lord of flies

Nope! We can leave at any time. Incredible, I know; we can just pull out. We have been in Afghanistan for the better part of the decade, and we have made very little progress. We seem to be going quite slow, and this is already going to be a long, drawn out process. Just look at the Russians in Chechnya: it took them fifteen years to get the locals back in line. Do you really want to throw tens of thousands of dead Afghani civilians on the pyre for the next twenty years? Just so we can establish some American client state that'll be collapse before the century's out? I'm sure you would have a wonderful career working for the CIA.

This is not, and has never been, the goal of the United States in Afghanistan. Our causus belli was, no doubt, the destruction or removal of al-Qaeda. The Taliban was in fact an "Afghan-led government" (unless you don't think Pashtuns are Afghanis) but that statement is meaningless anyway. Al-Qaeda is not Afghani, but allow me to outline a two-step plan to remove al-Qaeda from Afghanistan: Ally with the Taliban against al-Qaeda. You're ****ing done. Get out now. So what is the point? Well, Karzai's gang of thugs shows it's not to create a functional democracy. Do we really just hate that little autarky, the Taliban? Plausible, I suppose. We have a deep-seated distaste for them worldwide (e.g. North Korea), which has little or nothing to do with rational geopolitics. Attributing a motivation to that, of course, is more difficult; personally, I'd attribute it to the old western gunboat diplomacy and opening of new markets. What other motivations does the United States have? Well, there is the obvious one... killing people. Perhaps the sole reason our leaders and our people are fighting so hard to make sure that the war keeps going on is simple revenge. We cannot let them get away with what they did, we must destroy their families and homes, et cetera. Revenge mentality and the "Rome Jr." mentality (exemplified by the phrase, "We do [x], but the Romans used to...") have historically combined to create behavior that runs counter to reasonable foreign policy, such as the massive bombing of Cambodia. I can't think of any strategic resources Afghanistan has, and the current regime in Afghanistan has weaker grasp on any claim of "liberal democracy" than the PDPA did on being real Marxists (lol urban proletariat in Afghanistan).

The causes of the so-called "Holodomor."

Natural in the sense that there was not enough food to feed the Ukrainian farmers and the urban workers, and the government chose to prioritize the urban workers. There are many causes for the famine; many Ukrainian farms left large areas untended, for example. For example, the suppression of Communards, or the Tragica Semana. The scale is not quite the same, but Russia is a very big nation and the Bolsheviks were a very big group. It is important to remember that the people purged were not all killed, but the vast majority were imprisoned after a trial. Of course, I'm talking about the political angle here; the officer purge is totally different.

To say that National Socialism and Stalinism are comparable in evil is to say that Stalinism is worse, since fascism was a political reaction to communism. The informal rape and murder which the Red Army occupying forces was caused, not by some sort of psychotic upper-level dictate as the Nazi war crimes were, but by a revenge mentality fueled by the massive human casualties that the people of the Soviet Union had suffered. Brothers, friends, mothers, were mercilessly killed by Nazi forces whose sole purpose was to clear out the aborigines so that the Germans could settle the area. Killing, mutilating and raping Germans (and perceived German collaborators) was a natural reaction. The difference is vast and should be self-evident. Meanwhile, the "Great Purge" (the only actually comparable event, assuming that you know that the "Holodomor" was a natural famine) was aimed at political opposition but it is a much deeper story than that. There were counter-revolutionary elements in the military who were more than willing to turn on Stalin, and even taken together the Gulag was a remarkably nice system - most of the deaths occurred during the war, for obvious reasons. The political purge of his fellow Bolsheviks, while unjustifiable for the most part (e.g. Bukharin and Zinoviev), was a minor death toll, no worse or better than any other political violence practiced in the West.

"Punishment for the crime" is retributive justice. I'm trying to find the words, but none are forthcoming. I'm not the one dehumanizing criminals and pretending like they're evil robots.

And? What was her reason? All you've stated is that she was capable of performing the action with a high probability of success. That does not mean she was acting rationally or normally. Did the man also have a gun? Because at that point any confrontation immediately escalates to a life-threatening one and cannot be expected to end well. We weren't discussing the victims. I actually giggle like a little girl when I read some of your posts, so it'd be difficult to call me humorless. And I consider retributive justice an insult to the victims of these criminals. It is saying "Yeah, this will probably create more victims down the line... but **** it, I love revenge!"

Again, it is extremely unlikely that you will actually be forced to shoot people during this section, only expected too, just like in the boat mission or with the POWs. Hopefully, you'll read more than a word of this.

