Forum: F-16 News

Many good points made, one thing is certain..the Middle East (appears) it has no clue what they really want (in my opinion).

Yes they have Oil, (they want money and trade) but when that card has been played out (and Oil is no longer an issue) then... what will they offer the world, just ciaos from what I see (at the moment) and that is not enough.

They can not even agree on a government and when one is put in place, it is powerless (other then the type of government with have seen in Iraq) where they force their people into submission or they die by the thousands.

How does anyone reason with a mindset like that, I don't see any answer lately, have any of you?

I am sorry but historically all these people (and I have to be collective here) have had is a history of war and violence, this dates back to biblical times. They were basically tribes that have spread out. I don't wish to be insulting but lets call it as it has happened. Boarder wars, internally struggles, groups of leaders waging war, no respect for its own people and people that appear to go or act crazy at the drop of a dime. Killing each other and then turning on the world that wants to help them out of the dark ages.

Isn't that what we are seeing now, look at Iran, it thumbs its nose and finger at the world. One hand looking to Russia for possible advise and the other hand wanting to outright destroy a neighboring nation which it refuses to recognize (Israel). Religion that is taken out of context and used to reek havoc not only on its own people but the people of the world (look at the bombing globally). Setting out their terrorist to the nations of the world to basically raise hell and it does not matter who they kill in that process. Brain wash people into thinking they will receive numbers of "virgins" when they get to heaven...that is all madness and then collectively, that nation tells the world to basically piss off and we should not worry...are you kidding me or yourselves.

Plus, I was in the service of my nation when Iran took over the US Embassy and killed many. then captured hundreds of fellow Americans. I will NEVER forgive them for that or their warring ways since then. The Middle East needs to pull their heads out of their asses (collectively) before they can be really ready to deal with, live with the world collectively, not just the USA or its allies. Those are facts that are indisputable, that is history.

The mind set of that region needs to change and respect life in general, treat women like real people, then form a government that gives and accepts help (if requested) from the world and it neighbor's as we all do from time to time. On one country Can Not stand by itself, international trade and commerce is the only way this PLANET will and can survive. If Iran continue to threaten, beats the war drum, as stretched as the USA is, it will fight if provoked (that is the key word, provoked). It (USA) will not start it but the rain of destruction (if provoked) can and will be unbearable as we saw in Iraq in Gulf War 1. I too hate war but when pushed, I too will push back with all I can, as any collective people would. I for one am very sick and tired of the Middle East bombing itself into history and taking Americans and other nations people with it. Sometimes, I would like to say the hell with them all and watch them starve and raise hell with each other, but as a human being, we all know that is wrong, so we (collectively) try and help but it is throw back in our faces daily...that too is wrong!

What does it take to stop terrorism, especially when it comes from the heart of the Middle East. How does anyone expect the world to turn its head as these organizations roam the planet blowing the hell out of anyone that disagrees with them or their religion...that is madness. If it takes a war to clean that attitude out and bring about a world peace (if that is even possible) that if that attitude is not stopped, we will have a world war and the Middle East as well as the rest of the world will burn...no one wants that and right now..Iran is making far too much noise to support that type of action and response no matter what "weapons system would be used to prevent it"...that is the real issue.

Terrorist have got a strong foothold to control and inflict pain and destruction globally, that crap must stop, and we collectively must stop anyone that supports those actions...that is my two cents, like it or not! You cant please everyone, that is true. I do know the difference and am tired of hearing "I don't understand or should just be quiet"..we might offend someone, hell right now several counties there (that region) don't give a damn who they hurt or kill in their madness, so why should I threat lightly and be quiet as the madness continues, that in itself, is a problem.

F-16.net Sponsor

What's that old expression..."don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining"...seems that expression fits the crisis we have dealing with the Middle East right now.

thomas.warton said

Quote:

The mind set of that region needs to change and respect life in general, treat women like real people,

We won't live to see that, I guarantee you. This would take at least 3 generations (60 years) if it ever happens

Shame huh.I agree with you, I dont think we will see true Peace there in our lifetimes either.

In Today's News from that Region....points being made, again and again...just plain crazy there.

President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, summoned political leaders to a meeting Thursday. But the biggest Sunni faction in the new parliament, the Iraqi Accordance Front, refused to attend, citing the attacks on Sunni mosques.

