2,152 Forum Posts by "Iron-Hampster"
At 9/10/11 05:19 PM, djack wrote:
That is just flat out wrong. Guerrilla tactics do not win wars. The U.S. left Vietnam because politics got in the way. We weren't even losing, the citizens just got bored with the war and decided they wanted out. The real victories of the U.S. revolution were the result of full scale battles not guerrilla tactics. When used as a supplement guerrilla tactics can demoralize the enemy and be used to capture supplies but without an actual army that is fighting you'll never truly win. The best you can do is sacrifice people until the spoiled brats of first world nations get bored of war and decide to pull their troops out of your country. Of course, if the U.S. leaves Iraq before reforming its government and stabilizing the country then the invasion was pointless and the rest of the world will dislike the U.S. even more. Also, the Iraqi people don't dislike U.S. troops. Some want our troops to withdraw because they're confident the Iraqi military can handle any insurgents and they believe that the presence of U.S. troops is bringing unwanted attention from terrorists but the rest are fine with our troops being there. So long as the U.S. doesn't completely withdraw before Iraq is stable enough to handle its own affairs the invasion will have been successful.
There is only one historic record of the occupying force beating a nation that used Gorilla tactics: it was Rome against Gaul. You know what they did to beat the resistance? they built a fucking wall, around their main stronghold, they then let all the people inside that stronghold starve to death, women and children alike, even as they attempted to send those women and children out to this huge structure to plea for release. Think about all the resources they needed to do this, and just how unfeeling they had to be to push through with it, and even after they managed to win, it marked the end of the Roman republic.
One, the U.S. has changed tactics. The weapons our troops are using have been specialized to handle urban guerrilla warfare and the vehicles they have were customized to withstand the explosive blasts of IEDs. Two, insurgents are generally recruited by using either force or by promising them things that can't really be delivered so their numbers aren't growing just because we're killing off members. There are probably some people who join hoping to get revenge for a loved one killed by U.S. troops but that isn't the case with all of them. Third, most nations would be obligated to handle any terrorist group working within their nation. If there were terrorists in the U.S. attacking China, the U.S. would do everything in its power to stop them. This is not the case with middle eastern nations, many of which not only allow terrorists to hide in their country but also provide funding for terrorist groups.
The Americans won the revolution by changing how war was fought, the British bunched themselves up in rectangular formations just like every other European nation, and marched in with their brightly coloured uniforms so that they could be seen miles away. Americans spread out in their relatively camouflaged uniforms and would strike by surprise killing most of their targets before they could even shoot back. Now here we are in our uniforms so that the terrorists know exactly who we are fighting against people who are dressed up as civilians trying not to kill civilians. who is going to get the first shot?
and many of the insurgents are forced to join yes, but a lot are also forced by their own inability to provide for themselves and their families. The only thing they can do is fight for money, this is also further outlining how we are killing innocents in a way that will only make matters worse. And it took the "spoiled brats" of the first world to start this war anyways, millions of people all over the world protested this war before it began and they were all ignored.
At 9/10/11 12:42 PM, adrshepard wrote:
At 9/10/11 01:15 AM, Iron-Hampster wrote: "hey, what do you think about America and all their sselfless efforts to secure your freedom?"It's not about making Iraqis like us. We could have never inflicted any civilian casualties or destroyed any buildings at all and they'd still be annoyed at our presence. Nobody "wants" us there, but the vast majority of Iraqis recognize that the country needs our support, and they care enough about what's at stake to put up with continued US involvement. It is by no means a pointless conflict to them, or to us.
"About who?" as he is lifting his american flag... that's on fire.
alright, serious time.
wecan notwin the war without getting them to like us. Sure the quiet ones tolerate us for now, but more and more Iraqis are losing family and loved ones due to our collateral damage. Gorilla wars are not winnable with conventional tactics and this is why. The terrorists are intentionally letting children into their ranks because they know this too.
The insurgents are not video game npcs like Grand theft auto or saints row. Every time we kill one, at least one brother, father, best friend, or son will take their place out of anger. All we have been going by are statistics, but statistics are the ultimate form of dehumanization. Yes they are enemies, but no they are not numbers.
