Yeah, our government is ruthless. Pepper spraying lawbreakers and dissenters and whatnot. Not even brutally murdering anyone who speaks out against them but still somehow just as terrible as governments who do.
what's this about militant Islam? Militant Islam is bad, sure but that in itself doesn't justify our military actions. If we don't stop militant Islam over there then it will spread to America. Now replace Islam with communism. And you get stuff like the war in Vietnam. We are relieving the same hysteria of fear of communism. Communism collapsed on itself and so will these militant Islamists. Now we can look at Iraq and Afghanistan and see whether or not the loss of American soldiers was worth 1.5 regime changes. I don't think so. Sure militant islamists are bad but americas situation is worse. We got so many problems to deal with at home and we can't afford to keep our empire. Religious fundamentalism in the slightest is horrible and will lose in the light of logic and rationality.
That you're even comparing Islam to other religions is laughable. Islamists stick together wherever they may live. They have their own set of laws that their God wants them to instill in all the lands of the earth and they feel they must dominate the world. Most Muslims in Canada and wherever they happen to be do not condemn Islamic terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda. I agree we can't stop them all but we've actually made a lot of progress but know-nothing civilians can't see that because, well they know everything yet nothing at all. And this punk, Bradley Manning, was aiding this enemy to the civilized world. Fuck him.
A traitor to what exactly? I don't believe anything my government says anymore. This is their fall guy, that's how I see it. A computer hacker reported that Manning downloaded this info from a secret network to the fbi. Really? Stop believing everything this government tells you.
I don't believe everything they tell me. Stop disbelieving everything they tell you for the sake of disbelieving it. Both extremes are illogical. It's a wild world outside your cuddly US borders where the government becomes nazis for using pepper spray.
That was just to display the range-where do you want it set between those two points? (if it is currently "too soft" then what is "too hard" and what is "just right" to paraphrase Goldilocks) Of course, there is also impalement, but that seems to be out of fashion at the moment
Are you fucking serious? Did you just support your government pepper spraying people who disagree with it's policies?
Islam isn't unique in it's desire to dominate the world. In fact, I can think of another religion that was spread by the bloody edge of the sword throughout Europe and into the middle east. They aren't the only religion that has a sky daddy that telepathically tells them how to control other people. In fact, I can't think of a religion that doesn't have a magical skydaddy. With the exception of Buddhism, in theory. The less religous fundementalism in the world, the better off it will be. Hell, the less religion the more humanity will progress. But I don't want to sound too much like a commie, as this is the politics forum.
You do know where Australia is, right? Maybe your lack of geographical knowledge professes to your lack of knowledge on foreign policy.
Actually, requiring proof to believe something from your Government is highly logical and was actually encouraged 100+ years ago. Constant vigilance and dissent (not rebellion) are required in order to stop a Government becoming a dictatorship/tyranny. I don't believe a lot of the stuff that the Government tells me, because it's nonsense. Anyone with a brain stem can see that it's so. What about the Gulf of Tonkin incident? People blindly believed something happened that got them into the Vietnam war, maybe if 70% of people required that there was more open and transparent information a lot of Americans wouldn't have died and the military industrial complex wouldn't have grown to the extent that it has today. When do we find out that America was at least indirectly responsible for 9/11 by provoking the middle east? Unlike most Americans, I don't get as chastised for saying stuff like that. I mean, questioning a terrorist attack that has launched into a 10 year war, how ridiculous! This man needs to be locked up because he's clearly a traitor! - What? He's not an American citizen? He's clearly an enemy combatant then, forget the torture, just execute him then! I only now realise that my hyperboles wasn't actually enough to describe the American citizens being assassinated.
No. Likewise, American and Middle eastern terrorist lives are equally valueless. It's a shame some civilians had to die but we didn't need Bradley Manning to knowingly, potentially release thousands upon thousands of classified cables, which only a few had the video in question, the rest were just raw data that was a goldmine because it had names and other valuable information that these highly intelligence and educated operatives mostly likely utilized. Again these are highly sophisticated people. A traitor to the oath he swore his life to.