For those who want to help with the war effort, here is a link on help enlisting

[The Straight Story]

Joining the United States Military
Information and resources about joining the United States Military, including information about the enlistment process, commissioning programs, military entrance processing station (MEPS), the ASVAB test, military job descriptions, enlistment programs, basic training, and technical training.

http://usmilitary.about.com/od/joiningthemilitary/Joining_the_United_States_Military.htm

Similar ones have been posted here over the years so lurking freeps could find their way into the military to help fight the wars they wanted and since we need more troops thought it would be good to post now :evilgrin:

[Ghost in the Machine]

1. Recommended without comment...

[Ken Burch]

3. Same here...

n/t.

[create.peace]

2. ..........crickets........nt

[bigjohn16]

4. K&R nt

[TexasObserver]

5. Oh, no. War is for others to fight. We're a nation of keyboard warriors.

Hire some Hessians and send them to protect our imperial interests.

[Electric Monk]

6. +1

[lapfog_1]

7. Yeah, I've been pointed there twice already

Once, because I asked a question about other choices than escalation.

A second time, because someone incorrectly stated that Obama said that this war would be over in 18 months, when, in fact, all he said was that we would START to wind down the war in 18 months ( OMG, a time table!!!). I offered the correction and was called all sorts of names like chickenhawk and blood thirsty war monger.

So, apparently, if we don't ALL join in the Obama = Bush and Obama = war criminal bandwagon here because he has been confronted with a mess not of his making and he doesn't have any GOOD choices... well, you know... whatever.

If we pack up and leave right away, someone please explain to me how we keep the Taliban from eventually taking over the Pakistan government? And once that happens, how do we prevent them from handing a Bin Laden follower one of their 90+ nuclear warheads? And then how do we prevent those people from putting said warhead in an old rust bucket of a container ship, park it 3 miles of the coast of somewhere (Hong Kong, Rio, maybe Havana, or even Istanbul or perhaps Seattle) and detonating it?

Explain why this WON'T happen.

If we pull up stakes and pack up and go home, what happens to Pakistan?

Ok, sure, we leave and maybe everything is hunky dory and none of that happens. But how do you know it won't?

I don't know that staying or "surging" helps all that much. But I'm pretty certain that leaving makes it more likely than less likely.

And, unlike Iraq, Pakistan really DOES have WMDs. Big ones. Go boom. kill 10s of thousands, maybe millions.

So, instead of just calling me a war monger, answer the questions.

And for the folks that think the "surge" is the answer... I have questions for you as well...

What is the "job" there in Afghanistan and how do we know when it's done?

Why 30,000 and not 3,000 or 300,000? Is it that this is what we have? If my scenario of loose nukes is something to really worry about, then what was all that claptrap about "other priorities". If it is a real possibility, then there ARE NO OTHER PRIORITIES.

I don't have answers, just questions. Ones that need to be answered before we all decide "this is the most evil thing in the world" or "this is the only course of action that makes sense".

But it seems like I'm the only one. Everybody else has their minds made up. But they still can't answer my questions.

[ima_sinnic]

8. ooooh, I'm so scared of "the Taliban taking over Pakistan"!

you could hide under your bed for a few years until this thing blows over. But by then of course the next boogeyman will have already been hung out on the flagpole to see if anybody salutes.

[lapfog_1]

11. No, I'm safe, I live miles and miles from any populated areas.

But I'm curious... what makes you so certain that the Taliban, which is more popular in Pakistan than in Afghanistan, so much so that their rule IN Afghanistan was supported mainly by Pakistan (and that was under "our" puppet dictator Musharaf), won't achieve either a political or military victory in Pakistan? Before we pressured the new government of Pakistan (primarily by threatening to remove our funding of their military), the Taliban in Pakistan controlled wide areas of Pakistan, including the Swat valley. One of the conditions of the Pakistan military's move against the Taliban was that WE WOULD STAY IN AFGHANISTAN. Before that, if your memory isn't quite a good as mine, the Pakistan government would make "an arrangement" with the Taliban (appeasement). One such "arrangement" was why Pakistan never bothered to look for Osama bin Laden, even though it was well known where he was hiding (before he most likely died) in north western Pakistan.

