miditek wrote:Have you seen me ask people in this or other strato-related forums to apologize or take back statements that Christianity is bullshit? Of course not, and it's simply something that I don't do. If someone thinks that Christ was a fairy tale, that's their business.
Which is all good and well, but how is it relevant to the matter at hand? My point was merely that your attempts at satire, if that's what it was, missed the mark. I don't think you have anything to apologize for, other than your unfortunate remark about one billion Muslims above. But that's been dealt with already.
My viewpoint is that it is ridicule for the EU, nothing more, and nothing less. I am certainly no fan of the Kremlin.
I was going to respond to that, but I was "disappeared" by General Secretary Barroso and shipped of to the Gulag.
If you want to consider it to be Communist propoganda then in your mind, it probably is.
See how easy it is to perceive things?
And the citizens of these countries were not running about crashing airplanes into buildings, beheading people on live TV, calling for the death of Israel and the US, and many other terroristic activities.
Most of the people in those countries actually wanted freedom, and did not want perpetual war with the US or Israel.
But that was not your argument. You said "Overwhelming brute force has been the only proven method of bringing dictatorships down. " That was simply a list of dictatorships brought down not by overwhelming brute force.
And the people crashing airplanes into buildings were primarily Saudis, not Iranians. And even so, that hardly represents the Saudi population as a whole. And speaking of peoples who want freedom, Shurik already mentioned there was large faction of the Iranians (and, dare I say it, of the Saudis as well) who match that very description!
By the way, Russia is still far from being free.
Hey, I critique Generalissimo Putin on a regular basis, on this forum and elsewhere. But that just goes to show that bringing down the dictatorship is just the first step. Even if one chooses a highly volatile military solution, that's only a very small part of it.
I realize that you didn't intend for that statement to be comical, but that is absolutely one of the funniest things I've ever seen before. France is anguishing over whether to send just 200-300 troops to Lebanon while Prodi and Berlu have just committed 3,000 Italian troops to go.
Actually, I did intend for it to be comical, but not quite the way you think. If I say I'd rather go with recent French foreign policy than the Bush doctrine, and given my disdain for French foreign policy over the years, I think it's fairly easy to infer what I think of the Bush doctrine, not to mention its masterfully incompetent implementation. Which is what made my statement so deliciously hilarious!
While I admire Rome for making its contribution, I do feel that Paris deserves to be heckled
Want some freedom fries with that?
France can complain all it wants about the current fiasco in Iraq, while conveniently ignoring the one that it cannot control in Ivory Coast.
Indeed! Colonialism left the whole continent a mess! Which makes the recent Bush-led occupation all the more peculiar: surely the man has read at least one history book in his life? Surely he would be aware mucking about in other countries can have disastrous consequences?
I disagree. Militarily speaking, an invasion of the US would be suicidal. To mount an invasion here, you would have to have both naval as well as air supremacy. Moreover, you would have to keep the invasion force supplied. There is a long list of military contingencies that would have to be taken into consideraton, and no nation on earth could do that.
I don't disagree about the long-term prospects of such a venture, my point was merely that if a supposed invader had the element of surprise, it could potentially reach far into the country, as the US is not prepared for such an attack. Once the US scrambled its resources together the would-be invader would of course get their asses handed to them.
Dirty bombs and/or small scale nuclear weapons would still be quite easy to slip in and detonate for maximum effect, and I believe it is only a matter of time before this happens. I wouldn't gloat too much though, because I do not believe that America is the only target for such operations.
I think the only people gloating about such a scenario would be the ones looking forward to an impending and unavoidable apocalypse.
It won't be so funny if or when it happens.