I may replay the sequence for its inherent value, yes. However, it's silly to complain about people dying in an airport, because that is literally the only thing which significantly differentiates it from Modern Warfare's history of civilian murder. Perhaps in raw numbers too, but the numbers killed in the nuke were far in excess. Oh, and the option to skip it (which was not included for past war crime sections).

The mission is like three minutes long if you dilly-dally, if I recall correctly. And again, you will almost certainly not actually have to shoot civilians.

There was a constant undercurrent of inhumanity, murder, and imperialist slaughter in the original Modern Warfare. Civilians are killed right in front of you, captured political leaders executed by protagonists and antagonists alike, hundreds of thousands of people killed, et cetera. The fact that you are so distressed by an optional mission where you choose if you kill civilians is rather telling - what distinguishes it from the boat mission in Modern Warfare? What's so different about watching some Russian Ultranationalists murder civilians and watching the Arabic revolutionaries killing people in the original? Oh, right, now I remember: in MW2 the people you kill are upper-class whites.

It is extraordinarily unlikely that you will be forced to kill the civilians, even if you choose to play the level. Don't be an idiot. I would rate the chances so low that I promise that, if the level prevents you from just walking through it, I'll shave my own head.

Nice job with the context there. Why did the 18 year old choose to kill another man? Was that man, perhaps, a landlord who denied the 18 year old's family an apartment so they have lived homeless for six months since? Did he rape the boy's mother? Was he on drugs? Was he pressured into the killing by his peers? Did the victim kill the boy's father? What about the woman? Was she perfectly rational and acting normally, or was she suffering from temporary insanity? Postpartum trauma? Did she try to slit her own throat after attempting to kill her children? I sincerely doubt that a woman who raised a child to seven years was acting normally when she killed her two year old and tried to kill her eldest. But no, in Killian Kalthorne World, these people acted completely on their own choices; there were no external pressures that made them do this. It was a completely irrational and malicious act born of a completely rational and currently functional mind.

Actually, I have sex quite regularly, since I am quite personable (even "overly kind") in real life. On the internet, however, my tone varies wildly, because I honestly don't care what you think of me. I mean, you don't even know how to use punctuation - the first sentence is a question ("aren't you" implies a question), whereas the second is a statement. Unless you're unsure what you're guessing.

Oh yeah, I just remembered when you were expected to murder sleeping, unarmed Russian sailors in the original Modern Warfare (can't remember if you were required to). But they're dirty slavs, right?

Business model for PC RPGs: Blame poor sales on piracy.

Frugality is not a sin. In fact, spending money on anything less than charity when you don't need to is a sin (by inaction).

They were, and they were also available to all classes rendering a good chunk of the Soldier's skills useless. Since by the end of the game you've already filled up almost all your skill bars, this renders the class useless. Since all classes had the same weapons, and all classes had access to the same skills via their companions, they all played the same. QED.

I literally cannot imagine a turned based video game that could be called a "shooter;" even if you had guns, it'd be an RPG, strategy game or a point and click adventure game. Shooters are in real time, I figured that was so self-evident that it didn't need to be mentioned. Wrong again, and the only way you even fiddled with the non-pistols was by playing Soldier, where you got to choose between the incredibly inaccurate AR or the pistol. For everything else, by the time you unlocked non-Pistol skills your Pistol skill was high enough to make them seem excruciatingly terrible to use.

Must suck not to know about EB Games liberal return policy.

Yeah, but careful sniper is pretty much irrelevant in 90% of the game's situations, since you're only a few meters away in almost all situations and a high-level pistol is just as useful at those ranges. Oh so you ignored the companions and used the terrible non-pistol guns. Well, I guess if you did that you would notice a difference in gameplay. On the other hand, if you were smart you would do something else. Oh, so you are trolling me, but in case it isn't clear how so to anyone here: FO had turn based combat.

Honestly though, there is a difference. It's not noticeable in KotOR (for example) because you can switch between every character; if you couldn't, this wouldn't be true. Imagine in KotOR, that you could only control Captain Butts (as I called him); the gameplay for each class would obviously be quite different. In ME, despite the fact that you can only play one character, it plays the same period. Hmm... no.

I'm sure with your low standards it's quite a bit easier to find a game that you like.

Do you seriously not understand that there is a difference between third person and isometric perspectives, or are you just trolling me?

You think that your post was actually a zinger. That's quite sad. Sorry, everything you said was either never backed up with even a shred of evidence, or was whining about my tone. The fact that I am a "nasty condescending jerk" in my posts (by the way, cry some more about that, it's quite amusing) is irrelevant. One can be correct and rude. One can be incorrect and rude. I am the former; you are the latter.