"The Apologist"

Willful ignorance...

I'd like to apologize to the entire world for inflicting 8 years of Bush on them.

That said, Obama is not an apologist.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2011/02/obamas_apology_tour.html

Nice article Sensor, the fact that he didn't actually use the word "apologize" does not in fact mean he wasn't apologizing. In the immortal words of Bill Clinton it would depend on what the definition of the word "is" is.

Since he apologized to the afgans, and calmed them down, six more American Soldiers have been killed, by "apologized-to" seething, wild extremists. In what, ten days?

Here is a wild idea, maybe if we had not of parked tanks on someone's lawn and blown up their kids on the way to school we wouldn't have troops over there as targets for their outrage. People don't deserve foreign troops occupying their nation, calling the shots, and robbing them of Liberty we are trying to instill.

It's over, bring out brave troops home.

Germans no longer shoot at the US troops stationed there, now do they? The same goes for the Italians and Japanese. These three countries took more hell than the Afgans, to the tenth power. Do these three countries continually try to replace Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini? Do you remember WW2?

Keep on fucking that chicken, Wulf.

AC must be obsessed with bestiality!

Go look up that phrase on UrbanDictionary.

Also, I guess Obama shouldn't apologize for this:
http://www.toledoblade.com/World/2012/03/11/Afghan-official-US-service-member-opened-fire-on-Afghan-civilians-in-south-deaths-reported.html

After all, it's not like he's the Commander-in-Chief then. It's not like Bush ever had to apologize for what our troops have done.

This thread:

I wonder if the US. Sargent who allegedly shot 16 people, has had any impact on Afgan violence? Now the locals have something to really bitch about.

Someone should tell dbw that the tank was parked there protecting the cement truck that was building the school.

Yeah, Mikey. Bringing education to the Afghani masses was definitely one of Shrub's bullet points when he sold us on the war. You forgot that we wouldn't have to build a school there for 10x the going rate paid to American contractors if we hadn't tried to turn Afghanistan into a Christian Neo-con capitalist pipedream. Our "goals" in Afghanistan could have been accomplished quicker and cheaper using only intelligence and special ops forces; but hey, that wouldn't have ensured construction and protection of the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline.

Yes, send in Special Forces.

Or better yet, why don't we just pull the fuck out of absolutely everywhere that we can without breaking treaty obligations, and announce that we're done with this Team America World Police shit, we're not going to protect Israel's ass, and we're not going to be the front-runner for NATO ops nor are we going to play peacekeepers unless the UN's going to pony up to put our guys in the nifty blue uniforms.

Agreed with everything in the above post with the exception of "unless the UN's going to pony up to put our guys in the nifty blue uniforms". Elite controlling by proxy is still controlling. We pay the UN's bills so it's still our boys & our debt.

As a pacifist I do not believe in war. But I do respect our men and women in service. (Married 2 Koren War Sets) That being said it seems to me we take young folks and turn them into a killing machine.

Somewhere after many tours of duty some break. And someone in the chain of command should be on the watch for this.
Looks like this did not happen.

This breakdown is a symptom of being in war for way too many years. I know the services are aware of many suicides in the services during this war time. Could be this young man simply fell apart and went on a rampage. I will give him the benefit of doubt till I hear more facts.

I'm all for leaving the war theater and bringing the troops home. With that comes the responsibility of caring for their war time injuries, mental and physical.

Turning people into killing machines is not the problem. That's something we actually have to do with troops - manage to get them to be willing and unhesitant to take human life before the other side takes our lives. That's military reality. The problem is how it's glorified by Hollywood and the right-wingers into being "let's kill a pile of terrorist assholes! GO USA!". War and killing should not be glorified, it should be "we have a job to do against someone who wants to kill us and while we don't want to kill them, we may have to do so and that's unfortunate and sad." But this is America (FUCK YEAH!) where we have "Terrorist Hunting License" bumper stickers and if you don't want to kill a pile of non-white Christian motherfuckers with no questions asked then you're a pussy-ass liberal faggot. Since enough people believe that, The Powers That Be can use that to get into a war that makes themselves and their military-industrial-defense complex and other buddies richer, and damn the consequences.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201203210011

"The problem is how it's glorified by Hollywood and the right-wingers into being "let's kill a pile of terrorist assholes!" - I would also argue that hip hop/thug life/hood culture glorifies senseless violence just as much Rambo movies. More "thugs" kill people than "terrorist hunters" you speak of. You kid yourself if you think any of those people donated to the NRA or a Repub Super PAC.

It's an American problem, not a Tea-Op issue.

The "thugs" don't push "America, fuck yeah!" or print up "Terrorist Hunting License" bumper stickers, they just go shoot up each other over which gangs and rappers and shit they like. Quite a bit of difference between the "hip hop/thug life/hood culture" senseless violence and the "let's kill "bad" guys!" senseless violence.

But you had to try to deflect because you can't paint "lefties" as gun-toting violence-lovers, so whatever, keep doing horrible things with that chicken over there.

dbw the UN is not in Afghanistan. NATO is in Afghanistan and there are several NATO partners who have sacrificed a lot.

AC, your understanding of how we train our military and the effects are themselves a biased product of a media that itself doesn't understand it. I recommend you read "On War" and "On Killing".

And several of the tactics the military uses to train are actually less advanced and less effective than what our media uses and actually achieves better results.

For instance the military's use of immediate impact targeting on a rifle range is less effective than the Grand Theft Auto-Positive Reinforcement that we see in video games. In fact the military also uses more Shoot/No Shoot scenarios in it's training than you see in video games as well.

We demanded unconditional surrender of the Axis powers after WWII. We imposed on them no military or no manufacturing of arms. They were a beaten people afte the war.

When I studied World History Afghanistan was known as the "graveyards of Empires". In recent decades this has proven true. A country where there are tribal rules and rivalries and no cohesive government cannot be conquered by us or anyone else.

It would be wise to just get out. We are never going to win or make them a democratic country. A country who formerly ruled by "loya jurga" doesn't understand western democracy.

To add to jackie's comment, I've long had opinions on the world that stray from "the way a good American should think," so to speak. One of those views is that democracy isn't necessarily the best thing for everyone. In my opinion, it is the right thing for any industrialized economy. But what about, as jackie said, a country that is largely tribal? Or agrarian?

I started pondering this when studying Southeast Asia during my years as a history student. I was just having a hard time wrapping my head around why families who have spent their entire lives, for generations, working on the same rice paddy and having no interaction with anyone outside their bubble of a dozen or so miles, gave a shit about the democratic method. Much less why a westerner should think they'd be willing to lay down their lives for it.

Since it is well known that actual slavery still exists in parts of the world, maybe some here also feel that freedom isn't good for some people, either.