Aileron

Hey, if you don't like this "discussion", no one is making you post here. I agree that it is stupid to say the least. However, if Europeans keep opening and re-opening topics such as this one, we are never going to come to a compromise. I am tired of this at!@#$%^&*ude. Bin Laden claimed the US was the "Great Satan". Of him an Europe, at very least Bin Laden admits his opinion.

*ressurects Myst* *gives Myst a bazooka* *uses a teleportation device to put Myst ten feet behind Naed* *runs away and hides in "hideout that can never be found"*

*thinks about attack Paine and Myst, but notices that they are pretty much taken care of* *gets bottle of honey* *squirts some on Naed's face just as he is flying away* *watches as grizzly bears on jetpacks attack Naed for the honey*

Nah, you should enjoy squadlessness for a while. There's less stress to it.

*smashes cymbols together next to Naed's ears, making him break out of meditation and lose his mind* *casts power word, stun on Paine* *Paine is left standing there motionless unable to move* *climbs nearby hill* *sends barrel filled with honey rolling down the hill in Paine's direction* *watches nearby honey loving grizzly bears, minding their own business*

Is this a logical debate or a spamming board?

flaming Bush/US Really, it gets old after a while. If you think the US is so evil, then quit using moralistic arguements.

I didn't say they were dumb, just hypocrites. Look, I'd hate to go patriotic, (apparently it is wrong for an American to be nationalistic, but okay for everyone else to.) but the best thing we have to brag about is that everyone wants to come here. Particularly Europeans in the early 20th century, who came here generally for a better life. Think about it. These immigrants were seeking nothing but fortune. It order to get money and wealth, they moved from first world Europe to among other places, the US, which was second world at the time. Europeans were and are so selfish, that they do not even share with their fellow countrymen. Their countrymen had to move to poorer nations just so that they could get out from under the upper class' heel. Now, Europe is pissed, because the combined strength of the English rejects that were here before and the general European rejects they sent here in the early 20th century is now starting to overrun their economies and culture. I don't mean to say that the US is a social saint. We have our share of ghettos and orphans. I also don't mean to say that Europe hasn't learned and isn't trying to correct their problems. Most European countries are highly socialist. However, most of that socialism is devoted to tearing down the rich. Europe has tried tearing down the rich over and over since the French Revolution. 90% of both Socialism and Communism is to prevent the rich from getting more wealthy. Try bringing up the poor. Europe somehow has equated tearing down the rich to bringing up the poor. Guess what, they are two different things. That is why the US is capitalistic. We don't care how much some billionaire makes. Let them make their 7 or 8 digit salaries. We care about bringing up our poor. Yes, the US is selfish in that we do not share with other nations. However, Europe does not even share with themselves. Therefore, they are not in the position to judge us.

What's 'American' about this model? This father/mother/child model has been in place for millions of years, and whether you believe in creation or evolution, preexist humanity itself. Either God made the model, or the model was used in more primative forms of life. Not matter what you believe, marriage has been between a man and a woman for longer than humans have been around. Traditions like this are usually in place for a reason, usually social justice or economic efficiency. It is almost impossible to know why the exact reasons. Usually, if one wants to change them, one should have a very good reason. Every case where a tradition such as this one was destroyed for no reason resulted in disaster. An example of this would be the French Revolutions and the chaos following them. For starters, I would have to ask why we should change. BTW, I think you won that bet. I'm only 19 years and 9 months.

*sends Ninja Death Squad against mini army* / / / / / *Ninjas kick mini-myst's arses on account that the NDS is actually represented by smilies* *hands Platypus his beer* *Playpuss now has super strength, and jumps on Myst's face and starts clawing* *Does flying kick to Myst's stomach, sending him flying into the pit* *covers pit with a giant sack of $#%^ * *runs away and hides*

Look, you Europeans are about twice as selfish and ten times more arrogant as we are. You have held this at!@#$%^&*ude about three times longer than the US even existed, and you are still here. If Europe can get away with being arrogant and selfish for 600 years and still be around, I think the US, being arrogant and selfish to a lesser degree, has atleast 400 years to look foward to.

