I'm so sick of our world leaders...

[KwikR6]

That's what I have to say...it's absolutly disgusts me on how they act...they act like children..no wait they don't act like children. Children are smarter then they are...at least with children a black, white, asian, pakistan whatever colored baby could all sit around and play together and not worry about anything. I mean we could learn a lot from children. I wish that things would and could just be normal. I think its stupid that we have 1 guy sitting in an office commanding millions of people and risking the lives of his country and the whole world. I just don't get that's all. I mean I fight yeah. Fist fight...but I would never bring a weapon into the equation. I think that's for sissys. with the push of one button we could all be gone. All our lives lost. FOR WHAT? Give me one good reason why to risk your life, your mother and fathers life, a brother a sister, my life. I mean it's absolutly ridiclious. I try to take everyday and live everyday to the fullest....but it's getting hard to care anymore when all you hear is WAR WAR WAR!!! My questions is Why WHY WHY? I say all the leaders get together punch each other a few times...kick eachother a few times...call it a day...and get along for once. I'm sick of being depressed and saddened by all this war and death.

[TonitrusEN]

Did you notice the 3 most powerful men in the US are Dick, Bush, and Colon?

[Addict]

I understand what you are saying. But you have to realize that all the 'new Hitlers' are not completely stable. In a utopia things would be perfect. Unfortunately we have to deal with people like Sadaam & Osama. People that are jealous of what the US & other free countries have. Its not like any of this was handed to us. Remember we had several wars to obtain & maintain the freedoms we have today.

Unfortunately, they'll never see our side of the story. I'm not saying the US is perfect. We're far from it. But damned if we aren't one of the most caring countries in the world too. Think of all the money we've given to other countries & how we've helped. Russia, Kuwait, etc. Hell we're so far in debt its not funny. But somehow we manage to help other countries.

Originally posted by TonitrusEN
Did you notice the 3 most powerful men in the US are Dick, Bush, and Colon?

LoL~! I never thouhgt about that!!!

Originally posted by Civic_Addict
Unfortunately, they'll never see our side of the story. I'm not saying the US is perfect. We're far from it. But damned if we aren't one of the most caring countries in the world too. Think of all the money we've given to other countries & how we've helped. Russia, Kuwait, etc. Hell we're so far in debt its not funny. But somehow we manage to help other countries.

We'll never see their side of the story either. The US isn't the innocent "good" in the latest "Good vs. Evil" standoff that Napoleon Bushopart is trying to portray. The US trained Osama and gave him money to fight the Soviets....and now we're fighting him. The US trained Noriega....anybody remember what we did to him? We have a long history of this kind of action....and now who's our buddy? Pakistan? We'll see how that pans out in the future.

If you take a step back from patriotism and the US media and look at things from someone else's perspective, the US can look extremely bad. In many ways we're the big bully on the block, we get away with so much just because we're so powerful. With power comes responsibility, and not everyone who's wielded the ax of the US government has used it with responsibility. We are one of (if not the most) highest polluting countries in the world, yet we don't sign Kyoto. We pride ourselves on justice and war crime tribunals, yet we will not subject ourselves to the same justice system that we expect other countries to follow. We don't think abortion is right (or at least Bush doesn't) so we don't donate money to the UN family planning. We think Castro is evil so we embargo his country.

While these are just a few examples of bad things, there are many more. Of course when you really dig down into the subject you will find that the headlines (similar to what I wrote above) don't tell the whole story. They never do. So maybe we're not as bad as the above paragraph makes us sound. Keeping that principle in mind, though, take a look at the supposedly good things that we do. The US does donate lots of aid to other countries, but aid is a very powerful political weapon. We don't just blindly offer aid to countries. Aid comes with all sorts of restrictions and other policies that must be adopted. Rejecting aid to the UN family planning deal is a prime example of it.

World politics are much more complicated than any average person really understands. There is so much that we don't actually hear that goes on. Our media is often very misleading with their stories, but foreign media is just as misleading. Each side tries to present the story to make themselves sound better. Just watch some European news on top of your CNN watching and see how differently the stories are reported.

The terrorist acts that have struck our country happened for a reason. I'm not arguing that they were justified, but the people who committed them certainly felt justified. While not justified, they still happened for a reason. Americans keep asking why and the answers point to hate and jealousy....but nobody takes a step back to analyze why they hate us because Americans can't get over the "but we're good" attitude and see the bad things the country has done. Americans also don't understand the whole concept of sacrificing their own lives for glory to be a hero. It confused us in WWII with the Kamikazes and confuses us again with suicide bombers and the likes.

Has anybody on here heard of the term "Ugly American"? Lots of Americans haven't, much less read the book.....I suggest everybody read it. It gives a little insight to how sugar coated things are sweet when you just take a small taste, but bite into the center and it could be pretty sour.

And please, please don't blast me as a terrorist. I'm far from it. I'd like to see a peaceful solution to this more than anybody else. I just feel that the US government has taken a huge step backwards from peace recently and acted with too much passion and not enough logic. One thing we've certainly done a good job of in this war on terrorism is to create more terrorists......unfortunately there will be more attacks for a long time to come.

b

[ebpda9]

i have to agree with spoogenet

[DsBlu01CivEX]

I won't rant or at least try not to....but go to any country and their headlines and history books make their country sound all high and mighty and good, like they did nothing wrong. Ours are the same way. The thing is, there are too many differences culturally between all the countries, which is the main cause of world problems. Some people just don't know how to accept the fact that Country A wants to govern and live a particualr way...but Country B thinks this is bad....hence the ending result of war...which then the "winner" (however that is determined) typcially pushes their culture and beliefs on to the unwilling citizens of the other country. Which causes terrorist groups and what not. Basically causing a viscious cycle. Which yes does suck...but until people realize that there is "nothing wrong" with what other people believe and stop hurting those that are different from them, we'll continue to have this.

