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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted July 17, 2010 12:14 PM |
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Quote: @JJ
Ok, let's try this... Killing a man is generally perceived as evil. Killing a man in self-defense is not (at least not if your own life was in danger). So different degrees of knowledge can already make the difference between evil and not evil. Now add to that different perspectives, different moral codes, different cultures, different ideologies, etc. If after all that you can look at the world and say what is evil in it and what's good then you're either a saint sent to us by God himself or a madman who thinks he's a saint sent to us by God himself.
Good and evil is, most of all, a question of purpose and a question of available options. I think, we don't have to spend a lot of time with the purpose part here: in this context you can safely say that protecting one's citizens is a good purpose. You can also say, that if it has been a good purpose for the Jews to carve a home in palestine called Israel, then the same purpose of the palestinensians can't be bad.
Debatable are the available options or means to serve the purpose.
If you kill someone in self-defence, the purpose is to save your life and the options are just LIMITED to an immediate reaction. The more options there are, the more critical the actually chosen course of action is to be seen.
I do think, that Israel has a lot more options available than deliberately killing civilians in order to maybe kill a few terror-attackers. So the question to ask is: might there be a better way than the actual one?
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baklava
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Legendary Hero
Mostly harmless
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posted July 20, 2010 02:53 PM |
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Edited by baklava at 14:56, 20 Jul 2010.
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Quote: Also, on a side note, and this is just me being picky, but I really don't like how terrorists are labeled as cowardly because they don't confront a modern military on open terrain. Seriously, who would be stupid enough to ever do that? Of course they use guerrilla tactics.
You apparently don't understand what true bravery is.
You do not understand how much courage it takes to have the most powerful military in the world, funding it with billions of dollars every month to keep it as developed and advanced as possible, then recruiting all your allies from around the world, using their bases, then bringing your stealth bombers, helicopters, tanks and missiles to attack a middle East backwater country whose militia soldiers are armed with rifles from 1947... and still don't manage to win the war for a decade.
THAT's bravery.
It takes a lot of guts to have all that and then fearlessly fail so hard in front of everyone.
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"Let me tell you what the blues
is. When you ain't got no
money,
you got the blues."
Howlin Wolf
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xerox
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
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posted July 24, 2010 03:28 AM |
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Yes, I am amazed how the US and other countries are losing in the Middle-East and withdrawing their forces when their enemies have like half a decade year old weapons and throw rocks at them...
But I do not want to take sides in the conflicts in the Middle-East though if the people of Afghanistan want Taliban leaders, should not they get that and not be forced to have another government?
The only side in all the conflicts here I am taking are the poor, opressed palestinians.
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Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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angelito
Honorable
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proud father of a princess
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posted July 24, 2010 10:03 AM |
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Quote: You do not understand how much courage it takes to have the most powerful military in the world, funding it with billions of dollars every month to keep it as developed and advanced as possible, then recruiting all your allies from around the world, using their bases, then bringing your stealth bombers, helicopters, tanks and missiles to attack a middle East backwater country whose militia soldiers are armed with rifles from 1947... and still don't manage to win the war for a decade.
THAT's bravery.
It takes a lot of guts to have all that and then fearlessly fail so hard in front of everyone.
This is exactly how propaganda works bak...nice trying
The truth is, all these weaponary doesn't help a dime if you can't get bring it on the battlefield.
The reason why most of the actions fails in Iraq or Afghanistan is, they want to keep the colleteral damage as low as possible.
It would be quite easy to throw bombs in those cities were you expect talibans and other terrorists. But many many civilists would die too.
Not sure if you have followed the story about the bombed tank truck by german air force in Afghanistan some months ago.
They stole 2 trucks full of gasoline and then german aircraft bombed these 2 trucks. Some civilists died too, becasue they were standing besides thise trucks to gather some gas.
Of course some relatives of those victims went to german advocates and they took german military as a whole to court.
Now they want hundreds of thousand dollars as idemnity because they got killed while stealing and preparing bombs etc...
This is how war works nowadays.
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Better judged by 12 than carried by 6.
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JollyJoker
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posted July 24, 2010 11:37 AM |
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If anyone should know that, it's the US - after all Vietnam should have taught a lesson there. Not that they would have cared a lot about civilians there.
It's simply that a big military is a means only to fight against another big military. If you want to fight guerillas, you need guerillas yourself: special forces operating apart from all war conventions. Killer commandos, you might say, with the active task to find and destroy terror camps, terror cells, and so on.
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Geny
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What if Elvin was female?
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posted July 24, 2010 12:09 PM |
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Well, here's an international investigation team of the flotilla assault. We'll see what becomes of it...
Btw, some of you asked if Israel isn't being paranoid at saying the UN investigations are biased against it. Here's two quotes from the above article that might explain those feelings:
Quote: to look into what it called violations of international law
If that's the basic assumption the investigation begins with, is it really impartial?
Quote: But Pakistan and Sudan led a move by Muslim countries at the UN human rights body, where they hold an effective majority
The Muslim majority is much more likely to condemn Israel rather than support it.
That's why many here, including myself, feel that there's hardly an investigation team out there that will be truly impartial to the Israel-Palestine problems.
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DON'T BE A NOOB, JOIN A.D.V.E.N.T.U.R.E.
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baklava
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posted July 24, 2010 12:43 PM |
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Edited by baklava at 03:56, 25 Jul 2010.
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Quote: It would be quite easy to throw bombs in those cities were you expect talibans and other terrorists. But many many civilists would die too.
They didn't have much of a problem tossing bombs on our cities in '99 and didn't really give a crap about collateral damage. And our air defense from 1960-something still took down their high tech stealth F-117 airplanes.
I mean sure, they don't want to throw nukes, but that still doesn't make someone an epitome of peace and justice.
Propaganda is frightening the world into believing their army is indeed as great as they're saying it is, despite failing in every third world country they send it to.
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"Let me tell you what the blues
is. When you ain't got no
money,
you got the blues."
Howlin Wolf
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Moonlith
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
If all else fails, use Fiyah!
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posted July 24, 2010 01:04 PM |
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Edited by Moonlith at 13:06, 24 Jul 2010.
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To be quite frank, I'm pretty sure the cause of such believes is based more on western conceitedness, not so much on propaganda doing its work. Or perhaps that sense of false superiority is created through propaganda, I wouldn't know really, I don't consider myself an idiot.
If you need a sincere guideline to maintain a fair and just mentality and uphold proper ideals, just take a look at Elodin, and do the opposite.
And I really don't think they are failing to do their work in the third world, considering "winning wars" is not their goal. They are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing.
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