Quote from: quiller on October 07, 2016, 07:52:23 PM
Every time some gutless punk too scared to volunteer for national service even DARES to tell me what Vietnam was all about, I get 100% amused.

This puke wasn't even alive then. This lying little fraud too scared to serve the very country ALLOWING him these rights he claims....?

He's trash. And from now on, he is mine. All mine, with the big red Q branded on his worthless and ignorant ass.

It's not a matter of being "scared".  I don't want to offer myself up as canon-fodder for sociopathic politicians.  I'm not going to support policies that are deeply immoral.  I'm not going to throw my life away for nothing.

I'm being completely consistent.  I refuse to go and serve in a deeply immoral war and I don't want anyone else to go and throw their lives away in a senseless war, either.

Honestly, I don't even know how you can do the mental gymnastics necessary for you to justify this foreign policy in your own head. 

Quote from: Solar on October 07, 2016, 08:22:03 PM
Pure unadulterated Bull Shit!!!

I'll revise my statement to be more precise.  Small government libertarians and conservatives must be anti-aggressive war and against imperialism, skeptical of the military and the military industrial complex or else they are frauds.

A military which is capable of providing for the national defense is paramount to secure our freedom from foreign aggressors but a military which exceeds this narrow mandate is a very dangerous thing.  An out-of-control military industrial complex and imperialistic foreign policy pose the greatest threat to our liberties, period.

What, exactly, about this statement is "pure unadulterated bull shit"? 

Quote from: jrodefeld on October 07, 2016, 08:52:37 PM
It's not a matter of being "scared".  I don't want to offer myself up as canon-fodder for sociopathic politicians.  I'm not going to support policies that are deeply immoral.  I'm not going to throw my life away for nothing.

I'm being completely consistent.  I refuse to go and serve in a deeply immoral war and I don't want anyone else to go and throw their lives away in a senseless war, either.

Honestly, I don't even know how you can do the mental gymnastics necessary for you to justify this foreign policy in your own head.

Don't talk about cannon fodder, you testicle-free trash. You're too ignorant to even know what that is. What you are is a parasite determined to let others defend America while you suck up every benefit you can lay your worthless hands on.

Would you fight to defend America against Islam? Hell no. You'd surrender. Would you defend America under ANY circumstances? Hell no. You'd run and it's plainly obvious you would do so. Let OTHER people serve. You've got benefits to collect, unearned.

Preach lies to the gullible, child. I've heard pacifist trash like yours for DECADES. All you are is a leech, willing to enjoy freedoms you would never ever fight to retain much less earn.

Quote from: jrodefeld on October 07, 2016, 11:13:33 PM


What, exactly, about this statement is "pure unadulterated bull shit"?

Every word, including "and" and "the."

Quote from: quiller on October 08, 2016, 04:51:16 AM


Don't talk about cannon fodder, you testicle-free trash. You're too ignorant to even know what that is. What you are is a parasite determined to let others defend America while you suck up every benefit you can lay your worthless hands on.

Would you fight to defend America against Islam? Hell no. You'd surrender. Would you defend America under ANY circumstances? Hell no. You'd run and it's plainly obvious you would do so. Let OTHER people serve. You've got benefits to collect, unearned.

Preach lies to the gullible, child. I've heard pacifist trash like yours for DECADES. All you are is a leech, willing to enjoy freedoms you would never ever fight to retain much less earn.

jrodefeld probably agrees with Hillary's "open borders" policy.

For the leftists, let it be crystal clear here that "cannon fodder" are those who ACTUALLY SHOWED UP before they were killed in battle. Gutless Lying Puke wouldn't even bring himself that far.

Quote from: jrodefeld on October 07, 2016, 11:13:33 PM
I'll revise my statement to be more precise.  Small government libertarians and conservatives must be anti-aggressive war and against imperialism, skeptical of the military and the military industrial complex or else they are frauds.

A military which is capable of providing for the national defense is paramount to secure our freedom from foreign aggressors but a military which exceeds this narrow mandate is a very dangerous thing.  An out-of-control military industrial complex and imperialistic foreign policy pose the greatest threat to our liberties, period.

What, exactly, about this statement is "pure unadulterated bull shit"?

Dude, I was a pacifist through high school in the 60s and 70s. You think the bullies said, "He's a pacifist, we'll leave him alone?" No, it encourage more abuse and aggression.

It wasn't until my Dad took me to the Y and got me in a boxing class that thing changed.

