Rand Paul: Dick Cheney 'Wrong' About Almost Every Foreign Policy Decision

[bkepley]

Transcending ignorance is not surrendering to it.

You know the best thing about all this is Cards vs. Pirates.

[Dexter]

So, your prescription is, turn the other cheek, yellow ribbons all round... yep, that'll work

I'll take that over making the problem worse, which is exactly what we did.

[Fishrrman]

bkepley wrote above:
[[ Not only that but I still don't know what should have been done other than kill Sadaam. ]]

A couple of days after the World Trade Center attack, Ann Coulter said quite plainly three things that needed to be done in the struggle we faced with islam.

In both Afghanistan and Iraq, we accomplished the first two of Ann's three things.

The reason we lost in both places -- and the reason why The West is losing the battle with islam -- is because we ignored the "third thing" that Ms. Coulter should be done.

I didn't have any problems with G.W. Bush & Co. invading Iraq.... UNTIL...
... I read that the NEW Iraqi "constitutional government", in one of its first actions, chose to make islam the "state religion".

From that moment, I knew all our efforts in that place were for naught...

[EdinVA]

I'll take that over making the problem worse, which is exactly what we did.

Our politicians never allowed our military to fight to win, we allowed political correctness to determine battle strategy, we still are not able to say the words islamic terrorists.
Neither bush or obama had the guts to stand tall and take the heat.
We have had cowards in charge of our military for decades.

[Dexter]

Our politicians never allowed our military to fight to win, we allowed political correctness to determine battle strategy, we still are not able to say the words islamic terrorists.
Neither bush or obama had the guts to stand tall and take the heat.
We have had cowards in charge of our military for decades.

You've been misled for the sake of the military-industrial complex and others that profit from war. Islamic extremism cannot be defeated with bombs. It makes me sad to think many of you will never realize that.

[Oceander]

You've been misled for the sake of the military-industrial complex and others that profit from war. Islamic extremism cannot be defeated with bombs. It makes me sad to think many of you will never realize that.

And you've been equally misled.

[musiclady]

If one of you would show me the information he's referring to I would love to read it. I'm not going to comb through Google results for 3 hours in an attempt to find whatever he was vaguely talking about.

You're not going to 'comb through' anything to come up with facts that don't support your rabid pacifism.

There could be a hundred brilliant people defusing your arguments, and you'd ignore them all.

It's what you do....


Sing Kumbaya, while the world is burning down around you.

[Bigun]

You're not going to 'comb through' anything to come up with facts that don't support your rabid pacifism.

There could be a hundred brilliant people defusing your arguments, and you'd ignore them all.

It's what you do....


Sing Kumbaya, while the world is burning down around you.

That is certainly his history on this site anyway!

[PzLdr]

What's wrong with his foreign policy? Why is isolationism irrational?

See the run up to WW II, and to a lesser degree, WW I.

[bkepley]

See the run up to WW II, and to a lesser degree, WW I.

Isolationism doesn't mean you don't respond when attacked.  What Dexter advocates is extreme pacifism not isolationism.

[PzLdr]

You've been misled for the sake of the military-industrial complex and others that profit from war. Islamic extremism cannot be defeated with bombs. It makes me sad to think many of you will never realize that.

Take a look at Viet Nam, pal. Same political cowardice, same U.S troops and policy sacrificed. And yeah, you can defeat extremism with bombs. Just takes lots of bombs, and the WILL to use them.

[DCPatriot]

See the run up to WW II, and to a lesser degree, WW I.

"Lend-Lease" was a brilliant military maneuver leading up to our participation in WWII.

At least through the eyes of an historian.   

[PzLdr]

Isolationism doesn't mean you don't respond when attacked.  What Dexter advocates is extreme pacifism not isolationism.

Isolationism sends all the wrong signals to potential attackers. Adolf Hitler figured U.S isolationism into his computations. He knew Roosevelt wanted at him, but also knew Roosevelt wouldn't be able to while he dealt with England and France. In WW I, the Germans were able to estimate, with a great degree of accuracy how long it would take for the U.S to 'gear up' to engage in combat.

[PzLdr]

"Lend-Lease" was a brilliant military maneuver leading up to our participation in WWII.

At least through the eyes of an historian.   

One of the unforeseen results of Lend-Lease was that it convinced Hitler that at some point FDR was going to get into the European war [which he had been mightily trying to do since at least 1940]. It was one of the major reasons Hitler blundered by declaring war on the U.S on December 11, 1941. If he hadn't, Roosevelt would have been hard pressed to  get the U.S. Congress to declare war on Germany.

[evadR]

Take a look at Viet Nam, pal. Same political cowardice, same U.S troops and policy sacrificed. And yeah, you can defeat extremism with bombs. Just takes lots of bombs, and the WILL to use them.

W O R D !!
..and we've got a lot more tools than just bombs.  Use 'em.

[truth_seeker]

Islamic extremism cannot be defeated with bombs.

Japanese and German extremism WAS defeated by bombs. By bombs and by enough troops to occupy and hold the nation to their unconditional surrender.