"We want a clear condemnation from the government which didn't do enough yesterday to curb those angry mobs," said Dr. Salman al-Jumaili, a member of the Front. "There was even a kind of cooperation with the government security forces in some places in attacking the Sunni mosques."

As the country veered ominously toward sectarian war, the government extended a curfew in Baghdad and Salaheddin province for two days. All leaves for Iraqi soldiers and police were canceled and personnel ordered to report to their units.

Sixteen people, eight of them civilians, died in a bombing Thursday in the center of Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.

The bombing, which targeted soldiers, was not seen as part of the sectarian fighting.

Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr accused the Iraqi government and U.S. forces of failing to protect the Samarra shrine, also known as the Golden Mosque, and ordered his militia to defend Shiite holy sites across Iraq.

"If the government had real sovereignty, then nothing like this would have happened," al-Sadr said a statement. "Brothers in the Mahdi Army must protect all Shiite shrines and mosques, especially in Samara."

The destruction of the gleaming dome of the 1,200-year-old Askariya shrine in Samarra sent crowds of angry Shiites into the streets. The crowds included members of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and other Shiite militias that the United States wants abolished.

Sunni Clerical Association of Muslim Scholars spokesman Abdul-Salam al-Kubaisi blamed the violence on the country's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and other Shiite religious leaders who called for demonstrations against the shrine attack.

"They are all fully aware that the Iraqi borders are open, and the streets are penetrated with those who want to create strife among Iraqis," al-Kubaisi said at a news briefing.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Thursday that he suspects Al Qaeda in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was responsible for the devastating explosion at the Golden Mosque.

"There is not yet information about what caused this terrorist outrage, but al-Zarqawi and al-Qaida have been linked as it has the hallmarks of their nihilism," Straw told a news conference in London. He called on leaders of Iraq's religious communities to defuse tensions caused by the attack.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said the attack was "an act of desperation as well as desecration."

Al-Kubaisi said U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad enflamed the situation when he warned Monday that the United States would not continue to support institutions run by sectarian groups with links to armed militias.

"Without doubt, these statements mobilized all the Shiites," al-Kubaisi said. "It made them ready to go down to the street at any moment."

In Diyala, a religiously mixed province northeast of Baghdad, 47 bodies were found in a ditch. Officials said the victims appeared to have been stopped by gunmen, forced out of their cars and shot near Nahrawan, about 12 miles south of Baqouba. Most were aged between 20 and 50 and appeared to include both Sunnis and Shiites, police said.

Fighting broke out Thursday afternoon in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad, between militiamen from al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia and Sunni gunmen. Two civilians were killed and five militiamen were injured, police Capt. Rashid al-Samaraie said.

Thousands of demonstrators carrying Shiite flags and banners marched Thursday through parts of Baghdad, Karbala, Kut, Tal Afar and the Shiite holy city of Najaf in protest against the shrine attack.

U.S. military units in the Baghdad area were told Thursday morning to halt all but essential travel. Commanders feared that convoys might be caught up in demonstrations or road blocks.

Also Thursday, gunmen fired automatic weapons and grenades at a Sunni mosque in Baqouba, killing one mosque employee and injuring two others, police said. Assailants also set fire to a Sunni mosque in eastern Baghdad, police said.

Eight Iraqi soldiers and eight civilians were killed when a soup vendor's cart packed with explosives detonated as a patrol passed in the center of Baqouba, police Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi said. At least 20 people were injured in the blast.

The bullet-riddled bodies of a prominent Al-Arabyia TV female correspondent and two other Iraqi journalists, who had been covering Wednesday's explosion in Samarra, were found on the outskirts of the mostly Sunni Arab city 60 miles north of Baghdad.

Quote:

I am sorry but historically all these people (and I have to be collective here) have had is a history of war and violence, this dates back to biblical times

Well said Tom, well said my man.

If Israel strikes Iran, two things will be for sure. The threat of nuclear attack to Israel is imminent, and all diplomatic avenues have been exhausted. Israel does'nt come out unless they have no other choice. I for one would support a conventional strike/war long before I would stand for a country developing miniaturized nuclear weapons, and selling them to the thug of choice around the world. The leaders of the free world never want to go to war. In the nuclear age, nuclear war is the true enemy itself, and the free world will use any means to prevent it.

Salute...if only the world could or would learn from its mistakes and little bullies stop pissing off those around them.

I hate bullies, never liked them as a kid, still don't like them as an adult. I'd rather fight then stand still and get my butt kicked...least I had a say so in its outcome.

