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i know i'm going to get a lot of crap for this, most likely from Pyro and I.Am. And as a disclaimer, i would like to admit that this is a good country to live in, we have a lot of cooshy benefits.

but at what cost to others?

Take a good, long look at our history. not from our history books, mind you. from an objective vantage point, the way things happened, not the way they are sugarcoated or emphasized.

let's start at the revolution- This was a completely selfish and vain war fought over money. We were not trying to be free or our own people. in fact, we owed the king for everything- he sent supplies, kept us around, america was part of his kingdom. he owned us. Our seperation was like the proposed seperation of the south from the north in the civil war. We fought off our leaders and made our own country after the successful coup.

moving along, we enslaved black folks for being black, you know the drill.

next, the civil war. not about slaves. not about kittens. money, power, control. a split country is no good, power in numbers and all that. the idea was to keep the country together in order to have a more powerful country.

WWI- we jumped into this one when some of our buddies got dragged in when their buddies got dragged in. this one wasn't really that bad, since we didn't have firebombs at this point.

WWII- japan attacked pearl harbor during like, the last year of the actual war. we jumped in and acted like protectors, firebombing civilians all over the place.

we decicrated around 14 japanese cities with firebombs. we don't talk about those ones much, even though they killed more people than the nukes.

The nukes themselves were dropped specifically on a civilian target, NOT a military target. The pannel that decided on this course of action wanted to hurt the japanese people, badly. we wanted to scare them into surrender. we wanted to scare the other nations into surrender. we wanted to invoke fear. terrorism at it's prime, designed to kill as many as possible.

this is the japanese front, mind you, not to mention dresden and the other german cities we firebombed. we killed millions of civilians in this terror-spree.

next came the ******** that is the middle-east. More or less, we didn't like communists very much. we gave guns to the middle-easterners to fight them bad nasty baby-eating commies. this was all good, until we then started invading THEIR land and pushing them about, telling them where to go and what to do. This brings me to Ossama Bin Laden. This dude was the head defender of the middle east at the time, primarily plaestine, i believe. until we came in, of course. We decided we didn't like Ossama any more, so we pursuaded palestine to kick him out. Hence his pissed-off-ness at america.

basically, we were banging his chick and stealing his condoms to do it.

i'm going to ignore vietnam, because we all know how well that one failed.

soon enough comes 9/11. we lose 3000 people. 3000. that's it. not a city. not even a small town. two buildings.

what happens? we flip out. we cry and scream and kick. is this fair, considering OUR acts?

we have done the same thing thousands of times over. we deserve at least 50 9/11's for even a single bombing raid in japan. that would be EQUAL. we lose the tiniest fraction, and we have been wronged beyond repair. I am actually thinking of making a comic along those lines- we beat in Germany's knees with a baseball bat, take a dump on Japan's chest, kick Vietnam and Korea with cleats... then Osama comes along and pokes New York with a needle, and America cries.

some may see this as harsh or cruel, but i see OUR thoughts as harsh and cruel. i don't see the lives lost in japan as "japanese lives" nor the ones in korea as korean lives, nor ours american lives, they are all lives, they were all human, they all died just the same and lived just the same. The only thing that matters is the number of lives, since we are all people.

anyway, after this, we decide that afghanistan needs to die (disregarding the fact that it wasn't afghanistan at all, but an extremist group run by a man we wronged in the past)- we again firebombed more cities, killing more than died in the terrorist attack on our soil.

then we went for Iraq, because the general public is stupid and assumes all names that sound like that to be run by terroristic communists who hate small children and seals.


that's my take on America- i think we could stop being douches and stop screwing with everything, and especially stop killing civilians.

Precisely. If Saddam was so evil, if killing thousands of civilians is so wrong, why didn't we take him out years ago? What have we done for the millions of other civilians who suffered more than the people in the WTC? Where's the outrage and the ridiculous military budget? Neo-Nazis are more of a danger to the American people than terrorists--why don't we stigmatise them? Why don't we hunt down and detain them?

