Trading 5 Taliban Mass Murderers For 1 US Deserter

[MachineGhost]

If you leave… but leave behind a "residual force"… have you really left? I assume that the goal was to leave entirely at some point, right?

Ahah!  Exactly how large is this "residual force"?

Whoooooa! I never expected I would hear this from you! On that matter, I think probably everyone here is in agreement!

Indeed, it is an amazing turn of events!    Did an extraterrestiral Reptillian replace our Reub with a clone???

[dualstow]

I wonder if the residents of Afghanistan feel liberated. Being serious, not facecious. Because I know that parts of Afghanistan were starting to modernize in the 60s and 70s. Here are some pictures of Kabul during that time:<snip>

I remember reading that girls wore miniskirts in Afghanistan in the sixties.

[Reub]

Have you seen just how many ruthless Al Qaeda fighters are out there? They number in the hundreds of thousands! They have taken half of Iraq, a good portion of Syria, where there are 50,000 Al Qaeda troops lined up near the Israeli border, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya, Morocco, Yemen, among some of the nations. I am not very reassured when Obama says that they are on the run. This problem must be dealt with and a "head in the sand" mentality is not the way.

[Pointedstick]

Have you seen just how many ruthless Al Qaeda fighters are out there? They number in the hundreds of thousands! They have taken half of Iraq, a good portion of Syria, where there are 50,000 Al Qaeda troops lined up near the Israeli border, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya, Morocco, Yemen, among some of the nations. I am not very reassured when Obama says that they are on the run. This problem must be dealt with and a "head in the sand" mentality is not the way.

Yes, but which countries are they gaining a foothold in: Syria and Iraq. What do these countries have in common: they're unstable. Iraq is a country that we actively destabilized by killing the secular tyrant who ruled it, and Syria we're working to destabilize by funding and arming the rebels.

That said, this is all in the past; what matters now is what we do in the present. And I'm just gonna say it: who cares what happens in the shittiest part of the world? Why is it important to us if a bunch of barbarians are behaving barbarously to one another? When they try to make trouble over here, okay, let's kill the shit out of them. But why it is any of our business when they make trouble amongst each other?

[Reub]

Do you remember 9/11 at all? Maybe you were too young.

[Pointedstick]

Do you remember 9/11 at all? Maybe you were too young.

I watched it live.

And I'll reiterate: when they attack us at home, let's kill the shit out of them. But invading a foreign country that had nothing to do with 9/11 goes into the territory of doing to other people exactly what was done to us to make us feel so wounded and vulnerable.

Let's be clear what the situation was: a bunch of mostly Saudi Arabian terrorists led by a guy we armed and trained 25 years earlier blew up one of our iconic buildings (mildly damaging another) and murdered 3,000 innocent American civilians. We then proceeded to dick around destroying two foreign countries that mostly had nothing to do with the attack or the attackers, murdering more than 100,000 innocent Iraqi and Afghani civilians,  all the while scrupulously ignoring the country most of the terrorists came from and the man who led them. It took fucking OBAMA to kill bin Laden for christ's sake! I mean Jesus tapdancing christ. The asshole-in-chief who blew up two unrelated middle eastern shitholes couldn't even take out the dude who was actually responsible! It took a naive boob with no foreign policy experience to get the damn job done, and by that time it didn't fucking matter because all the young men who lost their family members in our attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan had grown up to be the next generation of America-hating terrorists.

…Sorry. I just get really steamed when people use 9/11 as an excuse to justify the murder of innocents in other countries.

[Reub]

ISIS terror leader in Iraq was released by the Obama Administration in 2009. Al bagdati has conquered almost half of the country and wants to impose a caliphate with strict Sharia law throughout the Middle East. How idiotic and dangerous to the world is this administration?
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/06 ... a-in-2009/

[Pointedstick]

Wow, Reub, I had no idea you moved to Iraq! Now I understand why you take such a keen interest in what the barbarous extremists do in that country. Pity Saddam Hussein isn't around to slaughter them all like he used to. You must be upset that the new American-installed puppet government is so weak! I hear their soldiers ran away while terrorists captured their cities.

[Reub]

I am upset that we have abandoned them and not stayed to see things through. The mass slaughter and chaos that has resulted could have been avoided.

[Kshartle]

led by a guy we armed and trained 25 years earlier

PS why did you arm and train him?

When you self-identify with your masters it makes their job easier and you end up saying weird untrue things like "we armed and trained". You did no such thing anymore than, "we slaughtered Apache or we burned those children at Waco" etc.

