Hello and welcome to MSFC. We are a small and close knitted community who specialises in modding the game Star Trek Armada 2 and the Fleet Operations modification, however we have an open field for discussing a number of topics including movies, real life events and everything in-between.
Being such a close community, we do have some restrictions, including all users required to be registered before being able to post as well as all members requiring to have participated in the community for sometime before being able to download our modding files to name the main ones. This is done for both the protection of our members and to encourage new members to get involved with the community. We also require all new registrations to first be authorised by an Administrator and to also have an active and confirmed email account.
We have a policy of fairness and a non harassment environment, with the staff quick to act on the rare occasion of when this policy is breached. Feel free to register and join our community.
As I type this Paris is under a terrorist attack on the scale of 911 .
Waring Not a Political correct tread
When do we say enough . And we call it what it is a war western civilization and the values we hold dear and when do we take off our kid gloves and hit back with full force and not play the political correct games ? Because they aren't holding back....
Be it 911 Spanish train, Sydney now Paris ... So much for a religion of peace it is nothing but a death cult . a spade is a spade
Before everyone says it's not all Islam not even the majority the funny thing is this majority does nothing and a majority even applaud such action s
Not to go all religious but I must say religion has caused nothing my strife and conflict on our history.
Enough is enough. It's long past time for something to be done about terrorists, we did it after 9/11, it might be time to do it again unfortunately.
I seriously think the middle east needs to be sorted out, some sort of permanent peace keeping force, unite the world together under a single government, something needs to be done.
I agree also. A glass parking lot in the middle east should do the trick (if you know what I mean). The US administration is ran by a bunch of idiotic pansies. When 9/11 hit, much of the world stood with us and had our back. Australia, Britain, Germany, France, and even Russia stood together and declared that we will not stand for this wanton destruction of our way of life. I would like to know what happened over the years. Now it seems the rest of the world is starting to burn around us and we stand silent. It pains me to see our allies to suffer and we do nothing. Instead of doing what is right, we would rather tear our own country apart from the inside.
Basically, our citizens forgot what war was like. Everyone was chomping at the bit to go to war after 9/11, but once they saw that some of our soldiers were actually dying, they got cold feet and started protesting the war. Since it was unpopular, politicians refused to back it. Since politicians refused to back it, the military was't equipped to fight properly. Since the military wasn't equipped to fight properly, they couldn't gain ground. Since they couldn't gain ground, the war was declared a failure and the troops were recalled. Since the troops were recalled, the terrorists took that as a victory and grew more bold. Since the terrorists were more bold, they decided to attack France.
Taking out a guerrilla force requires the numbers to form a solid front and push them back. You don't give them anywhere to run; you surround them and tighten the noose. Because most of them aren't professionals and only a few have any training at all they're not actually that dangerous to professional forces in individual battles. They can't hit the broad side of a barn and need a numbers advantage to gain any kills. Even then, they tend to lose. You do need to accept that the war will not be over quickly and that there will be a lot of deaths on both sides, however.
As to the views of the average Muslim, you have to remember that these people have been ruled by these terrorists for decades. They gave up hope a long time ago because nobody ever came unless it was to secure their own interests and terrorists are perfectly willing to target, and tend to give priority to, Muslims who speak out. Hussein was in power for 34 years and was only removed as part of retaliation for an attack on us even though he had been committing atrocities against his own people that entire time. It should never have gotten as bad as it did. UN forces should have intervened decades ago and no one should have recalled their forces until the region was stable. This was all eminently foreseeable.
No our citizens forgot what it means to be a citizen .forgetting that there is more to it than just flag waving and jumping on a bandwagon and calling them self patriots ... Politicians "Scum of the earth" need to look at more than polls and a balance sheet when making a choice Both need to come to reality that the right choice hardly the popular one more than often it will require sacrifice on the part of all. " nothing given is ever truly valued " ...
War is a thing I know first hand my brothers and sisters in arms know it's horrors all to well ... We know the cost and that it paid in blood. But we also know what it like to pay it and have our governments give that which we payed so dearly for back Political gamesmanship among there piers or tie our hands with rules of engagement just to be "PC " It sickens me "Washington arm chair quarterbacking. at its worst "... In that we should never look for a fight but one should never back down from a fight and leave it unfinished specially one that need fighting . What we are facing is war that we can not avoid and muss be or we will lose all that we hold dear ..
The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.
John F. Kennedy
Doing nothing is the path of surrender, or submission.