Thanks

Here is a jet for all weather, all terrain..I love it, my old base is ready to handle anything

Some more history for you that think we should sit still or just let 'things happen"...in Iran or Iraq (many others in that region could fall into this sink hole of aggression).

My button was pushed with this forum and subject so here goes.....
Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat, and had sunk more than four hundred British ships in their convoys between England and America for food and war materials.

Bushido Japan had overrun most of Asia, beginning in 1928, killing millions of civilians throughout China, and impressing millions more as slave labor.

The US was in an isolationist, pacifist, mood, and most Americans and Congress wanted nothing to do with the European war, or the Asian war.

Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and in outrage Congress unanimously declared war on Japan, and the following day on Germany, which had not attacked us.It was a dicey thing. We had few allies.

France was not an ally, the Vichy government of France aligned with its German occupiers. Germany was not an ally, it was an enemy, and Hitler intended to set up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe. Japan was not an ally, it was intent on owning and controlling all of Asia. Japan and Germany had long-term ideas of invading Canada and Mexico, and then the United States over the north and south borders, after they had settled control of Asia and Europe.

America's allies then were England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and Russia, and that was about it. There were no other countries of any size or military significance with the will and ability to contribute much or anything to the effort to defeat Hitler's Germany and Japan, and prevent the global dominance of Nazism. And we had to send millions of tons of arms, munitions, and war supplies to Russia, England, and the Canadians, Aussies, Irish, and Scots, because none of them could produce all they needed for themselves.

All of Europe, from Norway to Italy, except Russia in the east, was already under the Nazi heel.

America was not prepared for war. America had stood down most of its military after WWI and throughout the depression, at the outbreak of WWII there were army units training with broomsticks over their shoulders because they didn't have guns, and cars with "tank" painted on the doors because they didn't have tanks. And a big chunk of our navy had just been sunk and damaged at Pearl Harbor.

Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of England that was the property of Belgium and was given by Belgium to England to carry on the war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler - actually, Belgium surrendered one day, because it was unable to oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next day anyway just to prove they could.Britain had been holding out for two years already in the face of staggering shipping loses and the near-decimation of its air force in the Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany only because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively minor threat that could be dealt with later and turning his attention to Russia, at a time when England was on the verge of collapse in the late summer of 1940.

Russia saved America's butt by putting up a desperate fight for two years until the US got geared up to begin hammering away at Germany.

Russia lost something like 24 million people in the sieges of Stalingrad and Moscow, 90% of them from cold and starvation, mostly civilians, but also more than a million soldiers. More than a million.

Had Russia surrendered, then, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire campaign against the Brits, then America, and the Nazis would have won that war.

Had Hitler not made that mistake and invaded England in 1940 or 1941, instead, there would have been no England for the US and the Brits to use as a staging ground to prepare an assault on Nazi Europe, England would not have been able to run its North African campaign to help take a little pressure off Russia while America geared up for battle, and today Europe would very probably be run by the Nazis, the Third Reich, and, isolated and without any allies (not even the Brits), the US would very probably have had to cede Asia to the Japanese, who were basically Nazis by another name then, and the world we live in today would be very different and much worse. I say this to illustrate that turning points in history are often dicey things. And we are at another one.

There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world, unless they are prevented from doing so.

France, Germany, and Russia, have been selling them weapons technology at least as recently as 2002, as have North Korea, Syria, and Pakistan, paid for with billions of dollars Saddam Hussein skimmed from the "Oil For Food" program administered by the UN with the complicity of Kofi Annan and his son.

The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs - they believe that Islam, a radically conservative (definitely not liberal!) form of Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then the world, and that all who do not bow to Allah should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel, purge the world of Jews. This is what they say.

There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East - for the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation today, but it is not yet known which will win - the Inquisition, or the Reformation.

If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control the Middle East, and the OPEC oil, and the US, European, and Asian economies, the techno-industrial economies, will be at the mercy of OPEC - not an OPEC dominated by the well-educated and rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated by the Jihadis.

You want gas in your car? You want heating oil next winter? You want jobs? You want the dollar to be worth anything? You better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses, and the Islamic Reformation wins.

If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions, and live in peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade away, and a moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.

We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda, the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. We cannot do it nowhere. And we cannot do it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the battle now at the time and place of our choosing, in Iraq.

Not in New York, not in London, or Paris, or Berlin, but in Iraq, where we did and are doing two very important things.