So... tell me again, what are the odds of a Taliban like regime taking over in Pakistan?

You seem to think that it's near impossible over the next, say, 10 years. So much so that you have the hurl insults at me and can't discuss the possibility. But where is your argument that this is so?

I think (especially if we leave Afghanistan) that it's 50/50 or worse.

You seem to think that having a Theocratic death cult (radical Islam is pretty close, sort of like a Sarah Palin on steroids) with their hands on a stockpile of nuclear warheads is no big deal. I think you are wrong.

[John Q. Citizen]

44. Why do you iumagine the Taliban wants to Nuke anybody? Are you a member and that's what you want to

do?

So far, we are the only people on earth to actually nuke anybody. Are you suggesting we invade ourselves so we don't do it again?

Why not?

[aquart]

13. How is Pakistan OUR fucking problem?

Pakistan is INDIA's problem. Let them spend the money they got from taking our jobs.
Pakistan is RUSSIA's problem. Let them stop laughing at us over Afghanistan and deal with it.
Pakistan is CHINA's problem. But they are very content to let their only children stay home while ours die.
Pakistan is EUROPE's problem because the nuclear fallout will get them like Chernobyl's did.

But, honey, Pakistan ain't OUR problem.

[lapfog_1]

14. Sorry, but that's not an answer.

All well and good to stand back and say "we broke it, now it's someone else's mess".

You see, there wouldn't BE a Taliban except for us. And because of the mess that Bush made in Afghanistan, we've chased the problem into Pakistan. WE DESTABILIZED THEIR COUNTRY. We did it. Not the Russians (though they helped by initially making Afghanistan a client state), not the Indians (who, if they tried to DO ANYTHING would trigger a nuclear war, something that would affect us), not Europe. No... we broke it.

Just like we broke Iraq.

But unlike Iraq, where all we really were concerned about is oil contracts, Pakistan really does have WMDs. And if one gets loose and goes off somewhere, it will be partially our fault.

[aquart]

15. There wouldn't be a Taliban except for the Russian invasion.

We mistakenly stuck our oar in then, does that mean we are stuck with Afghanistan forever? THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO RIGHT IN AFGHANISTAN OR PAKISTAN. And formally invading an ally would not be nice. It's damned convenient for India and Russia and China to sit back and let us do their dirty work but we can't afford it anymore.

"It's our mess" has to be the stupidest argument I have EVER heard for continuing a lost military adventure.

on edit: not to mention the inherent racism of it. India can't manage a danger on its own borders? Russia can't? How unspeakably arrogant and contemptuous you are of other nations.

[lapfog_1]

17. Now you are intentionally "dumb"

India and Pakistan have been mortal enemies for generations. When the muslims first conquered India, it came at the cost of probably millions of lives. If India were, as you suggest, "manage a danger on it's borders", it would green light a nuclear war between the two countries, a war which has simmered for decades since partition with occasional eruptions.

There is no contempt in recognizing that. Especially not "unspeakably arrogant contempt".

As for Russia (and better yet, China), yeah, they should help. But Russia has recent memories of their own toe stubbing in Afghanistan. It would be like asking the US to help China to stabilize Vietnam in the early 1980s. We wouldn't have any public support for doing so. China... well, yeah. They have the army. They have a motive, namely removing a nuclear threat near their border. I'm not sure we want them to do this. But in other threads I've suggested that President Obama ask them for help.

Like it or not (and apparently you don't) we set ourselves up as the world's policemen after the fall of the Soviet Union. The only remaining military superpower.

And we ran around the globe "dogooding" ever since. Kuwait invaded, why call on us, we'll kick Saddam's ass. Bosnia got problems? Hell, we'll send in the marines. Grenada? Panama? Yup.

Rwanda? (oops, guess we muffed that one... amazingly the same people who now cry "it's not our problem" were often the same people who complained that we didn't stop genocide in Cambodia or Rwanda... it's so confusing).

