The Glade 4.0

And apparently they think Americans are all retarded.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/1 ... 06637.html

The most non-satirically condescending video I have ever seen. Really.

"Americans are upset about the Bergdahl exchange because it was 5 guys for 1 guy and in sports trades are 1 for 1!"

No that is seriously a quote from the video.

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I am perfectly comfortable with the notion that one of my own countrymen is worth five Muslim insurgents. Moreover, the prisoners probably aren't any good to the terrorist groups anymore after how long we've had them.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

after they've been further radicalized?

My other favorite quote:

People are unhappy with Obama's foreign policy which is dumb because it is the same policy that Bush followed.

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If you're talking about Republicans, that's true. Obama's foreign policy is the same as Bush. The fact that Democrats support it now while Republicans oppose it speaks volumes.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Not sure if joking...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obama_Doctrine

versus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_Doctrine

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I'm sorry. Military deployment overseas continues to advance throughout Obama's terms in office. Rather than finishing conflicts out, we continued to start new ones. You somehow believe that there are material differences in their foreign policy? As of right now, the major difference in their approach to foreign affairs is rooted in Obama inheriting a military that was stretched thin across the globe. Both presidents have had an ADD approach to foreign affairs, sending military resources of some kind, or blustering about the possibility of military intervention, in order to try to boost public approval. Then they start it up again with every hot, exciting new event that happens in the world.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Because really, that makes a difference. These guys were already about as radicalized as they could get.

Furthermore, Coro is right. One of our guys, even if he is colossal dickhead (he may or may not be, just saying if he is) is worth more to us than five of them. Furthermore, they aren't likely to be very effective; they've been in prison for years and have completely lost touch with the tactical situation. Those people that replaced them aren't likely to just want to step aside, either, and let people totally out of touch come back to their former positions.

Radicalization has nothing to do with competence or effectiveness. Both the Nazis and the Japanese thought "fanatical determination" (or whatever bombastic term they used for it) would lead to victory or at least stave off defeat. It didn't work out that way.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I wonder what the "right" way to value a trade is, though.

Obviously, one of our guys is worth more than one of theirs.

But we're not giving them their guys in exchange for ours.

We're giving away our imprisonment of their guys in exchange for them giving away their imprisonment of ours.

I feel like we might be getting the short end of the stick, there. Because we can sure as hell run multiple extraction operations against them with the same effort and likelihood of success it would take for them to run one against us.

We're not trading them a few crappy soldiers for a superstar specimen of first-world training to fill the boots of the best equipped army on the planet.

We're giving them a pass on 5 jailbreak operations in exchange for getting a pass on one ourselves.

And Seal Team Six could do that **** in their sleep if we had the resolve to.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Probably, yes. The problem is getting solid enough intel to do it. There's also the problem of them killing the prisoner once they realize what's happening.

The Son Tay raid was extremely well planned and trained for over a period of about 6 months, and went off without a hitch... right up to the point that they found out the POWs were not actually there.. and this was at a fixed facility whose location was easily identified, not some random hole in a mountainside somewhere.

You're right to point out that we have a much better chance of performing an extraction against them than they do against us, but our chance of successfully performing one is not as great as you might imagine, despite the great skill of the 'operators'.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Where and when has Obama committed ground troops to anything? We pulled out of Iraq creating a power vacuum, we are almost out of Afghsnistan leaving another. China is sinking Vietnamese ships and doing whatever they want in the South China Sea, North Korea continues to fire artillery into the South, we let Russia annex part of the Ukraine via invasion, we let Libya storm our embassy, we haven't done **** about African genocide or the rise of militant Islam there, we are letting Iran build nukes, we let the Syrian civil war give birth to an Islamic army, we let Russia buzz our airspace with tactical bombers, we let Egypt and Indonesia declare maetial law against their own citizens.

The only thing we've done is step up indisciminate drone bombings worldwide.

