[SHIFTY1944]

"Kill 'em all...let god sort 'em out" enuff said!

[PyroManiac]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by azsarge</i>
Do the insurgents follow the Geneva Conventions?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
excactly!
also, not that we even signed that worthless peice of paper, mines are against the geneva and we still use the claymore...and others. but also using civilians as humans sheilds is too! and guys what the punks do? yup u guessed it! i say if they even look suspicious hog tie them! then ask the questions.

[Screwloose]

To add another Megadeth song quote to the list.

"Peace sells, But whos buying?"

[TheCelticOne]

Not to sound too know-it-all, but anyone saying to nuke 'em or kill 'em or whatever uselessly has no respect for the powers they are calling for.  One has to remember the human factor here.  Not only that, but an Iraqi person is equal to an American citizen with respect to humanness.  We are not more human or superior just because we live in the great American system rather than being born in a country best described as "the urinal of the world," and we should not be saying something that just demeans them into things that we have the power to destroy with impunity.  Not until they pick up a gun with intent to engage an American soldier should we think of killing them.

That being said, I think that martial law must be implemented in Iraq, at least for the time being.  HavHav, what you said earlier, about getting their economy going, etc. is good and that is exactly what we are doing.  That isn't a project that can be done overnight.  They attack us because they realize that America does not have the stomach for a long fight, and that is exactly what we are in for.  Hopefully, we have the staying power for this war.  

Remember, our enemy breaks up into two groups:

1) The people ousted remember what it was like to be in power, and thus have a burning hatred for us, and use religion as an excuse to frenzy the masses, and
2) The romantic notion of dying for a cause, expecially the highest calling from God, is absorbed by the masses, especially young men around 14-25 or so.  

Force does have its place in society, and anyone who says otherwise has lived too long under the protective shelter of American military might.  I'm all for the Gulf War and "Gulf War II" (I hate that name, but it looks like it's gonna stick; like Paco clarified earlier, it's an extension of the prior war).

It is unfortunate that people need to die, but there are worse things.  As John Stuart Mill said, "War is an ugly thing, but it is not the ugliest of things.  The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

637 troops killed is a small number for as large a conventional force as we had.  However, it also leaves 637 reasons why war should not be pointless.

Hope I didn't lose you through all that.  Granted, it's not terribly succinct nor cogent, but I hope you can wade through all that and come out with a little more understanding of the value of human life.

[KamikazeSM]

Bravo!

[semper_fidelis]

I completely agree with Colin on this matter.  I'd also like to add an observation that I've made...It's a feeling I know I've had since we deployed, once again, into Iraq.  With one of the saddest chapters in American history hanging over our heads, we couldn't do much to escape the ghosts of Vietnam, that haunted our nation.  When we liberated Kuwait from Saddam's military, in '91, I believe we exorcised those ghosts and lifted the American spirit on-high.  Now, however, we have since returned to that turbulent area of the world, with the objective of expelling the dictator that was ruining Iraq(along with other important objectives, that have also been completed or which have been progressing as expected).  This time around, however, we have been impeded at every turn by guerilla terrorists that do not fully understand the situation...The situation of the world as a whole that is(as well as the humanity that populates it).  We have been in Iraq for much longer than was originally anticipated, and a resurgence of the ghosts from that horrible time in our history looms on the horizon.  I also hope that the American public can hang on for long enough for this chapter of American history to end up being one of the better ones.  It seems to be a pattern, and a vicious one at that.  From 1950 to 1953 we fought to liberate the sovereign nation of South Korea.  During that conflict, an average of 32 American Soldiers, the sons and fathers and brothers and husbands of our nation, died...everyday.  We ended the fighting relatively quickly with the help of other UN nations.  Next we entered a disasterous conflict, the conflict in Indochina(Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia).  After the French were slaughtered at Dien Bien Phu, they had clearly lost the fight to the communists.  The communists now threatened their neighbor to the South.  We came to their rescue in many different forms, that ended up being troop deployment.  During that conflict we "only" lost an average of 15 American soldiers per day, however, the conflict lasted much longer, and the total number of dead was higher...The American public was disgusted with our involvement in that conflict and after years of protest, Nixon announced that we'd be handing the war back to the South Vietnamese.  We lost...and we lost bad...But, as mentioned before, We kicked some invader butt in Gulf War take one.  But now, in Gulf War take two, it seems that we may be headed down that road of defeat once again...not because of military defeats, or numbers of casualties, but merely in the eyes of the American public.  Good:Bad:Good:Bad pattern seems possible...

*NOTE*...i realize that we did enter other conflicts between some of these conflicts, but when it comes to the history books, these are the conflicts that more or less defined American military operations around the world.

[yellowmonkey]

We must of course make sure that we don't let evils go unpunished. As tempting as it is to say that isolationism is the right way to go for our country's good, it must not be forgotten that when one suffers, we all suffer; Rawanda was probably the best example of this. The US has an obligation to interfere with the business of other countries at times, even if it means sacrificing the lives of our people. I believe that because we have the power, we have a duty to at least preserve the one human value held in the highest across the earth that is... life. It is unfortunate that sometiems the only way to save lives is through the sacrifice of life.

[Paco]

I'll agree with all but this:

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by semper_fidelis</i>
<br />We have been in Iraq for much longer than was originally anticipated...<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

From the very beginning, it was said by the administration that we would be in Iraq for many <b>years</b>.

[arsenal]

Cost-Benefit Ratios (originally printed in SOF, May 2004)

Soldiers killed in Vietnam War (1964-1973)  58,200
Soldiers Killed in the Persian Gulf War (90-91) 382
Chicago murder rate (2003) 599
New York City murder rate (2003) 546
Calendar tallies on deployments:
Iraq (Bush) 8 months and counting
Kosovo (Clinton) 4 years and counting
Bosnia (Clinton) 8 years and counting
Haiti (Clinton) 2 years
Somalia (Clinton) 2 years
Vietnam (Kennedy) 9+ years
Korea (Truman) 50 years and counting
Japan (Roosevelt) 57 years and counting
Germany (Roosevelt) 57 years and counting

[Harley]

I wouldn't really count Korea, Japan and Germany as being that long.  Yes we have troops there, but we're not actively engaged in combat there, especially Japan.  If we're going to count every place we have troops deployed why not count the Philipines, Guam, England, France, Italy, and so forth?

It's interesting to note that we've almost doubled the death toll in the second Gulf war from the first.  Any idea what the total coalition forces loss was at for 90-91?

[Harley]

New deaths in battles for Fallujah, Iraqi south
Five more U.S. soldiers killed, 40 have died this week.

[Harley]

Quote from CNN:

"There have been 637 U.S. troops killed in the Iraq war, 447 from hostile fire, 190 in non-hostile incidents. Of those, 498 were killed after President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1."