Because we can't leave those problems alone.

United States is no long independent. We used to be in isolation during WWI/WWII and many went against engagement in the Wars, but since then, United States is no longer self-sufficient.

Since the two WW, US has become one of the world's largest debtors. We now depend on globalization to keep our economy stabilized, therefore, the world's problem is our problem.

Aiya, why does the world's problem have to be ours? Why not, instead of killing fully grown people, we spend some money to help the homeless. Put our money to a better use? We depend on others for others to live, yet we are "independent"?

Umm, we do have welfare and there are many organizations that helps the homeless. If you care about them, then why not devote yourself to that cause, I know I do. I don't expect the governement to do everything.

What's your definition of better use? I say that keep Americans safe from Terrorist groups and putting prevention measures agaisnt them are pretty darn good uses.

First, we should take care of all the knots in our society. All those innocent jailers, everything. Then, we kill terrorists.

haha okay..
first of all.. we are NOT and i repeat NOT in iraq to "help" ive said this before and i'll say it again.. were in there for oil.. if america cared sooo much and really wanted to help the world there are SO many other places in this world that could use our help WAY more than iraq. but do u want to know why were in iraq? because they have something we want.. oil. geez.. bush used september 11 to his advantage to get into iraq. ... he was going to go in there anyway and 9/11 gave him a reason.. man oh man. sometimes this country disgusts me.

innocent jailers? sorry i'm confused...

but i like your way of thinking about those terrorists .

name some of those places that we can help out, and i'll tell you whether or not we've tried.

it's no phenomenon that US is looking out for its own best interest, is there for their own best interest. That's why NATO is nervous about US involvement and that's also why France is angry at the US.

okay, so maybe that much oil in one place is really turning on our greed demons. but i'm sure i'll not be the only one freaking out if i wake up one day to find the price of oil has sky-rocketed.

And it disgusts me when people only look at the bad side of government.

haha.. alright.. *sigh* .. here we go again..

okay like any country in africa! ..

if we dont want high gas prices then we can look for alternate ways to run cars.. like hydrogen etc.. if we stopped using all of our money in iraq maybe we could use that money to put in research for alternate ways..

im not only looking at the bad side of our government.. i mean yes in this situation of the war in iraq yes.. of course i am because i disagree COMPLETELY with it.. but in other ways i think our goverment is great..

Funny that you mentioned Africa, because that's one of the most obvious places that US have helped. It makes me wonder if you keep up with the news much.

Well, off of my head, there are American programs in Africa to help contain AIDS and to provide for those in poverty. A friend, who's studying med, is getting sponsor to go to Africa for her internship to help in those organizations.

Have you ever heard of the American Red Cross? Do you know about their extensive involvement in Africa?

Yea, I realize that usually private charity organizations are the ones to help out, but do you realize that if we do not have a democratic government, none of that would be possible? If our government is so bad, then it wouldn't consider lending a helping hand at all.




Sure, we can do all that, and ignore the immenent danger of terrorism.




oh, okay, sorry i misunderstood you there for a moment.

Adding to what Aiya (that's your name, right?) said...Okay, so you think we're just in there to get oil, huh? Catching Saddam Hussein wasn't helping our country? Extracting all of that dictator's power from that country isn't helping? If that's not helping, I don't know what is.

okay, let's admit it

level of importance from an individual person's point of view:

family and close relatives>friends/distant relatives>friends' friends etc.>people from your own country.... and so on. Starving people in Africa and wounded innocent civilians in Iraq are pretty low down on this list.

Most of us are too busy worrying about the people around us and couldn't care less about people that we don't know about. That's just human nature and I'm not saying there's anything wrong about it because sometimes that's the way I feel. I mean, we could sit on our asses in front of a computer and argue about the morals of having or not having a war all day in this forum, but how many of us are actually going to do anything about it? If someone did, what are the chances of him/her making any difference?

Well, if I could, I would vote, and that would be doing something about it. Or, last year in school, we helped troops out by sending care packages to them. Schools everywhere are helping out our troops, and is that not doing something about it? Being active in your community, actually speaking up to things about this is doing something about it. What do you mean? Every person makes a difference!

we started it why?

Umm...to defend our country from Saddam...for one...

