It’s not a fitting analogy at all. Burned CDs don’t have a side effect of being the key ingredient used in a weapon to blow up entire cities. Let’s have some proper perspective here.
You state that nothing has been proven that their aims are militaristic. Fine. By the same token, nothing has been proven that their aims aren’t militaristic. If we let Iran do whatever they want, and they really were lying and obtained a nuclear arsenal, what then, would you suggest be done about it?
Gambling like that when nuclear weapons are involved is utterly absurd.
In the meantime, Israel has claimed that it is prepared to bomb Iranian nuclear sites as early as March. I wonder how the Muslims in Europe who refuse to allow themselves to be assimilated by the dominant cultures here will react? I assume more of them will blow themselves up?
Isreal won’t bomb Iran for the same reason the USA and Europe can’t bomb Iran. Russia and China. If anyone even attempted to invade Iran where Russia and China get their oil from they won’t be afraid to flex their muscles and escalate a WWIII situation.
Iran knows this as does anyone in power which is why Iran is being very defiant. I’m pretty surer Russia wouldn’t want Iran to have nukes as anyone else but don’t be fooled if they will stand idly by and wait for the USA to invade and china especially won’t tolerate that since Iran has become important for their growing economy.
I will go out and say I’m not too well informed on the whole situation basically because I no longer see the 8 o’clock news on a daily basis like I did.
But in my opinion WW3 is just a matter of time sadly.I just can’t imagine that in 10 years time everything will be as “calm” (mind the ") as it is now.
I don’t think a World War III will happen, at least in the manner you’re probably thinking. The days of conventional warfare are over. The United States military can decimate an enemy military in mere weeks with minimal civilian casualties.
If anything, modern warfare is nothing more than terrorism, and countermeasures toward it. After all, just as a simple example, the United States possesses 2/3 of the entire world’s aircraft carriers combined. The runner up is the UK with 4 carriers, and France with 2. Any attempt to try to fight the United States through conventional warfare is futile. Terrorism has a better chance of hitting us where it hurts.
So it boils down to two methods to defeat the United States: terrorism (which isn’t working) and nuclear weapons (of which we have no defense against). So you can imagine why the United States takes nuclear weapons very seriously.
Though you have to wonder when EMP weapons will start taking off.
[quote=“Parn”]I don’t think a World War III will happen, at least in the manner you’re probably thinking. The days of conventional warfare are over. The United States military can decimate an enemy military in mere weeks with minimal civilian casualties.
.[/quote]
The countless civilian casaulties from Iraq and Afganistan would disagree with you. From what i’ve seen i would hardly call it minimal.
They’re serious about nuclear arms so they can reserve the sole right to push the rest of the world around? >.>;; But are too cowardly to store them all on their own soil? <.<;; Here’s to hoping the US will never rule the world.
And I think your faith in the US military is a tad misplaced. During the Iraq war they’ve destroyed schools, hospitals, villages, and whatnot on their happy road to Baghdad, but I doubt that ever made the US news due to censoring. (Soviet America? =D)
I also reckon that they can’t defeat ANY military threat in a matter of weeks, if one of their larger current allies decided to be a turncoat I’m sure it’ll take them more than a forthnight to topple them. But let’s hope that never happens because war is the ultimate failure of diplomacy.
Less than 200,000 civilians have been killed for various reasons in Iraq and Afghanistan, including crossfire during skirmishes, terrorists who think blowing themselves up next to mosques to take out two or three US soldiers is a great idea (nevermind the several dozen fellow innocent Iraqi citizens in the vicinity who also are blown up in the process), or by negligent military members who ignore LOAC and Geneva, and are assholes for it.
When you look at that number, you are including civilian casualties based on figures provided during our occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, which is not reflective of what I stated before. Elimination of an enemy military and occupation are two entirely different beasts. Besides, if we want to get into some real numbers, over 37,000,000 civilians died in World War II, nevermind that we’re not directly responsible for the majority of the civilian deaths in Iraq, since every terrorist attack in Iraq and Afghanistan ends up killing more Iraqi civilians than United States soldiers. And of course, we’re also not responsible for the majority of the 37,000,000 civilian deaths in WWII.
By the way Pedro, you seemed to miss the point behind storing nuclear weapons in a multitude of areas. The idea was to have strike capability world-wide. It’s not about being “cowardly” at all. By the way, if the US is “pushing the rest of the world around”, then aren’t we technically already ruling the world then? Nevermind that your commentary is utterly ridiculous and that the European Union is at the head of the opposition, having recently rejected Iran’s request for talks regarding its nuclear program. But by all means, turn this into an anti-United States “they’re just jerks trying to take over the world lol =^)” situation.
You can toss in all the handful of stories where a few bad apples in the US military act like jackasses and misrepresent it as something commonplace like most anti-war buffs like to do, but I see right through that crap, especially since most of the time, those events are either sensationalized or really didn’t happen to begin with, and only a few are actually legitimate. It reminds me of the sob story regarding Muhammad al-Dura from back in 2000 and how Israeli soldiers supposedly shot this 12 year old Palestinian boy because “grrrrrrrrr soldiers just love to kill”, and there was “video proof”, and the press selectively not broadcasting the OTHER video footage that showed that the whole scenario was staged to create anti-Israel sentiment.
