When is enough enough?

And in other news.

Total Americans dead in Iraq: 3,096

I see news articles like this nearly every day. Yet I also see articles touting our progress in Iraq. I mean, it's getting ridiculous. In a month or so, it'll be what, four years? Over 3,000 of our soldiers are dead, and all it seems to be doing is inciting Iraqi's to kill other Iraqi's.

Focus of discussion: Do you think it is possible for this war to be resolved by coalition forces? If so, how.

If you are wanting to say something along the lines of "pull out all the troops tomorrow" or "just nuke 'em" then please stay out of this thread.

Just nuke 'em

Before you do that, you gotta pull all the troops out so they don't get nuke

No! Without the soldiers there the Iraqis would just kill each other!


The soldiers have to stay until after Iraq has been nuked. It's a small price to pay for freedom. :911:

Sounds like old news to me, but I guess some things just repeat themselves.

Of course it can be resolved by America. But it should spread to Iran and some other countries and it should have more explosions and high-quality video footage for me to watch. Yet desert wars still are boring, but at least few explosions make it more tolerable.

I think Antony was serious when he stated about the 'not saying "just nuke 'em" ' especially with that sentence in italics.

I don't think any more fighthing will stop this war. Some one has to come up with a plan that everyone in Iraq will be happy with.

I don't think it is. I said in the previous thread the situation can't be solved as long as the people of Iraq simply want to fight and kill each other. I was countered by saying it's not the Iraqis who want to fight but foreign terrorists. However, I can't fully accept that. If the Iraqis themselves didn't want this constant fighting, surely they would unite to a degree to stop these war mongering foreign terrorists inside their country?

I mean, if Swedish, Norwegian, Estonian and some Danish elements infiltrated Finland and started a series of serious car bombings, I'm pretty sure the Finns, from all backgrounds, would quickly try to stop them completely by any means necessary, and not just sit and wonder and let the cars, people and buildings blow up.

I may run for president on a whim.

Vote for me. This is a feasible notion. I will resolve the situation in Iraq. All I need is you.

Maybe, but Finland has a lot of things Iraq doesn't, like consistent electricity and safe drinking water...it's not as easy to fight terrists on an empty stomach in the dark

That is one of the only things in a great while to actually on some level offend me.


Congratulations, this doesn't happen often.

The insurgency is in its last throes?

The problem with "resolving the conflict" is you have to define what "resolved" means. You have to define it exactly in quantifiable terms. Otherwise you can't measure your progress. America hasn't even done that, and that's the first step to fighting a war! Sigh....

As far as I'm concerned, resolving the conflict means making the people happy. I mean that was the point of our second reason of going into Iraq, right? Liberating the people. If we can get the Sunni's and the Shi'ites to stop killing each other, then they can be happy.

The way I see it, we need to give equal draw to the Sunni's, Shi'ites, and Kurds. That should, in theory, make everyone except for the people coming from other countries to blow up a lawless land, happy. And if these people can co-operate, they could probably come to a consensus about how the govern the country and establish law and order.

As far as I'm concerned, we won the war before we stepped one foot in Iraq. Bush told us we went to war to get rid of Iraq's WMDs. They were gone before the war started. Mission accomplished, now GTFO!

3000 servicememebers dead.

You think that's a lot? It's not. Most of the killing is not done by Iraqis, it is done by Iranians, Syrians and Arabians. The way coalition forces can resolve the war, in my opinion, is to put more towards a reconstruction, and providing jobs. In this manner, Iranian, Syrian, and Arabian immigrants are going to have jobs, and be less likely to want to blow themselves up. This is an oversimplification, but I think you get my idea.

lassev, there is a large amount of Iraqi volunteer policemen and soldiers. In fact, they are integrated into many of our operations with success. But I'm quite confident you the Finns couldn't stop a carbomb from going off any better than the Americans or the Iraqis. Those things are more complicated than you can imagine.

Congratulations drizzt, you just offended me on a very deep level.

How is drizzt not banned?
*Mumbles about admin corruption*

But killing each other makes them happy.

okay, sucky computer boy, he doesn't need to be banned for posting a disrespectful picture.

And you can't make the people happy. You have to provide the opportunity for the pursuit of happiness. That means providing jobs, healthcare, and education.

i say pull all soldiers out and build a massive wall around the country... let them kill each other until they either figure out it's a dumb thing to do or there's nobody left to kill

So, you're not bothered by the murder of 3000 people but you are deeply offended by that little photoshop image?

Yeah. Like Obi_Kwiet said. The Finns and Swedes go to ice-hockey matches. The Brits and French go to soccer matches. The Americans go to football matches. The Iraqis and their neighbours go to suicide bombing matches.

Seriously, if they stopped that, their countries would be a lot merrier places. The cost of the US military operation is astronomical. It's foolish to think that money would have gone to Iraq otherwise, but a fraction of it could have. If the place was calm and there were only like 4000 coalition troops to train the locals and guard a couple of bases, it wouldn't cost much at all, and more money might be used to build up the place.

Now new destruction years after the actual war is all that happens and where the money goes. You build one place, and they blow up another. A twisted way of living. You don't have consistent 100 suicide bomb kills a week in any other country, so they must like it for real.