What if we had a bunch of terrorists in our country that were a threat to china but not us? would you want the Chinese to set up their bases on our territory and start bombing various neiborhoods suspected of holding those terrorists? We might not agree with those given terrorists on many things but we would agree to one thing, we hate the Chinese, and that alone would be enough to get some of us to join them. You have to see things from other people's perspective before you can get the full picture.
Obviously the American army is strong, but it only works with conventional war, its very clear that none of the generals or politicians have any idea how gorilla war works. We saw stuff like this happen in WW1, people were under the impression that war was to be fought the same way every time, but one little change was enough to completely throw everything off: the machine gun. When war changes, so must our tactics, why we are fighting them the same way we fought the Vietnamese is beyond me.
At 9/9/11 11:43 PM, adrshepard wrote:At 9/9/11 10:41 PM, Iron-Hampster wrote: you mean people dieing in meaningless war.Ask the average Iraqi if he thinks the conflict is meaningless. Ask him if he thinks his countrymen have died for no purpose. Ask him if he has no preference in victor between his parliamentary republic and a fundamentalist Islamic insurgency.
"hey, what do you think about America and all their sselfless efforts to secure your freedom?"
"About who?" as he is lifting his american flag... that's on fire.
At 9/9/11 10:02 PM, Psil0 wrote:At 9/9/11 03:56 PM, TheAngelZlayer wrote: Over 100,000 innocents including children were killed. Do the math.Oh, look people dying in war? Surprise, surprise!!! OUTRAGE!!!!!!
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
you mean people dieing in meaningless war.
Pull out of the middle east: This is one of the biggest sources of government wastage, if not, THE biggest
End the drug war: See above, not even going to get into the moral aspect of it, its just an inefficient drain on the US economy and is providing no positive long term results. Talents go in jail, criminals come out.
cut military spending: It is a known fact that America CAN NOT balance it`s budget without doing this. Don`t even need to say more.
Adapt a policy of isolationism: You have enough problems to deal with at home, and are in no position to solve the problems of other people until you get your finances in check. You were criticized for this in both world wars but there is a pretty big difference between then and now. Libya is not going to invade half of Europe any time soon, and the nuclear missile says war is obsolete.
These changes alone wont be enough, but they would be a good start.
At 9/8/11 03:12 AM, CaptainPrichard wrote: socialism= the government own all of the businesses
Trickle down would be impossible because business owners would not make money and have no incentive to hire new workers. I'm pretty sure this is a troll thread, or op is just retarded.
if the government owns everything, then the government is on top, AND responsible for the well being of everyone below... so in socialism, money is distributed from top... to bottom.
AND, lets not forget what a big role our corporations are having in our government, in fact they practically run the fucking place...
are you connecting the dots?
At 9/6/11 11:31 PM, Camarohusky wrote:At 9/6/11 10:20 PM, surfingthechaos wrote: simple-but-sandy, you might think you've read enough about it, but obviously you haven't. Just look at this thread. This has not been a debate about whether or not anarchy is good. This has been you and a few other people being told over and over again in so many words that what you think of as anarchy is inaccurate.Well, we have an issue here. No one has actually defined anarchy. Are we going off of the dictionary definition here? Are we going off of some other definition?
Unless someone can actually pin down what they mean by anarchy then we are unable to proceed forward with any discussion.
Furthermore, the definition of anarchy in this thread seems to flow in between the dictionary definition and other forms of light government in order to fit the specific point the proponent is making at any given time.
So I ask the proponents, is anarchy "the absence of government" as Webster says (Government being "authoritative control") or is it something different?
as with any belief, there is no way to get people to agree to what is and what isn't part of the system 100% of the time. Most of these people acknowledged that people will band together anyways but form a more sparse form of civilization.
The main definition were going by is no centralized power. Everybody's idea of anarchy seems to revolve around this main feature in some way or another. The rest of it is just different flavors like my idea of small tribes and gangs (Replacing Nations and Colonies) and the OPs... what ever he believes in.
At 9/1/11 05:54 PM, DingoTheDog wrote:At 9/1/11 02:41 PM, Lorkas wrote: So many dead...If the 55 million hadn't died in the war the vast vast majority would already have died from natural causes by now. No sense crying over spilt milk.
but when I spill my milk it doesn't create a flash of infrared that is intense enough to fry my brain through my eyeballs.