(1) We deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether Saddam Hussein was directly involved in 9/11 or not, it is undisputed that Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for decades. Saddam is a terrorist.
Saddam is, or was, a weapon of mass destruction, who is responsible for the deaths of probably more than a million Iraqis and two million Iranians.

(2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic terrorism in Iraq. We have focused the battle. We are killing bad guys there and the ones we get there we won't have to get here, or anywhere else. We also have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq, which will be a catalyst for democratic change in the rest of the Middle East, and an outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in the Middle East for as long as it is needed.

The Euros could have done this, but they didn't, and they won't. We now know that rather than opposing the rise of the Jihad, the French, Germans, and Russians were selling them arms - we have found more than a million tons of weapons and munitions in Iraq. If Iraq was not a threat to anyone, why did Saddam need a million tons of weapons?

And Iraq was paying for French, German, and Russian arms with money skimmed from the UN Oil For Food Program (supervised by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and his son) that was supposed to pay for food, medicine, and education, for Iraqi children.

World War II, the war with the German and Japanese Nazis, really began with a "whimper" in 1928. It did not begin with Pearl Harbor. It began with the Japanese invasion of China. It was a war for fourteen years before America joined it. It officially ended in 1945 - a 17 year war - and was followed by another decade of US occupation in Germany and Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their own again .. a 27 year war.

World War II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year's GDP - adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars, WWII cost America more than 400,000 killed in action, and nearly 100,000 still missing in action.

[The Iraq war has, so far, cost the US about $160 billion, which is roughly what 9/11 cost New York. It has also cost about 1,800 American lives, which is roughly 1/2 of the 3,000 lives that the Jihad snuffed on 9/11.] But the cost of not fighting and winning WWII would have been unimaginably greater - a world now dominated by German and Japanese Nazism.

Americans have a short attention span, now, conditioned I suppose by 60 minute TV shows and 2-hour movies in which everything comes out okay.

The real world is not like that. It is messy, uncertain,and sometimes bloody and ugly. Always has been, and probably always will be.

If we do this thing in Iraq successfully, it is probable that the Reformation will ultimately prevail. Many Muslims in the Middle East hope it will. We will be there to support it. It has begun in some countries, Libya, for instance. And Dubai. And Saudi Arabia. If we fail, the Inquisition will probably prevail, and terrorism from Islam will be with us for all the foreseeable future, because the Inquisition, or Jihad, believes they are called by Allah to kill all the Infidels, and that death in Jihad is glorious.

The bottom line here is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism until we defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away on its own. It will not go away if we ignore it.

If the US can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq, then we have an "England" in the Middle East, a platform, from which we can work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East. The history of the world is the clash between the forces of relative civility and civilization, and the barbarians clamoring at the gates. The Iraq war is merely another battle in this ancient and never-ending war. And now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to get nuclear weapons. Unless we prevent them. Or somebody does.

The Iraq war is expensive, and uncertain, yes. But the consequences of not fighting it and winning it will be horrifically greater. We have four options -

1. We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons.

2. We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons (which may be as early as next year, if Iran's progress on nuclear weapons is what Iran claims it is).

3. We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the Middle East, now, in Europe in the next few years or decades, and ultimately in America.

4. Or we can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the Jihad is more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has dominated France and Germany and maybe most of the rest of Europe. It will be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier then.

Yes, the Jihadis say that they look forward to an Islamic America. If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your children, or grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today.

We can be defeatist peace-activists as anti-war types seem to be, and concede, surrender, to the Jihad, or we can do whatever it takes to win this war against them.

The history of the world is the history of civilizational clashes, cultural clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society and civilization should be like, and the most determined always win.

Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win. The pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them.

In the 20th century, it was Western democracy vs. communism, and before that Western democracy vs. Nazism, and before that Western democracy vs. German Imperialism. Western democracy won, three times, but it wasn't cheap, fun, nice, easy, or quick. Indeed, the wars against German Imperialism (WWI), Nazi Imperialism (WWII), and communist imperialism (the 40-year Cold War that included the Vietnam Battle, commonly called the Vietnam War, but itself a major battle in a larger war) covered almost the entire century.

The first major war of the 21st Century is the war between Western Judeo/Christian Civilization and Wahhabi Islam. It may last a few more years, or most of this century. It will last until the Wahhabi branch of Islam fades away, or gives up its ambitions for regional and global dominance and Jihad, or until Western Civilization gives in to the Jihad.

