Monte Carlo

Random quotes and paranoia does not a cogent argument make. If I were you I'd adjust the antenna on your tin-foil Napoleon hat.

Yeah, a +3 version by the look of it.

It's from Icewind Dale 2. Female drow, apres boob job. Cheers MC

Ergo, my point about the draft is proved in abundance. Some of the best infantry leaders I ever met were quiet, considered men who did not enjoy violence, despite being extremely adept at it. They are also men who would be sickened by the REMFs at abu graib abusing prisoners, FWIW. Cheers MC

No. Your evident lack of self-discipline would obviate you from being an effective infantry soldier.

Grandpa speaks much wisdom. If we can get away from irrelevant age-of-beer-drinking nonsense and back on topic, look at it like this: We live, in the West, in an age of abandon and illusory individualism. Imagine if tomorrow Donald "my hero" Rumsfeld issued a draft. Guess what? Almost every American 18-21 year old not living in the flyover states would burn their draft card and ask to be put in a stockade. You'd need more redneck reservist MP's to lock 'em up than you would to drag Iraqi POWs around on dog leashes. Point the second: conscripts are resource-intensive. They tend to perform well in popular wars of national survival (WW2) but badly in politically sensitive ones (Vietnam). Which category do you put Iraq into? Burdening the middle-management backbone of the regular army (the senior NCOs) with poorly-motivated and trained draftees isn't the way forward here. Seriously. What do most modern armies need with regards to reservists? Civilian specialists in telecommunications, logistics, medicine, intelligence and so on. Infantry work is getting increasingly technological and not fit for conscripted grunts. It really is Point Not Found. If the US army could acceptably draft qualified IT technicians, telecommunications engineers, paramedics, arabic language specialists and so on then maybe I'd see where this argument might be going. This is a Democrat scare story, and a clumsy one at that. The US voters who are most likely to vote Democrat who would be affected (do you honestly imagine that Volvo-driving Vermont Democrats would send their kids?) in the blue-collar rustbelt are also, ironically, the most patriotic and likely to heed the call (the Deerhunter classes, I'd call them). My money is on no draft unless there is some hugely seriously big merde about to hit the fan. Then, hell, they'd probably even be calling the likes of me up. Cheers MC

Soldiers join to serve. You don't get war a la carte. Kids nowadays seem to think that they'll only kill the foreigners that suit their own personal agenda, which ain't the way it's done. You might get a popular war with lots of shiny medals and a clear moral agenda. Chances are you'll get a crappy one where you roundly beat a third world army then get bogged down in a gritty counter-insurgency. Meanwhile, all the other kids your age are earning more for doing less, watching MTV and screwing your girlfriend. Was ever thus. I can imagine Roman Legionaries bitching that they could be sitting pretty in Gaul instead of freezing their arses off on Hadrian's Wall fighting picts. All part of the deal, ladies. Some people fall for the recruiting spiel ("army of one" my arse), some don't. You have the priviledge of not volunteering for regular military service in a Western democracy. In 1991 I was an infantry reservist. We were put on notice for the first Gulf War as battlefield casualty replacements. I, to put it bluntly, near messed myself with worry. But I was going to go because I'd signed the dotted line and I knew the risks. As it turned out, the chances of us going was slim given the duration of the war, but it didn't feel like that at the time. I was preparing myself to put my life on hold for a bit to go to war. At least I learnt that I was prepared to put my money where my mouth was and fulfil my obligation. Most professional soldiers don't want the sympathy of civilians, just a little bit of understanding and perhaps a sliver of respect. Which, by and large, they deserve. --- And, yes, although the movie of Starship Troopers is a clever parody that underlines the authoritarian themes of the novel, as a piece of popular culture the novel blows it out of the water. Cheers MC

Heinlein wrote Starship Troopers in the 1950's, Sport Fans. It is required reading for any aging reactionary like myself, and Heinlein was roundly condemned for being a crypto-fascist by pro-Commie fellow travellers/ useful idiots of the day. Cheers MC

Why draft people when the regular army isn't having recruitment problems and the reserves are up to establishment? The US army is withdrawing substantial assets from Western Europe (especially Germany). I see overstretch, sure, but not anything near drafting levels. There has been notice of recall of ex-regulars with reserve obligations, which suggests that the military is feeling the heat. However, volunteer armies usually see a dip in numbers after active service ("been there, done that, got the T-shirt" syndrome). The author of this thread's incessant doom-mongering spamming on a gaming forum is priceless, BTW. Would he like me to link him to some political websites instead?

Could Dakoth please learn to selectively use the quote function? As for Mkreku, meh. No point, is there?