So, we are now faced with the distinct possibility that a terrorist group will get their hands on a real live big nuclear warhead, one that can do great damage to our interconnected world... and NOW you want us to give up the role of world's policeman.

[aquart]

38. Oh, you think being their problem means I expect them to HELP.

No. I expect massive bloody murder. And if they've gone Taliban, I won't mind a bit.

We are NOT the world's policeman no matter what arrogant fools believe. That's what the UN was set up for.

We cannot teach the people of Afghanistan to fight because they already know how better than we do. We cannot teach them to govern because they are tribal and they know how to govern tribally.

As for your desperate and pathetic clinging to "world's policeman," you probably didn't notice how many treaties and alliances altered around the world during the Mad Dog Bush years. Much of the world re-aligned to protect itself from possible invasion by the insane United States. BUT YOU WANT TO CONTINUE THE BUSH POLICIES OF INVADING NATIONS THAT NEVER ATTACKED US?

We can't afford it. We haven't got the army that can do it. We don't have the national commitment. AND THEY'RE READY FOR US.

During the next 200 years millions of human beings will die. Some in warfare fighting for scarce resources. Some because we will turn our backs and let them die because helping them will destroy us. Religion will be one method used to sort who lives who dies. But only one. Will you and yours do battle to bring the refugees of Manhattan and Long Island to the mainland?

We need to come home and fight for our own lives.

[Duende azul]

40. There wouldn't have been a Russian invasion without the Mudjahedeen propt up by the US

But to go on occupying and killing civilians today is no way of reparation for all the damage done.

[ima_sinnic]

16. no, the United States is "our mess"--when are we going to fix THAT?

As I recall, Afghanistan was restabilizing after bankrupting the Russians, so of course that couldn't be allowed, because Afghanistan is SOOO logistically perfect for protecting "our interests" in the ME.

I don't care what the problem is, further destruction and mass murder is not an option.
Money and training in positive social programs in employment, education/literacy, infrastructure repair, water supplies, conservation, and so on, would render the Taliban moot.

[lapfog_1]

19. Well, yes, they also had "re stabilized" enough

to invite Osama bin Laden and his merry men to set up camp there and train and plan.

Which is why we invaded in the first place.

As for our "interests", Afghanistan has zero to do with the ME. Has everything to do with a pair of pipelines from the other 'stans down to the Indian Ocean, avoiding the Russian pipeline (which Putin uses to "extort" payments under penalty of freezing to death) and a Iranian pipeline (which we didn't like because they were a charter member in the "axis of evil"). But I don't give a rats pattotie about economic or even strategic interests in the region. If we are there so that Unocal (or whoever) can finally build their wet dream pipeline... I say screw it. Big time. (as deadeye Dick would put it).

My only interest in either country is the Taliban and radical Islam and nukes.

I hope that we can (very quickly, if not magically) negotiate with India and Pakistan to both give up their nukes (and any other WMDs). I can dream. If we could achieve that, then I wouldn't spend one more second or one more dime in the region. I'd feel really bad for the Afghan women, but then I feel pretty bad for women everywhere. That's their problem to solve. They want to live under Sharia law? It would cross them off my list of tourist havens... but other than that, I could care less.

We need to develop our own energy resources (renewables). And we need to do it now, for so very many reasons.

And we need to rid the world of WMDs.

Note that terrorists could still do us great harm, just like they did with box cutters 8 years ago. But I can live with that. It's a risk. But all of life is a risk.

Terrorists with nukes, especially nutjobs who want to get to heaven ASAP... and think that GOD wants them to blow up the non-believers (of whatever non-believing stripe), yeah, I do worry about them.

[noamnety]

20. hhmmm

"And if one gets loose and goes off somewhere, it will be partially our fault."

When we use them, whose fault is that? What should be done about it?

[lapfog_1]

23. When have we been using nukes?

Since 1945. And yeah, I'd say 1945 was our fault. I'm not certain that Truman would have used them, if he had the benefit of hindsight. But the argument over that will rage and rage. It's done. We did it. Move on.