Sometimes one person's freedom is another's restriction. In this case I would go in favor of the person who worked hard to produce the material over the person who effortlessly stole credit for it.
I used to let people copy off me in school all the time but that was my own choice and I didn't happen to give a damn.
At 8/31/11 08:56 AM, djack wrote:At 8/31/11 12:47 AM, Iron-Hampster wrote:No but you can agree to a cease fire until a proper surrender has been signed. It's not like they took too long to respond and America decided to speed things up with some big bombs, they had a chance and they refused.At 8/31/11 12:21 AM, brainiac3397 wrote:
Their propaganda that enforced feelings of honor and always fighting to the death painted them into a corner, if they did anything that could come off as admitting defeat in the wrong way, Japan revolts and a bunch of people get their heads cut off.
Like Mason said, they switch to land based battles. Everyone in Japan had been taught to be prepared to fight U.S. troops by any means necessary. It's the reason why Japanese pilots had no problem with crashing their planes into our ships and it's the reason why every citizen of Japan could be reasonably perceived as enemy combatants.
So are we both clear that an island nation being restricted to land based battle is pretty much as dangerous to us as a really pissed off hornet in a jar of inch thick glass? They would have had to admit defeat at some point or let their people starve until Japan revolts and a bunch of people get their heads cut off.
At 8/31/11 09:26 AM, BanglaBoy96 wrote: If we HAD NO free will, we'd be bitching about god being so bossy.
would we really?
At 8/31/11 12:21 AM, brainiac3397 wrote:
What is not debatable was the fact the Japanese had a chance to surrender before being nuked once then were asked again before being nuked twice.
because you can't just say "okay okay we surrender you win uncle uncle!!!"
and further more, they were out of oil. what the hell were they going to do to us with out their oil?
it will hurt the people who use Gasoline more than any of the companies that sell it. by a long shot I might add.
middle class loses again!
A bill like that would be a great idea! lets see if we can run that through congress right now- oh shoot.
ya know? Carl Marx thought up the same ideology everyone else did, with only one change. Eugenics, same idea, killing off people (or forcefully sterilizing them if you are merciful) until you achieve Utopia. Adolf Hitler hated Communism so much he proceeded to do the exact same thing by killing people off selectively until he could achieve the perfect racially pure Germany. Religious extremists are the same too, killing off non believers "until they no longer have to because everyone will be a believer." There are even people who believe we should let all people without jobs starve so that we eventually kill off all the useless people to achieve a perfect society where everyone functions.
what the hell is so different about communism?
At 8/30/11 01:32 PM, Ranger2 wrote: Remember kids, it's cool to be leftist! As long as you say the words "equality," "justice" "free-thinking" and "anti-imperialism" enough, you can do whatever you want.
Remember guys, it also makes you look more mature when you are a rightist! As long as you say "personal responsibility" "justice" and "free economy" and "anti socialism" enough you can do what ever you want.
At 8/29/11 03:22 PM, simple-but-sandy wrote:
I'd say they did. Education was practically non-existant back then, so asking a bunch of morons to rule themselves was just asking for trouble. By keeping power limited to as few people as possible those rulers could make decisions (not necessarily good ones) without fear of it blowing up in their face.
That sounds awesome and all until they start repressing education further so that they could never be challenged and progress would halt to a stand still.
That life span would have been much lower if you expected everyone to rule themselves.
Actually, they would have been able to move around more, initially yes, they would have lower life spans but they would eventually start smaller, cleaner settlements, meaning less disease. Topping that they would have freedom of speech and not have to worry about inquisitions or witch hunters.
Us, humanity, the state, whatever you want to call it. The collective sample of society you want to make as glorious as possible.
for the very few who DO benefit.
So you're saying that a society which gives no-one power won't end that way?
All it requires is for someone to figure out that he can better himselves at the expense of others to round up a few like-minded indivduals to strong arm everyone into submission. With no centralised law system there will be nothing to stop him whatsoever. Sure there are no beacons of morality in our conventional hierarchy, but there will be even less in a world where the biggest jerk wins.
