SpawnPoint - Where Game Begins

What has he done a good job with? So many people are still living in the "Anyone but Bush" mentality that just having someone new NOT doing anything is an improvement. He is PROPOSING a lot of things but what is he actually doing? The only thing about the surge idea from him that I like is it shows that he is not a slave to the rabid left as I was afraid he might become.

The sad thing is China's percentage of American ownership is about to go up like 30 Billion....(the cost of the surge as reported on TV.) That is like $1000 a head EXTRA from every man, woman and child living in the US today...with that in mind, do we still think that is a good idea? I don't have an extra grand laying around to throw away on this (actually 4 grand as I have a wife and 2 kids)....does anyone? Sooner or later, they are going to have to raise taxes and raise them bit time. Our government is following a similar path of the financial institutions that failed.....except they can print the money. I have heard theories that only hyper inflation will allow the US to pay this off by making the dollar virtually worthless.

*edit* Yay, my paragraphs show up now

"Having plans" and "talking points" are all he has right now which was my point. I hear too often what a great job he is doing. Yea he is coming up with good ideas but right now those are almost as bad a campaign promise. Promises by politicians shouldn't even be considered promises. They should be classified "If I can do it and add crap hardly anyone wants to legislation to pay back donors well then maybe" or "I know there is no way in hell I am going to be able to do this but I am going to say it anyway to get elected". Right now he is PROPOSING deficit spending. I don't care who is in charge, I am tired of the deficit spending. Who the hell is going to pay for all of this? China? The next 2 generations? Are we going to finance things forever now until China and the other loaners say enough is enough? Or should we start living within our budget both as a country, companies and individuals. Naw....we can't do that...the political aisles will be full of sob stories and lobbyists saying we just can't cut that!!

The "too big to fail" category includes our government now too. We could have paid for universal health care if we had stayed out of Iraq and just gone into Afghanistan and brought back that raving lunatic's head on a plate. What gets glossed over is that while yes that money could have been used for the health care, it still did not exist and would have had to be borrowed also. Obama's ideas are great. His way of paying for them is either in "La-La" land fantasy world or non-existent. That is the problem I have had with left wing politicians, great ideas but don't seem to figure out how to pay for them. The "Republicans" <----(I used quotes here because I wouldn't consider the Bush administration to be Republican) have been as bad but in different areas. Maybe Obama should hire some of Clinton's staff. That was the last time the deficit looked good in the last 20 years.

As for the surge, I mean if they are going to throw 30 billion dollars away on it, I wish they would have just cut us all a check instead. THAT would help the economy. I we are going to finance that kind of dollars, might as well go to the public.

The reasons for staying in the war are what? Fighting them there and not here? Pffft! That will only remain that way until we leave. You can not stamp out an ideology. What is even more dangerous is that by doing "Shock and Awe" and trying to force it, you actually make it worse. Doing a surge is only sticking our finger over a small hole while the whole dike is breaking. The only way to win that is to take the warfare to a level that the US is unwilling to do. They either need to turn it all into a parking lot or go after them even when they hide in churches and civilian structures. This will send a message that "You can't run, you can't hide and anyone that lets you gets toasted too." The problem with that is we aren't like that and the world would rebel against those kinds of tactics. It is like running your finger through a mudpuddle...you can part the water and see the bottom for a second.....but the water always closes right up behind you like you weren't even there. When those rocket scientists running this war figure that out, we can quit wasting money and lives on something that we can't win.

I am hopeful that Obama is smart and strong enough to do that....say enough is enough. Here is a novel idea....make it VERY hard to immigrate here illegally. Will that work? Probably not because the only way to do it effectively is to allow controversial tactics like profiling....noooo!! we can't do that *sarcsm*.....that would be racism/religious intolerance/elitism/ect. whatever. If someone looks like a gang-banger I wouldn't let them in my house....not because of the race or other visual factors... but because of an implied behavior pattern associated with that lifestyle.

