Quote:
Originally Posted by baddog
I am not even going to bother arguing with you since "we" is rather vague, but even if we were to associate every civilian death with US military actions it is not shit compared to 36,000+ killed by their own government in 2 years. Multiple it by 5 and you have more than 180,000 in 10 years . . . KILLED BY THEIR OWN GOVERNMENT.
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Yes, I agree that "we" is too vague, and I certainly didn't vote for or approve any of that, and I doubt you did either. You don't strike me as a pro-war type.
I'll also agree that being killed by your own government is worse than being killed by the US government, but at the end of the day, dead is dead. Whatever flag the person who killed you salutes is no longer relevant when you're in the dirt. All of it is meaningless.
Pol Pot killed 1/3 of the Cambodian population (a few million) in the 70s within a couple of years and no one did anything about it. Lord knows how many have died in Africa. All of this stuff is just heart breaking, but where do you draw the line? At what point is it OK to help and at what point does it become just another US invasion? My gut says we should not get involved in the Middle East, but if you look at other times where we didn't and millions of people died, you could also say that blood is on the world's hands as well. And who pays for it all? Iraq and Afghanistan both were supposed to be fairy quick wars and none of it worked out the way they thought it would. There is nothing to guarantee Syria wouldn't be the same, and I seriously doubt the US can afford another war.
Tricky situation. However, I don't think anything is going to settle the Middle East other than iron fist dictators. As shitty as that is to say, that seems to be the only thing that works. They're not ready for democracy yet. Cutting off heads, stoning people in some areas, some of them are truly barbaric. So you help them only to have it backfire on your later like it did with Afghanistan and Osama. It's one of those can't win from losing situations.
Of course there is the other thought of, don't take arms against your government unless you're willing to pay the price. After all, this is an uprising from the people against the government. How can the USA support that? The same US officials supporting those rebels would not support Americans taking arms against their government. And then of courser, the rebels could stop fighting, but they fight on and on. I can understand why the White House is uneasy about this, as it's just too complex to run in guns blazing.