There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.
John F. Kennedy
Problem is that great powers such as US, UK or other 'great states' of EU like to spread 'democracy' in rest of world, especially US...Let's get this clear..I feel sorry for those unlucky people...
For me, 9/11 was inside job...from that day US fights war with almost imaginary enemy...US can crush all terrorist groups (God you have satellites, tons of modern and better weapons and you cant destroy terrorist groups which are armed with silly AK-47, e.g. ISIS). There always has to be enemy to run economy or to keep people scared...
Remember Iraq, Lybia, Eygpt, etc..? Those countries were dictatorships so US 'had to intervene'... now all those countries are in worse state than before... I even believe that US agencies are responsible for breaking Yugoslavia 25 years ago...
Religion is major problem in things like this...We all know Crusades or Jihad...but I believe that really small precentege of Muslims are terrorists...Even in my country there are many muslims and so far we didn't have problems like this... Why? Because we dont mess up with people's lifes in other countries or provoke them..
And now France...France has many, many people with African origin and most of them are Muslims... Till yesterday they didnt have problem with this... Europe today is faced with 'refugee' crisis... Many refugees come from Syria and rest of middle east...It's quite possible that there are some terrorists within this people that came to Europe...However, we can't be sure about that...I think purpose of these attacks is to provoke people to make them scared or unsure about people of different religion, race, etc... And thanks to mass media that imapct grows even better...
I truly hope that we'll find out who is responsible for this... but we have to be objective about matters like tihs... Situation is like this - you (Western world) came to our countries (Middle East) and killed our people (in name of democracy), and now you are paying for it (terrorist attacks)...
I know about Srebrenica if you are talking about that... I think 8000 Muslim people were killed...I'm in Croatia btw so I know little bit more about 'Yugoslav Wars'...
Fact No.1. It's interesting that during 80s main objective of US secret services was breaking Yugosplavia apart
Fact No.2. Yugoslavia faced IMF restrictions 'cause of "funny" debt of 4-5 billion USD (now republics of former Yugoslavia owe more than 20-30 billion USD
Fact No.3. Prime minister of Yugoslavia Ante Marković visited USA in 1990. asking for help president Bush (older one)... Bush said he will help and next day he forced US senate to vote against help for Yugoslavia!!!
Later, 1991-1995 there was war, many people died...many tragic fates...Serbs started it...Many neighbours suddenly became enemies...Nationalism is f***** up thing too... People lost jobs, there were also many war profiteers..etc... We once were developed country, now we are developing again..
And Fact No.4. Purpose of NATO was to protect not to attack...but you have to run that organization so you'll attack aswell..
Ok people, lets just remember to keep this civil as this sort of subject raises the blood pressure.
A few points to consider:
- Just because all terrorists are *insert group*, it does not mean that all *insert group* are terrorists. There are plenty of Muslims just wanting to go about their daily lives in peace.
- People kill people. It is, unfortunately, what we do. Sometimes we do it for land, sometimes for resources, sometimes for women! And sometimes its for some imaginary being. The current waves of violence are attributed to Muslims, I won't dispute that. But remember, we had (and have) similar problems in the UK with the Irish. Protestants and Catholics wanting to kill each other for reasons that, frankly, I don't understand and couldn't care less about.
- The Muslim *community* doesn't help itself, and frankly, countries with Muslim communities don't help themselves either. We have "No Go" areas in the UK, places where police (and ambulances and fire departments) fear to tread because the *communities* will riot if they do. These communities have spokemen that the authorities negotiate with, and they have their own internal rules which sometimes go against the laws but blind eyes are turned because it wouldn't be "politically correct" to complain. The overriding problem is that these communities don't integrate and don't want to integrate (which begs the question why they bother coming here in the first place...) and that governments are so scared of being seen as racist that they won't force integration.
- A wider problem with Islam is that they don't distinguish between religion, politics and laws like the rest of us. Islam has a mandate to spread the religion by any means necessary. Obviously this is incompatible with the way the rest of the world operates, and it puts religious leaders (and my understanding is that anyone can declare themselves one) in a significant position of authority.
