| Green Day – American Idiot Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| Hedgemon, I see that you were born in 1987 which means you are not in college yet. Forget what mommy and daddy and your high school history teacher have been brainwashing you with. Obviously you have had no political sciences classes and this is the only time you have debated about this topic. This is apparent from the erroneous "facts" that you are providing. I suggest you go do your own research and forget what the main stream media has told you. | |
| Green Day – American Idiot Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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Not unitlateral? do you have a pulse? That's the biggest issue here, of course we acted unilaterally. We contributed 250,000 troops. Compare that to our second greatest supporter Britain who contrbuted 45,000 troops then comes Australia with 2000 troops, and 200 polish troops. No, there was not over 100 countries in the coalition which wouldnt make sense anyway since there are only 193 countries in the world in the first place. The truth is that 48 countries wanted Saddam removed. If you look at the list, only about 20 of those 48 countries gave some sort of significant political support. The rest of the world condemned the war. How is it that we go about enforcing UN resolutions by violating the essence of the UN charter. The UN inspectors said that there were no weapons of mass destruction and it seems that they are correct. Did we need to spend billions of dollars and thousands of lives to make sure of what they told us? How can you extreme right wingers say you were enforcing the word of the UN when most of you want to pull out of the institution? About soldiers doing what is necessary to survive, that is the reason these crimes were commited. These troops lives are put in danger for no reason so they have to do their best to survive. So they resort to measures such as shooting an unarmed dying man in a mosque in Iraq or massacring hundreds of women and children in a Vietnamese village. Arrogant perspectives that we can continue this as long as we want is what will ultimately lead to the fall of our country. Buddy, the humiliation of the prisoners goes against the geneva convention. Yes I agree that american soldiers are heroes, but acts of torture and ill treatment cannot be tolerated. Are you saying that because the terrorists beheaded some prisoners that it is okay for us to sexually abuse our prisoners?We have higher standards than that. The abuse started before the beheadings anyway. Terrorism should not be the center of our foreign policy. |
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| Green Day – American Idiot Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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You have to be kidding me, read the accounts of the soldiers in Vietnam and what happened there. The biggest crime in Vietnam is that we killed around 5 million people over a conflict that did not need to take place. The same is happening in Iraq. My question to you is, if Iraq was going to eventually be a threat, then why did we not act on the imminent threat of north korea. We know for a fact that they have a nuclear weapons program, so why did we not handle the imminent threat first? Because there is no financial gain for us to deal with North korea and even though famine and political repression in north korea are much greater than that in Iraq so why did we not decide to "free" north korea first, and by "free" i mean kill off hundred of thousands of people in the name of democracy. The UN really has nothing to do with Iraq since we decided to ignore them totally and act unilaterally so the excuse of violating un resolutions cannot be used here since we totally ignore the UN. The reasoning behind a preemptive strike is ridiculous. think about it, "we're going to invade you not because we know that you are a threat and have weapons of mass destruction, but because we think that maybe some time in the future you might want to develop these weapons and become a threat so we'll invade you now." This is not an excuse to start a war. Did we try everything to try to avoid war? no we did not, not by a long shot. What if Iraq used that same pretext that Kuwait might develop into a threat to them and that is why they invaded them? They would have been ridiculed, especially by our government. This war has done nothing but built up more world wide hatred towards us and it does nothing but increase the chance of terrorist attacks. We have remanants of that British legacy of when they occupy a country and leave it, they create so many divisions amongst the people that the people end up killing each other. We have done the same by turning Sunni's against Shiites against Kurds. Iraq is better off? Correct me if I'm wrong but i don't remember suicide car bombings in Iraq until the invasion. You say Korea and Iran will be next? What are you, suicidal? You think we can keep this up for that long? Iraq will take at least 5-10 years to fix, maybe longer, hopefully by then we'll have elected a sensible leader. That is unless George Bush cancels elections all together because they threaten democracy, dissolves congress because they hate freedom, and declares himslef the fuherer. [A conversation between Alexander the Great and a pirate he had seized] When the king asked him what he meant by infesting the sea, the pirate defiantly replied: The same as you do when you infest the whole world; but because I do it with a little ship I am called a robber, and because you do it with a great fleet, you are an emperor. |