It’s not like I love the idea of war. I’d prefer a world without any of it. That sadly isn’t the case right now, and will never be the case since all these “obvious” miracle solutions that will supposedly solve everything aren’t practical at all. Nuclear weapons won’t ever disappear until SDI becomes a reality, which is funny, since so many nations are opposed to the United States obtaining such technology, since it would leave the US in a position to fire nuclear weapons without any possible retaliation, nevermind that we’d never do it since irradiating the planet is knowingly not in our best interests, since the United States, like every other modern country, is interdependant on one another for various imports/exports.
Less than 200k? Oh well, no need to worry there then. Perhaps you are unaware that 200k is a large number. Two hundred thousand civilian casualties that rpresent people who did not ask to be involved in war activities. Add onto that the 2000+ American military who may or may not have believed in the cause they were fighting in, and we’re now talking about a lot of people; maybe not on a global scale (as a fraction of 6 billion) but that’s 200,000 families that have been hurt as a result of Iraq and Afghanistan. The reasons you give for these casualties do have grounds, but what must be taken into consideration is the fact that the reason the majority of these things happened is because America went there in the first place.
…which was, as it’s title suggests, a WORLD WAR. It was not the invasion and occupation of a country with a population of 26 million, it was full blown out aggressive action between countries all over the world. Of course civilian casualties will be higher in a conflict of that scale. I don’t even see why you’re comparing this number to the Iraq conflict at all.
No, Parn, the US is not directly responsible for the majority of civilian deaths in Iraq. There wouldn’t be any damned civilian casualties in the war iin Iraq if the coalition troops had not invaded Iraq in the first place, and instead had concentrated on legitimate targets in the “War on Terror”.
Follow this train of logic for me, if you will.
9/11.
Osama Bin-Laden.
Osama is hiding in Afghanistan. Let’s invade Afghanistan.
Osama is not likely to be hiding in Iraq. But Saddam is in charge, so let’s invade Iraq. Why? Um…WMD!
Quote Tony Benn: “We know Saddam Hussein has WMD because we sold them to him.”
Incidentally, a survey I read a year or so ago showed that in some republican states, 2% of people still believe Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. I rest my case on that front.
This has no logical bearings in the argument whatsoever. The reason the US is not responsible for that amount of civilian deaths is they were not the aggressor until the very end of the war; Nazi Germany and her allies were. Case in point: the Holocaust. Whilst that war was clear cut in terms of “Good” and “Evil”, at least from Europe’s point of view, the present conflict is not. No logical comparison can be made.
The United States has more internationally located troops than any other country in the world; in military terms, it’s pretty much “Big Brother is watching you”. In addition, all monetary values when relating to international aid, markets etc. are commonly converted into US dollars as standard due to the involvement of so many American TNC’s. That’s not quite ruling the world, but it’s a start.
The Iran talks have only now broke down. Europe has been trying to make talks for months, but after several months have decided on a change of strategy. According to today’s Daily Mail, it is believed that the diplomatic method of talking them down quietly was seen as a sign of weakness by Iran’s rulers. Therefore, new strategies are being considered.
It’s good to know that someone out there has their opinion and will stick to it no matter what evidence is thrown their way.
I’m not going to into the Israel debate. It’s pointless. At least NOW some progress is being made between Israel and Palestine.
You think that miracle solutions such as dumping nukes, a move that would save countries a fortune in taxpayer money and bring us a step closer to world peace, are unrealistic, and yet the “Star Wars” defence system, costing billions of dollars and monopolising the world Right-Wing style, is not?
Don’t twist my intended point around. I stated that the US military is efficient at eliminating an enemy military with minimal civilian casualties on page 1. Goonboy responds stating otherwise by referring to figures that include losses primarily made during the course of our occupation. Occupation and elimination of an enemy military are two seperate entities, and so using said figure as a means to say that the US military is NOT good at eliminating an enemy military with minimal casualties is invalid. The end.
Do tell though, what opinion are you referring to anyway? Because apparently, whatever opinion I’m having in regards to these stories, all of these non-referenced events that Pedro randomly typed out are clearly true and couldn’t possibly be even remotely falsified like the example I gave in the previous post. Also nevermind my stating that some of them are probably legitimate (since I have read some atrocities committed by military assholes), putting me in a gray area which seems to be unacceptable to you in your apparent world of binary logic.
So what exactly entails “right-wing style”? Feel free to divulge.
Telling everyone to dump nukes won’t work, because no one would do it. Who decides who goes first? Does everyone do it at the same time? Who ensures the disposal of all nuclear weapons and the inability to make any more in the future? How would you go through with such a process and make it work?
We can make crime go down if we just get rid of guns! We can also make the air cleaner if we get rid of gas-powered cars! We can solve world hunger if everyone donates money! We can have true world peace if everyone disbands their military! Wow, see how easy this is?
Until someone offers actual solutions and methods to make such things work, none of it will happen. Talk is cheap, as they say. Anyone can be an idealist and throw out all sorts of “obvious” and “simple” miracle solutions that sound great, but it amounts to jack and shit.
As far as SDI, whatever method they use to make it work, it’s the current best path to make nuclear weapons obsolete, and is much more prone to happening than telling everyone to dispose of nukes. Would getting rid of nukes be much cheaper? Of course. Would it make more sense? Of course. Will anyone do it? No. Welcome to Earth.
Sorry Parn. =D I’m a convinced pacifist, I’ll never like the idea of armed conflict. So I’ll just agree to disagree or we’ll be debating in circles for weeks.
The reality of the situation is appeasement does not work. Our extravagant lifestyles come with a very hefty pricetag. Too many people are too quick to forget that.