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[Nilocy]

de5me7, I'm scottish and I don't care about what the Americans think about Scotland. What I do care about is Americans thinking wrongly.

[LegoLord]

as far as encouraging terrorism goes i think this will discourage it. Anti western terrorism is built on the premise that we are an evil empire. Compasion undermines this view.

Exactly.  This is one of the things I dislike about my country (U.S.):  our people seem to think the opposite of this; they think the way to deal with criminals and terrorists, who are normally criminals and terrorists because they have been put into a difficult life, is to make things even worse for them.  This makes them look like heroes.  The real thing to do is to rehabilitate.  For criminals, we do this in some cases, but nowhere near as often as we should.

[Jude]

The real thing to do is to rehabilitate.

Well, the real thing to do is to stop fostering the conditions that turn people into terrorists, but since our entire way of SUV-driving, consumption-centered life depends on that....fat chance.

[Killas[SiN]]

No offense to Americans, but they, like so many other superpowers throughout history, have turned to decadence and self-indulence, at the wanton cost of various other things: the environment and possible allies in the Middle East.

[Sensei]

No offense to Americans, but they, like so many other superpowers throughout history, have turned to decadence and self-indulence, at the wanton cost of various other things: the environment and possible allies in the Middle East.

I'm sorry, I can't help but read that off as 'Decadent immoral western scum!'

Speaking of the middle east, didn't they say they hated Britain more now for some reason?

[Killas[SiN]]

Speaking of the middle east, didn't they say they hated Britain more now for some reason?

Huh? Oh, they have pretty much always hated Britain loads. Probably due to the fact that they were cheated out of independence because they were placed under the British Mandate after World War I, when Britain had explictly promised them that they would get an indepent country. Oh yeah, and probably also because they did not stop Jewish immigration to Palestine, which eventually led to the creation of Israel, which leads to all the crap we see in the Middle East today.

I suppose they do have a reason...

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[Nilocy]

Weirdly enough, its Afganistan that likes us the most. The troops we have there are acctually on a proper nation building mission thats suppoesed to last for another few decades.

[Aqizzar]

Well, the standing government likes us most, since we're basically the only reason it exists from day to day.  That and all the drug money supplied by Hamid Karzai's brother.  Naturally, this being the year of the most deaths since the Army went to Afghanistan, all of eight years since the original point, and the Taliban is not only still around but growing and Osama bin Laden is still kicking around in northern Pakistan, it's now coming up in serious discussion in the Pentagon that it might be time to just declare victory (or even not) and just leave Afghanistan to it's own devices again.

There's nothing particularly shameful about giving up on the place.  Afghanistan is where armies go to die.  It's been an ungovernable, resource devouring, emissary crushing, outsider hating wasteland for five thousand years, and America of all powers isn't going to be the one to change that.

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[Aqizzar]

...I don't even know where to begin with that one.  Rather than try to chase it down the rabbit hole of utter uninformation, I'll just say that, 1) even saturation nuclear bombing would have essentially no effect on a place like Afghanistan, and 2) that sort of "blow it up until it's not a problem anymore" flippancy is exactly what's giving hyper-reactionaries like Nilocy ammunition to go on thinking America is composed entirely of Rush Limbaugh clones.

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

And... nuking Afghanistan would make US a "World enemy #1".

UN would kick your ass. Terribly. Obama wouldn't risk it (he's no Bush(who hide in the Bushes ))

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[Boksi]

Perhaps because of humanitarian reasons? They could just leave Afghanistan alone, but would you want to live under Taliban rule? Or want anyone else to?

The U.S.A. is(are?) big and stupid but it's not inherently malignant.

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