Everyone has their theory as to why this happened, what event acted as a trigger (as if there's even a single event)… One I found interesting was the statement that it began with Warren G. Harding (the 1920 Treaty of Svres, which ended the Ottoman empire). It's also been suggested that it's in part the Russian's fault, because the CIA got lazy and bureaucratic after the breakup of the USSR and wasn't able to effectively watch out for the US's interests. This CIA agent also blames the CIA.
It's looking like this isn't just the start of a war against the Taliban… It's an all out war against the entire middle east perhaps. Let's hope it doesn't get even more screwed up.
Well this sucks… The bombing raids have statistically killed more UN relief workers than Taliban. What sucks just as bad is the food and leaflets they're dropping… Because they're being dropped from relatively vulnerable C-17 cargo planes, they're being dropped from very high, scattering them where they don't even get to the people who need them. Worse than that, they're being dropped into live minefields.
I realized that outside of kooky movie and media quotes, I almost never use quotes… Of course, maybe I have too much to say myself most of the time and that's why. But if you remember a previous squabble over territory that ended up changing the world:
You know that these two nations have been at war over a few acres of snow near Canada, and that they are spending on this fine struggle more than Canada itself is worth.
Voltaire
1759
I think everyone has heard the “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” quote… George Orwell as well as many others said “war is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.” I really feel that in times like this one has to remember that… I'm not at all saying one should support war, and in fact, I do not. However, what I do have a big problem with is people who object to war and then offer no reasonable alternative.
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest thing. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling, which thinks that nothing is worth war, is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing he cares about more than his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
John Stuart Mill
Honestly, if you don't feel we should be at war, if you feel that the US brought it on themselves — and yes, there is a very strong case for that — you need to present an alternative. Obviously there's a problem here, and a very big problem. War is one solution. If you don't want war, think for a while what the other solutions are…
On a more positive note, I'm picking up the modded anime porn for the shirts later today and will post some scans the evening.