The point? To paraphrase David Letterman: Life is high school with money.

Quote from: jrodefeld on October 07, 2016, 11:13:33 PM
I'll revise my statement to be more precise.  Small government libertarians and conservatives must be anti-aggressive war and against imperialism, skeptical of the military and the military industrial complex or else they are frauds.

A military which is capable of providing for the national defense is paramount to secure our freedom from foreign aggressors but a military which exceeds this narrow mandate is a very dangerous thing.  An out-of-control military industrial complex and imperialistic foreign policy pose the greatest threat to our liberties, period.

What, exactly, about this statement is "pure unadulterated bull shit"?

Reagan proved you wrong when he rebuilt the military the Dims destroyed, then proceeded to destroy the USSR without ever firing a shot, brought down the Iron Curtain with a single demand: "Mr Gorbachev, Tear down This WALL!"

Oh I get it, this all happened before you were born, so what you you were taught as history is opposite of reality.

Quote from: jrodefeld on October 07, 2016, 11:13:33 PM
I'll revise my statement to be more precise.  Small government libertarians and conservatives must be anti-aggressive war and against imperialism, skeptical of the military and the military industrial complex or else they are frauds.

A military which is capable of providing for the national defense is paramount to secure our freedom from foreign aggressors but a military which exceeds this narrow mandate is a very dangerous thing.  An out-of-control military industrial complex and imperialistic foreign policy pose the greatest threat to our liberties, period.

What, exactly, about this statement is "pure unadulterated bull shit"?

Sounds good.  Let Allah know....

Quote from: Solar on October 08, 2016, 09:39:03 AM
Reagan proved you wrong when he rebuilt the militray the Dims destroyed, then proceeded to destroy the USSR without ever firing a shot, brought down the Iron Curtain with a single demand: "Mr Gorbachev, Tear down This WALL!"

Oh I get it, this all happened before you were born, so what you you were taught as history is opposite of reality.

I see you did not learn a damn thing from your time-out about freedom.   It's the military that give you the freedom that allows you to keep fling poo in hopes it will stick.  It's not the Dem's or other country's that give you that freedom.   

Quote from: quiller on October 08, 2016, 04:51:16 AM


Don't talk about cannon fodder, you testicle-free trash. You're too ignorant to even know what that is. What you are is a parasite determined to let others defend America while you suck up every benefit you can lay your worthless hands on.

Would you fight to defend America against Islam? Hell no. You'd surrender. Would you defend America under ANY circumstances? Hell no. You'd run and it's plainly obvious you would do so. Let OTHER people serve. You've got benefits to collect, unearned.

Preach lies to the gullible, child. I've heard pacifist trash like yours for DECADES. All you are is a leech, willing to enjoy freedoms you would never ever fight to retain much less earn.

I'm not a pacifist.  I'm a non-interventionist.  I believe that violence is morally defensible in self-defense only.  Yes, I'd be willing to defend America against an invasion from a foreign military.  But our military is not being used to defend America.  It's being used to provoke conflicts in the Middle East.  The War in Iraq was an un-justified act of aggression by our military against a sovereign nation that posed no threat to our national security.

If I joined the military when I was 18 or 19, I would have certainly been deployed to Iraq.  I chose not to support this horrific invasion perpetrated by our military.  You should be commending me for refusing to support evil, not chastising me because I didn't go and kill a bunch of Iraqis that never threatened me.

Quote from: Solar on October 08, 2016, 09:39:03 AM
Reagan proved you wrong when he rebuilt the military the Dims destroyed, then proceeded to destroy the USSR without ever firing a shot, brought down the Iron Curtain with a single demand: "Mr Gorbachev, Tear down This WALL!"

Oh I get it, this all happened before you were born, so what you you were taught as history is opposite of reality.

The USSR fell because they had an economic system that was non-viable from the start.  They also fell because they foolishly put troops into Afghanistan and spread their resources too thin.  Austrian school economists predicted that Socialist Central Planning was always doomed to failure because without price signals in capital goods in a market, horrible inefficiencies result.  Eventual economic collapse is inevitable with Socialist nations. 

I can support Reagan's public denouncements of Communism and the USSR in particular.  It is an appropriate role for the President to use the bully pulpit to denounce evil. 

But Reagan also showed good judgment when he quickly "cut and ran" from Lebanon.