Iraq didn't pose a tactical threat to the US. it was mostly to Israel

wow. this animation was so incorrect! It was wrong from the beginning! it said the first nuclear war was fought in 1991. is the author forgetting hiroshima and nagasaki?

depleted uranium is made from the used control rods in nuclear power plants. it is much less radioactive than normal uranium. it is used in munitions because it is very dense, so it can pierce through enemy armor. they emit alpha particles, which are very weak and do not travel very far. clothing can stop the beta particles and the number gamma particles emitted is too low to cause real harm. ONLY IF THE DEPLETED URANIUM IS INGESTED IT WILL HARMFUL. the reason it is ingested is because of Iraq's poor water grid. if saddam was not such a ruthless dictator, he would have focused on domestic problems instead of invading Kuwait. let's not forget he used weapons of mass destruction on iraqi citizens. that could be a reason for the deformities. As for Kosovo, what did George Bush have to do with that?

Clearing up the myths of Depleted Uranium
http://www.ntanet.net/traprock.html
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/faq_17apr.htm

Saddam did not let the inspectors in Iraq initially. The question is not whether or not there are WMD's. It's where are the wmds. there was proof of wmds in Iraq. the wmd's could even be in Syria or sold on the black market.

YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO CALL ME BLIND.

[edit] You refer to us as kids, but you are younger than me. i also didn't notice that you gave up because you are too stubborn to accept the fact that you may be wrong and even if there is a lot of proof against what you say, you irrationally hold on to your views. it's a shame you'll probably never read this post, you could have learned a lot from it.

that was before we realized that sadam had connections with terrorist groups.

"Dictators" cause a threat to everyone, everywhere

so should we get rid of Bush as well? lol. just joking

i support it

well this was a nice little debate here, but I think we've reached the end of this stalemate.

It's nice to see people voice their opinions and oppositions...whether or not I personally agree with them is not the point. The fact that we can even voice our opinions openly like this without worry of someone stepping in and stoning us for our views, is a wonderful asset of being "free"...just remember that.

One thing...
x0xcrzybabyx0x
I might suggest you don't go by everything you hear or have been told, but do some research and form your own opinions. You refer to us as kids, but I am triple your age. Don't be disrespectful just because others simply don't agree with you...it's not a flattering quality and it truly shows your age. I will say though with as young as you are, it's nice to see you're not afraid to get involved politically.

well reading and watching the recent news, the war in iraq seems to be quickly becoming a recurrence of the war in vietnam.

so what justifies having this war now?

not really. what justifies this war is that we got the dictator out, we're looking for wmd's and we're trying to transfer power to the iraqi governing council. that's why we're still there.

yea, but i hope you understand that it sort of defeats the purpose of US soldiers being there if they're having fun beating and urinating on captured Iraqi soldiers. No one deserves to be humiliated in that kind of way

i dont support it...and i think america SERI0USLY needs to mind their own business....ESPECIALLY about the whole north korea nuke thing....and the war too of course......

even my teachers say americans need to stay out of other country's affairs...

we learned that we can't ignore international events during WWII when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. North Korea claims they have missles that can hit the US? doesn't that deserve some concern? Who are your teachers to say that the US should stay out of international affairs?

oh yea, this is pretty random, but did you know that Winston Churchill knew about the plans of the Pearl Harbour incident but didn't tell the Americans about it because he thought it was the only way that the Americans would be persuaded into the war?

I'm not against America getting involved with international affairs, but are the failures like the Vietnam War and the Gulf War really worth it? They really better get this abuse of captured Iraqi soldiers thing sorted before this campaign ends in a failure as well

well america bombed japan, and did lots of other crap to other nations.....they dont get in yalls bussiness do they? and north korea has missiles for defense...
oh, and my teachers are ms. holloway and mr. jones....

but the US only bombed japan after japan launched their sneak attack on us. the US didn't just attack for no reason. the US was not the aggressor. and i don't think defense missles are supposed to be able to reach the us from all the way across from the pacific. your teachers should not be giving their opinions. they should be teaching facts.




The Gulf War was not a failure at all. I think that we could have won the Vietnam war if there were no protestors and draft dodgers.

The abuse of the Iraqi soldiers is terrible. That's why the abusers are being court martialled. The US does not approve of such treatment.

so what would have happened if the US had "won" the war in Vietnam? Got rid of communism? Great! - maybe except for the fact that communism died out eventually there anyway even if there was no war.