BTW, the nukes that Pakistan has (90+ warheads we THINK), some of which are 25kt devices, and a few which might be 300-500kt devices. In comparison, Hiroshima was about a 13kt device. Which caused this:



and

[noamnety]

25. I was responding to a comment about "WMD's"

I didn't realize you thought that only includes nukes.

[WilmywoodNCparalegal]

18. + 1 billion

Thanks for pointing out that (1) this is not Obama's doing and (2) there are no easy choices.

[lapfog_1]

21. Note that despite the others attacking me here in this thread

I'm still not convinced that the "surge" is the best choice or even the least worst choice.

Nobody has answered a single question yet. Other than to call me arrogant or chicken (do those two even go together?).

If we leave, how can we prevent the Taliban from eventually taking over the Pakistan government... and all that follows.

If we surge or stay, what does "finishing the job" look like? How can we tell that we've done it?

The only suggestion from my critics so far that I sort of agree with... we leave and let the Chinese invade. It'll make India nervous, but I'm guessing some assurances could be given. They could surge 300,000. And for less than a year. Provide security while we HIRE local Afghans to rebuild their own infrastructure to whatever level THEY want, not what we think they want.

And then we still want to remove the nukes from the region.

Again, I know it's a dream, but you might as well dream big if you are going to dream at all.

[noamnety]

22. Arrogant and Chicken absolutely go together

See privilege, sense of entitlement, or G.W. Bush.

[lapfog_1]

24. Well, I'm not either of those.

It's not chicken to worry about radical extremists acquiring a bomb. And not fictional ones in Iraq, but very real ones in Pakistan. And it's not arrogant to note that India should not (and would not) step in and "police" Pakistan. The very concept is insane.

And, despite the name calling and knee jerk reactions, no one has answered my questions (from either side, mind you).

If we leave, what prevents the Taliban from eventually gaining power in Pakistan. And if they do, what is the likelihood (expressed in whatever terms you want) that the Taliban would give an Osama bin Laden wannabe one of their "Islamic nukes" (that's the Pakistani's name for them)?

If we surge (like the President wants, or maybe some other plan) or simply stay... what does "finish the job" mean? And how can we tell if we have?

(This last question is one that I would ask of the Pro-Iraq war types, almost all republicans, back in the day. I never got an answer. Now I will ask it of the apparently pro-war Democrats. I hope for different and thoughtful answers this time. So far, on every thread that I've posted it... crickets).

[noamnety]

27. There's a reason nobody will answer this:

"If we leave, what prevents the Taliban from eventually gaining power in Pakistan. And if they do, what is the likelihood (expressed in whatever terms you want) that the Taliban would give an Osama bin Laden wannabe one of their "Islamic nukes" (that's the Pakistani's name for them)?"

"If we leave"

Our only options are staying into all eternity, or leaving (eventually). Yes, there is a chance someone will get their hands on nuclear weapons, if not there, then somewhere else. And that's a risk we need to live with, unless we put the entire world under our personal military dictatorship, which isn't an option.

The longer we stay, the more reason they have to attack us. It's not like the choices are stay there and be safe or leave and be blown up. 911 was done with a few box cutters, I'm not sure why we are talking about nukes. Using your logic, seems like other countries should be attacking us to prevent us from using WMDs, since we have access and a history of aggression.

The domestic violence model, while not a perfect metaphor, holds up well for me here. Two spouses have an argument. Spouse A locks spouse B in the basement in chains and begins abusing them. Spouse A decides never to let Spouse B out, because they can't be sure Spouse B won't get pissed and murder them. True, that could happen. They might even commit suicide upon release. There's no way to recover from the abuse without Spouse B having permanent anger and resentment issues. But that is not a legal or moral justification for Spouse A to keep them locked up as a prisoner for 20 more years as a preventative measure.

[dgibby]

34. Great analogy!

Also, the unspoken reason racists/bigots don't want minorities to gain power. The White South lived in fear that Blacks would rise up and give them a taste of their own medicine.

[Solly Mack]

9. Goodness...you mean this isn't supporting/helping the war effort?

pom-poms




lip service




flag waving




Token tokens from China.