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| Green Day – American Idiot Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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You want resolutions that Israel broke? here's a whole list of them http://www.musalman.com/news/musalman-UN%20resolutions%20against%20Israel.htm Although the US has not broken any resolutions per-say, we have always supported Israel when they have done so. But essentialy we violated the charter of the United Nations which states "Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations..." The suggestion that a country might possibely become a threat so we invade them and topple the regime has no historical or or legal basis. It was stupid on our part because now other countries can use the same excuse to invade another country and use us as an example. An invasion of US soil is not likely and will likely result in a nuclear war that ends all life as we know it. Yet the threat is not of direct invasion because we can only keep up this hegemonistic act for so long. New super powers are on the verge of rising up ie the European Union, China, l, India, will soon rise to new levels and keep in mind that a great deal of the world's population is in these areas and that these countries all have nuclear arsenals. If we continue our acts of aggression all on the pretext of democracy then it will truly be us against the world. Again, is it logical to spread democracy and freedom through the use of bullets and bombs? How can people enjoy these freedoms if we kill them? You admitted that Iraq was not a threat. You can't use the UN as a reason for invasion when Kofi Anann himself said the war was illega and, that it broke international law. Iraq was exclusively a regional problem. The whole middle east is more threatened by Israel's nuclear and biological weapons so if we really took in the account of neighboring countries we would have stopped support to Israel. We didn't commit crimes in Vietnam? Ever hear of the Mai Lai massacre? Go read any accounts of what happened in Vietnam and tell me no crimes occured. That's another story altogether. I agree that something needed to be done about Saddam but this was not the way to go about it. How exactly are we supposed to leave now? If our troops stay, they get shot at, if our troops pull out then Iraq will turn into a state ten times more tyrannical than Saddam and it will be a huge embarssment on our part. So we're stuck in a dilemma. The way we went about things, the world is only more dangerous than before Saddam. Of course we need some rhetoric like spreading democracy and our national security to invade. The public wont take too knidly of an invasion based on protecting Israel, gaining oil supplies, and raising Dick Cheney's stocks. We have spent about 160 billion dollars on this war. It would take about 80 billion dollars a year to ensure that everyone on this world has an adequate food supply. Using that money to feed the world for 2 years would have made the world more content and less dangerous and Terrorists wouldn't have to resort to turning on us because we have been the ones practicing a cruel foreign policy towards them. |
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| Green Day – American Idiot Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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quoting hedgemon "iraq was not a threat to the USA but they did break a resolution and the pussy filled UN wouldnt do ne thing about it so we did. and kuwait and quatar both wanted sadamm go so theres ur neighbor theory out the window. " First of all, you just admitted that Iraq was not a threat to us. And how do you bring up the UN? Do we only use them when it is suitable to us? Israel has broken resolution upon resolution yet we do nothing. We ignore resolutions too, so how do we use the excuse that Iraq broke a resolution to invade them. Also, security council resolution 678 was passed in the first gulf war to allow any means necessary to stop Saddam. That resolution only applied to the first gulf war. The one we use now to defend our actions, resolution 1441 does not have the same wording that calls for necessary measures to stop Iraq. Also, saying that Qatar and Kuwait wanted Saddam out is like saying Cuba and Mexico want Bush gone so they get the rest of the world to invade the US and say they felt threatened. fool.. If they really felt threatened then they should have done something about it themselves. Think about it, did we spend billions upon billions of dollars, and thousands of troops because the poor people of iraq couldn't vote? I agree that something needed to be done about Saddam. But is systematic genocide of the Iraqi civlian population the answer? And no, there are not any weapons of mass destruction. We admitted that the other day. They were all destroyed either by the Iraqi government, by UN weapons inspectors, and by our bombings of 1998. I don't know who is more annoying, extreme liberals or extreme convervatives. about yorur remarks about "rowing up in a safe world without pshyco leaders of unstable nations possessing nuclear and biological weapons you will all thank george bush." These weapons being in the hand of George Bush are the most dangerous thing to this world. Keep in mind that we are the only ones ever to use a nuclear weapon. I only fear that with these irrational wars that our children won't be able to grow up in a safe world. Killing all those who might be a threat instead of diplomatic solutions will eventually turn the entire world against us more than it is now. These wars only build up more anger towards us. This same rhetoric was used in the Vietnam war, about how if Vietnam fell the world would fall to the communists, so we ended up killing 4 million people in south east asia. Let's not commit the same crimes once again. |
