Heck yes...ANNEX IT...no more illegal aliens crossing, they will be citizens.... And, the best part, our soccer team will be so much better with both the USA and Mexico as one team. DD
So you honestly don't know? A majority of Congress has to vote to declare war on another country. Every other use of the word "war" in American government, as in "The War on Drugs," (which I don't support) amounts to using the word to make a political point, to get the public "worked up" about something, for publicity, in an attempt to win an election. In short, it's just a word, Hightop. It takes a vote of Congress to actually declare war. The last time this country had a declared war was just about 70 years ago. Wait a couple of months for the exact anniversary of that declaration. And read more. It's good for you. And I'm getting really tired of reading crap about Mexico. Can't you guys give it a rest? Maybe go to Mexico for an extended vacation?
I did not say the son was a target. It would appear from the article he was not. It's not important to the point I'm trying to make in any case.
It took a little digging, but apparently the target was the Ibrahim al-Banna, who is claimed to be the media director for AQAP. source
What do you guys think about the airstrikes on Germany during WWII? The city of Wesel, devastated by Allied bombing in preparation for the crossing of the Rhine on 22-23 March 1945. Do you think these only killed Nazis older than 18 years? For the record, I think the Americans are the good guys in both cases. It's easy to sit at home and condemn, from a position of perceived moral superiority. But war is ugly, and never fully just.
- war - you are the good guys - people get killed who individually possibly/probably do not deserve to be a target in any way - doing nothing is arguably not an option - surgical strikes cannot be targeted precisely enough (yet) to only take out the actual target I do think there are some commonalities, yes.
At 8:30 on the evening of April 2, 1917, President Wilson appeared before a joint session of Congress and asked for a declaration of war against Germany in order to "make the world safe for democracy." On April 4, Congress granted Wilson's request. In 2011, American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the President Obama of its decisions. There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House's National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.
I'm not sure why people are waxing offended. The comparison makes sense. If the main objection was that WWII was a declared war on a nation-state, and the Yemen strikes fall into a more nebulous legal category, I don't think it detracts much from the comparison. I think the more pertinent distinction is that WWII was Total War -- a war of attrition in which Germany could not be realistically defeated unless it's ability to wage war was decimated. That resulted in making legitimate targets of ball-bearing factories and port towns and most any civilian endeavor in the country. AQ no doubt thought the same way in attacking WTC and other soft targets. Our 'War on Terror', however, should not be Total War. That makes collateral damage harder to justify. But, this is hardly our first instance of it. This is something we've been guilty of for quite some time. And, we tolerate it a little too easily.
They were necessary to defeat a genocidal dictator intent on conquering Europe. Hardly the same as the keystone terrorists. Even if you equate the evil of the Nazis with the evil of al Qaeda, I can't imagine Roosevelt ordering a strike to kill a Nazi propagandist. (Then again, Roosevelt didn't have drones.)
So are you saying that if the threat is large enough (genocidal dictator), it is ok to kill babies and children (as "collateral damage") to attempt to remove the threat?
I'll say it. They were wrong. Firebombing cities wasn't right. I'm not enough of a WWII expert to say whether or not they were crucial to victory but ethically speaking, they trouble me. That said, it was a different era. I mean Hiroshima and Nagasaki were acceptable at the time. Dropping nukes on any city today would be universally condemned. We are in an era in which mass killings aren't ok and our ethics are shaped around that. But applying our ethics today in a vacuum to the past doesn't make sense either. We can do the same with tons of events in World History. Was the Spanish American War justified under modern views of international relations? Probably not, but we live in a different era. You can't cherrypick events in history and simply apply modern views to them. If you do that, nothing makes sense anymore.
I have no problem with taking out someone that is 16 years old if they are a legitimate threat to the USA. Second, it has always been such that those in power have a double standard, this is no different. Look at our position on nuclear weapons, etc. The fact is that we do have a double standard... all super powers do.
Excellent point... and I agree with you. I do not know where you draw that line. Obama has turned out to be quite the little hawk has he not... you will notice all the Republicans are not saying anything, as he has out done them... Mitty wont even mention foreign policy in the 2012 election.
Agree with everything except this. The distinction isn't that the war on terror isn't a total war, but rather that it's a Bull**** war. It can't even be a war. It's like the war on drugs that it's utterly BS and can't solve anything. The only way to prevent terror against the US is to either annex every other country in the world, or kill everyone who's a perceived threat. You can protect yourself the best you can against terror, you can't actually "destroy" it. You can destroy Germany, Japan, and any other tangible target. You cannot destroy terror without some serious brainwashing of masses. Therefore there really is no way to set ground rules because it's fictional war in the first place.
