My son thinks that the Afghans (and the Iraqis - he was there too) are stupid flunkies that are not salvageable. They will continue to live short brutish lives. He also thinks terrorists and the people that harbor them need to be killed. So does my daughter and son in law - and so do I. I don't think you have a clue as to how many enemies of the US and of western civilization are out there and formulating plots to attack us every day. Please spare me the "America as bad guy that created these people" argument. It's BS. Sometimes we try to work with these bastards and then they turn on us. That is stupid tactics, IMO. We should kill them wherever we find them without mercy. They will never change. Sorry if that offends your spiritual sensibilities. You get to enjoy pacifism b/c someone else is doing the dirty work and keeping you safe.
Thank you, Eric! No joke. You have just freed me of some last doubts about you. Now all I feel towards you is a deep revulsion.
Since you are not willing to formulate counterarguments, and prefer building lines of straw men (your last incoherent slur against Steve was a masterpiece of a kind!), I want to demolish a few of your straw men and clarify a few things - not for you, but for others - before I leave you be.
1) First, I'm not a pacifist. People have a right to fight back when an act of violence is initiated against them. This even include these Iraqi / Afgani / Syrian / Venezuelian "subhumans", who do have the full right to kick away the imperial "supermen" from America, with armed force, if they come to them in a violent and invasive way. Sorry, "supermen", the lives of "subhumans" are as valuable as yours - for the simple reasons that you are not in fact "super", and they are not "sub".
2) I do not hate America. Yet I do hate imperialism, colonialism and aggressive war, whether American or not. This includes the aspiring would-be imperalists like Russia and China, not just the currenly leading violent imperialist force, the USA.
3) The USA
IS a world's top violent invader, pillager and murderer
here and now, but not because it is somehow fundamentally evil (it is not). It is so because it is a leading imperial force today, and thus can afford itself the ugliest behavior possible; it is, in the moment, the biggest and the meanest bully in the large schoolyard known as "planet Earth". Yet, before it, there were a long line of similar global bullies - the USA's former main competitor, the USSR, say; before that, Britain, France, Germany; before that, Spain and Portugal; before, Ancient Rome... and so on. And Western civilisation is not somehow especially bad in this regard: Mongols, China and Japan were also violent imperial bullies in their own time. So, nothing exceptional about America - neither in positive nor in negative sense: it behaves so ugly because it can afford it. It is this simple.
4) Neither I think that if America suddenly disappears from the map - say, because of some natural catastrophe - world will imediately turn into some kind of paradise, filled with peace and love. There are a lot of would-be imperialists, who are currently look at America with envy and jelaousy, and dream of taking its place and behaving as badly as America does today; Russia and China are the two prime examples. And, when America falls (one day it will happen, one way or another), they will start to rise and fight for its legacy, for the dubious right to be the biggest and meanest bully. So, the anti-imperialists of the future will have their own work to do, whether the USA is still the leading threat to global peace, or it is not.
5) But I do think the struggle against the Empire is a winnable one, even if on a very long run. Part of it will include the armed stuggle against the currenly leading embodiment of imperialistic global bulliness - people may and should defend themselves against the imperial violence, and should not subdue themselves to such violence - but the other part would be in minds and hearts of people. Imperialism and the Empire should be fully discredited and delegitimised in every mind and every heart of an every human being, as it fully deserve; an Empire should no longer be able to present itself as a global savior, a force of righteousness and truthfulness - it should be universally seen as a global gangster, thief, murderer and conman, as it is.
6) And you, Eric, however unwittingly and unwillingly, have worked for the latter cause. Your pro-Empire position is so clearly disgusting - to anyone except you and people like you - that it will avert more hearts and minds from the imperial cause than any anti-imperialist like me can ever hope to. Thank you for that!
Here, I leave you, Eric. There is nothing more we can talk about.