What has happened to us?

[C_Clayton_Jones]

My point is, when a country calls for our help, do we abandon them? Think about it for a minute. If some person was being beaten on the street to within an inch of his life, and you alone had the power to stop it, would you abandon him?

This fails as a false comparison fallacy.

The American Century is over, it's been over for some time now – and thankfully so.

However much it may be a trite cliché, it's nonetheless true: we're not the 'police of the world,' it's not our responsibility to solve every problem, to address every crisis, or get involved in every conflict.

If all we can do is be feckless in the face of the world, we have betrayed who and what we are.

Nonsense.

Acting in our best interest is not being 'feckless,' Americans need no longer fight and die in far off places to ensure our integrity or security.

Otherwise, the OP is simplistic, naïve, and ignorant.

 

[Siete]

What has happened to us? What has happened to this great country of ours? Where is our pride? Where is our sense of patriotism? Has all of this been lost over the past two decades? Before you start flaming me, I want you to answer those questions honestly. I know a lot of old folks, vets from World War II on... they can remember when America's word meant something. When we could give anyone the look and they would back off. When Britain needed our help with the Nazis we came in. Our president even then skirted congress to give ships and planes to the British back then. It didn't matter that we were war weary from the first great war, we defended our allies, we were drug into a war we didn't want to fight, but we fought it anyway. As it so happened, history was better for it. We kept our promises. Our patriotism and our desire to help keep the world free was unquestioned. Until now.

My point is, when a country calls for our help, do we abandon them? Think about it for a minute. If some person was being beaten on the street to within an inch of his life, and you alone had the power to stop it, would you abandon him? "Well it would be none of my business" you would say. Ahh, but tell that to the person being beaten. Whatever he did, whatever happened for this person to bring that upon himself, that shouldn't stop you from helping. In fact, he would welcome any help he could get. It speaks of your character if you were willing to risk life and limb to help someone. Some will say "we aren't the policemen" well, no, but we claim to fight for truth, justice, and freedom. It does us no good to wave that banner around if we sit here letting people be taken over by despots. Believe it or not, like it or not, the violence you see today on the news could be at your doorstep in an instant tomorrow. Then what? "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it"? By the time you get to it, it may already be too late.

If all we can do is be feckless in the face of the world, we have betrayed who and what we are. We were once a proud country of sacrifice, now we are one of indifference. What do I know of sacrifice? Admittedly nothing. But I know people who did make that sacrifice. If they had their health, their bodies and vigor, they would be beating down the doors of the local recruitment office and demand that they make that sacrifice again. For their country. Mind you, there is nothing honorable about war. Nothing. But if it takes war to liberate a peoples, so be it. If it takes war to prove we haven't forgotten ourselves, so be it. Sometimes, it's better to put down the pen and pick up the sword. The phrase, "the pen is mightier than the sword" only works if we have leverage against our enemy, if our resolve is rock solid. Right now we have none of either. Let's get one thing straight here: I don't like war. I loathe it. I loathe violence, I don't think killing anyone is the answer to anything. I would much rather we negotiate our way out of our crises. I wish there were no such thing war, violence or killing. But that's not the way life works. War is war, it will never go away. Sometimes you must end life to preserve life.

We profess to be a country of compassion. Yet, as we can already see with Iraq; we are willing to let them fall back into the abyss of true totalitarianism. Does this not belie our compassionate nature? We claim we want to help the poor, the homeless, the needy; we claim to be caring and compassionate people. Does our inaction not say to our friends and allies that we do not support what we say we support, or uphold what we say we uphold? Do we really support freedom? Or justice? Or truth? But we're fighting someone else's war!" you'll exclaim. Are we really? What we would be doing is showing the world that we cherish the things we stand for, and that those things transcend just us, but it meets the billions of people living here. Sure, some wars are started for the wrong reasons, and we did make quite a mess in Iraq, but to abandon them in an hour of need is wrong. If we made the mess it is our job to clean it up. It is time we redeemed ourselves.

Just imagine if we took this kind of indifference with us in our everyday lives, just imagine how sad it would be.

what has happened to us? ...

two words... Partisan politics.

three words ... special interest groups

 

[FJO]

What happened to us?