I'm not saying they would allow chaos to happen, I'm just saying they would be powerless to stop it.
His power structure would be much more fragile. He wouldn't be able to get control over as many people and the more powerful he would get, the more people he would scare. The more you scare people in a world with no police, the more likely you are to have an accident. Further more, it would be a more even fight because gorilla war would be much easier. Another exalted individual could rally people against this war lord just by using his own misdeeds against him.
Yes, but with no government no-one would be able to agree on what is good for the state. Thats why we try to have as few politicians as possible. Anymore and it would be several thousand people shouting to get their point across with no real progress.
this is why smaller groups of people function so much better. people learn to compromise faster.
Then you get a bunch of idiots who think they know whats good for them trying to be policy makers. Which usually never works.
get a bunch of geniuses to do it for them on their behalf and it will work out even worse.
I see, it all boils down to "The man is out to get me."
a legitimate problem should not be shot down that easily, you would be on the same train if you had been so ripped off by the system.
No, I equate it with de-centralisation, and without centralisation there are no effective ways of enforcing laws. It's a symptom yes but not the main thing.
with no centralization there are no effective ways of manipulating them either. and once again, it would be a more even fight if you were to enforce it yourself.
Yet I'm going to go with the point I've used so far: Those societies don't exist anymore. If they don't exist they are not good for us.
Every single civilization has and will fall at some point. non existence = not good for us is way too over generalized.
It may not condone it, but it will still make it much easier to happen.
and I won't be thrown in jail for defending my own property/ family.
What if he has a lot of followers and everyone is unable to stop him?
there is no way he could get enough coordination to spread very far before collapsing. Plus it would be easier for people to just leave the area. and that is in the worst case scenario.
Heirarchy is what got us out of the caves and into the cities. Without leaders we would be nothing.
Yet individualism got us off the farms, if we weren't defiant we would still be surfs.
Did you just say Victorian England, the centre of the greatest empire the world has ever seen, was a bad thing? Sure the citizens suffered, because they didn't know that it was good for them.
Also, Nazi Germany, Feudal and Slave societies all rose out of periods of anarchy... intredasting.
well then we will never know "what is good for us" and therefor will never stop suffering. And those periods of anarchy rose from periods of authoritarianism and misuse of power.
Still, some sort of agreement has got to be reached, and that will involve someones views being stomped on. Wait, so some people will have their views suppressed? This doesn't sound like the "everyone is equal" utopia you have been preaching thus far...
every belief has that extremist branch that believes in Utopia. All of those beliefs are strangely the same in almost every aspect. You shouldn't group the Leninists with the Marxists (examples only.)
Happiness is relative. In a few decades they'll be happy that they aren't suffering power outages and starving to death when they have a government who has their back.
instead they will be starving ALMOST to death and enduring genocides. topping that we used to be able to hunt just fine, we would run after what ever wild bovine we could find until it died of heat stoke due to the fact that we had sweat glands and it did not (they can't pant while they are running).
Small communes, no matter how many of them band together, cannot stop the war machine of a centralised state.
a long gorilla war can though.
Once again, they don't exist. That's usually perfect proof of somethings inferiority.
None of the text book ideologies exist either. Communism, Capitalism, neither has been truly implemented, and both are seriously flawed anyways. Dictatorships are dropping like flies nowadays (completely removing the ability to say they have stability now) and monarchies are almost a myth now. most monarchs don't even have any real power anymore anyways. if none of the systems made by man have worked, then that sort of sets an even playing field now doesn't it?
At 8/28/11 12:40 PM, adrshepard wrote:At 8/28/11 11:36 AM, Camarohusky wrote: Ah yes because the tax less spend more philospohy of the hard right is a great fiscal agenda. They're supposed to be party of big business, yet they aact as if they've never even balanced their own checkbooks.Are the "hard" right supposed to be different than the "far" right? Because the Tea Party, labeled as the extreme, doesn't support more spending.
Also, the OP picks some pretty strange reasons for his support. He is not going to get the Tea party to support tax increases simply by virtue of being a republican. The Tea party hates more than a few republicans already.
