Originally Posted by pan6467

Well hurray for you and don't tell me I am prepared to sacrifice lives. My son and his half brother are of age. His half brother is on his way to Afghanistan, I don't want to see anyone die. Death is death, murder is murder whether by a despot or a fight to remove the despot. As for murder and death in war you have to take those risks you can't slap a wrist and say please stop. It won't happen. It's much like bullying, if kids see someone getting bullied then stand up and protect the one getting bullied. Because bullies don't stop once they get what they want from the original person they bully. They continue because it is a power rush. Same with these despots and dictators. They will continue to kill and rape and trash their countries until there is nothing and blame the US and the West until they have rebuilt a nice terrorism network brainwashed and dictated to believe that we are the bad guys. And we will be the bad guys the longer we ALLOW these rulers to get away with murder.

Until we as a people stand up and demand that OUR leaders do something to get rid of these idiotic asswipes, then we are as guilty as that leadership. If we continue to buy oil and protect those leaders as we did Mubarak for our own self interest we are more guilty. Because we know what is going on but turn a blind eye to it for self serving reasons. Same with China and Tibet.

It comes down to morals and ethics. Which do we need more of peace and leaders that spread the wealth or outright persecutions and civil rights violations in the name of sparing "US lives"? We are being freaking hypocrites.

We say we value freedom and that we don't want to see innocent people die. But in the end we don't show it. In that aspect, I can see why the rest of the world hates us. We aren't willing to sacrifice anything to save the millions of innocents in Libya, Egypt, Iran, China and so on. We instead slap a wrist and say, "don't affect our commercialized Utopia." Until WE make sacrifices and show the world we mean what we say about freedom and take out these despots and murderous leaders who care nothing about civil rights (as hypocritical as that may sound), we look like fools and are indeed such and every bit as guilty as those leaders, moreso for letting it happen.

Example: If I see an old woman getting raped and robbed, I'm picking up the nearest knife, gun, 2x4 I can to help her, as I dial 9-1-1. If they beat me down or kill me I can "live" with myself, because I sacrificed myself for what I believed to be right. If I turn a blind eye, my morals and ethics dictate that I am guiltier for letting that happen. I will have a hard time living with my conscience.