You think I'm not bothered? Those guys are my friends. To most people they're just numbers but they are a lot more to me than they will ever be to most people. But I'm saying this is one of the least costly wars in American military history. Same goes for the photoshop. That photograph means a lot to me, and it's disrespectful to what it represents to use it as a silly political device.



Right. Because so many Iraqis are all excited to cause problems. You know, those nasty Iraqis are naturally mean and hateful. It's just a poor quality of their race. Yeah, sure. Iraq is a unique climate that draws outside filth.



Why? The cost comes largely from munitions and fuel. My training company at School of Infantry shot $3 million in rockets in one day near the beginning of our training cycle. IN CALIFORNIA Take that money away from Iraq, and it's only going to go back to training and maybe I could actually learn to shoot an anti tank rocket. That astronomical cost is from US troops trying to deal with insurgents who magically appear in Iraq from neighboring countries.




Exactly, if the place was calm. For it to be calm, money and manpower needs to be concentrated on reconstruction. And who is going to do the reconstruction? Yeah, Marines and soldiers. A troop decrease is retarded. A troop reorientation is needed.



You just don't get it. Iraq has so many more bombs because there are so many American combat troops. Iraq has so many more because the number of American combat troops draws all the loonies from the surrounding countries, creating an insurgent hotspot. It has very little to do with the Iraqi public themselves being hostile.

Fair enough, but that photo has always been a silly political device.

No, sorry. Being used for bond drives does not make it a silly political device. Every other time politicians have tried to use it for political shenanigans some Marines have gotten pissed off and eaten some babies or something.

I don't know. I think using it to try to prevent people from getting killed over resources is just as worthwhile, and anything that subverts the myth of the united states as a uniquely glorious nation is cool with me.

Let's steer this thread away from talking about oil, as it's just going to get ridiculous.

And besides, what other nation has the US Marines?

*digs in for flames*

Whats so great about the marines?

Well...

We're us.

Need I say more?

FA-DA-DA-DAH, MARINES!

There a division of the American armed forces that is entirely a special unit.

Marines > *. I happen to live right by Quantico too. I know lots of Marines. Three of them live in my apartment building. I was building a frame to hang a punching bag outside my building one afternoon, and one came out and helped me and then he beat the **** out of the bag.

As for Iraq, the single biggest problem our troops have is that they aren't allowed to fight the war the way they need too. You can't fight a politically correct war. Our soldiers can't fire unless fired upon. They are always afraid to fire back because they might his a civilian and end up on trial. A defensive war against guerrilla forces just doesn't work, as history has proven countless times.

If you think that the Sunnis and Shi'ites are ever going to get along in Iraq, you are sadly mistaken. They don't want equal representation, they want the other to have no representation. Nor do either of them want the Kurds. The Kurds are persecuted universally by all nations in which they have native populations. No, the sad truth is that Saddam actually was able to govern these people through fear. After thirty years of that, can we expect them to be ready for peace? I saw the best commentary of this on an episode of American Dad. They were in Iraq when democracy kicked in and it spontaneously turned into America. Too many people expected just that. They thought that if we just got rid of Saddam, the Iraqi people would magically become a democracy. Yeah, right.

Whereas if you allow them to fire upon unarmed civilians it only perpetuates support for the rebels. Either way there is no end in sight.

I am in full support of a no-rules-military. War is not democracy. War is shooting the **** out of someone before you're shot the **** out of.

Regardless of the justification of the Iraq war, the reality is that people are sitting in iraq, right now, for a stupid war, but can't get the damn thing over with to avoid pissing off mom and dad tax payer at home.

You seriously think a no-rules war would end the conflict?

But we're not fighting another army dude we are in fact playing the role of a peacekeeping force so shooting the **** out of everyone would not in face be conducive to that goal

I'm kind of offended that you think we will shoot at unarmed civilians.

What happens is we shoot at someone who shot at us, and the fact that 40+ machine guns are firing at them causes collateral damage.

And yes, if we were allowed to shoot without calling for permission to shoot at SOMEONE WHO IS SHOOTING AT US, we might do a little better.

Of course, Marines are only bound by that regulation when we are attached to an Army unit, our SOPs are different. We can shoot the **** out of people if we feel threatened.

Wait, you have to ASK PERMISSION to shoot at someone who shot at you if you are with the army? WTF? Or is it you have to wait to be shot at first and then you can shoot them without asking permission?

The SOP for some units is to call for permission to fire. Most units you can only fire if you are being shot AT (not if there is fire occuring, even if it's in your direction) whereas in the Marines you can shoot someone if you think they're reasonably suspicious. You are still obviously held accountable, and more than a few people have shot people and gotten court martialed. Then again, a lot more have shot someone and saved a lot of lives.

In fact, in the Marines, a Lance Corporal (Ranks go Private, PFC, Lcpl) can give the order to kill. Most services have to go much higher up the chain of command.

Uh, aren't the rules of engagement a big secret?



That was one long sentance. I'm not getting all grammar-freaky on you, but it's funny...I imagined you saying it all in one breath.