Dresden hurt my family and my people a lot, but compared to what the German government did to the rest of Europe I don't really have much to complain about. I mourn the loss of the people, the culture, the art, the architecture, and the overall peaceful city lost. I mourn more the millions of Jewish, Gypsy, gay, communist, and dissenting civilians lost because of the rule of a megalomaniac. As for Japan, I know nothing of the whole issue but I recognise that atomic warfare wasn't worth it.
I don't know anything about kicking out Osama, or other current events in the war in Afganastan. It seems like they're losing way more people than we are especially considering the fact that US civilians aren't getting any updates on the Middle Eastern death toll. It bothers me that although radical Musilims have a history of violence we're decimating them so thoroughly. Then again, all religions have violent radical murderous sects.
9/11, I will always think is a tragedy. Just because only four thousand people died doesn't make it any less tragic. No revolution is entirely noble, either.

Dude, setteling this country was HELL. We had all kinds of trouble, and nearly all of our settlers died, or came very close to it. On top of that, the jackass king dumps a crapload of taxes on us, oh HELL no, tell me you aren't justifying that

you know, i can't argue that this was wrong, but it wasn't an exclusive thing to the americas. do a little research, there were plenty of white europeans that were kidnapped and shipped off to serve in africa as well by pirates. This was bad, but it was par for the course at that time in history.



Actually, Abe Lincon was a very outspoken abolitionist. While it's true the civil war isn't just about that, it's also not just about a unified country. It was about a multitude of things. Also, most countries out there have had a civil war in their history at some point. I wouldn't say this lowers us at all, just makes us human.

WWI- we jumped into this one when some of our buddies got dragged in when their buddies got dragged in. this one wasn't really that bad, since we didn't have firebombs at this point.



Are you serious? Dude WWII? you make it sound like the Japanese were friggin angels, They attacked TONS of civilians on the european front for the same reason, not to mention they were backing HITLER for craps sake. We were definatly the lesser of two evils in this war by a MAJOR degree, not to mention the idea that civilians weren't acceptable military targets wasn't even being discussed at that point. This was how wars were fought throught most of history. Civilians weren't looked at as civilians, but as potential soldiers.

And i'm SOOOOOOOO sick of hearing how the nukes were evil. Yes, far better that we drag the war on for another few years and let the Japs develop this weapon and use it on us, rather then hit them first, or lose tons of our soldeirs in the trenches rather then just drop one big a** bomb on THEM and let them die because they don't realize the war is over yet. We had a HELL of a time taking just two islands from them, lost thousands of soldiers to their hundreds because they were on the defensive. We did the right thing in this war, and i'll stand behind that one unless you have proof that our side was the one wasting women and children in gas chambers simply because they weren't part of our ideal 'master race.'



now i'm not gonna argue that teaming up with ossama wasn the most brilliant thing we've ever done, but let's look at how this got started. Remember WWII? remember the Russians helping us out? They turned on us just about as soon as they recovered from the war because they wanted to push comunisim over the entire globe despite the fact that it wasn't even working in their own country. At that time, comunists were evil, and we did what we could to stop them. Now the wackos in the middle east weren't any better really, but at least they weren't invading other countries yet, but the only reason they weren't doing that was because their technology was a couple of decades behind ours. The thing that we did that was stupid was arm them and bring them up to speed with us. But what would have happened if we hadn't? I dunno about you, but i rather like speaking english, and i'd prefer it to russin, german, or arabic. I don't think what we did was awesome, but again, we just got off of WWII, the last thing we want is for ANOTHER hitler to pop up and start rasing hell all over again.



Dude, now you're an a**. Seriously.

You may not realize this because your stupid a** is obviously not from NY, but he did more then take out a couple of towers and a few thousand CIVILIANS (something you've been criticising us for all allong) he smacked our entire state with a hammer. The damage he did to us economically is staggering. Not to mention they also hit the pentagon, and tried to hit the white house. This wasn't a needle poke, this was an attack in the spirit of the attack on pearl harbor, only aimed at civilians and no where near as sucessfull, since one plane was brought down and another one didn't hit the target as well as they wanted it to. We weren't even at war, we were just sitting there minding our own buisness. How the hell is that the same as bombing a village during a war? New York as an entire state is STILL in an economic depression because of this, and before you go OHHHH, YOU LOST MONEY! WAAAAAA!. You better think long and hard about the fact that that means a lot of New York famlies are living in shitty houses, eathing s**t for food, and unable to get a job, or get health care for their kids. In reality, because of the economic damage, they probably caused a lot more deaths then just the ones that just happened to be in the towers that day.



disreguarding the fact that Afganastan was harboring this man and supporting his operation. Did you sleep during that whole thing and just pick up on the propaganda wave recently? maybe you forgot?