Flowery & feel-good patriotic speeches






the Keyboard Ranger Brigade

[Soylent Brice]

33. it's not fair that we can't rec replies.

[Sirveri]

10. I'm RE-4, got out in 2008, no need to go back to that hell.

[aquart]

12. Yep. You support it? SEND YOUR KIDS.

Real easy to send someone else's.

[TornadoTN]

28. You've got that right. If you support it, have your kids sign up at the first opportunity

Doesn't matter if they are 3,4, 5, 8 or 16 - have them start reading through the recruitment material or read it to them as a bed time story. Tell them to be very afraid of the puppet boogeymen that we have used over the past 9 years to whip the people into blind support disguised as patriotism.

You can send your kids, but I'll be damned if I'll be sending my children anywhere near this hell hole bunch of bullshit. It's all about the resources - resources that if we spent a fraction of our war expenditures on alternatives they wouldn't even be needed in the first place.

Eisenhower was right - beware the Military/Industrial Complex. Too bad we didn't pay heed to his warning.

[stray cat]

26. I'm waiting for DUers to sell their cars and refuse to use oil, electricity, or gas

Who here has stepped up to the plate!

[TornadoTN]

29. Keep banging on your war drum and spending that money on the effort!

You do know that if we spent a fraction of what we spend on this war and our bloated defense industry, we might actually be making real progress to alternatives that could wean our addiction to these resources that we fighting ouver?


Oh, and I'm already off the grid. Was fortunate enough to have the money to make it happen. Now getting a vehicle that doesn't use any of those resources is going to be another story.

[John Q. Citizen]

43. So your analysis is this war is about oil? I think you are correct. Which side are you on?

Do you favor making more war on the Afghan people or are you against making war on the Afghan people?

[MineralMan]

30. I enlisted in 1965, despite my concerns about Vietnam.

I didn't go to Vietnam, but went where I was sent. I enlisted because it was unfair for others to be drafted while I didn't serve. In 1968, you could find me, outside the Pentagon, in uniform, protesting the war. I was stationed near DC.

So, I may be recommending this thread for different reasons than many are. I despise those who, without any experience in the military, condemn the military. I despise those, as well, who have no military experience but foment wars.

[dgibby]

35. I joined in '69,

about a year after I finished nursing school. I knew I could make a difference in the lives of the wounded. Spent the next 22yrs in the Navy. Never regretted serving. It was never about supporting war with me, it was about taking care of the warrior, and believe me, they needed taking care of.

You cannot believe the amount of damage war does. I think that anyone advocating war or escalation of war should be required to spend a year in a military/VA hospital.

For those of you who may have read "Johnny Got His Gun", I had a patient like that. Massive trauma. No arms, no legs, no face, no eyes, couldn't hear. He moaned and screamed constantly. We had him in an isolation room in the surgical ICU, but you could hear him all over the unit. He broke our hearts. Other than attending to his basic needs, there was nothing we could do for him. There was no way to comfort him, nothing, nada, zip, zilch. Forty years later, I still remember his name.

So, if you really want to support this war, then run, don't walk, to the nearest military hospital or VA, and volunteer. You may be too old or infirm to enlist and fight, but you would be welcomed with open arms in these facilities, that is, if you can handle it.:cry:

[create.peace]

36. thank you for caring for those guys

i am sure we have all seen some of your patients who survived, through the years. my dh goes to the va, he was navy during the years just before anyone knew about viet nam, but those who were there did, now he is considered a viet nam era vet. i agree with you about visiting the va. i am a committed lefty peacenik, and seeing the effects of war, ptsd, poverty and homelessness on the guys at the va makes me more committed.

[dgibby]

37. It was my honor.

Absolutely the most rewarding nursing I ever did. The gratitude of those guys was humbling.

The VA is lucky to have you. Thanks. It really does make a big difference.:hug:

[SammyWinstonJack]

31. knr

[Soylent Brice]

32. K&R

[frylock]

39. knr

[donheld]

41. indeed

[OhioChick]

42. K&R n/t