QuoteThirty years ago this week, President Ronald Reagan made perhaps the most purposeful and consequential foreign-policy decision of his presidency. Though he never said so explicitly, he ended America's military commitment to a strategic mistake that was peripheral to America's interests. Three-and-a-half months after the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. military personnel — and after repeatedly pledging not to do so — Reagan ordered the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Lebanon. As Gen. Colin Powell later aptly summarized this military misadventure: "Beirut wasn't sensible and it never did serve a purpose. It was goofy from the beginning."

What was particularly remarkable about Reagan's bold decision was its rarity. Presidents often authorize using force or deploying troops to achieve some discrete set of political and military objectives. When they prove incapable of doing so with the initial resources and political support, the mission can be scaled back in its scope, enlarged to achieve additional missions, or, the atypical choice, terminated. The latter option requires having the ability to recognize failure, and political courage to end a U.S. military commitment. In large part, it is a combined lack of strategic awareness and political courage that explains many U.S. military disasters. To understand how Ronald Reagan successfully pulled this off, it is worth reviewing and remembering the strategic mistake that was the U.S. military deployment to Lebanon in the midst of that country's wrenching civil war.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/02/07/when-reagan-cut-and-run/

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/reagans-withdrawal-from-lebanon-and-hard-liners-misreading-of-history/


In this instance, Reagan showed better judgment than all of the neo-conservatives who followed him.  We could have recognized the complete failure of the Iraq War in 2005 or 2006 and promptly withdrew our military from the region.  Instead, the hard-liners instituted the so-called "surge" and we kept our troops there for another six or seven years.

If we understood the internal contradictions of the communist economic program, we never had to view them as a military threat to take over the world.  Their system was bound to collapse sooner or later.  They had nuclear weapons of course, so caution was warranted.  What wasn't warranted was the hysteria and arms buildup that our military industrial complex lobbied for throughout the Cold War. 

Quote from: walkstall on October 08, 2016, 01:36:20 PM

I see you did not learn a damn thing from your time-out about freedom.   It's the military that give you the freedom that allows you to keep fling poo in hopes it will stick.  It's not the Dem's or other country's that give you that freedom.

I've never said we shouldn't have a military.  Even in a State-less society, free people would have some sort of military to repel foreign invaders and protect their liberties.  I'm objecting to our foreign policy.  I'm objecting to what we are asking our military to do. 

I'm objecting to the Vietnam War and the Iraq War.  I'm against nation-building and CIA covert coups against democratically elected governments in other nations.  I'm against paying for the defense of other nations who should be managing their own security needs.  I'm against maintaining bases and troops in 170 countries around the world.

I'm against the National Security State that monitors our phone calls and reads our metadata. 

These actions taken by the US military do nothing to keep me safe or protect my liberties.  On the contrary, these actions make me less safe and deprive me of my liberty.

The debate we are having is, how much should we be spending on our military budget each year?  What should our foreign policy be?  What constitutes a Just War?

Quote from: jrodefeld on October 08, 2016, 03:50:47 PM
I've never said we shouldn't have a military.  Even in a State-less society, free people would have some sort of military to repel foreign invaders and protect their liberties.  I'm objecting to our foreign policy.  I'm objecting to what we are asking our military to do. 

I'm objecting to the Vietnam War and the Iraq War.  I'm against nation-building and CIA covert coups against democratically elected governments in other nations.  I'm against paying for the defense of other nations who should be managing their own security needs.  I'm against maintaining bases and troops in 170 countries around the world.

I'm against the National Security State that monitors our phone calls and reads our metadata. 

These actions taken by the US military do nothing to keep me safe or protect my liberties.  On the contrary, these actions make me less safe and deprive me of my liberty.

The debate we are having is, how much should we be spending on our military budget each year?  What should our foreign policy be?  What constitutes a Just War?

When are you going to tell us about "blowback"?

Quote from: jrodefeld on October 07, 2016, 08:47:37 PM
Terrorism is not a figment of our imaginations, but the threat we face from terrorism has very little to do with Islam per se.  If you have been plugged into conservative news outlets for years, then many of the views you are hearing will have been handed down from figures like Gaffney and Gabriele.  The reason people like this want you to be suspicion of Islam as a religion is that it gives them the pretext to launch and maintain their aggressive wars.  If you were to view terrorism as primarily a manifestation of blowback for our foreign policy, then the logical step would be to pull back and adopt a non-interventionist foreign policy instead.  If you keep getting stung by bees, you might want to consider ceasing to hit the hornets nest with a baseball bat.

