Why won't the US end issues and take some names.

[Agent327]

So Obama's approval rating is at an all time low with the recent exchange of 5 Taliban... leaders for the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. I'm not to sure whether they were leaders or not, but they were in Guantanamo Bay so they weren't just the average grunt.

The average person in Gitmo is an illegally abducted person. None of them have even been accused of anything and the US has denied any of them due process. To all intents and purposes they are political prisoners and no Western country has agreed to take them of the US's hands. Legally speaking the Taliban's initiative is a laudable initiative: people that are being detained, yet not being accused of anything should be set free - unless you're a dictatorship that doesn't care about such legalities.

A comparison with Israeli-Palestinian prisoner exchange does not hold up for various reasons, the most important being that Israel generally does try (not torture) its prisoners.

(On a side note: the fact that you or anyone else considers the soldier in question a traitor is of no relevance. If he disobeyed orders, that is a military matter, not one the US government should concern itself with.)

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Actually the status of largest market in the world goes to NAFTA. USA #1.

NAFTA isn't a market to the outside world. It aims to facilitate free trade between the member states but it lacks common regulations and a customs union which would represent it as one market to non-members.

 

[Kaitzilla]

... I know we could never justify blackmailing other countries to get what we want, but if someone messes with us, why can't we just end them? Why is it that we have to put up with that?

We basically "ended" North Korea in the 50's.
You mean like that?

U.S. warplanes dropped more napalm and bombs on North Korea than they did during the whole Pacific campaign of World War II.[277]

As a result, almost every substantial building in North Korea was destroyed.[278] The war's highest-ranking American POW, U.S. Major General William F. Dean,[279] reported that most of the North Korean cities and villages he saw were either rubble or snow-covered wastelands.[280][281] U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay commented, "we burned down every town in North Korea and South Korea, too."[282] The devastation of Pyongyang was so complete that bombing was halted as there were no longer any worthy targets.[283]

What most people in America do not know –and which is particularly relevant when assessing the “threats” of the DPRK to World peace– is that North Korea lost thirty percent of its population as a result of US led bombings in the 1950s. US military sources confirm that 20 percent of North Korea’s population was killed off over a three period of intensive bombings:


“After destroying North Korea’s 78 cities and thousands of her villages, and killing countless numbers of her civilians, [General] LeMay remarked, “Over a period of three years or so we killed off – what – twenty percent of the population.” It is now believed that the population north of the imposed 38th Parallel lost nearly a third its population of 8 – 9 million people during the 37-month long “hot” war, 1950 – 1953, perhaps an unprecedented percentage of mortality suffered by one nation due to the belligerance of another.” (quoted in Richard Rhodes, “The General and World War III,” The New Yorker, June 19, 1995, p. 53.)

This is the closest we come nowadays:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/sep/22/pakistan.usa

The Bush administration threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the stone age" after the September 11 attacks if the country did not cooperate with America's war on Afghanistan, it emerged yesterday.
In an interview to be aired on CBS television this weekend Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, said the threat was delivered by the assistant secretary of state, Richard Armitage, in conversations with Pakistan's intelligence director.

 

[Borachio]

We basically "ended" North Korea in the 50's.

And hasn't North Korea turned out well, after all?

(I honestly didn't know the Americans bombed it that much. The Korean war has never been something I've been interested in for some reason. Perhaps I need to read up a bit.)

 

[Senethro]

Didn't know that either. 30% of a population sounds like genocide territory. Damn.

 

[CavLancer]

There is a reason they call it the graveyard of empires.

Devils advocate on/ Because those empires didn't have thermonuclear weapons? /DA off

Just playing in the spirit of the OP.

 

[Old Hippy]

Devils advocate on/ Because those empires didn't have thermonuclear weapons? /DA off

Just playing in the spirit of the OP.

in the same spirit
/ that is the end of everyone, not just the odd enpire /

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Devils advocate on/ Because those empires didn't have thermonuclear weapons? /DA off

Just playing in the spirit of the OP.

I think the guerilla warfare and lack of major population centers makes Afghanistan one of the least efficient places to use nukes against. It would be better to spray the area with toxins that prevent anything to grow and starve them out.

 

[Borachio]

Didn't know that either. 30% of a population sounds like genocide territory. Damn.

No wonder the North Koreans are a touch waspy at times.

Those sorts of figures seriously affect one's perspectives.

 

[KmDubya]

I think the guerilla warfare and lack of major population centers makes Afghanistan one of the least efficient places to use nukes against. It would be better to spray the area with toxins that prevent anything to grow and starve them out.

Afghanistan is pretty sparse on growing anything except for angry bearded men

If it was one of the states in the US it is where we would have stuck all the Indians. It makes Gallup New Mexico look like a garden spot.

 

[Tee Kay]

Afghanistan is pretty sparse on growing anything except for angry bearded men

Also opium.

 

[sophie]

Also opium.

Damn, beat me to it.

 

[Borachio]

Didn't they use to export pomegranates in vast numbers?

 

[LoneRebel]

That's true. We look worse when the light shines mostly on us. And we should. Aint never been perfect. Never really been anything other than deeply self-absorbed as a general zeitgeist. But as more poles flicker on in the 21st, poles we have at least tried to help power in our own semi-competent way, I would bet that the lighting will be somewhat more complimentary.

Pretty much this. You look at a certain large East Asian country today, and then you realize that in comparison, the US isn't quite the Great Satan it's made out to be.

 

[Borachio]

Do you mean China? Because honestly it's beginning to look not at all bad. Especially in comparison with India.

They do have quite a few human rights issues, of course. But a lot of benefits for their population, and I'd say that counts for a great deal.

 

[LoneRebel]

Do you mean China? Because honestly it's beginning to look not at all bad. Especially in comparison with India.

They do have quite a few human rights issues, of course. But a lot of benefits for their population, and I'd say that counts for a great deal.

I was not referring to how they treat their own citizens, although of course that's pretty bad too, but to how they treat other countries.

What's wrong with India? I don't see them threatening their smaller neighbors. I'd much prefer India to be the world superpower than China. Which, if we're lucky, should happen by the turn of the 22nd century or so.

India is a democracy, by the way. China isn't.

 

[Borachio]

Absolutely, India is a democracy, and China isn't. One might expect Indians to be better off than Chinese.

India is doing quite nicely. For some people, who are becoming phenomenally rich. The poor, though, aren't doing much better at all. And a significant minority of Indians are illiterate.

China's people, on the other hand, generally have access to universal education and health care.

At least, so I've heard. I've not visited, or studied the statistics in detail of, either country.

 

[LoneRebel]

China could be paradise on earth and I still wouldn't like them.

Like I said, I am more concerned with their foreign policy than with how they treat their own people. As far as I can tell, the vast majority of China's population seems to be solidly behind their government as far as foreign policy is concerned, giving me even less reason to be concerned about them.

 

[Agent327]

So, you don't like China and don't care about Chinese...

And hasn't North Korea turned out well, after all?

If you consider a 30% undernourishment rate well, then yes.

 

[Borachio]

My remark was sarcasm. Heavy sarcasm.