He believes in evolution. Big deal. It has nothing to do with policy.
Bush was elected governor of Texas and had executive experience too, but the OP still hates him.
The others, flat generalizations, are not worth going into.
I would hope that the Tea party that "doesn't support more spending" would have the common sense to avoid all of the republicans who are talking about intervening in Iran like the plague then. I also hope they are against the drug war and tax cuts. They should also be in favor of pulling out of the middle east. if they aren't, well then they are neglecting the majority of the government wastage.
I REALLY want to believe the Tea party has their own best interests in mind and are not just a bunch of angry people who want the edgiest slogan robot who only knows how to attract votes with shock value and cheap rhetoric. I also really hope they have the common sense to see past the 3 front runners presented to them by the news, they look attractive but all have 3 VERY troubling down sides.
Mitt: He implemented a health care plan that is almost identical to the one Obama implemented, before Obama even ran for office.
Michele: Highly unqualified and has the worst truth record among any of the other candidates. By that I mean she takes the lead in false statements and lies.
Herman: Constantly fear-mongers about Islamic groups and Sharia law. Some take this as him having the guts to say what people need to hear but I take it as a warning sign of a future tyrant. Hitler was democratically elected with the same strategy after all. further more, hes lying about some of his more controversial statements to cover them up now.
At 8/27/11 11:50 AM, homor wrote: Imagine if someone came into your house, and they told you that someone you've never even met (and died before you were born) stole this house from them, so you are obviously also guilty of stealing *his* house.
Now imagine he subjectigates you to a small corner of your own house and makes you go through a checkpoint everytime you go to take a shit.
That's Israel.
well its not a simple issue to deal with. Ending their little Apartheid would mean more hate crimes and terrorist attacks.
There is really no "humane" way to deal with this, keep going on the track they are going on and they will be committing genocide. I personally think they should just say "okay you know what? you are free to go as you please everyone is now a 1st class citizen.", Issue an apology, and subject all people guilty of any violence to the same punishments as everybody else. There is no way to fix the problem without a bunch of people getting killed either way, got to get it over with sooner or later.
At 8/27/11 02:36 AM, Dawnslayer wrote: He is the only Republican on the list right now that I would even consider voting for.
In other words, he's unelectable.
The insultingly biased media is giving me a sense of hopelessness too. They are choosing the front runners for us whether we like them or not.
he is running for the wrong party. he may be a good candidate in our eyes but look through the eyes of all his radical colleagues. He bombed the debate harder than hard because of how everyone played "pounce on the moderate so he looks weaker".
why are we not mad that we are giving bankers money because they handed out mortgages to people they knew couldn't afford them?We are mad; at the loan officers and the poor people who tried to sneak away with something way out of their league. But they wouldn't fall alone. Tens of millions of other people would suffer under your beloved "true capitalism."
i'll respond to this one: Economists were saying it would have been cheaper to pay off the loans of all of those people than it would have to bail out the banks, further more, maybe if the banks knew they wouldn't get away with such idiocy they wouldn't have done it?
also, we paid for those bailouts through our tax payer money, so we are all already sort of paying for it ourselves now aren't we?
I'll also admit that i am misusing the term socialism, but that term has been twisted to suit the needs of people wanting power since the twenties so this thread is more for poking fun at the Republicans in the first place. (using the same logic they have been using).
hypothetically, if it were really the case of divine intervention, then only a just god would ensure that it works in favor of good people and that all the good people would benefit.
but i don't think the forecast can say that hurricane hates rapists and murders but intends to donate half of the money if picks up off the ground to charity now can it?
Before I start, yes I am making an odd claim but I will back it up with historical references and facts.
First: Trickle down economics is basically where wealth distribution starts from top to bottom. The government has sort of been trying to force this to happen in a rather unnatural way. We have sort of been shifting our tax burden from rich to poor under the idea that rich people stimulate the economy more than anyone else. In a way, this is redistribution of wealth, you have heard plenty of people claiming that redistribution of wealth is socialism (or some people saying it is theft) a few times I'm sure. In true capitalism, supply and demand would be enough to determine who makes how much money.