Why do people think that Democracy is monolithic? Why do people feel that their influence and/ or participation is once every 'X' years at a polling booth? If you don't like George W Bush being president, there is a stack of things you can do about it. The most fundamental, of course, is that you don't vote for him. However, you could also: * Start your own website/ newsletter/ discussion group/ lobbying group * Join an alternative political party * Join the Republican party and agitate for an alternative * Become the CEO of MegaCom and not support the Democrats/ Republicans/ Whoever * Become the Director of Wealthy American Vegans for Justice and do the liberal version of what the CEO of MegaCom just did * Be a war hero, come home and decry the war you just fought in * Put on a batman costume and cheekily penetrate the security of an Important Place * Choose not to buy certain products and services for ideological, moral or ethical reasons (this applies to those on left, right and centre BTW) * Get involved in the Media * Get involved in a pressure group * Stacks of other stuff None of these things will, necessarily, dethrone George Bush Jnr. But you'll have had your say. Done your bit. Moved, in a tiny way, the debate in a certain direction. Who knows? You could have, via your efforts, persuaded a half dozen people in Florida to vote for the Democrats, prompting genuine hanging chad apocalypse. You could have, without knowing it, helped a new Republican faction nudge their way slowly towards power, usurping the Neocons. My point is that participation is the essence of civic democracy. It is what sets the West from the rest. Chinese people share a fraction of these freedoms, for which millions have fought and died. I'm not an idealist: our flawed democracy is the "best worst" system. But where would you rather live? Iran? Russia? China? Thought not. Cheers MC

Well, not really, seeing as my real name is Monte Carlo. ;_;

Easily, by far, the silliest and most offensive thing I've read on the Internet this month. Cheers MC

..... ROFL. How can a country with a forty-plus percent base rate of income tax be Americanized?

The heavy-handed modding is getting worse. Bioboard culture, I have said, is coming to a forum near you soon.

The problem is, Mark, that the kid's going through his fire and brimstone lefty phase. It'll pass. He's only addressing the points I make that he's comfortable with and ignoring the others. Please, address the salient points, don't tell me I'm "wrong" so blithely and get with the programme. The intellectually lazy, left-wing, reflex anti-Americanism on this little corner of the forum is like a child's sandpit full of shiny but, ultimately, pointless objects. If you can't at least try to see the argument from the opposing point of view (I can clearly understand, with some sympathy, Allende's position in the early 70's) then you've got no chance of cogently making your own.

OXYMORON ALERT!!!

Who edited my contribution to this thread?

Who wrote your history book? Why don't you question it, doubt it's veracity, test it's sources, read an alternative point of view? Uh, that is communism. You say "take back the land" and I say "sieze property unlawfully from it's legitimate owners." Communists say "progressive elements" and I say "terrorists". Communists say "Vanguard of the Proletariat" and I say unionised bully-boys. Communists say "redistribution of wealth" and I say "theft". See where this is going? Quite clearly I read it in a history book rather more accurate than the one you read. Ha ha ha. 70's Latin American socialism, if anything, was even more red-blooded than centralized soviet communism, actually. Death squads ahoy! Oh, sorry, I suppose in your history books only right-wing juntas have death squads, right? Why is is that madmen so often seem to conveniently be part of extremist ideological cults of both left and right? To try to separate Stalin's terror from Russian communism would be disingenious. No, it definitely isn't. Is blaming the Holocaust on the NSDAP shallow? Is blaming Year Zero on the Khmer Rouge shallow? Heck, is blaming 9/11 on AQ shallow? I don't think so. I was around the last time "The Kids" got this upset about the world. It's OK, it's cool. Just try to, occasionally, look beyond your furious self-righteousness. Then ,when it's all over you won't feel like a manipulated jerk. Cheers MC

Allende was a hard-line socialist who had every intention of abandoning democracy in Chile and replacing it with a Soviet-style regime. The Nixon administration wasn't going to tolerate Chile and Cuba going Red, and I can't say I blame them. They couldn't invade, not with the Vietnam imbroglio. No, they would use a home-grown proxy. If you are going to discuss and consider history, try putting yourself in the shoes of the protagonists....enter the forces of reaction. Pinochet thought he was a patriot rescuing his country from Communism. Allende would have eventually ushered in a political regime just as repugnant, but the Left generally hear/ see/ speak no evil when a totalitarian regime is from the left-wing end of the spectrum. Look at Stalin. Murdered millions. Made Hitler look like an amateur. Yet kids wear "CCCP" tee-shirts, or pins with Lenin's head on. I find them as offensive as swastika vests or Eichman badges, personally. The winners write history, or, in the "post historical" world, the Media/ Political complex that is made up of overwhelmingly urban liberals. Cheers MC

Blade 2 was, like, an ultra-violent screen saver. Ron Perlman was the best thing in it, really. I like Snipes as an actor and an action movie hero, actually, but this wasn't his finest hour. What bothered me was that the Bloodpack was this ill-disciplined bag o' ****. If the vamps have become this ultra-slick corporate entity, wouldn't their covert warrior elite be more like some sort of glam special forces outfit? Not a bunch of scruffy goths/ Marilyn Manson fans armed with melee weapons? So, yeah, half an hour into it the torpor set in. It's as if they have a "please the kids" flow chart of stuff they have to have. BTW, I haven't seen Hellboy yet. Is it any good? Cheers MC

Discuss!

The sixties, eh? LSD is the only credible explanation for that. The tunes kinda catchy though, dontcha think? Cheers MC

How do you square this with Islam, where the notion of secularity doesn't even come into the equation?