Senator John Kerry, in the debates and almost daily, makes 3 scary claims:

1. We went to Iraq without enough troops.

We went with the troops the US military wanted. We went with the troop levels General Tommy Franks asked for. We deposed Saddam in 30 days with light casualties, much lighter than we expected.

The real problem in Iraq is that we are trying to be nice - we are trying to fight minority of the population that is Jihadi, and trying to avoid killing the large majority that is not. We could flatten Fallujah in minutes with a flight of B52s, or seconds with one nuclear cruise missile - but we don't. We're trying to do brain surgery, not amputate the patient's head. The Jihadis amputate heads.

2. We went to Iraq with too little planning.

This is a specious argument. It supposes that if we had just had "the right plan" the war would have been easy, cheap, quick, and clean.

That is not an option. It is a guerrilla war against a determined enemy, and no such war ever has been or ever will be easy, cheap, quick, and clean. This is not TV.

3. We proved ourselves incapable of governing and providing security.

This too is a specious argument. It was never our intention to govern and provide security. It was our intention from the beginning to do just enough to enable the Iraqis to develop a representative government and their own military and police forces to provide their own security, and that is happening. The US and the Brits and other countries there have trained over 100,000 Iraqi police and military, now, and will have trained more than 200,000 by the end of next year. We are in the process of transitioning operational control for security back to Iraq.

It will take time. It will not go with no hitches. This is not TV.

Remember, perspective is everything, and America's schools teach too little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young American mind.

The Cold war lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Forty-two years. Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany.

World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten year occupation, and the US still has troops in Germany and Japan. World War II resulted in the death of more than 50 million people, maybe more than 100 million people, depending on which estimates you accept.

The US has taken a little more than 2,000 KIA in Iraq. The US took more than 4,000 Killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944, the first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism. In WWII the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week for four years. Most of the individual battles of WWII lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far.

But the stakes are at least as high . . . a world dominated by representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms . or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law).

I do not understand why the American Left does not grasp this. They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom, but evidently not for Iraqis. In America, absolutely, but nowhere else.

300,000 Iraqi bodies in mass graves in Iraq are not our problem. The US population is about twelve times that of Iraq, so let's multiply 300,000 by twelve. What would you think if there were 3,600,000 American bodies in mass graves in America because of George Bush? Would you hope for another country to help liberate America?

"Peace Activists" always seem to demonstrate where it's safe, in America.

Why don't we see Peace Activist demonstrating in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, North Korea, in the places in the world that really need peace activism the most?

The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc., but if the Jihad wins, wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc. Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side of their own worst enemy.

If the Jihad wins, it is the death of Liberalism. Everywhere the Jihad wins, it is the death of Liberalism. And American Liberals just don't get it.

Sorry to take up so much space but it needed to be said.

I'm going to take some issue to a few things here.

The parallels don't work. Every conflict has it's percieved good guys and bad guys, and we can tie pretty much any war to any other previously fought war in history. Hitler, Caesar, Alexander, The Confederacy, The Emipire of Japan, The Crusades, the scottish rebellion, it's all pretty much the same. One major inconsistency that you failed to mention was that the world was in our corner during ww2, not so much with this last one.

The plan in Iraq didn't work for a few reasons. One: the biggest CIA f*ck up in history. We had gong show intel. Why is it that we had stopped the Israelis from beating the sh*t outta Iraq throughout the 80s and again in Iraq 1, then when we say, "alright, go get em boys" only to get the response, "no thanks." Becuase they knew Iraq wasn't too much of a threat to them anymore. They knew stuff that we didn't and we embarassed ourselves.

Also, to implement a new government you need to have a shadow government ready to go. The American Revolution would have never worked if France decided to fight for our independence, then get us going. Your own people need to start that fight, and want to continue to fight it. You have to have people like our founding fathers who want to make change, and who will have the support of 95% of the population. The Iraqi people need Iraqi heros like Americans had George Washington, how the Scotts had William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, the Indians had Ghandi. They will never accept George Bush as a hero just like we don't accept the King of France as a Hero from our revolution.