Draft dodgers during the Vietnam War- why were there clearly more black people being drafted than white people? Most of them are poor, so why not make use of them and use them in the war? If that's not racism, I don't know what is. If there were clearly more asian people being drafted and I was one of them, then I would have refused. Even if I was white, I would have still refused because there was no point in the war.

Now, it's the "War against terrorism" as they put it. In effect, it has the same meaning as "war against hatred". Terrorism is an abstract noun - you can't touch or feel it, it's just there. There're probably a lot of terrorist activities going on even within the United States - the guy standing next to you on the train could be a terrorist. I don't know how bombing Iraq is going to make any progress to destroy "terrorism", but they better be doing something because I'm sure people don't want to be paying all their taxes for just manufacturing the next bomb and feeding the government officials.

N. korea's missles are for defense?? LOL!!

The reason that many people find that the Gulf war was a failure is because we went in there and then LEFT!! We neglected them when they needed us, that is why the Iraqi's seriously have no trust with us anymore, because they felt that we abandoned them back then. We should have stuck around back then and there would have been no need to be there now, but since we didn't...there we are again.

Where did you get that information??

Umm, once more I think you have your facts twisted about Vietnam. Communism still exists and the majority of the Vietnamese who had to fled from their own homeland would like very much to have their home be rid of Communism.



PLEASE, NEVER again say that there was no point to the War. You suffered no losses to your family, but thousands, and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were affected. We wanted to freedom. THAT WAR MEANT SOMETHING, we fought for our future and it is a justifiable cause.




I DO NOT MIND paying my taxes for the cause. If you cared so much then strike or something.

the idea behind communism is a very good one. it's just that it will never work with humans because the majority of humans are selfish, deceitful and untrustworthy, including myself.

About Vietnam, I spent a whole year in history studying it, so it's not like I know nothing about it, although I know that sitting in a classroom is very different from having first or second hand experience. But I hope it gives me some qualification for arguing my point.

I understand that the war did have a point for the Vietnamese, because people were fighting for what they believed, but why did the Americans have to intervene? They thought that putting in a dummy right-wing Catholic dictator as leader of South Vietnam would cease the spread in communism. Actually, it just made things worse. The majority of Vietnamese being Buddhist, having this Catholic leader didn't please them. This lead to attacks from the Vietminh - which I guess the Americans would call "terrorists". The American army, not being used to guerilla warfare, got paranoid, bombing everywhere they could, using Agent Orange to strip the leaves of trees to make it easier to look for their enemy (more bombs were dropped in South Vietnam than North Vietnam, in fact). Chemical weapons were dropped everywhere and the consequences of them can still be seen today (apparently). The peak of their paranoia was probably illustrated by the My Lai massacre, where a whole town of innocent women and children were massacred. I'd be surprised if no one protested against these war crimes.

About people that don't like communism fleeing. Not everyone is going to be pleased by their own government. People that have strong right-wing beliefs are obviously not going to like a communist government. When Fidel Castro took over Cuba, a lot of right-wing people did flee (the majority being the rich, who didn't want their money taken away from them). Are people suffering in Cuba? They may not be the wealthiest of countries, but they have the best hospitals in the whole of central and south america and quite a stable education system. It may be common concept that communism is evil but I don't think one has to think more deeply about it to reach that conclusion.

Obviously I haven't spent much care on writing this, so there're a lot of leaks in the argument, possibly some faults in the facts, so this is still open to arguments.

NO ONE can tell you what REALLY went on in My Lai, even South Vietnamese soldiers have doubts and questioned where the fault truly lies. What you know of is only from propaganda from 'peace-lovers' at the expense of a Nation's freedom. You ask why America interfered? I don't know, but I can tell you that the South WANTED AMERICAN help.


I base my opinions about communism from having lived in a communistic society and having family members suffered from it. I don't know the case of Communism in Cuba, but I do know that Communism today is not in its pure form. Almost all communist regimes now adopt some socialist and even democratic characteristics because Communism in its purest form DOES NOT WORK.

alright, lets get back on topic. It's the War in Iraq we're talking about, not Vietnam.

*sigh...i guess there's no preventing it....but i don't like war at all.

One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one - Agatha Christie

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake - Jeannette Rankin

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children - Jimmy Carter

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy? - Mahatma Gandhi

Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed - Mao Tse-Tung

One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once 'The Unnecessary War' - Sir WInston Churchill

yes yes, all of those quotes are all nice and good, but how realistic?