That was the question occurred to me a few years ago when I was still in the habit of buying CD's of classical music and noticed the gradual shrinkage of that section and the growing of the section where rap, hip-hop and similar crap was promoted.

 

[Freewill]

Well then if we are going to abandon Iraq then we might as well make some money. We could sell missile launch sites to ISIS. Not ones that would reach the US of course but at least Israel.

 

[Freewill]

My point is, when a country calls for our help, do we abandon them? Think about it for a minute. If some person was being beaten on the street to within an inch of his life, and you alone had the power to stop it, would you abandon him?

This fails as a false comparison fallacy.

The American Century is over, it's been over for some time now – and thankfully so.

However much it may be a trite cliché, it's nonetheless true: we're not the 'police of the world,' it's not our responsibility to solve every problem, to address every crisis, or get involved in every conflict.

If all we can do is be feckless in the face of the world, we have betrayed who and what we are.

Nonsense.

Acting in our best interest is not being 'feckless,' Americans need no longer fight and die in far off places to ensure our integrity or security.

Otherwise, the OP is simplistic, naïve, and ignorant.

Hate America first, gottja, simple philosphopy.

Even though we still have the biggest economy.

Even though our border is being flooded by those who wish to come here not leave.

Even though we are the, by far, most humanitarian nation.

But hate becomes the liberal, hate on.

 

[deltex1]

Things were going great and then you were born and it's all been going downhill ever since, seriously, mr angry man life is wonderful if you take some time away from this pointless shit and do something awesome like bathe, go on a date and maybe even kiss a girl.

What the hell is your problem?

I have a special kind of loathing for basement dwelling neckbeards who only know how to complain on the internet without ever doing anything in the real world except consume resources. This dumbass has no intention of getting his ass shot off in a war, oh no, but he really, really wants our real men in uniform to get their guts blown out just to satisfy his lust for cool explosion footage on youtube. If the Sunni and the Shiite want to have a regional conflict there is nothing any of us or the entire US military can do about it. Why should we feed more of our young people to that retarded wood chipper?

Ossified is incapable of looking at the big picture. It is obscured by her ample ass.

 

[Freewill]

What has happened to us? What has happened to this great country of ours? Where is our pride? Where is our sense of patriotism? Has all of this been lost over the past two decades? Before you start flaming me, I want you to answer those questions honestly. I know a lot of old folks, vets from World War II on... they can remember when America's word meant something. When we could give anyone the look and they would back off. When Britain needed our help with the Nazis we came in. Our president even then skirted congress to give ships and planes to the British back then. It didn't matter that we were war weary from the first great war, we defended our allies, we were drug into a war we didn't want to fight, but we fought it anyway. As it so happened, history was better for it. We kept our promises. Our patriotism and our desire to help keep the world free was unquestioned. Until now.

My point is, when a country calls for our help, do we abandon them? Think about it for a minute. If some person was being beaten on the street to within an inch of his life, and you alone had the power to stop it, would you abandon him? "Well it would be none of my business" you would say. Ahh, but tell that to the person being beaten. Whatever he did, whatever happened for this person to bring that upon himself, that shouldn't stop you from helping. In fact, he would welcome any help he could get. It speaks of your character if you were willing to risk life and limb to help someone. Some will say "we aren't the policemen" well, no, but we claim to fight for truth, justice, and freedom. It does us no good to wave that banner around if we sit here letting people be taken over by despots. Believe it or not, like it or not, the violence you see today on the news could be at your doorstep in an instant tomorrow. Then what? "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it"? By the time you get to it, it may already be too late.

If all we can do is be feckless in the face of the world, we have betrayed who and what we are. We were once a proud country of sacrifice, now we are one of indifference. What do I know of sacrifice? Admittedly nothing. But I know people who did make that sacrifice. If they had their health, their bodies and vigor, they would be beating down the doors of the local recruitment office and demand that they make that sacrifice again. For their country. Mind you, there is nothing honorable about war. Nothing. But if it takes war to liberate a peoples, so be it. If it takes war to prove we haven't forgotten ourselves, so be it. Sometimes, it's better to put down the pen and pick up the sword. The phrase, "the pen is mightier than the sword" only works if we have leverage against our enemy, if our resolve is rock solid. Right now we have none of either. Let's get one thing straight here: I don't like war. I loathe it. I loathe violence, I don't think killing anyone is the answer to anything. I would much rather we negotiate our way out of our crises. I wish there were no such thing war, violence or killing. But that's not the way life works. War is war, it will never go away. Sometimes you must end life to preserve life.