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There's nothing "indiscriminate" about drone attacks, except the propaganda of people who have latched onto these simply because the aircraft are unmanned, and the propaganda of those on the receiving end.

Every one of those situations you listed is vastly more complex than you are presenting it as. Weren't you just complaining in the other thread about not being informed?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Libya, despite any proclamations by Barack Obama to the public otherwise, as anyone who lives near several Air Force bases can tell you.

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Doing nothing is doing nothing. Not saying we shouldve invaded or put troops on the ground but wait and see what happens is about as far from Bush as you can be.

Dicksack.

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Doing nothing is doing something. Not making a decision is making a decision. If we shouldn't put troops on the ground, then what SHOULD we do, and why? And what do you base it on, beyond an intuitive feeling that it seems like it ought to work?

Any of those situations you listed is the same. Take Ukraine. Exactly what SHOULD we have done?

Bush and Obama definitely have one problem in common: a large portion of the public that just wants to ***** that they should have done things differently, without any idea of what "different" looked like, or why it would have been a good idea beyond empty platitudes devoid of even the most basic analysis.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

And this discussion is over. For someone who sure loves to beat the drum on America projecting power internationally to protect our interests you sure have pulled a fascinating 180.

Troll.

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Failing to make a decision is a decision because it surrenders initiative to whoever DOES make a decision. It is not a praise of indecisveness; it is a way of pointing out that, functionally, not making a decision has the same effect as making a decision to let someone else have their way.

As for projecting power to protect our interests, I'm all in favor of it - when it makes sense to do so, and with an understanding that new problems will inevitably present themselves; we should not fall victim to "perfect solution fallacy", even though that's the justification for so many criticisms of those with responsibility by those that take none.

What exactly is our interest in Iraq right now? Protection of stable oil supplies in order to avoid major effects on the global economy? What, if any action, should be taken in that regard?

What is our interest in Ukraine? What action could be taken to prevent Russian aggressive moves, and what costs and potential costs do they involve? What of the Ukrainian failure to make provision for their own defense? By acting, do we encourage other nations where we have an interest to continue to fail to make such provision, because they know America will eventually be forced to intervene on their behalf for our own economic security?

What exactly does "Russian bombers 'buzzing' our airspace" mean? Why is this some enormous problem? Wasn't this sort of thing rather common on both sides during the Cold War, including actual penetrations by recon flights? Where does this problem fall in priority compared to the others you listed? Is it a problem?

The reason you think this is some sort of 180 on my part is that your understanding of these issues is that of an adolescent. You want to reduce problems down to snarky sentence fragments and propaganda lines., and yet you think I'm trolling? It's tempting to say you are, except that you aren't even putting fort that amount of effort. You isolate that line out because the very next sentence is asking you what we SHOULD do if we don't put troops in Iraq.

The answer is that you have no **** idea, just like you have no idea what to do about any of those other things.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I'd be very surprised if at some point during some medical procedure some tracking device wasn't put in or they are now willing agents for the US.

That is a long long time to go away for without outside contact.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

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In other words, you don't begin to understand what I'm talking about, and are therefore trying to be provocative to save face.

You don't begin to understand what using our capabilities to protect our interests actually means. It does not necessarily mean using force or getting involved in every single situation; it means having the ability and willingness to when the benefits outweigh the costs.

You still have yet to suggest a course of action or give a reason or expected outcome for one for the situation in Iraq or any of the others you cited. Not even in a cursory manner. You can't discuss any of the others; either.

For example, take the Russian bombers. They aren't doing anything they haven't been doing for years. They didn't penetrate our airspace; they just came close to the 200-mile air defense identification zone. What do you want Obama to do about this, other than have the Air Force intercept them which is exactly what is happening, and would happen regardless of who was in office?

The fact is that you know nothing about the issues you're citing, but you want to ***** about them all the same. Obama is mishandling quite a few of those issues, but you have no idea how; you can't even articulate what the actual problem is in the first place.

The uninformed voter you wanted to test for in the other thread? You're him.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."