by every human being who hoped the middle-east could be more than a collection of despots? No, I don't think so. The Arab spring was a fundamentalist uprising supported by groups the world intelligence communities considered terrorist organizations. The Arab spring movement became ISIS. The naive American news outlets seemed to espouse the virtues of revolution in the Middle East without paying much attention who was behind it. Naturally the Obama administration, and Clinton by extension, would have you think "climate change" is behind the Arab spring otherwise Obama would have to own his failed foreign policy. Much the same way Obama, and Clinton, wanted to blame Benghazi on a Youtube video. your assertion would seem far less silly if, in fact, tunisia, libya & egypt were currently isis hot spots - they ain't. you seem to have this climate change thing deep in your teeth.

wasn't it promoted by every human being who hoped the middle-east could be more than a collection of despots?

WWNDGTD? did he not look high, high, high throughout most every episode of cosmos?

climate's just one of several casus belli's, and not necessarily the most important of the lot - nor too can climate change per se be blamed for the war no single storm or drought or weather phenomenon can be directly linked to global warming - it's like the era of heavy steroid use in baseball - no individual homerun that was hit was caused by the drugs, but sweet jesus, the much higher volume of balls leaving the park overall was

i'll take any runners-up, if you please

And it back fired in their faces....kudos? Bullshit. Wake up. granting people as nearly unrestricted liberty as safety allows ensures terrorism will occur with some frequency - shit, even despotic nations can't completely wipe out the tendency for angry hair-less monkeys to do hair-brained shit not just soldiers die for our liberties - civilians die all the time b/c some fool decides to abuse his liberty to own a gun, drive a car, have a drink, etc. france will have failed if, in the wake of this attack, they fall back on their historical tendency to impose a police state and start persecuting members of unfavored groups willy-nilly

Is that what we're calling ISIS now, "a religious group"???? you make it pretty clear you think all muslims should get tossed into the sausage machine - i'm pretty sure i'm not the only person here reading you that way

this is also bad history - france's biggest mistake in the inter-war years was assuming the maginot line was all it needed to ensure it's defense france has not "given its nation away," it's stayed true to the concept of what france is about: liberty, equality, brotherhood. kudos for them.

isis is double-plus bad assuming all the members of a religious group are terrorists and not deserving of any democratic form of due process before execution is double-plus bad too, in fact, it's more or less exactly the same thing isis does you do realize this is EXACTLY what isis wants, right? they want the west to shit their pants and crack down on muslims b/c they figure it will force the vast majority of muslims who are in "the gray zone" to rally to them for protection

No Choada Boy, i'm way out in front of you on this. FUCK THE CAMPS!!!!! Any person that is down with ISIS should be killed. No gitmo, no trial, no bullshit! These are enemy combatants and should be treated as such. Give them the Virgins. congrats, you're just a hop, skip n' a jump away!

QED, you are wrong, since you accuse at least one person of thinking so the causes of terrorism are necessarily complex - generally high stress-levels in society is clearly a major cause, and economic conditions in a community too, and both of these are easily effected by climate, whether you care to notice it or not.

he outlasted shannon hoon n' bradley nowell at least

makes sense - my ww2 vet grandpa was the most racist man regarding the damn dirty japs that i've ever met encouraging to see the follow on generations could chill the fuck out, no?

i show it to my military history class every year at the start of the first semester to try to make the kids take the subject seriously - can't speak for them but sweet-jeebus at the half-way pt i'm always done

happy to see you didn't get the chop, tovarisch - saw your ride in the timberline lot after we got back late in the darkness and didn't much fancy the idea of you still slugging it out way up the hill

the hateful habit of "total war" was rampant in bloody-red man long before the industrial age offered us so many spectacularly more awesome means of expressing it historical debates are necessarily silly, but should you be interested in sussing out the morality of the a-bombing of japan, it's worth considering that: a) american bombers killed far more japanese civilians, and in just as gruesome fashion, through conventional aerial bombings in the months leading up to august, 1945 and b) the vivid demonstration of the awful impact of atomic weapons on civilian targets at the very end of the 2nd world war might well have so sobered the combatants of the follow on cold war that they luckily choose not to use them rashly and thus commence a thoroughly retarded 3rd world war i think of the dead of hiroshima and nagasaki as a species of martyr, who's senseless murder may have well spared the world many, many millions more such deaths (at least so far) everyone in the world should have to watch "white light, black rain" once a year for the rest of their lives

dunno 'bout you, but the hotter i get, the more i want to kill everyone around me - just ask all of my yosemite partners

i can't imagine anyone caring - jesus, hardly anyone's out there this time of year lord know i got some fixed ropes that'll be hanging for many more months in the cold winter winds

agreed. i don't believe government can or should tell people what to think or not think, only what to do or not to do. killing a man b/c you wanted the money in his pocket or the girl in his bedroom or b/c you despised his race or his religious views is all the same and should result in the worst punishment man can hand down. if you could kill a man twice or keep him alive an extra 100 years so as to keep him in a cage even longer than a natural life-span i might be more interested in the hate crime concept. of course i don't think accidentally running somebody over and killing them or panicking and killing somebody w/o thought is that same as cold-bloodedly killing someone in a calculating fashion. 1st degree murder is an important concept, and it should include both those who kill in the process of committing another crime (like robbery or rape) as well as those who kill to push forward some sort of political ideology.

schweeeeeeet