So we really are kinda stuck. We can't leave becuase then youa re right, the extremist Jihad type guys will take over, and we can't afford that. But at the same time, if we stay, we are just a hated occupying force in a land that will grow to hate us. I truly believe that we are creating a new generation of anti-americanism by being there. I'm 23, and I'm sure that when I am 50 we will still be dealing with this.
So that's Iraq

Iran: You are right, Iran could go either way. But, by forcing military action we are ensuring that both sides will hate us. I say let them develop Nuke energy, but we must watch it, and over see it. Perhaps that is a job of the UN. Then, at the first sign that the "Bad Guys" are gonna start getting nukes, we end it. People aren't going to like us if we don't trust them. Iran could go either way, which is why a positive influence by the US is important, a negative influence will only piss everyone off.

Then we have Afghanistan. We are working with their Gov. We are doing the right thing there. That is a special ops mission that will continue for a good cause and I am pretty sure that no one will argue that point.

China has become a Capitalist Communism, they really don't pose a threat at all as their economy is depedant upon the rest of the world. N. Korea, well, hey, if they go bonkers we are right there, and we have good men to do the right thing.

One big issue I have is that you say if we don't act they will take over America. We have and are raised with a different set of values that those of Jihad. It will never thrive here. Just as they can't udnerstand why we do want we do, we can't understand them. Our values are so different that we will never accept theirs. It won't happen.

I think American Liberals understand more than you think. You have a very one-sided opinion of the issues. The answer to every possible threat to American Idealism is not military action. If anything, it should be the last option. I still agree with the whole "Speak softly, but carry a big stick" mentality. You are right in the fact that Appeasement doesn't work, and never will.

One thing you fail to consider. What if people want the Jihad? What if they agree with their Ideals? The Hamas party was elected popularly. If it is what people want, as long as they are not hurting someone else, let them do it and leave them alone, after all it is their country and their government.

Nice...I was hoping to hear other sides and other opinions, you did well. If you believe everything you say, well..that is another issue for another day.

Thanks for your thoughts, ever been in the military? Been in combat, served overseas? Just wondering.....

thomas.wharton wrote:

Nice...I was hoping to hear other sides and other opinions, you did well. If you believe everything you say, well..that is another issue for another day.

Thanks for your thoughts, ever been in the military? Been in combat, served overseas? Just wondering.....

Nope. I'm just a college kid that's graduating in May and sending his UPT apps to different ANG units, hoping for a slot.

I'm not a liberal, I'm a moderate. My mom is a liberal school teacher and my father is a retired fighter jock, so I find myself smack in the middle.

One thing I'd like to add, I agree that whatever we do, we can't just sit still. Action is the only way to get things done, or to make things better.

I'd like to hear what everyone else has to say.

Me too...that's why the post was so long, trying to get folks to think and openly contribute to the forum and discussion.

Good luck with your goals, if you ever get to drop bombs (and I hope you don't)...your going to change, and have to live with what you had to do so I hope like you started to mention...see the bigger picture.

You may find your thoughts and views change (nothing wrong with either one but you will change). It is not easy wearing the uniform, everyone has something (normally bad to say about it, sometimes in your own country, get ready for that too)..but just press on, it is worth it in the long run (my own thoughts after twenty six years worth of it).

You gotta feel in your heart your doing what is right and it is what is best for your country....Good luck, I hope you do fly, life will change greatly.

Tough situation, but even if the iranians dosnt wants to get their act together and drop their program to build an A Bomb, any action military action must be aproved by the Security Council of the UN, nobody wants a continued policy of "I`m the toughest S.. O. B... arround here and do what I want just because I can", because that precisely what make little states to became worry about they sovereign, and began to build A bombs.

Maybe we can`t undestand the way of living of the Middle East folks, but it is not our place (as the "modern western countryes") to impose to them our way of see things, it`s their job to built a more tolerant society but if anyone tryes to force them to do that changes, they will react as any of us in the same situation ... with violence.

My point is that everybody must give a chance to the diplomatic agencyes, more time is needed to solve this without the lost of any live (iranian, israelies or any other). And if the worst happens, any action must be aproved by multilateral organizations.

If you dont like bullies, dont became one ....

Bye

Good point, but trust is earned, so is respect. These radical government s need to display the very fabric and ideals you refer too, until then...where is that trust. Based on past experience with these folks (diplomatically) they change their minds like I change my underwear, turn on us and themselves as we see in todays headlines.

I worry one day, they will have a weapons system capable of launching one of their peaceful uranium weapons towards the west or my country, until they prove otherwise...I will doubt what they say and watch what they do...don't you think??

Forum: F-16 News

Israel to attack Iran?