Terrorists are responsible for their actions, true enough.  But if we understand that the anger which motivates their attacks has to do with resentment over our foreign policy, then it is reasonable to expect that when we cease our interventions into the middle east we will see fewer terrorist attacks.  Robert Pape has demonstrated that this is precisely what has happened historically. 

Terrorists are responsible for terrorism, but WE are responsible for how we respond to terrorist attacks.  You are acting like everything our government does as a response to terrorism is necessary and unavoidable.  Do you really think we should have a TSA that gropes us at airports?  Do you think it is necessary to sacrifice all our liberties?

Remember when Rahm Emmanuel said "never let a good crisis go to waste"?  Regardless of the causes of a crisis, governments will tend to use those crises to expand their own power even in ways that have nothing to do with responding to the crisis at hand.

Surely you don't think that invading Iraq was justified because Osama bin Laden carried out an attack on the World Trade Center, right?  Iraq, that had nothing to do with 9/11.  Iraq, the Secular nation that was opposed to Al Qaeda and radical Islamic groups.

I cannot fucking believe that you are defending the Vietnam War in 2016.  The Vietnam War was precipitated by a False Flag event perpetrated by our CIA.  This is known as the Gulf of Tonkin incident.  Over 60,000 Americans were killed in that war, and hundreds of thousands more were left with horrible PTSD, many who were crippled or ended up committing suicide.  Many more continue to be treated in our health care system for the scars, both mental and physical, they suffered during that unnecessary war.

You are defending this?!  I'm not personally attacking anyone who was drafted and had to go over and fight in that war.  To me, ya'll are the victims of a vicious foreign policy.  But don't continue to defend the war itself. 


Finally, national DEFENSE is one of the enumerated powers of the Constitution.  I can't believe I have to explain to grown-ass educated adults the difference between defense and aggression.  The Vietnam War was an undeclared, aggressive war that was sold based on propaganda and a False Flag event.  The Iraq War was an undeclared, aggressive war based on propaganda.

The only US War in the 20th century that could be remotely defended as being necessary for our National Defense was World War 2.  And World War 2 would not have happened had we not gotten involved in World War 1 a couple of decades earlier.

The Constitution does not permit the maintenance of military bases in 170 countries around the world.  Nor does it permit interfering in the internal affairs of other nations, overthrowing elected governments and installing puppet dictators.  It doesn't permit the sort of entangling alliance we have with the State of Israel.  Most of the foreign policy you evidently support is blatantly UN-constitutional.

Once again you are (Incorrectly) assuming that my opinions are driven by which ever news outlet maybe the mouthpiece of these two people whom I never heard of. I assure you it is not, My opinions are formed by my experiences. Both in the USA and abroad. That's the difference between you and I. I see end result of terrorism, have experienced them, saw what was happening first hand and know who did it and why AND their motivations. You listen to Pape, or who ever else is out there trying to promote their latest book.

I'm not in this to write a book or make money I'M IN THIS TO SAVE SOMEONE's LIFE....maybe yours...and out of Love for my country, IT's WAY OF LIFE, I truly fear for my Grandchildren....all five of them, two girls, whom I hope will never be forced to wear a full veil, and three boys....whom I hope will grow up to put on a uniform and defend this country, I've already begun to teach them to handle weapons, use their fists and their wits and to strategize.

Guys like me don't listen to people like Pape....PAPE SHOULD BE LISTENING TO US, but since MY FACTS  don't fit in with his brand of philosophy of course, so my EXPERTISE is ignored.

Do yourself a favor, get on a plane and go to some 3rd world country where Muslims and whomever, Christians, Buddists, Hindu's are clashing daily and see what terrorism and the advancement of Islam as a conquering force really is.
You just might learn something that Pape or whomever doesn;t put in his books...go ahead...I DARE YOU.

You think I'm defending the Vietnam war? You learned nothing from Historical facts that I enumerated. Man is a ruthless animal who, when left unchecked becomes worse than any plague, natural disaster or force of nature. The slaughter you saw, but apparently ignored, after the SOUTHEAST ASIA WAR....coz that is what is was, more than just Vietnam was involved.
Is prototypical of what happens when man's true nature comes out and there is nothing to stop it. It was the Communists turn, now it is the turn of the Islamofacists.

Just keep telling yourself it will all stop when our forces withdraw from the middle east, scale down our military and stop being such aggressive meanies.