Well with conscription there would not be much choice.Even without plenty a draft of people from different walks of life enlist voluntarily in the military and I can assure you that there are booth hipsters and former gang members in the military right now along with rednecks,surfers,dweebs,nerds,hunters and what ever else you can think of.To judge a person on the style they choose as teenager is a silly way to judge their actual potential.


Also not to knock you but you have no idea how you will actually react in a combat situation until you really face one.You may think you'll handle it fine but until you are really there you cant know.

I am not really sure what you mean by "real" war either.I see people say this and it really irks me.Trust me if you where in a front line unit in Afghanistan you most certainly would not be saying that.If very high casualties is a hallmark of a "real" war then WWII would not be a real war either because most nations experienced less casualties in WWI than during WWII.

Technology changes how wars are fought technology also means that medical science can improve survival rates drastically which means a reduction in casualties.

To be honest I doubt that a conventional war on the scale of WWII is likely to occur again the economic costs are so high that a losing nation(any of the nations truly capable of a global war) would simply use their nuclear weapons to "level the playing field" assuming that they just did make their opening move.

Another thing to consider during WWII every nation had very strict regulations in place in regards to what was made public.Sure people knew a little of what was happening but it was strictly controlled even in the US even with all of that people where tiring of the war by 1945.Hell one of the first times they showed publicly what happened at Tarawa in November 1943 many people where upset by that which was pretty much the first time that the entire nation learned the full details of a battle.The full extent of the loses and damage done at Pearl Harbor was not made public during the war and even what was known drove much of the west coast into a panicked state for a few weeks.

What does oil have to do with this? Troops didn't go to Afghanistan for oil, they went because a bunch of crazies killed thousands of Americans. Oil had nothing to do with it. The whole purpose of going there was to kill Osama Bin Laden and train the Afghan military.

And I'm not sure that leaving is the right choice. I doubt that the Afghan military will be able to effectively fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban. And if Al Qaeda establishes an even stronger power base in Afghanistan, they might launch even more attacks on the US. Time will tell.

Well, actually troops went for the same reason troops go anywhere, because they were told to, and they were told to go Afghanistan for a multitude of reasons, only a handful of which have actually been accomplished. Certainly though, if access to cheap oil was the chief war goal of Iraq and Afghanistan, they really went about it the wrong way, after all blowing up the Middle East doesn't usually drive oil prices down...but some people would have you believe that that is why it happened in the first place. However, that is, again, a whole can of worms for another topic (the conspiracy bin perhaps).

To be perfectly honest though, the invasion of Afghanistan was an emotional reflex, America got punched in the face and it needed to punch back just as hard, drone and airstrikes would not do, it would have to be a big show of force, 'shock and awe' as I believe the phrase of the time was. It needed to be shown to the world that you don't mess with America, sate the bloodlust of the people. I think there would have been a massive outcry in America if Afghanistan wasn't invaded to be honest.
Was it the right idea to put boots on the ground? Well, it would have been harder to track and destroy all Taliban forces without it, admittedly, you can only see so much from the air, and back in 2001 drone warfare was only just coming online. So if you wanted to destroy the Taliban for refusing to give up Osama (although to be honest I doubt even they knew where he was) then you'd need to get down and dirty to do it.

It was a no-win situation really, no matter what Bush did he would still lose. If he didn't invade and decided to hunt Osama down using the US Special forces and intelligence networks then he would get absolutely lambasted by the US public and media for not reacting in a strong manner to 9/11. If he just ordered airstrikes on Afghanistan then he would get lambasted for not doing enough (after all, airstrikes were what Iraq was getting from time to time and they hadn't killed 3000 US citizens) and if he invaded Afghanistan then he would get caught in the same quagmire that ensnared the British and Soviets before them.

Iraq on the other hand... :nope:

That is true... With a draft, it won't matter....but I don't think Congress has the balls to do that again.

:yep: Never said they'd be bad fighters.