We profess to be a country of compassion. Yet, as we can already see with Iraq; we are willing to let them fall back into the abyss of true totalitarianism. Does this not belie our compassionate nature? We claim we want to help the poor, the homeless, the needy; we claim to be caring and compassionate people. Does our inaction not say to our friends and allies that we do not support what we say we support, or uphold what we say we uphold? Do we really support freedom? Or justice? Or truth? But we're fighting someone else's war!" you'll exclaim. Are we really? What we would be doing is showing the world that we cherish the things we stand for, and that those things transcend just us, but it meets the billions of people living here. Sure, some wars are started for the wrong reasons, and we did make quite a mess in Iraq, but to abandon them in an hour of need is wrong. If we made the mess it is our job to clean it up. It is time we redeemed ourselves.

Just imagine if we took this kind of indifference with us in our everyday lives, just imagine how sad it would be.

what has happened to us? ...

two words... Partisan politics.

three words ... special interest groups

In my opinion it depends on how you look at things. We as a nation have done a lot of f..ed up things. Like the civil war and slavery. BUT on one side people wished to keep the black man in chains but on the other we had those who fought to free them. So you could look at it like America was a scum bag nation because they allowed slavery, or you could say look what America sacrificed to end the institution of slavery.

Take something simple as the drone program. We are sending in drones to ally country and blowing people up, damn poor luck for those who might be in the area. Some would say it is justified (depends on who is POTUS) an others would say WTF is the difference between sending in a drone and sending in a suicide bomber?

One would think we could unite on at least some areas. Such as the children being abandoned at the border. I would think we would all unite in thinking this was appalling but no, we have folks like Pelosi applauding the abandonment of people's children.

Indeed what in the hell is happening to us?

 

[Siete]

congress can start a "we'll take care of you fund" for third world countries who wont fight for their own freedom .... how much of your tax dollars are YOU willing to donate to save someone that wouldn't save you ?

 

[JakeStarkey]

What has happened to us?

The forces of truth, justice, and the American way have struggled for over a century against the imperialists and then the neo-conservatives for control of American foreign policy.

The latter, because of the untold wealth of their corporate sponsors, win more often than not.

 

[Freewill]

.

Maybe we should just let them work this out on their own.

We have a lousy history of trying to "help" people and then ultimately hurting them.

Reminds me of what we have done to American Blacks.

It's not our sand. We've done enough damage, we've paid enough of a price.

.

Yeah, f..k them. We shouldn't have help Europe in WW1 and WW2, Germany never attacked the Mainland US. We sacrificed a lot of time and material helping in wars we really didn't effect us. Except of course the shipping that was making us wealthy.

Japan, now that was different story. How dare they get pissed because we cut off their oil?

 

[Mac1958]

.

Maybe we should just let them work this out on their own.

We have a lousy history of trying to "help" people and then ultimately hurting them.

Reminds me of what we have done to American Blacks.

It's not our sand. We've done enough damage, we've paid enough of a price.

.

Yeah, f..k them. We shouldn't have help Europe in WW1 and WW2, Germany never attacked the Mainland US. We sacrificed a lot of time and material helping in wars we really didn't effect us. Except of course the shipping that was making us wealthy.

Japan, now that was different story. How dare they get pissed because we cut off their oil?

What do you think we should do, right now?

Precisely?

And as you weigh the alternatives, what might the unintended consequences be?

.

 

[Mr Natural]

Maybe you should enlist and go help out those poor Iraqis.

Do something useful with your life.

 

[Freewill]

What has happened to us?

The forces of truth, justice, and the American way have struggled for over a century against the imperialists and then the neo-conservatives for control of American foreign policy.

The latter, because of the untold wealth of their corporate sponsors, win more often than not.

In the next post I assume you will be bragging about how conservatives can not win an election. How they are regulated to the back of the room. Yet even though for 16 out of the last 24 years foreign policy was set by anything but a "neo-conservative" president and things have not gotten better but much, much worse.

