Quote Originally Posted by Torog
Howdy mrdevious,

Well I'm glad that you at least recognize the threat that Iran is,to the Free World and especially Israel.

As for disarming ourselves,while hard-line commies and violent muslim-jihadists don't..no sane person,with common sense,would trust them with nukes. The 'everybody else' that you refer to,do not have a good system of checks and balances and they have piss-poor fail-safes,as it stands now-AQ elements are on the verge of gaining control of Pakistan's nukes.

There are 2 ideaologies in the world today,that aim to destroy democracy and freedom,that being Islam and communism. Despite Russia and China's appearance of being democratic,they are in fact-still in the grip of hard-line commies,they have a mutual defense pact,against the US and the Free World,and both of them,are building nbc shelters,so that they can survive our counter-attack,after they attack us first with nukes.

So put that in yer pipe and think about it,a bit.

Have a good one ...
Torog, I know what I wrote below is an exceptionally long read, but I'd advise you and everybody else to go through it if you really want to understand why I have such opinions regarding international conflict, and it should especially give you a much broader understanding of the threat facing us.


I think I understand where you're coming from , and I agree that those extremists must never have such weapons of mass destruction. All I'm saying is that, whether we're right to hold nukes or not, it's not realistic to have such a massive arsenal and expect such other nations to accept this as a just system. Every leader and their nation want's power and security, and when one has nuclear capabilities, all will want nuclear capabilities.

One intersting point in history to consider is the Cuban missle crisis. A lot of people look back on this as a day when communists arbitarily placed a bunch of nuclear warheads in Cuba and pointed them at the head of the United States. What most American media and (so called) historians fail to mention is that this was a tactic in direct response to a threat form America, intended to equal the playing field. The only reason it become suddenly necessary to place nukes in Cuba, right off the coast of Florida, is because only half a year earlier the United States put a bunch of nukes in Turkey pointed right at the head of Moscow, about the same distance. The nuclear arming of Cuba was actually a very proportionate response. Albeit it only compounded international tensions, and was probably not a good response, but an innevitable one nonetheless. Results are based on realism, not one-sided ideologies that see the power balances as they should be.

Furtheremore, I by no means believe we should "disarm" ourselves as you seem to think I was proposing. I only think we should minimize our nuclear arsenal to a few weapons tucked away just in case, and perfect our anti-nuclear defense system. Holding thousands of nuclear weapons and telling our enemies not to is obviously not a realistic request, and will only compound enemy propoganda that the west is an institution of hypocracy and a dangerous threat. Believe me, almost all terrorists organizations are filled with a majority of people who hate the west not because they "hate freedom" as we're propogandized to believe, but because they've been propogandized and conditioned since birth to believe that the west is a great satanic threat out to conquere and destroy the muslim way of life.

I half agree with your assesment of the 2 powers that threaten freedom, that being communism and islam, and would actually add a 3rd, that being totalitarianism.

Islam itself is not the sole threat comprising terrorism, it's more the recent extremist movement within islam that established sharia law in the late 1940's and sought to bring about the end of days fortold in the holy texts. There is indeed a huge movement of Muslim extremists seeking to bring about this apocalyptic outcome, but I know there are many muslims who want to live regular lives, hold down a job, and support their families like the rest of us. My dad actually had a friend who was from an Islamic branch from Africa that has several million followers. It's philosophy is strongly in support of perpetuating islam as a religion of peace, and spreading it throughout the world by example of universal peace, love, and compassion for all humanity. They believe that Jihad must be strictly forbidden, and that god can only be spread through love.
In fact, Islam does forbit Jihad and posits that war is only acceptable in self-defence. The extremists has twisted this into poor U.S. foreign economic and political policy, as well as western decedence, as a supposed "threat" to Islam as a whole, and therefor justifying Jihad as a form of "self defense", which is a load of crap.

Communism is a bit of an iffy one.
Russia seems to have not recovered since establishing a democratic society, and communism is once again growing in popularity. They still have the second most powerfull military (at least in supplies) in the world, and seem hellbent on maintaining it no matter what the cost. Both Russia and China have been caught with several spies in our countries as of late, and have been supplying the Iranian's (and possibly syrians) with huge armaments of weapons while making a nice profit themselves. Though while both employ communistic aspects in their social ideology, both are still pretty far from a true view of actual communism. Rather, I'd call China a totalitarian fascist government with state-centered capitalism, and Russia... that one's a bit more hazy, but definately Totalitarian at least. Cuba I'm pretty sure is content to be an isolated dictatorship with no interest in internation conflicts or conquestion these days, and as far as dictators go I'd say Castro is one of the better ones (but, like I said, that's as far as dictators go).
North Korea.... well Kim Jon Ill and his government are just damn insane, probably one of the biggest threats to democracy and human life in general. I don't blame the North Korean people at all, those poor people live under one of the most brutal and suppressive dictatorships in human history. North Korea could only be called communist in that everybody is kept equally poor, isolated, and starving unless they enlist in the military (1/3 of the population is enlisted for that reason). I think if anything North Korea would supply the majority, if not all of their nuclear weapons to Iran. And while Western power are struggling to keep their middle estern conflicts under control, NK will sweep in for South Korea and finally take it as they intended. Japan would most likely be next, and with such power further conquest would be limitless.

This is just one of the reaon's I disagree with the Iraq war. While Saddam was unfriendly to the US, he was rather isolationist and even more unfriendly to middle-estern powers such as Iran and would have been helpfull in keeping them in check, simply as an enemy of our enemy. Now we have far too many resources devoted to a needless war while real immediate threats such as Syria, Iran, North Korea, and possibly Russia and China are at our doorstep. Even if we win Iraq, all it will accomplish is a democracy held together by a weak military that will have no more ability to stand against the Iranian threat than Saddam's regime.

You have a good one as well my friend.