I define a real war as one where we fight a clear enemy and reason to be there.

World War Two was one such war. World War One...eh...maybe. Vietnam started as a fight against communism....but ended up like Iraq and Afghanistan. The last few we've been in don't seem too helpful.

I don't like the idea of an all drone military.

Our media now is terrible. They'd just criticize whatever we do no matter how morally right or wrong it is.

There are a lot of people that say all the fighting in the mideast is raising oil prices.

I, personally, believe that this is a sad excuse by the oil companies to get an extra dollar from us.

Leaving Afghanistan would leave the Afghans by themselves, yes....but the country has been there thousands of years and all they have ever done is fight. You can't expect them just to give it up for Democracy in a period of 10 years.

If we were going to stay, we might as well Annex the place. We've been there so long...

I just don't think we're doing much good anymore.

Lot of people give Bush a bad rep for this....I don't.

I'd like to see those other people make that decision and then face the nation.

Iraq was stupid. We should've finished that in 1991. Like Korea, we should've finished them in 53.

----

Maybe all the world leaders need to get together and play Hearts of Iron. :rotfl2:

Well we have not faced a situation since Vietnam that required a draft.If the need for bodies was high enough they would re-instate the draft.


Yes you did read the second sentence in post #8.If you do not trust them to defend you and they are in the context of your statement in the military helping defend then you are saying that they would be bad fighters or that they would be inept in some other way that would make you not trust them.

Where it is effective to do so I have no problem with drones doing things where they can fulfill a role especially a hazardous role that otherwise means putting someone at risk.

Which is why during WWII the government exercised strict control they have done it before if they ever felt the need they will do it again.

The reason the cost of oil has gone up is because the demand over the past roughly 20 years has risen sharply.25 years ago only the upper class in China drove a car today nearly every middle class Chinese family has a car same goes for India.On top of this the demand for oil in developed nations remains high.

38% of oil sold in the US comes from the US and we import more oil from Latin America and Canada than we do from Saudi Arabia and Canada is the number one importer of crude oil to the US.That being said the oil market is tied together which is why the prices are higher.

Food for thought the reason Italy invaded North Africa during WWII was to gain control of the vast oil reserves. Of course they sucked and the Germans came and helped but the goal all along was to get to Egypt and then the middle east.Germany invaded the Soviet Union for its resources especially its vast oil reserves.The allied nations where defending these resources from the Axis.

Japan invaded China for its resources and they invaded the Dutch East Indies for the oil reserves there.That oil was so well refined naturally that it could be loaded right onto tankers at some points and was ready for use.

My point? Even what you define as a real or just war in the end was fought over resources.That still means that your nation looses even if it seems as if you are fighting for nothing because they still take your land your home your means to have an effective economy.Even before we developed complex civilizations we defended our resources and if need be took the land of weaker group and their resources.

I totally agree with the rest of the stuff you wrote in your post, but I think the WOT has definitely touched America. I may be sensitive to it because of my origin. In Germany, we had the Red Army Fraction fighting against the alleged fascist state. Their target was not a military victory (hard to achieve with some dozend folks), but to show that Germany is the 4th Reich, by making the state act fascist - to rip off it's democratic mask, so to speak. And indeed, the state's counter-measures, turned many into thinking the RAF's view of the country wasn't so wrong. Those measures created a climate of distrust and fear and were the fuel of the RAF's and their sympathizer's recruitment drive.

I think with the dreadful Patriot act (a very smart acronym: If you're against it, you hate America :rolleyes:) and all the rat tails it includes, the US has become a different country. With the erosion of civil liberties, the surveillance of the general population, I see a shift of the US government's philosophy towards it's own population. Not so much by and for its people anymore, more of "we don't trust our citizens", putting them under general suspicion. The good ole presumption of innocence, became more of a "We better check out all the time if you're really innocent!"

unfunny anecdote: The instruments and extended powers which the German state gave its agencies, were never taken back or revised.