I also believe you don't know the definition of imperialism.

im·pe·ri·al·ism [im-peer-ee-uh-liz-uhm] Show IPA
noun
1. the policy of extending the rule or authority of an empire or nation over foreign countries, or of acquiring and holding colonies and dependencies.

Who?

2. advocacy of imperial or sovereign interests over the interests of the dependent states.

Again, who?

3. imperial government; rule by an emperor or empress.

Not applicable

4. an imperial system of government.

5. British . the policy of so uniting the separate parts of an empire with separate governments as to secure for certain purposes a single state.

None of that fits US policy.

 

[Freewill]

.

Maybe we should just let them work this out on their own.

We have a lousy history of trying to "help" people and then ultimately hurting them.

Reminds me of what we have done to American Blacks.

It's not our sand. We've done enough damage, we've paid enough of a price.

.

Yeah, f..k them. We shouldn't have help Europe in WW1 and WW2, Germany never attacked the Mainland US. We sacrificed a lot of time and material helping in wars we really didn't effect us. Except of course the shipping that was making us wealthy.

Japan, now that was different story. How dare they get pissed because we cut off their oil?

What do you think we should do, right now?

Precisely?

And as you weigh the alternatives, what might the unintended consequences be?

.

I told you before when you started a thread on the subject and you pretty much ignored my suggestions.

The Iraqi nation can not be inclusive as it is today, reform is needed and perhaps we should made sure of this before we left, blame GWB. Maliki will not agree to such reform. Thus we should work behind the scene to help the IRAQI people elect someone who will bring all the people of Iraq into the fold.

To do this Obama must, MUST, get directly in you face involved. Not stand back and let ISIS set up a base of operations.

In the interim we need to put a very small force of special operations in to direct air support for the Iraqi army. We can't trust the Iraqis to do this, if the drone program has taught us anything we can't rely on others to direct our missiles.

As for unintended consequences, how can anyone know what they maybe? We can only go by what we think would be best to happen.

 

[FJO]

Most threads are nothing more than full or partial quotes of somebody's thoughts, placed on this board by people who have no thoughts of their own.

It was entirely refreshing to see a thread which started with Templar Kormac's own opinions and thoughts.

Agree or disagree with him, more people should learn to speak for themselves, like he did.

 

[Freewill]

Maybe you should enlist and go help out those poor Iraqis.

Do something useful with your life.

Not sure who you are bleating at but I did my time and if a young man starting over I would go again.

But don't you worry I am not going to ask you to sign up that is up to you. You need not worry there are plenty of brave men and women willing to do the work for you. Stay home, be safe.

 

[froggy]

everyone keeps their mouth shut. afraid if they say something about how bad this country sucks their peers will talk about them.

 

[eagle1462010]

everyone keeps their mouth shut. afraid if they say something about how bad this country sucks their peers will talk about them.

I've been all over the world. Be glad you live here.

Perhaps some need a dose of reality to realize how great it is living here.

One of our major malfunctions is taking for granted how good we have it here.

I'm Proud to be an American. Even though we screw up from time to time, that will never change.

 

[Freewill]

congress can start a "we'll take care of you fund" for third world countries who wont fight for their own freedom .... how much of your tax dollars are YOU willing to donate to save someone that wouldn't save you ?

hu·man·i·tar·i·an

/(h)yo͞oˌmaniˈte(&#601rēən/

adjective
adjective: humanitarian
1. concerned with or seeking to promote human welfare.
"groups sending humanitarian aid"

char·i·ty

/ˈCHaritē/
noun
noun: charity; plural noun: charities

1. the voluntary giving of help, typically in the form of money, to those in need.

•philanthropy, humanitarianism, humanity, altruism, public-spiritedness, social conscience, benevolence, beneficence, munificence
"his actions are motivated by charity"

•help or money given voluntarily to those in need.
"an unemployed teacher living on charity"

2. an organization set up to provide help and raise money for those in need.

 

[Freewill]

everyone keeps their mouth shut. afraid if they say something about how bad this country sucks their peers will talk about them.

Who in the hell is keeping their mouths shut? I would be happy if more did.