I think we should just let them kill each other until one group is all dead. Maybe sell them weapons so that we get something out of it.

*give ninjas swords* / / / / / *gets Ninja Death Squad to attack Naed again* *Naed beats up ninjas again* *Platypus finally leaves Women's Locker room and picks a fight with the Hamster-like thing* *Playpus does flying spin kick and knocks the HLT into Naed's face* *Naed is knocked backwards into a pit leading to the center of the Earth* *uses one of Naed' super strength pills* *Picks up Mr. Ious and uses his 5000 time usual size arse to seal the pit shut.* *gives Platypus a high five, then fetches him a drink*

It means "operating under the !@#$%^&*umption that". You can't talk about anything if you don't make !@#$%^&*umptions. I just happen to be nice enough to define mine. true. I will thank you for making scientific judgements. It is good to see somebody use the scientific method for their judgements. I just must have gotten used to all the emotional ranting that occurs on this topic. Well, disarming nukes is going to take time, and I'm not talking about the time to physically do the job. All parties must ensure that everyone else disarms as well. This takes trust, and it is difficult given what we are dealing with. If one nation manages to hide a few with everyone else disarming; that nation gets to dictate their policy on the rest of the world for about the next 10,000 years. I know the first thing the next reader is going to do is say that the US is the biggest candidate for that position, but let me emphasis that it could be done by ANYONE. Therefore, we need to take our time. This was probably mentioned in Live-Wire's post; I'm just curtailing it.

Somebody please lock this topic. It was almost flaming in the first place and now that its off-topic and been inactive for almost a month.

*sets snare trap in Naed's path* *watches and waits* *Naed walks around the trap without noticing* ...... *goes to dojo* *trains group of highly skilled ninjas aka. Ail's Ninja Death Squad aka. * Ail's Ninja Death Squad sneak up behind Naed and kick the cr@p out of him with their mad ninja skillz*

I don't think we could make the balls bounce off the bricks if we wanted to.

Sorry, but I think the problem was identified a false premise I found in your first sentence. As it currently stands, not all nations in the world have the same interests. Thus, cooperation is impossible.

First off, you are confusing motive with justification, which in humanity's long history of warfare has NEVER matched up. If we went for oil and used Hussein's tyranny as a justification, we would be no better or no worse than any other nation in history. If a war is justified, it is justified. It doesn't matter if our motive was freedom, oil, or to build a big parking lot. Whether or not a war is justified depends on the justification, not the motive. That said, I don't think the motive was oil. We have too many other places to get it. If we were looking purely for oil, it would have been more profitable to negotiate with Russia. I think Iraq goes back to the War on Terror. I do agree that Iraq had no terrorists in it and no connections to terroristic organization, save possibly "enemy of an enemy". However, attacking it does affect its neighbors, and the neighbors have ties to terrorists. If we invade Iraq, then everyone around them has reason to fear. If they fear us, then they will be less liable to harbor terrorists. Not only that, but we also have a very good and selfish reason to want a democracy in Iraq. If Iraq becomes a democracy, and then becomes rich, everyone around them will want to be in a democracy too. If they want to become democratic, they will want to form friendly enough ties to the US to promote trade. The easiest way to get those ties is to kill a few terrorists for us. The logical question after this is if we were going into Iraq just for the affect on neighboring countries, why Iraq? Couldn't one do this to any country in the region to gain the same effect? I say, probably. An invasion of any one of the countries in the region would produce the desired outcome. Iraq was most likely chosen because it was the weakest political target. In my opinion, it would have been better to invade Saudi Arabia. They are the ones producing terrorists. They also are and incredibly weak monarchy, weak enough that a political case could be made against them. They would probably have been easier to reconstruct. On top of that, if Bin Laden was intelligent enough, he is not in Pakistan and is hiding in Saudi Arabia as we speak. (I have many reasons for thinking this that I will not say here for reasons of length.) Still, I support going into Iraq. Its a two party system, and my only other choice would be to support some suicidal Democratic policy.