I have one question for you: would you fight for your freedom, your children's freedom, and their children's freedom if it's being threatened?

I would.

I don't think I can make up a decision on that unless I was actually faced with it. I don't think this war in Iraq has much to do with freedom, so if it was this war, I would never fight in it. My children are probably a million times more likely to get killed in a road accident, drug abuse or homicide by a crazy man living in the neighbourhood than be killed by a terrorist attack. The type of question I would ask myself would be something like: "Would my children suffer more from losing their father to a war or from the fear that they might be involved in a terrorist attack?" I don't think it's as easy a decision that you've made it out to be.

did you guys know what they were doing to the iraqi soldiers. its wrong.

we aren't condoning those actions. those soldiers are being court martialled. that was just an isolated case.

Do you want to actually risk that? Having a mindset of, "Oh, I doubt my kids will get slaughtered by terrorists"? I wouldn't want to. If you have the choice to prevent possible terrorist attacks, would it not be best to try?

So you're just going to sit there and wait for another September 11th to happen, this time closer to home. Maybe it doesn't have to happen to your children, but maybe to your loved ones.



Then I guess it all comes down to point of view, because I feel that we're fighting for freedom, the freedom to live the American way of life. I felt that it was threaten by people who are only envious of what this country has become.



I agree, but that doesn't mean I won't be wary of other threats as well.




Pfft, if their father is fighting for what he believes in, then he has honor. He knows the risks, but he's still fighting for his country and for his family. That's the making of a hero. I'd be proud to have a father like that.

Yea, actually, I'll be fine sitting my ass here in front of my computer. If you feel so strongly about it, why don't you get your ass of your computer seat and go do some volunteer work for the army or something? I won't be convinced by your argument until you do so, because at the moment, it doesn't seem to me that you're doing any more for your country than I am.

*scratches head*, I think I told you to do the same thing a couple of posts ago.

But I'm not the one who needs to go protest because the war is continuing, and I'm in favor of it. I think you got it the other way around, because you're the one who's anti-war, shouldn't you be protesting?

Sorry if I've misled all of you. As a matter of fact, I'm a very right-wing person and I'm in favour of the war. All the publicity and money being made from it is just great. I'll never go to war myself, but still, I'm proud of the people that are there and I hope they kick some Iraqi ass.

I was just having fun trying to argue against most of you that seemed to be pro-war. Can I continue my anti-war arguments?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
okay, continuation:

I don't go protesting because I think protesting is just as useless as the war itself.

You said before that you'll be proud of a dad who fights for what he believes, but I'll rather have a dad who's bringing in stable income to the family than a dead one who went out to fight somewhere thousands of miles away

Ah, I see, how fun it is to try to argue the other way... what a challenge!

But protesting was a potent strategy used by Ghandi and MLK. It's not as useless as you may think.



Like I said, it does depends on point of view because when you look at the Bigger picture, a father can't really bring home a stable income if his home is being threatened by bombs and planes crashing into it, right?

These are my feelings about the war...

We were going to go to war NO MATTER WHAT. DOi agree with it no, but it was going to happen. Do i agree with the so-called reason, no because this is what i believe: Bush wants to finish what his father started, have control of the oil feilds, and remove Suddam from power. He is not doing this to free the Iraqi people, he don't give crap about what is happening to them. But let me clarify, it is not JUST Bush, it is his cabinent including his advisors and our representatives, that we vote into office who have voted ofr the war. We need to pull out right now. There have been so many casualities since the so-called major combat has ended a year ago on both sides. Most of the people dying have nothing to do with the war, in the aspect of being rebels and what not. These are civilians we are killing, and they are killing our soldiers. The thing is we need to get out now. Bush said he wanted to take Suddam and he did, he nows says he wants to set up a democratic government. That ain't gonna happen. The thing is it comes down to how dare we tell them what to do with there country and fight thenm for power over THEIR country. If these people will remember when we wanted independence from Great Britain, we said they had no authority over us and we should be free. It seems as though we are now "Great Britain" and they are "America".
That is just half of my opinion. About protesting, what in the world do protestors of the war really think that Bush will all of a sudden call a cease fire and pull out because of protestors over here?!?! We have too much freedom in America cuz if this was Nigeria there would be no talk of protesting in the streets, your behind would be shot before you stepped onto the street

I think it's more likely that his work place or transport to the work place is going to get bombed, so I guess the threat is more on the Dad than his family.