groph
Well-Known Member
As far as rights being removed, it's not the "terrorists," its your own government stepping up security and interfering more and more with your private business in the name of national security.
A terrorist organization like Al Qaeda doesn't need to dismantle Western governments, they need to create instability and fear, or terror. They also don't need to defeat the US Army in a final grand battle. They simply can't, so they'll fight an asymmetrical war and beat the US Army through attrition. The Soviets against the Afghani Mujahideen ended that way as far as I know. The Soviets pulled out because their casualties were just getting too high (they weren't that high, even) and you'd figure eventually America will withdraw once the body count gets high enough. Popular opinion seems to suggest there's a desire for that to happen, same deal with Vietnam. The US got their asses handed to them by a smaller, far less technologically advanced force. The VC knew the land and they mastered guerilla tactics. "Insurgents" and "terrorists" (I'm using quotations because I don't necessarily subscribe to the notion that everybody resisting US military occupation are what you hear they are, IE religious extremists who hate our very way of life and want to see a Muslim flag over the White House. Not trying to spare the feelings of such people either, I just go to a liberal arts university so I literally can't help it..) know the villages, language, the land, everything. They're resourceful and effective in the face of the technological monstrosity that is the US military and they've racked up quite a killcount while it SEEMS that we have no bleeding clue how much their numbers are dwindling. According to Wikileaks, 60-90% of Iraqi deaths are civilians (Wikipedia, not bothering with a scholarly research job here). Not trying to imply that the US Army are a bunch of genocidal murderers as so many love to say, but the situation regarding "who is dead and who isn't" is really cloudy.
Anyway, getting back on track, "terrorists" don't need to kill every last US soldier to win the war, they just need to wear them down so the US State decides the cost to benefit is no longer in their favor, that's how attrition works, at least. Things will start to look shady when the bodycount gets REALLY high and the US stays there regardless. And the terrorists won't strip our rights, our own governments will while the people sit on their asses bitching about how much of a blowhole Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Wolf Blitzer or whoever the fuck else are and not doing a goddamn thing to exercise something called "democracy" or real social resistance. Nobody cares enough to educate themselves and do something, and that could very well be the downfall of freedom.
As for me, I won't automatically support the mission just because it's our military and our military is awesome, but I am sympathetic to people who are having bullets whiz by their heads and are losing friends. This leaves room for the enemy, and I feel uncomfortable being sympathetic to somebody who would actually want to kill me, so I'm not, but I don't know who wants to kill me and I sure as fuck don't trust the mainstream news.
How the FUCK did a misinformed thread about a rapper's vague sentence become a misinformed thread about what the military really does. Do you people see why threads get closed now? Did any of you stop and think "hey..this might derail it, I should take this to private messages"?
It does entitle most of them to my sympathy because, no matter how misguided their choice, they get thoroughly fucked by our system before, during, and after their enlistments are up. 