*removes himself from horse and takes shower* *borrows Mr. Ious' teleportation device* *tweaks device a little* *teleports to random girl's locker room on Mars* *leaves locker room* *goes to duplicating machine* *creates copy of teleportation device* *tweaks copy and sets it to a timer* *superglues copy to Naed* *Naed gets transported to the backstage changing rooms of a Village People concert* (back in time apparently, but work with it) *uses origional device to teleport back to random girl's locker room on Earth* *gives device back to Mr. Ious*

Insulting me does not make you right. Arrogance is not a sign of intelligence, only stupidity. Being disrespectful is nothing but a sign of immaturity. Please remember these three things when choosing your word choice in future posts. This problem will only be solved with understanding, and if you merely dismiss my statements as a byproduct of your impression of typical American arrogance, we will go nowhere. I will admit that thinking that the vast majority of terrorists coming from the Middle East is borderline racist. However, my opinion walks close to the line, but does not cross it. This figure is especially difficult to find, because the word "terrorism" is used to describe so many groups, even the established governments of some countries. Even if I had a statistic proving it, it would not apply to somebody else's defignition. However, there is no denying that the region itself is a cultural and religious hot spot that hasn't had real peace since the Abbasid empire collapsed. The cause is mostly environmental; race has little to do with it. Also, hatred does have the possibility of springing from nothingness. Fortunately for your point, it does not in this case. They hate us somewhat for supporting Israel, but the true cause is that we prop up the Saudi monarchy. I definitely think we either have to get Saudi Arabia to change or remove them. However, compare that to the Western hemisphere. We have proped up several dictators over here and most of the countries owe us billions they can't offord. What the US does in Latin America is far worse than what we do in the Middle East, and we have only picked up a handfull of groups in Colombia. It just doesn't make sense.

Human life is mortal. Not one of those people were destined to live in this universe forever. If you think the conflict was a waste of life, how should it have been spent? The results of the conflict by all certainty saved lives in the long run. Hussein killed enough civilians to maintain his power that removing him justifies the spilling of blood. However, this was not enough of a justification. If we were to remove every such leader from power, we would have to invade three quarters of the third world. Thus, Bush needed something else. He used the WMDs, because of their high probability of existence. It turns out now that they didn't exist. However, justification had already been achieved by saving the lives that would have been lost under Hussein. Besides, you speak as if Operation Iraqi Freedom started a conflict. Infact, this action ended a two decade long revolution that had started before Hussein even invaded Kuwait, which had been fought by everyone from Iran to the Kurds to the UN. In classical morality, all just wars need an ultimate goal of peace. Thus, there is no way that the conflict prior to Iraqi Freedom was justified, because it was going on without end. The loss of several thousand people is great, but it is less than the steady rate of loss of a never-ending revolution.

*takes out pocketknife* *cuts rope* *grabs nearby lance* *gets on horse* *jousts Naedhaha, sending him flying into the wall* *has horse sit on top of Naedhaha* *takes away Naedhaha's towel*

..... Terrorism is not so much a retalitory reaction as it is a religious belief held by the terrorists themselves, I've proven that several times in this forum. If terrorism was merely a reaction, we would be getting terrorists from evenly from all over the world. The vast majority of terrorists come from the middle east. If your model were to be true, there would be a proportionate number of Europeans, Latin Americans, Asians, and Africans etc. Yes, certain areas will be happier than others, but I think the biggest victim of "yankee imperialism" would be Latin America. If your model were to work, almost all terrorists would come from Mexico.

That is true; There is a difference between lying and being incorrect. There was very good reason to believe Iraq had WMDs. Couple this with the fact that Iraq was the first nation in history to actually disarm when told to disarm by force. Bush played the probabilities, and the less probable situation was the reality. You can't really blame him for that.