[bkepley]

Japanese and German extremism WAS defeated by bombs. By bombs and by enough troops to occupy and hold the nation to their unconditional surrender.

Who do you suggest we occupy?

[truth_seeker]

Who do you suggest we occupy?

I stated the historical fact that we bombed and got unconditional surrender and then occupied with sufficient numbers of troop, the last time we won decisive victory in major wars.

[Oceander]

Who do you suggest we occupy?

Iraq and Syria would be good places to start, provided we had the willingness to do what we had to in order to get the compliance we had from Germany and Japan after WWII.

[EC]

The problem is you won't have the willingness to do what needs to be done to get that level of compliance.

Arabs (in general) are NOT Westerners. They react a lot more like the Japanese. If you want their compliance you have, basically, to terrify them and keep on terrifying them until their great grandchildren will be born with an ingrained fear of you.

Nukes worked on the Japanese (about the only thing that would at the time) but they WILL NOT WORK for this fight. You aren't fighting a nation, with cities and ports and strategic resources. You are fighting an ideology and thus will have to apply the terror retail rather than wholesale.

Your military is admirable. Honorable men and women and they'd simply not stand for it. Nor would the populace. Lets face it, a quarter of the population of the West already consider anyone in uniform to be subhuman baby killers and another quarter of the population are basically too decent to go along with it in the first place.

[Oceander]

The problem is you won't have the willingness to do what needs to be done to get that level of compliance.

Arabs (in general) are NOT Westerners. They react a lot more like the Japanese. If you want their compliance you have, basically, to terrify them and keep on terrifying them until their great grandchildren will be born with an ingrained fear of you.

Nukes worked on the Japanese (about the only thing that would at the time) but they WILL NOT WORK for this fight. You aren't fighting a nation, with cities and ports and strategic resources. You are fighting an ideology and thus will have to apply the terror retail rather than wholesale.

Your military is admirable. Honorable men and women and they'd simply not stand for it. Nor would the populace. Lets face it, a quarter of the population of the West already consider anyone in uniform to be subhuman baby killers and another quarter of the population are basically too decent to go along with it in the first place.

The first sentence is true enough.  And that is lacking.

Be that as it may, bombs are quite useful as part of the arsenal used to defeat barbarians like ISIS and the other muslim militants.  Would giving ISIS the same talkey-talkey/kissey-kissey we just finished giving Iran have prevented them from beheading and torturing all the innocents they've killed?  Or stop them from destroying all of the antiquities they've destroyed?  Only a moron, or a liberal, would think so.

[EC]

Bombs have their place, though I do prefer missiles from fairly close range - I dislike collateral damage of innocents intensely. Training camp? Bomb the shit out of it. ISIS convoy? It should be smoking piles of scrap metal within minutes. Find a higher up? Take out the building and apologise to the innocents later, or at least send a wreath.

Indiscriminate bombing though, in the mold of Dresden - nope. The fight against ISIS will have to be more like Vietnam - where WE are the Viet Kong.

[truth_seeker]

I rather thought that almost 14 years ago, when we were attacked in the name of islam, we responded with a purpose.

The purpose was to discourage further attacks. We went to Afghanistan, issued warnings, killed and captured some people, changed the government.

We claimed victories of sorts, we supposed that not all of islam was our enemy, etc. And after awhile we fell back into a sort of complacency, deciding it wasn't such a big deal, after all.

That is where we remain. We remain in the mindset that all of islam is not our adversary.

And that is why we cannot bring ourselves to engage in a world scale war with islam or components thereof.

This sort of unsolvable dilemma, of it being either all or nothing is more acceptable for the moment.

The Iran "deal" is based on the least bad option. The US and the civilized world, simply don't want a big war, or to deal with the evil that islam too frequently imposes on people.

What is new on Netflix this week?

[DCPatriot]

I rather thought that almost 14 years ago, when we were attacked in the name of islam, we responded with a purpose.

The purpose was to discourage further attacks. We went to Afghanistan, issued warnings, killed and captured some people, changed the government.

We claimed victories of sorts, we supposed that not all of islam was our enemy, etc. And after awhile we fell back into a sort of complacency, deciding it wasn't such a big deal, after all.

That is where we remain. We remain in the mindset that all of islam is not our adversary.

And that is why we cannot bring ourselves to engage in a world scale war with islam or components thereof.

This sort of unsolvable dilemma, of it being either all or nothing is more acceptable for the moment.

The Iran "deal" is based on the least bad option. The US and the civilized world, simply don't want a big war, or to deal with the evil that islam too frequently imposes on people.

What is new on Netflix this week?

Low Winter Sun.....Season 1 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2314792/

 

[truth_seeker]

Low Winter Sun.....Season 1 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2314792/

 

Thanks for movie tip.

Amazon Prime has a new ten episode series called "The Hand of God" starring Ron Perlman.

I think the fact Netflix and Amazon are producing their own content is wonderful. Puts more competition into the mix.

How is that for a thread hijack?