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| Green Day – American Idiot Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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Overall this is an alright song, now to clear up some stuff for you fools. Apparantely no one here is educated or done their homework and it seems that everyone is brainwashed first of all, it was entertaining to hear Saddam be called a communist. This is understandable as it is part of cold war dogma that obviously hasn't totally worn off. The term now is terrorist. All who oppose us are terrorists, they were called communists up until 1990. Up until that time, Saddam was our best friend. We gave him all his weapons so he could fight Iran and keep radical Islam from spreading. We knew about him gassing the Kurds a long long time ago but we turned a blind eye. We only used it now as propaganda to invade when in fact we knew about over a decade ago. It was only when Saddam disobeyed that we turned against him. Crimes are not of great consequence, it is disobedience. Second of all, you are a fool to try and justify this war because all the pretexts for it have been refuted. There are no weapons of mass destruction there and there were no ties with Saddam and Osama Bin Laden, this has been proven. The argument that we couldn't just stand idle and do nothing is laughable. This is like seeing someone on the street being mugged, so you take out your assault rifle and kill the mugger, the victim, and all the standbyers. It makes no sense. Iraq is worst off than it has ever been. Sure we're going to rebuild it but at what cost? Billions of dollars have already gone towards this and billions more will follow. So how exactly was Iraq a threat to the United States? It wasn't. Was it a threat to its neighbors? If it was, why didn't its neighbors show concern. The only state in danger of Iraq was Israel. The truth is, we're fighting Israel's war for them. Of course we retalliated against Afghanistan after 9/11 and that was justified. But no sooner had the dust settled there did we move to Iraq. Let's take this imperialistic march one country at a time. The war on terror is not your conventional war and therefore cannot be fought with conventional methods. It's like delcaring a war on poverty and bombing mexico. Like someone said earlier on, violence breeds more violence. Conquering a state like Iraq will not help solve terrorism. In fact it will help breed more terrorists because the people of the region see their homeland being desecrated and their people murdered. Someone stated earlier on that it was the Arabs who started it. The fact is we have had a harsh foreign polcy to the middle east for over half a century and now we are seeing the consequences. We are slowly separating ourselves from the rest of the world. We have very little international support and more and more people are starting to hate us. They may not hate you as an individual but they may hate your government that destroyed their homes and killed their children. One intersting fact is that we also armed Osama Bin Laden and Afghanistan when the Soviets invaded them. Kinda funny how these things backfire on us. What was also funny is the guy who tried defining a massacre as over 5000 people. Who are you to do such a thing. The story with most of South America is that when they democratically elect a leader from the left, we invade them usually under a pretense of a drug war. The drug war pretense didn't last too long though and was quickly replaced with terrorism. The media contributes to this a great deal. This whole control by fear started after world war 1. During that time it was the facists that had to be defeated. This proved to be a useful strategy to get the public to do whatever the government wanted so right after ww2 ended, communism was the new threat. News reports about how the soviets were going to kill all of us were all over the place and children were doing nuclear bombing drills at schools. Communism was then used as a tool for foreign intervention. After the fall of communism, that pretext could not be used aymore. This is seen when we invaded Panama under the drug war pretext which was soon replaced by terrorism. Anyone see those reports on tv about dirty bombs and how to duct tape the cracks in your house incase of biological bombing? more scare tactics. The argument saying "if you don't like it, then leave America" is the one that enrages me. Too bad we've made the rest of the world a hell hole and do you think people are just going to up and leave their homes and friends? People seem to forget that this country was based on the ideals of renegades and radicals and to the British, we were terrorists. So why is it unpatriotic to question the government? Why is anyone who criticizes the government deemed unpatriotic? How can anyone defend the patriot act? How can you defend liberty by placing restrictions on it? It seems like a waste to argue this on a music website, e-mail me or instant message me if you want to argue. |
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