The tyranny is horizontal and enforced by virtually everyone, sometimes by ourselves against ourselves with our language.

[MachineGhost]

That said, this is all in the past; what matters now is what we do in the present. And I'm just gonna say it: who cares what happens in the shittiest part of the world? Why is it important to us if a bunch of barbarians are behaving barbarously to one another? When they try to make trouble over here, okay, let's kill the shit out of them. But why it is any of our business when they make trouble amongst each other?

The answer is E-N-E-R-G-Y.  Syria has a lot of natural gas reserves offshore.

[Kshartle]

That said, this is all in the past; what matters now is what we do in the present. And I'm just gonna say it: who cares what happens in the shittiest part of the world? Why is it important to us if a bunch of barbarians are behaving barbarously to one another? When they try to make trouble over here, okay, let's kill the shit out of them. But why it is any of our business when they make trouble amongst each other?

The answer is E-N-E-R-G-Y.  Syria has a lot of natural gas reserves offshore.

Is it the Americans who are barbarians if they support murdering people to steal the natural resources of others?

[MachineGhost]

…Sorry. I just get really steamed when people use 9/11 as an excuse to justify the murder of innocents in other countries.

I hate to nitpick when you're being overly emotional, but Osama was not responsible for 09/11.  He was just a spiritual leader of the Wahhabism religion; just as there are spiritual leaders for many other religions.  Free speech is not supposed to be criminal.  The actual ringleader responsible for the dirty deed was arrested and tried in NY and I think he may be dead or imprisoned without parole now.  I can't possibly remember how to spell his name, its Al something.  Just goes to show you how Wag the Dog all war propaganda is.  Hearst would be proud.  The scorched earth policy to find and wipe out a religious spiritual leader will definitely have long-term consequnces in terms of formenting more terrorists who feel that it was an unjust act.  Martyrdom is especially dangerous when we're dealing with religious extremist whackjobs.

[MachineGhost]

The tyranny is horizontal and enforced by virtually everyone, sometimes by ourselves against ourselves with our language.

It's just cultural indentity.  Resistance is futile.

[MachineGhost]

Is it the Americans who are barbarians if they support murdering people to steal the natural resources of others?

Yup.  Ideology and Might Makes Right!  It is a proxy Cold War since Russia supports Assad.

[Jan Van]

The answer is E-N-E-R-G-Y.  Syria has a lot of natural gas reserves offshore.

Considering there's quite a bit of it in Iraq, can we look forward to an US/Iran led Coalition of the Willing?

The Kurds seem to do well. Maybe they can safe some of the oilfields for us...

[Pointedstick]

I was using synecdoche. Obviously I did not arm and train Osama bin Laden or his terrorists/freedom fighters (as they were in the 80s ) and I do not feel responsible for the act, given that it was clandestinely executed before I was born. Nor was I personally attacked on 9/11. My point was that it was agents of the United States government who helped build up Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the first place.

[Kshartle]

I was using synecdoche. Obviously I did not arm and train Osama bin Laden or his terrorists/freedom fighters (as they were in the 80s ) and I do not feel responsible for the act, given that it was clandestinely executed before I was born. Nor was I personally attacked on 9/11. My point was that it was agents of the United States government who helped build up Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the first place.

I know you know that and I know you weren't saying that. Except.....you were.

I mean zero Offense PS. Zero. I'm just saying some friendly thoughts about expressing ideas more precisely because that will help us personally and everyone else as well.

The US government, or more accurately the people who claimed/were given the moral and legal and physical ability to dominate us armed and trained him. Not you and not us.

When enough people speak accurately about reality rather than speak the tribal collectivist control language the masters always want you speaking.......we will solve problem after problem and humans will be happier and happier. If you value that I just make the simple suggestion to avoid as much as you can the lazy self-identifying language we  all employ sometimes. 

And I really mean no offense. We all do it but I would just challenge everyone to think next time you're inclined to say "our national debt" or "we bombed them". Break out of that lie. The national debt is not yours, you didn't create it. Someone else did and is convincing you that you owe. Someone else bombed those people. They made you pay for it. Now they tell you that you did it and so you must be willing to do more to make up for what you created.

All lies. Let's speak truth here. It's rare.

[MachineGhost]

All lies. Let's speak truth here. It's rare.