Relevant quote I just read some days ago:
(can't cite the source because of forum rules ;))

Well put for a German anyway:03:.

Seriously though that is how most Americans fell about it.Law enforcement especially has much more power now than it did before.

The thing that always kind of gets me is how they every so often catch some screw up that going to do something of course such a person is still dangerous.Still though in many cases they tracked the guy and then even had him fooled enough to think that they where helping him then they bust him and have their little press conference.

And the tone is "see it is still dangerous so watch your neighbor stick your fat nose in his business... America if you disagree you must be up to something!!" and it also is an attempt to show that they "can" catch people yeah people that are dumber than a box of rocks and never actually received any real help.

Good points, I guess I'm a bit blasé about the increase in security measures because we've had our security measures slowly ramped up since the end of WWII, bomb scares and arrests were a fairly common thing in London. If anything though it's actually gotten quieter since the War on Terror began, certainly there are much fewer bomb scares on the underground than I remember. When the whole NSA thing broke, I think Britain collectively looked at the rest of the world and thought "You mean you didn't think they were doing that anyway?" I've just sort of always assumed that my online activity was being monitored, it's not really something in my power to change.

But, I do understand what you mean, there's definitely been a change in atmosphere which has helped lead to the polarisation of America, which has been reflected in the politics of recent years. However I meant more physical attacks than psychological...but then, the latter can often be more damaging than the former.

This...is what I said exactly

"With the way we are, I'm not sure if I want hipsters and gangsters defending me. That's saying they would go."

Didn't say they would be bad. I'm just not keen on the idea.

They're already doing it. It's called MSNBC and CBS. :har:


Which is why we should just get oil from Latin America and Canada. Plus, we should drill more on our own land.

Makes sense.

Until you're the weaker land... :03:

So then you are saying that you dislike the idea certain people defending you or a nation because you are not keen on the idea even though they can do the job as well as anyone else?:hmmm:

Since this nation has been forming military forces people from various backgrounds have performed just fine together why this would suddenly change today is beyond me.

Take a WWII US Navy submarine crew that was 65 to 75 men from various backgrounds you can be sure that there where crew members that that where not keen of another crew members style of tastes but they still worked together because when your life really depends on working together the petty crap takes a back seat.





The two Latin American suppliers are Mexico and Venezuela by the way.

I don't want to argue about it. I'm done. You win.

It's not that I think they couldn't do it. I just don't want that lifestyle to spread because it annoys me to no end.


:yep:

I got evacuated in a Tube station in the early 90s, during an alleged IRA bomb warning. I was really astonished how calm the people behaved, stiff upper lip indeed - the police and Tube staff were also extremely professional in defusing this potential panic situation. As a dumb foreign tourist on his own and not used to this situation, the calmness was quite 'contagious' to me. This is why I have problems imaging how your society would react more hysterical today. My experience was long before 7/7, but you folks had unfortunately enough experience with those situations from the decades before. I found the "We are not afraid" campaign after 7/7 very inspiring, by showing the finger to the attackers: you might blow up some of us, but you will never win. That's the spirit :up:

In comparison to Britain, in Germany we have a little less experience with terror attacks on civilians, but I think we are still more used to it than the folks in the US. However the seed of hysteria and scare sadly also germinated here, with too many people willing to sacrifice liberty to fight the war on terror. I fear the day of the first successfull bombing by islamists in Germany. Our hawks have the contingeny plans in their drawers, and knowing the Germans, I fear we will give them free reign. Unlike for example the Norwegians, who said if you attack our democracy, we will answer with even more democracy:http://americablog.com/2011/07/norwa...democracy.html

Your physical vs psychological attack is a good wording. I don't think terrorists can win by blowing up some 1000 people, but I am afraid that they win by managing to change some fundamental principles of our respective societes.

Well know you now how Liberals feel about Conservatives :up:

OK so you really really dislike hipsters fine by me.:sunny: