Love the way people read posts, my question was this -
Why is it fine to murder non american citizens but really bad to murder americans ?
And my point is this -
Surely all human life is sacred and must be valued equally.
Where is the compassion in this statement for the 100,000 thousand Iraqis who have been killed since the US invaded.
"look at it this way, no one likes it and there's nothing we can do now, so now, we fight the war and get done with it,"
Guess they can't be US citizens or someone would care...........
Definition of murder = The crime of homicide committed either intentionally or with wicked disregard for the consequences. hjem.get2net.dk/safsaf/glossary.html
So unless you change a great deal you are going to be the downfall of us all.
The point about Iraq having nothing to do with the 911 is true. But the war in Iraq was started because of 911. I think the whole 911 thing was staged by the US government to justify the oil war in iraq. Besides who was it that trained the Alqaida(or how ever it's spelled)? The Americans!
BTW When have you actually won a war? Korea you lost. Vietnam you lost. Afghanistan you lost. Iraq you are losing. WWII you waited until the last minute to deside to join the winnig side. Oh wait! You did win one war! The American civil war!
Please guys don't turn this into another America bashing thread!!! We have head way too many of them already.
Yes, after the massacre they were banned but look at the UK now, UK is suffering from the ever increasing gun crime. Just go back a few weeks and you will hear about shootings in a London suburb. Banning guns doesn't really solved the problem, if someone wants a gun then they will get their hands on it whatever means necessary. I am sure it wouldn't be that difficult in the UK either.
In America it does seem to be way too easy to pick up a gun though, it shouldn't be that simple to simply walk into a store, say hello, right I want that one. What XC said earlier in the thread. by making things legal like drugs and guns you will get rid of the problem because then there wouldn't be any need for having them I disagree. I just don't see by legalizing everything you will solve the problem. The sort of people that take drugs usually come from deprived families, have social problems, are part of city gangs, for pleasure and then you have the addiction. To these people legalizing drugs would mean peanuts. If you take alcohol for example, (yes its a poisonous drug) alcohol is legal pretty much everywhere, accessible everywhere, but it doesn't stop people from drinking. Here in the UK we are suffering from binge drinking and its becoming a serious problem, alcohol is way too easily accessible and when that happens people start to consume way more! Same would happen with drugs and guns.
But there is short supply of ammo over here, lots of people have guns, but only a small number have ammo for it. But the fly is slowly getting bigger, and what do you know, it all flows in from America. I couldn't help myself, but pretty much all of the gun market here is made from guns used in America in murders, then shipped over here so they cannot be traced.
At heart, I'm a libertarian, so have a bit (only a bit...) of sympathy with the American attitude to gun ownership. But its a tough stance to live with. Sorry America, but if you want to argue that prohibition is not the way, then you've got to go the full stretch. Ditch your moralistic sexual laws; kick the god botherers into touch over abortion; start dealing with recreational drug use as a market, not as a "war".
Its not a question of access. The death rate in the USA is a cultural problem: just like alcohol only becomes a killer when people use it to "solve" the dilemmas of life, America has become dependent on killing to sort out its issues.
Unfortunately, a growing, general impoverishment of life in the UK means we're seeing something similar start to happen here.
so not true.. china takes up both of those, they use over 50 billion gallons of raw oil every day, and their smog becomes so bad at times you can't even see half a mile
as for everyone else hey hey hey ... enough with iraq thats not why i made this thread
True...they went to all that trouble and expense to ban the sale and possession of hand guns..upset a load of enthusiasts and collectors and such, but if you want a gun in Brixton, Toxteth, or Mosside you can expect to have at least a 20 minute wait before 'somebody' can get you one!
Total bans are pointless, they only affect the law-abiding community that aren't likely to go blasting into schools in the first place!
And last point, guns DON'T kill people...People kill people
The chap who just killed 32 of his colleagues in Virginia was apparently very much a part of the law-abiding community, right up until the moment when he started shooting innocent people.
Guns certainly do a good job of facilitating the killing of people, which probably explains their popularity amongst the world's various military organisations. Are you telling me I should be just as worried if I am threatened by an unarmed man as I should by a man with a gun?
The only thing more sad than the loss of life at Virginia Tech is the ignorance of people who are willing to give up their rights for supposed "safety".
Honestly, look at it this way, what citizens had a higher chance of revolutionizing the world? The students who were going to a university, one of which, who was a black man, who had a triple major, or the Iraqi civilians? I'm not saying it's okay for the troops to be blasting off innocent citizens in Iraq but obviously they have posed a threat towards the forces, which may be 9/11, which may be something that us, as citizens, are unable to know, whatever, my main point here is the fact that yes, I care more about American citizens than I do of those in Iraq, you won't be seeing people from Iraq becoming something in 20 years...
As for the killer, yeah, he was a little out there, he had received therapy or what not but you must realize this kid is in college, yeah, his room mates made attempts to get him checked out, but college is a chance for kids to become independent, to make friends, remain steadily academic, it's the transformation from a teenager to an adult, so can you blame anyone for not putting forth more effort in saving this kid before he made the mistake he did? No, and what shocked me but really moved me was as I was watching CNN late last night, a victim who had been shot was interviewed and he said he forgave him, he had forgiven him for what he had done because he must have had some pretty bad things going on in his life to cause him to do such a thing, and that really hit me hard.
You say bigoted, shortsighted, ignorant shit like that and you wonder why so many people (i.e., The World) think your country is backward and racist. And stupid. And elitist. Not to mention the biggest threat to world peace since, well, ever (Hitler doesn't count - he didn't have thousands of nukes and he wasn't a fist-puppet for the likes of devious bastards like Dick Buckshot Cheney and Karl Rove).
Iraqis are attacking your troops because your troops invaded their country with no legal or moral (or even factual) basis and your government refuses to admit this and remove them. If some jackbooted thugs invaded & destroyed my country (after first helping to empower & arm the dictator who ruled it with an iron fist for decades) you can bet I'd feel the same way.
The reasons you're unlikely to see Iraqis "becoming something" for decades are many, and unfortunately stem all the way back to YOUR President Reagan. He & Rumsfeld armed and supported Saddam during his war against Iran including providing him with chemical and biological weapons, which he used. The US looked the other way on Saddam's human rights abuses until he invaded friendly dictatorship Kuwait, which kicked off 1990's Desert Storm. They hit him hard enough to get him back within his borders, but then backed off (after promising to assist a Shiite rebellion) and he was able to continue with his tyranny. Then came the UN (US/UK) Sanctions which basically starved the Iraqi people for a decade, enriched Saddam (because whatever could get in went straight to him) and made them totally dependent on for everything (during the sanctions over 500,000 children died of malnutrition - former US Sec of State Madelein Albright said this was a fair price to pay for harming Saddam's rule).
So after all those years of damage under Saddam (and the murderous sanctions), George W invades, shocks, awes and basically destroys Iraq all over again based on complete and utter lies and refuses to leave, like a drunken idiot guest who's just shot your dog, crapped on your sofa and still has that goddam shit-eating grin on his face, and you have the utter nerve to suggest Iraqis won't amount to anything.
This post isn't worth wasting any more of my time as I know it has as much chance of getting through as common sense does to George W.
That's a pretty shitty, ignorant statement to make. If you care more about the Americans from V.T. than you do for the Iraqis, because you feel a closer connection, that's one thing. But to say that someone will never amount to anything because of where they were born...
It sounds to me like you need to walk a mile in their shoes.
And you are doing the exact same thing by grouping all of us Americans together. Just remember that half of us didn't vote for that fascist, Bush. And most of us were opposed to the invasion of Iraq before it even began.
We might be from the same country, but we are not all cut from the same cloth.
This is exactly why everyone of these threads everywhere turns into a bash America ver. X. You Americans just prove to us all that you really are the conceted irresponsible bunch of thugs that everyone thinks/fears/believes.
How do you know that the next nobel prize winner-to-be wasn't among the dead in Iraq. That would be much more probable than him/her being among the lot in Virginia.
I can't really feel sorry for the americans killed in either Iraq or Viirginia. But I am saddened by the deaths of the civilians in Iraq and possible exchange students in Virginia. That is the way I feel and if it offends you Americans then (maybe you should look in the mirror and wonder why) you can just sod off.
I'm not going to come read this thread again because it just makes me angry. I really shouldn't have read it in the first place but I was kind of feeling sorry for the Virginia case but that feeling has passed. For that you can thank yourselves, Americans.
Which was sorta my point (which I probably should've made clearer in hindsight). For the record I don't think that way myself, but because of the actions of your government that's how a lot of the world currently views your whole country.
And it was more than half that didn't vote for Shrub in 2000. Shame your Supreme Court's vote counts more than those of half a million Americans.
Really? I bet I could land in London at 8:00 in the morning and by noon have made the connections and by sundown have not one but two guns. Two guns that since they are obviously illegal there will be almost untraceable and unaccounted for.
THere was a guy wanted here in the US for Murder in Florida I think. He went to the UK to hide out. He shot two cops to death over there in that "gun free" country of yours.
I had two instances where I needed to have a pistol while playing LFS.
Both times I was up late playing, and somebody messed with the front door. I sort of saw the guy the second time, but he had managed to
get about a half a block down the road by the time I determined it was just one guy and decided to take the initiative instead of wait for him to come in.
I guess he saw me thru the window or something, trying to sneak to the door with a .357. When I got out into the yard, I just saw this one guy running like hell down the street.
It was weird that there was only one guy. I thought most burglars worked
twos or threes.
There isn't a week that goes by here where I don't hear gunshots. I don't think that putting my trust in some sort of gov't authority to protect me and mine over putting that trust in myself is a great idea.
Oh Mikey... here's another story. When I was a kid My nextdoor neighbors had a son that went to college in New York City. This was in the late '70s.
Any ways Mrs Rochen (the next door neighbor) was up there visiting him.
One night she went out to her car to get something. there was this guy down there breaking into cars. She confronted him and threated to call the police on him. At that remark, he laughed at her and said they won't come and even if they did, he'd be long gone and threatened her if she didn't leave him alone. Stupid idiot, I guess he didn't see the Texas license plates on her car. she said something like, Is that so?" and pulled her pistol from her purse and began shooting at him. Lucky for him, she was a bad shot. LOL and he was right. the cops never did come.
Saw Sherriff Bush on the news, comforting victims' families and making speeches about how horrified he is by this tragedy. Fair enough. He might actually mean that. But has he gone to one soldier's funeral yet? Has he comforted even one grieving mother whose son was killed by an IED or shrapnel from a martyr bombing? Does he actually wish to support the troops (like the bumper stickers say) or is he just playing soldiers in the sandpit, seeing them as green plastic instead of his own countrymen?
It does indeed seem that many threads about US news end up bashing Bush or various aspects of American culture. This may be because it seems many Americans agree with their government when it says (in word or in action) that violence, or the mere threat of violence, is an effective way to prevent or stop violence (and the current government has more blood on its hands than any government since the Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon that caused and continued Vietnam). Gun crimes? Simply let everyone arm themselves because if everyone has a gun, criminals will be more careful who they attack. Terrorism? Launch wars. Possible nuclear ambitions by another state? Threaten them with military action (and conspicuously refuse to take the "nuclear option" off the table). Catch a murderer? Kill him with poison gas, lethal injection or electricity as a deterrent (doesn't seem to work that well).
A lot of resentments people hold toward the US didn't just start in 2000, it's just that Team Bush have been the worst exponents of the abuse of US domestic and foreign power since Nixon's shameful behaviour, and Sherriff bush is a particularly visible, incompetent, easily-led fool. Nixon was a bastard but at least he understood politics. I'll wager Bush could barely drive a "stick".
Some of these resentments (deserved or not) go back even before Vietnam. Korea was an embarrassing episode for the might US military. Its provocation of the USSR in Cuba, nearly leading to all-out war, made people wary. Vietnam itself made people more than wary, it made them furious. My own country was dragged into that farce, killing thousands for no good reason (as well as half a million US troops and millions of Vietnamese, Loatians and Cambodians & hastening the rise of the murderous Khmer Rouge). Its unwanted meddling in the affairs of Latin America (including the other 9/11, that of 1973, when elected Chilean president Allende was ousted and replaced by CIA stooge Agusto Pinochet) and more recently Haiti, the former Yugoslavia & the Middle East are the most easily recalled. US "missions" into other countries are often greeted these days with defeated sighs or impotent rage because people have just accepted that the US will bomb anyone they want to, for any reason they care to invent and it will happen without any of repercussions the US would demand from any other nation which would dare to attack another (with one or two execptions). They've not paid any reparations to Vietnam or to Nicaragua (as the World Court ordered the Reagan administration to do so) and lord knows when they'll even leave Afghanistan or Iraq, let alone assist with cleaning up the damage they've caused.
A lot of people remain angry at the American people, too, as they are meant to be in charge of the government as the definition of democracy demands. But if successive US governments can simply do whatever they want without the US public raising a fuss (and most times supporting it passionately), what does that say about American democracy? Is it really something worthy of "exporting" to the world?
Maybe I wasn't specific enough but yeah, their is a clear connection between I and the students at VT but maybe be reasoning with the Iraq civilians wasn't explained enough. Yeah, I wish this war never happened, of course, I don't think anyone wishes death upon another individual for no reason, but when you compare the civilians in Iraq to the students in VT, that's crossing the line. Yeah, both are innocent, and yet, there is a WAR in Iraq, regardless if the government plotted 9/11, which isn't a surprise that that was brought up, anyways, I, as a United States citizen can't change how the government is ran, and you guys seem to put down all Americans for what Bush has done, and how he has responded, and it's unfair. Understandably so, I understand your opinions towards my comments, and maybe I didn't explain myself clear enough but sometimes you have to look past the government aspect of things.
I may have came off wrong but my intentions were to emphasize that although there IS a war going on in Iraq, the issue at hand is the VT situation, and I don't feel it's wrong to say I symphathize more for the VT students than the Iraqi civilians, and I appreciate Cue Balls statement about feeling a closer connection, of course I do, I'm also a college student and the thought goes through my head now everyday I walk into school, what I meant by the amounting to nothing deal was the fact that these kids really did have something going for them and it's sad to see them lose their lives over this. But when it comes down to it, Iraq has a bunch of fools with bombs strapped to themselves detonating every direction possible, so is it fair to stereo-type the country of Iraq and say there ALL suicide bombers out to kill whatever is in there path?
As for Hankstar, I appreciate the history you provided, I truly do, and I can understand where your coming from, but you must realize I came off on here wrong, and I'm sorry...
As for March Here, by saying "How do you know that the next nobel prize winner-to-be wasn't among the dead in Iraq. That would be much more probable than him/her being among the lot in Virginia.
I can't really feel sorry for the americans killed in either Iraq or Viirginia. But I am saddened by the deaths of the civilians in Iraq and possible exchange students in Virginia. That is the way I feel and if it offends you Americans then (maybe you should look in the mirror and wonder why) you can just sod off." is just sick, we have troops out there risking their lives, and in Virginia, by you saying you don't feel sorry is disgusting...
