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How far would you go in defending your country?

Re: Re: Re: How far would you go in defending your country?

Lurker said:


Wow! JK knows what is in the mind of suicide bombers. Soon he will be a guest on Montel Williams alongside Sylvia Browne.

JK, you don't think the suicide bomber for the PLO is thinking he is doing it for the freedom of HIS people?

Originally posted by Jedi Knight



If the US was ever invaded I would be a General Officer in command of a covert light infantry division of some type.

JK
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My, someone has delusions of grandeur.

Lurker [/QUOTE]

You missed JK's point,...and amazingly enough it's a good one. That is, what country one is fighting for is less important than what ideas motivate the soldier.

An example; America becomes a totalitarian police state, and Denmark invades in order to bring freedom, then I would gladly fight against my own countrymen and for the Danes!

Suicide bombers tend to kill innocent people,...plus tends to limit ones options after conducting such an operation. :rolleyes: Suicide bombers are not warfare...they are murderers.

Guerilla warfare?--sure.
Faked surrender?--no
Human shields?--ridiculous! no!
Torture of captured invading forces?--no. But if they are un-uniformed spies, sabateurs, or terrorists they should be hung in a public place. (We could start with most of the "detainees" in Gitmo)

-z
 
rikzilla said:

Torture of captured invading forces?--no. But if they are un-uniformed spies, sabateurs, or terrorists they should be hung in a public place. (We could start with most of the "detainees" in Gitmo)
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Here it is the pro-torture patriot! :rolleyes:
 
bump on account of the would you be a terrorist thread.

Anyone have a different opinion on the matter a couple years or so later?

also in memory of the departed Jedi Knight.
 
Kullervo said:
If your country were being invaded would you feel justified in:

Suicide bombing?
Guerilla warfare?
Faked surrender?
Human shields?
Torture of captured invading forces?

Where would you stop? Would you do anything differently than what you believe the Iraqis have done?

In short, why should you adhere to any of the rules of war?

Why or why not?
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The problem is - how far do you stretch the notion of what constitutes "defending your country". Personally, I would defend my country to the death were it actually under attack. I don't doubt that everyone of us in here would be willing to die in defense of our country. However, "defending your country" has come to mean invading and occupying foreign countries thousands of miles away which constitute no actual threat to the country. Defending your country has come to mean whatever the people in power decide it means when they want to send our sons and daughters off to die. I do get your point, reading further. Yes, I am certain the Iraqi insurgents consider themselves to be great Iraqi patriots just as we would were we so occupied.
 
Kullervo said:
If your country were being invaded would you feel justified in:

Suicide bombing?
Guerilla warfare?
Faked surrender?
Human shields?
Torture of captured invading forces?

Where would you stop? Would you do anything differently than what you believe the Iraqis have done?

In short, why should you adhere to any of the rules of war?

Why or why not?
Click to expand...
There is a big difference between what I would do and what some Iraqi's are doing. And that is that I live in a democracy, and if we were being invaded, it would almost certainly be by a country that wants to make us part of a dictatorship.

The situation in Iraq is the opposite. They were living in a dictatorship, and are now forming a democracy. If I was an Iraqi, I would be glad the US threw was there. Even though the change would be painful. Change often is.

I wouldn't do suicide bombing or human shields. But I would do the other stuff on your list.
 
Personally, I don't think I would do much to defend my country. I would, however, do anything at all to defend my family. The question then becomes at what point does the defense of my family merge into the defense of my country?
 
The reality of any invasion of MY country means that it is hardly worth defending. The saying goes: Our military might could not hold off an invasion of well-prepared Boy Scouts at Bondi Beach on a sunny Sunday afternoon, let alone a determined enemy.

But the question that goes BEFORE all this is better: WHY would anyone invade us?

To take our wealth? Our "wealth" is all raw material in the ground, mostly iron ore and other minerals, and we are already shipping that overseas by the shipload ourselves.

Because they envy our lifestyle? Our immigration controls and qualifications are so lax by comparison that anyone who wants to come and live here in our lifestyle can do so easily enough already.

Because they need the space? Goodness me! Come and live in it! There's plenty of that to go around!

In summary, there's bugger all that would require any sort of armed invasion in the first place. Just fill out the proper forms, get a plane ticket, and Bob's your uncle!
 
rikzilla said:
Suicide bombers tend to kill innocent people,...plus tends to limit ones options after conducting such an operation. :rolleyes: Suicide bombers are not warfare...they are murderers.
Click to expand...

How about the Japanese Kamikaze pilots? Were they murderers or soldiers? "Suicide bomber" can mean other things than strapping plastic explosives around your waist and detonate it in a crowd of random civilians.
 
Zep said:
The reality of any invasion of MY country means that it is hardly worth defending. The saying goes: Our military might could not hold off an invasion of well-prepared Boy Scouts at Bondi Beach on a sunny Sunday afternoon, let alone a determined enemy.

But the question that goes BEFORE all this is better: WHY would anyone invade us?

To take our wealth? Our "wealth" is all raw material in the ground, mostly iron ore and other minerals, and we are already shipping that overseas by the shipload ourselves.

Because they envy our lifestyle? Our immigration controls and qualifications are so lax by comparison that anyone who wants to come and live here in our lifestyle can do so easily enough already.

Because they need the space? Goodness me! Come and live in it! There's plenty of that to go around!

In summary, there's bugger all that would require any sort of armed invasion in the first place. Just fill out the proper forms, get a plane ticket, and Bob's your uncle!
Click to expand...
Sounds like Iraq to me.
 
CapelDodger said:
I wouldn't go beyond the end of my street to defend my country... Patriotism is, in my opinion, for fools. As Rudyard Kipling put it :
"It's Tommy this and Tommy that,
And 'Tommy here's my boot'.
But it's 'Tommy, you're a hero'
When the guns begin to shoot."
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Well, I can't say I'm surprised by your attitude, but you miss the point of Kipling's poem.

It is the likes of you--who claim patriotism and fighting for one's country is for fools, but only do so when they know for sure that somebody else will patriotically fight to defend them--which Kipling, quite rightly, despises.

Tommy Atkins, the protagonist of his poem, tells people like you that you "make a-mock of uniform that guard you while you sleep". Or, as Epictetus put it 2000 years ago, "The brave man is called a fool by the coward".
 
Zep said:
and Bob's your uncle!
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Sorry for flying way off topic, but I've heard this before, my old roommate was from Manchester and I assume it means something like "there ya go." If I'm wrong, please correct me. Anyway, I've always wondered where this phrase came from. Any ideas?
 
bob_kark said:
Sorry for flying way off topic, but I've heard this before, my old roommate was from Manchester and I assume it means something like "there ya go." If I'm wrong, please correct me. Anyway, I've always wondered where this phrase came from. Any ideas?
Click to expand...

Quoting http://www.yaelf.com/questions.shtml:

The most plausible theory for the origin of "Bob's your uncle" refers to a case of nepotism wherein Lord Salisbury (Robert, or "Bob") appointed his nephew to the post of Chief Secretary for Ireland (1887).
Click to expand...
 
Wow...a blast from the past!
Let me just say that I still agree with my 2003 self! ;) While there are posts in threads that I deeply regret participating in...this was not one of them.

Go Danes! :D
-z

Edited to add: Outlasted the pro-terrorist nutjob... ;)
 
Happy to oblige, Rik. Q is still around, though. Don't write her off yet.
 
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