No, we went for Iraq for several reasons. Just look at results from the war crimes trial agains Saddam. I honestly don't know how i feel about this war, but i've talked to several of my friends who have faught there, and whatever your opinion is, i take theirs over yours. All of them have shared stories about the citizens of the country thanking them for what they were doing, and the general public's overwhelming support of them in the war effort. Most of them wouldn't want to go back of course, but if they were called, they all said they would go because they know what they are doing is for the good of that country.

Now it's true we aren't perfect, and i'll be the first to tell you that. I've agreed with you in a lot of places if you look at it, but i just think that on a global scale, we have to be one of the best, if not THE best country out there in reguards to how we've conducted ourselves, and before you go pointing towards more pacifistic countries, just keep in mind that if they haven't fired a gun to help us, they probably won't fire one to defend us either. Hell most of those countries have relied on us to defend them.

again, you convinently ignore the fact that their soldiers were just as bad, and that taking civilian casualites in war was common place until recent history. Hell, it was only a thousand years ago that it stopped being common place to wipe whatever city you took over off the map and made slaves of the women and children.

This whole idea of civilians NOT being targeted is new. Nobody knew any better, that was what war was.

quit twisting my words around to try and make me sound like some kind of bigot. It's annoying, and it really just diminishes whatever argument you're trying to make, not to mention makes you sound like one of those choicers. Everybody knows i'm no such thing, including you. Your argument consists of ripping everything out of it's historical context. I'll remind you again: The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor with no reason what so ever. They wrecked the same kind of slaughter on allied cities as we did on japanese cities, and for craps sake THEY BACKED HITLER. You weigh what they did and how they acted against what we did, and we come out shining.

Who the hell ever said that whole countries were filled with bad people? I cannot think of a single thing that Mindcandy or I have said that would imply that.

In fact, the only person who is categorizing whole groups of people as bad here is you with your last sentence: "Countries are not bad. Militaries are." (Capitalization added in for the sake of my sanity). Can you be serious? I mean, really, do you seriously want us to just dissolve our military entirely?

Speaking of which, you have not once addressed a question we have brought up. All you have done in reply to our responses is bash us as bigots because our views do not conform to yours. That and repeat your statement as though it were fact and not merely your opinion.

I didn't say, "No one said it directly," I said, "No one implied." That means that not a single thing we have said has in any way sounded, to me at least, like we are saying everyone from any single country is evil.

What you do not take into account is the fact that the Japanese people are and, even more so, were, a very proud and nationalistic people. This is not to say that they are evil, and it is not to say that this is true of all of them any more then it is true to say that all Americans believe in Capitalism and Democracy. However, it does mean that most Japanese people would do anything their country asked them to, simply as part of their culture. Add to this the fact that the country, at the time, was ruled by a man who was a god by their religious beliefs.

This is something that I think you need to realize: All people are people, yes. All humans were created equal. But this does not mean that all humans think the same way, or will act the same way under the same conditions. As my -extremely- liberal sociology teacher would say, "Yes, if all your friends jumped off a cliff, you would do it too." That's culture.

Er, to stop, we'd have to start... I don't know about you, but the most recent "taking over" of a place I can think of that Americans have done would be Hawai'i, the Virgin Islands, and Guam. All of which were, hmm, sixty years ago.

But you don't just tell us how you feel. If that were the case, you would never have created this thread, because we already all know exactly how you feel on the subject, and we've already told you how we feel about your feelings: It's a very nice idea, but it won't work. You tell us that -this is the way it should be,- and you act like we are idiots if we do not agree.

yes, slavery has been around forever, and was only abolished recently. yes, others have killed civilians. yes others have been horrible and cruel. but are we not past that now? was that not the past? can we not now sit down and figure out a way to stop killing eachother? ALL of us. not just iraq, north korea, iran and america. all of us need to stop and work together. and to do that, someone needs to come in first with a white flag and say "wait, stop it. this isn't working, and never has worked" i propose that WE try that, being the superpower. we can bring peace as easily as we can bring guns, by changing our approach and our methods. i'm not saying it will be convenient, and i'm not sayign it will be perfect, and definitely not even work the first time, probably for many years. but at least it can be said that we TRIED, and weren't just another cog in the wheel of human extinction.