[94_AcCoRd_EX]

Great post spoogenet.

[Violent Apathy]

But damned if we aren't one of the most caring countries in the world too.

Yeah, we help out other countries if it benefits us. I mean come on, in Bosnia we helped them out because we needed their slave labor to make out clothes. And after 9/11 remember all that anti-taliban propoganda that told us just how horrible and how oppressive the taliban regime was? If they were so horrible, why didn't we do something about it sooner?
And then there's the whole war on drugs. I mean come on, look at columbia. We can't go blowing stuff up in other people's countries cause people in our country have a ****ing problem, you have to treat the demand, cause you'll never be able to eliminate the supply. Adn look at Noriega. I mean we went into someone else's country and arrested their president.What would we do if someone came into the US and tried to arrest Bush with a reasonable reason?

[Addict]

You're right we help countries if we think we can benefit from it. Why else would we? Yes we funded the Taliban. Yes we armed them. Yes we trained them. Then they turn around and decide to go against us. They didn't have to fight the Soviets. We could have allowed them to die & have their country taken over by the communists. They chose to fight and we helped them. Now they turn around on us?

Anyhow, I hate politics. So I'm not going to argue/debate any of this. That & its Saturday and I need to do something more productive.

[blind34_1]

Civic_Addict, you reminded me of something:

You said we've had several wars to protect our freedom.
Isn't it interesting that, in response to these new wars we are fighting, we are actually losing freedoms? Everyone is a terrorist now...

I think, This war isn't about freedom. Ultimatly, everyone wants freedom, regardless of race, religion, whatever. I think this one was a stab at globalization and all this new crap designed to make the rich richer.

I don't know...I'm sure I've got a point here somewhere, its just not clear to me yet.

[Addict]

Originally posted by blind34_1
Civic_Addict, you reminded me of something:

You said we've had several wars to protect our freedom.
Isn't it interesting that, in response to these new wars we are fighting, we are actually losing freedoms? Everyone is a terrorist now...

I think, This war isn't about freedom. Ultimatly, everyone wants freedom, regardless of race, religion, whatever. I think this one was a stab at globalization and all this new crap designed to make the rich richer.

I don't know...I'm sure I've got a point here somewhere, its just not clear to me yet.

Yes, we are losing freedoms. But really I see no problems with what's happened so far. Hell they should've been this strict before 9/11. Our country was too busy sitting on our 'high & mighty' post.

We're fighting mid-east wars for 2 reasons. 1 - We need all that oil because we have all these fuggin conservationists that don't understand what fossil fuels mean to our economy & 2 - We failed to "neutralize" Sadaam the first time. Likewise with Osama.

Back in the Iran-Iraq war....we provided military intelligence to, guess who, Saddam Hussein. Guess we hoped he'd stop helping international terrorist groups if we helped him win the war with Iran. I think many of us know what has happened since then. And the term for what has happened to us so many times....blowback. Stick your nose in others business and you'll eventually get slapped or punched. Americans have taken the "it won't happen to me" approach for many years. It is now catching up to us.

I would hardly say conservationists don't realize the importance of oil to our economy. In fact, a mainstay of the conservationist stance is the importance of oil to our economy, and that's why they are trying to change the economy to be less reliant upon oil (AFVs, alternative power, etc).

But you forgot about reason #3....our economy is down. Nothing like a war to pull up the economy.

b

[Addict]

Originally posted by spoogenet
I would hardly say conservationists don't realize the importance of oil to our economy. In fact, a mainstay of the conservationist stance is the importance of oil to our economy, and that's why they are trying to change the economy to be less reliant upon oil (AFVs, alternative power, etc).

But you forgot about reason #3....our economy is down. Nothing like a war to pull up the economy.

b

Its not likely to change our economy to be less reliant on oil. There are some minor things that can be done. But converting to natural gas, bio-diesel, etc are very costly. That's the biggest drawback for people. That & the fact their is no standard for any of these alternates.

[Violent Apathy]

I think, This war isn't about freedom. Ultimatly, everyone wants freedom, regardless of race, religion, whatever. I think this one was a stab at globalization and all this new crap designed to make the rich richer

They weren't going after freedom. They hit the world trade center to strike at the heart of capitilsm.

i wonder how many people in that building the day it happened were rich...im sure some but most of the people were making average wages...and alot of charities were based out of the wtc. f**cking savages

Originally posted by Civic_Addict

Its not likely to change our economy to be less reliant on oil. There are some minor things that can be done. But converting to natural gas, bio-diesel, etc are very costly. That's the biggest drawback for people. That & the fact their is no standard for any of these alternates.

There's not standard for a lot of things, that's why the US has such a patchwork of things. Just look at the wireless industry and computer industry....anyhow, that's an unfortunate drawback of a competitive market. Can't say I like it....but life goes on.

No one thing is likely to change our economy to be less reliant on oil. There are some major things that can be done as well as some minor one. A change such as that takes many years to accomplish and it does come at a price. It will be necessary sometime in the future anyways. Fortunately many companies have begun to invest a good amount of money into research on a more practical level rather than purely theoretical so that the changes will be smoother when the time is right. The changes have already begun and are taking place very slowly. Nothing major will happen until a variety of things line up. Heck, look at CA and their attempt at setting mandates for AFV and EV sales and how poorly that has gone over.

On the other discussion, they hit the two things America is best known for: capitalism and democracy. Unfortunately we really live in a capitalist democracy where money buys power, but that's a different discussion altogether.

b