It's pointless.  I went decades speaking the truth.  It made no difference.  If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.  And frankly, it's a lot easier saying "we" than going through the mental gymnastics everytime.  Besides, all these people born hardwired as Democrat or Republican are not going to be amenable to the powers of "deep anarchy".  Reality is a collective hallucinotion.

And no, I'm not on 'shrooms nor have I ever taken them.  But I sure feel like I have!

[moda0306]

All lies. Let's speak truth here. It's rare.

It's pointless.  I went decades speaking the truth.  It made no difference.  If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.  And frankly, it's a lot easier saying "we" than going through the mental gymnastics everytime.  Besides, all these people born hardwired as Democrat or Republican are not going to be amenable to the powers of "deep anarchy".  Reality is a collective hallucinotion.

And no, I'm not on 'shrooms nor have I ever taken them.  But I sure feel like I have!

People use generalizations when it suits their arguments or mindset on an issue. It's really difficult to get out of.

Even anarcho-capitalists do it a lot. Many have a strong men's-rights-activist streak... And the things they say "women" or "feminists" have done to "men" is full of huge contradictions with everything they believe about self-ownership and force. "The media" didn't do anything to you. "Women" or "feminists" didn't do anything to you.  Even to the extent someone advocates that government do something... This is not force. And lastly, unless we actually get back to the proving morality thread, and are able to extend that self-ownership to the world around us in a logically probable way, perhaps the entire concept of "property" is an obfuscation of reality. 

So we have to be aware of when we are obfuscating reality when it is material to the discussion.  As some say... Words aren't magic. They don't make things true that aren't just by moving them around the right way. The word "my" may just be obfuscating reality, helping me make immoral claims on the world around me at the expense of those deserving of moral consideration.  If property is a figment of our imagination, then so is theft. That is a scary thought for almost anyone to ponder. I don't blame them for wanting to reject it.

[Pointedstick]

If property is a figment of our imagination, then so is theft. That is a scary thought for almost anyone to ponder. I don't blame them for wanting to reject it.

It is as scary as it is true. However, just because something is a figment of our imaginations, doesn't mean it's not real. Ponder THAT!

Corporations and governments are figments of our imagination too, yet we assign them real power due to the actions of people operating under the auspices of their fictional existences. I posit that the thing differentiating us humans from all other animals is our ability to act as though imaginary things are real--in other words, our memetic capacity… or others might say, our capacity for self-delusion! Either way, it is clearly a thing.

[Kshartle]

Things are true or false whether we believe them or not and whether we know them or not.

If you believe 2+2=5 that doesn't make it true. Opinions about facts don't change the facts.

[Mountaineer]

If property is a figment of our imagination, then so is theft. That is a scary thought for almost anyone to ponder. I don't blame them for wanting to reject it.

It is as scary as it is true. However, just because something is a figment of our imaginations, doesn't mean it's not real. Ponder THAT!

Corporations and governments are figments of our imagination too, yet we assign them real power due to the actions of people operating under the auspices of their fictional existences. I posit that the thing differentiating us humans from all other animals is our ability to act as though imaginary things are real--in other words, our memetic capacity… or others might say, our capacity for self-delusion! Either way, it is clearly a thing.

I posit what makes us humans different from all other animals is a soul. I also do not agree, in the big scheme of things we own anything; it is all a gift, on loan from God. But this is a subject for the morality and/or religion threads if as Moda says, we get back to it.

...Mountaineer

[Kshartle]

Hmm... but a corporation has to be the simultaneous figment of many imaginations, not just one.  In other words, a corporation (or government, etc.) doesn't exist unless a multitude of people have precisely the same figment.

The corporation never really exists either way. What exists is the people and the way they interact which is all just choices made to get the most benefit within their limited perspective.

I don't think people can have precisely the same figment because we are all truly unique and our experience can never be replicated by another person. I hope this doesn't sound like I'm splitting hairs.

Capacity for self-delusion? I think PS that we are either almost always or very nearly always in a state of self-delusion. I think it's an exciting challenge (even if it may be futile) to try to break free of self-delusion. I think it's a pretty worthwhile endeavor too. I think this board can help.  Look at how many people put knowledge as the answer for mountaineer's question. 

[Mountaineer]

Capacity for self-delusion? I think PS that we are either almost always or very nearly always in a state of self-delusion. I think it's an exciting challenge (even if it may be futile) to try to break free of self-delusion. I think it's a pretty worthwhile endeavor too. I think this board can help.  Look at how many people put knowledge as the answer for mountaineer's question.

Perhaps even Mountaineer. Who knows but the Shadow ?

...Mountaineer