Second: People in favor of trick down economics tend to be against labor unions. They believe people demanding higher wages takes more money away from their employers preventing long term growth. During the Winnipeg general strike (Canadian history) many people saw the demonstration as the spread of communism. The government endured the shut down economy for a while until the RCMP was sent in to disperse people and have them go back to work by force. Ring leaders were arrested. What do you think would happen if you attempted to go on strike in Soviet Russia? The absolute best case scenario would be under Khrushchev who would have arrested the ring leaders and forced everybody back to work. Under true capitalism, if workers can strong arm their employers into giving them more things, both parties would be on their own.
Third: Our tax money is starting to pay for everything the rich are buying now. In a true capitalist society, the owner of the business would be 100% responsible for paying his workers. in 2007 a CEO made over 324 times as much as his low level workers, this figure has increased by 45% since then. If that is the case, then why do they need more tax deductions to pay for these workers? Under true capitalism, they would have to fork all of the money they need to pay their workers out from their own pockets. Why is it that my tax money is being increased to pay for their workers? They have the means to pay but refuse to, yet they expect help from the government and are now mooching off of us hard working middle class. Under true capitalism, our tax rates would be a flat amount based on a percentage of our income, that does not change based on anybodies income bracket.
Fourth: Corporate Bailouts are being handed out to companies to stop them from going bankrupt, however, these bailouts are packages of taxpayer money that are being handed off to people who CLEARLY have enough money in their bank accounts to pay for their own mismanagement. People justify it as "if we don't, people will lose their jobs". To put it into perspective, its like me buying a new TV that costs a little under half the money in my life savings, then demanding the government to give me the full cost of that TV or else my children will go hungry until I make that money up, and keeping the TV. People were very upset about "octomom" because she chose to have 8 kids and live on welfare because she couldn't get a job that payed enough for her to take care of all of them, why are we not mad that we are giving bankers money because they handed out mortgages to people they knew couldn't afford them? under true capitalism, both parties would be 100% responsible for themselves on that problem.
At 8/25/11 10:36 AM, MattDogg wrote:At 8/25/11 02:31 AM, Iron-Hampster wrote: just genocide the Lebanese with smallpox and give the survivors casinos.I hope you are being sarcastic about this
I hope you caught the reference
just genocide the Lebanese with smallpox and give the survivors casinos.
@Cam: The last person to attempt communist democracy was Gorbachev. He was also the last communist to ever lead Russia.
@Koriken: It is easy to say Capitalism won over Communism just like that but the reality is that neither system has truly been implemented.
At 8/23/11 09:54 PM, Polske322 wrote: The thing is, Russia and China would never team up together. Yes they are both fairly Anti-American, but they share a border, and like most countries that share a border they have problems with each other. They don't even have the same interests, China wants to expand its economy, and watch that of the U.S. collapse, they don't want to risk a hot war and are going for an economic war. Honestly a second cold war could happen with them. Russia on the other hand, wants militaristic expansion and (like they always have) wants to control Eastern Europe. They don't like each other, and couldn't help each other much if they did.
there's that, there is also the part where China condemned the Russian invasion of Georgia. (kind of ironic that china would do that considering the whole Tibet thing eh?).
on another topic, if I had to over generalise, china would specialize in infantry, Russia in tanks, and America in Air force.
At 8/23/11 09:56 AM, orangebomb wrote:At 8/23/11 12:39 AM, Iron-Hampster wrote: doesn't sound right but that's life. Even if the rebels win, they will remember it and turn into another Terrorist group.And how do you know that's going to happen? I mean, if they elect another nutjob or something like that, then maybe. But I have great doubts that the rebel group is going to turn their backs on us, after aiding them in their hour of need, I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt that they won't be terrorists.
what I'm thinking is that as soon as the old regime that committed all these monstrous crimes is done away with, they are gone, forgotten, and the only people left who have wronged the Libyans in anyway would be none other than the people who currently stand as the single most powerful country in the world.
Then again, it isn't the first time that we supported a rebel group in the Middle East, and end up getting bit in the ass for it.
That too. Dare I say, that if Reagan were never elected, 9/11 would have never been able to happen?
At 8/23/11 12:51 AM, Twone wrote: Jedi
protip: that was based on budism
