Something in this post or the comments was flagged as offensive by a user. I have reviewed the entirety of the discussion and aside from name-calling I see nothing offensive here. So I have cleared the tag. Please continue the discussion, but if possible at least refrain from insulting each other. We do not wish to foster an environment of mud-slinging and name-calling instead I think we wish to foster an open and uncensored arena for discussion which this thread illustrates quite nicely. Carry on. :) Poised Guru Xomba Moderator

That is my point. I am a card carrying member of the Buchanan pitchfork brigade if you must know. I am neither Republican nor Democrat. Just an American who knows his country was attacked and is now at war. Hows that for free thinking patriotism. My ideaology would not have elected to go to war and I believe Bush felt the same. Shit happens though and you need to stay flexible enough to go where you might not have originaly wanted or ever dreamed to go. Most people had never heard of Pearl Harbor when they realized that life as they knew it would forever change because of it. AND THAT EVENT SET IN MOTION OF WHAT WAS TO BECOME THE GREATEST POWER IN THE HISTORY OUR PLANET. I am not a fan of the two party system either but I'll take it any day over what the sheiks do in their countries.

No, it's I who thank you ogmern wulfsail. You wear your sour grapes on your blue state sleeve. First I'm glad you felt you did'nt need to prove me wrong and then wrote a short novel trying to do just that line by line of what I wrote. I see I have gotten in your head good but I assure you it was not my intention. Lets be frank. You are a typical McGovern / Gore democrat who is still crying foul over your loss in 2000. It's not war crimes which bother you but the commander in cheif himself. Let me tell you the difference between us sir. I will support MY President and especialy in war time and I will not cry that I did'nt vote for him or that an election was fraudulent when you know very well how our system and electoral college works. I will not say that Bush wanted this war, not me. I accept the fact that our elected leaders make decisions on our behalf and only wished Clinton would have made a few relevent ones to fighting the defining struggle of the 21st century. You need to get your nose out of the philosophy books and to stop quoting Obama of all people. If you did then you'd know this war is most necessary and this IS your war. President Bush knows how to take the fight to the enemy and has the courage to be bold, bypassing the status Quo that we sit and wait and everything goes away. Especialy in that region. We have to be there and will be for the next 100 years. And of course your gas prices have much to do with it. Lets not be naive. $10 a gallon is not so much more than many countries are already paying. Where will our economy go with Iran calling the shots and setting the prices. You will most likely see the closest thing to a depression. We could'nt afford to keep the lights on. Democracy and free markets are the first reason though as freedom breeds peace and Bush is giving this region a big shot at this. Iran being able to smell us is anything but creepy. I find it reassuring they can. Jack Daniels, Bud, Red hot Chili Peppers and moms apple pie. You better believe they smell us and it makes them %^$# their pants. To quote Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now " I love the smell of napalm in the morning. It smells like victory ". Don't cry over war crimes Wulfsail, we are the best at monitering our people. Don't nit pick because Gore and Kerry lost. Back your President and he just might surprize you. Take a break from Philosophy and you may be able to " smell the victory ".

Thank you, AnthonyB, for saving me the trouble of proving you wrong. Allow me to show you what I mean so that in the future you may avoid embarrassing yourself in a public forum by doing your homework ahead of time. Firstly, as stated in my last post, by condoning war in your present state of acceptance you are also condoning what you say are inevitable war crimes. You say that, "When we decide to take the path of war, it is only as a final means to an end. War is total destruction and chaos by it's very definition." The error in your first sentence is that "we" did not decide to go to war. Bush decided to go to war and as he was never actually elected by the people, the term "we" to represent both you and I or the majority of Americans is inaccurate. Your sentence after that defines war as total destruction and chaos. See here for an actual definition of war where you will find neither "total destruction" or "chaos." You go on to say, "If we bombed civilians and destroyed their infrastructure and starved them would that then be acceptable if we were able to eliminate all war crimes? " Herein you fail to make a solid argument as the international community outlawed the bombing of civilians years ago as a direct response to the deliberate mass bombing of civilians in the sceond world war. It first tried to do so in the fourth Geneva convention of 1949, but the UK and the US would not agree, since to do so would have been an admission of guilt for their systematic "area bombing" of German and Japanese civilians. In 1977 a protocol was added to that convention at last outlawing civilian bombing, and the UK signed it. The US still has not done so, but because enough nations are signatories the protocol is now part of customary international law, putting the US out on a limb. So to answer your question, No, that would not be acceptable since bombing civilians is in fact a war crime. Moving on, you say, "War is what it is and that can not be changed." Maybe you just need to be a little more specific here, but any introductory level studies in the History of Warfare will show you very quickly that war evolves just as does life itself. Then again, your definition of War in general is at least slightly, I suspect grossly, warped. From here you degenerate so rapidly and without direction that one might think you are perhaps ill and heavily under the influence of too much cough syrup or simply drunk. As you laud the president's supposed vision, tact, and courage, you begin to replace Truth with talk of being the "big dog" and having other nations "fear" us. "Close enough to smell us"? - That's just creepy. Economics come up out of left field and you run them far out of bounds into the side stands. Bush's plan will keep gas below the $10 a gallon we'd pay if Iran were controlling the region? Does this imply that we should take over the region and control the oil? Now open your mouth and insert your foot, son, because you've just hinted at a blood-for-oil plot. Tsk-tsk. If George "idiot-child" Bush had any interest in our economy, he wouldn't have bankrupted the nation taking the military that Clinton built on a wild goose chase after the red-herring known as WMDs. Instead, he could have appointed a Secretary of the Future and began to work on some alternative energy sources or total energy interdependence and solid defense against terrorists. Alas, you see, he has not that gift of vision. I'd now like to give Senator Barack Obama the floor for a moment. Senator... "George Bush...needs to defend his vision of government—and that's a government that can't, won't, and shouldn't solve great national challenges like our energy dependence. You see, it's this timidity—this smallness—in our politics that's holding us back right now. The idea that some problems are just too big to handle, and if you just ignore them, sooner or later, they'll go away. In the middle of the Cold War, we built a national highway system so we had a quick way to transport military equipment across the country. When we wanted to beat the Russians into space, we poured millions into a national education initiative that graduated thousands of new scientists and engineers. If we hope to strengthen our security and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, we can offer no less of a commitment to energy independence. This is our chance to step up and serve. For decades, we have heard President after President call for energy independence in this country, but for decades, we have fallen short. Well it's time to call on ourselves. We shouldn't wait for the next time gas hits $3 a gallon—and we shouldn't accept any more headlines that talk about a dying auto industry or a terrorist plot to use oil as a weapon against America. We should act—and we should act now." Ahem, thank you Senator Obama. Now for another taste of what real vision is like, please see Sir Branson, head of the Virgin Group, here. Hot damn! Now we're talking! In closing, I will comment on your remark about Bush keeping "citizens comfortable enough, even to object to all our policies that actualy are the very policies which allow us to sit back in peace and quote old German philosophers in the first place." I'll have you know that I am perfectly comfortable - perhaps in my element even - quoting old german philosophers from the back of a tank on the battlefield with a grenade launcher in one hand, a bottle of wild turkey in the other, with blood, gore, guts, and veins in my teeth! Lucky for you, you'll never see that because this is "their" war, not mine.