Not much to say in anything other than the "campaign" against terror but being a little more informed about it now that I've put myself in this situation I'll throw in my two cents. Plain and simple the War against Terror can never never be won. The longer we stay there doing things the way we have been, the worse it is going to get not only in the middle east, but across the entire globe. Cells influenced by what is happening in Afghanistan and the rural tribesmen that are seriously hurting one of the most advanced and powerful nations on Earth, are becoming more and more prominent in Africa, Southeast Asia and Europe, and it's not going to stop. Now don't get me wrong radical Islam is a very serious problem and something needs to be done, but how do you deal with something as sensitive as religion but so dangerous that people can be simply brainwashed into these killing themselves for reasons they know nothing about. I can't think of a way, but clearly our approach is not working,and all were doing is getting innocent people killed.


"No need for large numbers of troops on the ground --- kill them with our technology."


That is one of the major problems as well. You can't fight an insurgency with UAV's or missiles or robots because the insurgency lives amongst innocent people and technology cannot distinguish like a human on the battlefeild in the fight can. The Taliban would simply use it as leverage against their cause that the U.S. in satanic and promote their cause ammong the people. Weeding (with extreme prejudice) these people out and protecting the civilians is the only way to make progress and at least supress it for now. Nothing will come from Obama's decision exept more dead troops and the Taliban getting what they want. Now remember, one soldier is worth about 4 grand to these people which is a LOT of value in Afghanistan, and they don't even go after the combat troops anymore, they ambush vulnerables like convoys and remote fob's, because they know infantry or armor will kick their @$$. Technology is the no no. The only way really is to suck it up and start getting seriously aggressive against these radicals and not just NATO powers, but everybody because when it gets a whole lot worse countries like China and Russia are going to be feeling it just as bad as we are. Again its a very complicated problem and it's not going to end anywhere in the foreseeable future.

I am starting to believe that we should just pull out and watch what happens. The only way this is going to stop is if we let the rabid dogs take over. They will try to get us sure, but they are trying that now. They will also go after ALL the "infidels" across the world in the industrialized nations of the world. They will oppress their own people in ways that would make you either vomit or shiver. At some point, the entire globe will stand up and shout "NO MORE!". Fortify the US and have travel restrictions like Fort Knox and let some of those snide "We think you are wrong and we won't help you/are going to pull our support for you" take a couple of bombs in a populated area and see how snide they are now. It is easy to take the high road if it is not your trade towers or subway that got bombed.

France treats their Muslims like second class citizens so I understand why they are "taking the chicken s**t high road". They are afraid of the numbers of Muslims and what would happen. Their Muslim population is similar in size to our Hispanic "illegal alien" and green card/naturalized citizen population. Can you imagine what would happen if they were rabid fanatics and we were hurting their homeland/religious places? They could cause some serious problems for us....so I guess France's chicken-heartedness is understandable.....I don't respect them for it but I understand it. I hope they realize that if we pull out, it might give their Muslims something to concentrate on other than the homeland and what we are doing there....they probably won't but that is almost assuredly what would happen.

I am all for freedom of religion myself, but their has to be limits. Those of us who are Christians despise the White Supremacists that claim to be "following God's plan". I am willing to bet that most Muslims are sick and tired of the radicals in their midst also. The ones that secretly support radicals are the problem as well and I don't feel sorry for them if they take a smart bomb in the face....just like any American that would help a skin head that takes an FBI round in the process wouldn't bother me either. I feel sorry for the Muslims that are always looking over their shoulder just because the most vocal and rabid of them cause so much trouble in the name of Allah. I would hate to be watched suspiciously simply because of my religion.

I like Atrus' idea of a permanent base with an airfield over there that shoots anyone within the perimeter on sight. Set up a satellite or two to scan and monitor activity and when a training camp is spotted, either send an F-22 up their ass or some unmanned type thing. It would provide enough instability in the radicals over there that it might keep them there instead of coming here. It would also make it very hard to go after our soldiers. It HAS to be cheaper as well. Those of us that have been around a while pretty much believe that some kind of presence over there is just going to be a fact of life for a LONG time. Those of you who are skeptical about that, look at Germany....we have had that base (Ramstein built in 1951) there since just after the second world war.

Another thing we should be concentrating on is making sure the old Soviet Republic(s) don't "misplace" a nuke....*shudders*

If we could just break the grip on the big oil companies and come up with some other type of transportation fuel, that would solve that problem for us too I believe. If they no longer have a commodity that can provide them with funding for their radicals, that part of the world becomes a worthless batch of sand covering up environmentally damaging hydrocarbons. We wouldn't have much to fear from crusade era radicals....which is about all they could afford to be at that point.....ahhh dare to dream.