- My final point, OpetJa is half right. The *Western World*, for lack of better term, likes to poke its nose into situations in order to right what we see as being wrong. I don't dispute that what we do appears "just" under our moral values. But not everyone has the same moral values! The best description I saw once was that some of these Far East countries are populated by Klingons. They have a completely different mindset over what is right and wrong. Womens rights are a classic example. We protest against their poor treatment of women, but to them its normal. I don't say that it's *right*, I don't agree that it's *right*, but to them it is, to them a woman is property. The mistake the *Western World* makes is that the governments (who are only in power for a limited time, compare that against the long running dictaterships who can plan long term) go for a knee jerk reaction against a perceived *wrong* without bothering to understand the *Klingons*.
- I lied, this is it, honest. Our commercial people (and sometimes engineers if they are on the customer front) get training on how to deal with Middle East customers. It isn't easy negotiating with them. They only appreciate a position of strength. If you negotiate and give an inch, they won't deem you worthy of respect and will continue to push for more and more (hence the problem we face with rioting *refugees* who aren't getting a cushy standard of life). The problem is, that if you stand firm during negotiation, there's a chance they'll walk away. The Indian Rafael deal is a classic example of that (and frankly the French were right not to agree to Indian demands on that one, they would have been royally shafted).
Whilst this is a serious discussion, here's a slightly humorous take on the complexities of situations like this, which highlight that the world isn't black and white but instead many shades of grey.
A highly restricted briefing document on Syria....
President Assad (who is bad) is a nasty guy who got so nasty his people
rebelled and the Rebels (who are good) started winning (hurrah!).
But then some of the rebels turned a bit nasty and are now called Islamic
State (who are definitely bad!) and some continued to support democracy
(who are still good.)
So President Putin (who is bad, cos he invaded Crimea and the Ukraine and
killed lots of folks including that nice Russian man in London with
polonium poisoned sushi) has decided to back Assad (who is still bad) by
attacking ISIS (who are also bad) which is sort of a good thing?
But Putin (still bad) thinks the Syrian Rebels (who are good) are also
bad, and so he bombs them too, much to the annoyance of the Americans (who
are good) who are busy backing and arming the rebels (who are also good).
Now Iran (who used to be bad, but now they have agreed not to build any
nuclear weapons and bomb Israel are now good) are going to provide ground
troops to support Assad (still bad) as are the Russians (bad) who now have
ground troops and aircraft in Syria.
So a Coalition of Assad (still bad) Putin (extra bad) and the Iranians
(good, but in a bad sort of way) are going to attack IS (who are bad)
which is a good thing, but also the Syrian Rebels (who are good) which is
bad.
Now the British (obviously good, except that nice Mr Corbyn in the
corduroy jacket, who is probably bad) and the Americans (also good) cannot
attack Assad (still bad) for fear of upsetting Putin (bad) and Iran
(good/bad) and now they have to accept that Assad might not be that bad
after all compared to IS (who are super bad).
So Assad (bad) is now probably good, being better than IS (but let’s
face it, drinking your own wee is better than IS so no real choice there)
and since Putin and Iran are also fighting IS that may now make them Good.
America (still Good) will find it hard to arm a group of rebels being
attacked by the Russians for fear of upsetting Mr Putin (now good) and
that nice mad Ayatollah in Iran (also Good) and so they may be forced to
say that the Rebels are now Bad, or at the very least abandon them to
their fate. This will lead most of them to flee to Turkey and on to Europe
or join IS (still the only constantly bad group).
To Sunni Muslims, an attack by Shia Muslims (Assad and Iran) backed by
Russians will be seen as something of a Holy War, and the ranks of IS will
now be seen by the Sunnis as the only Jihadis fighting in the Holy War and
hence many Muslims will now see IS as Good (Doh!.)
Sunni Muslims will also see the lack of action by Britain and America in
support of their Sunni rebel brothers as something of a betrayal (mmmm
might have a point) and hence we will be seen as Bad.
So now we have America (now bad) and Britain (also bad) providing limited
support to Sunni Rebels (bad) many of whom are looking to IS (Good / bad)
for support against Assad (now good) who, along with Iran (also Good) and
Putin (also, now, unbelievably, Good) are attempting to retake the country
Assad used to run before all this started?
I hope that clears up all that confusion for you! If it doesn't, sorry
you'll have to find someone else to explain it a different way.
My personal view - seeing as we won't do the job properly due to lack of political will, we should blockade the area, refuse all support, and let the duke it out once and for all. Our political *lords and masters* are elected to look after our own populations first and foremost, not poor good money after bad into lost causes half a world away. Its cold, its hard, and goes against my moral values, but we're not going to accomplish anything in the long term unless we decide to go all in with a proper long term plan - and given the way politics works, that can never happen.
Kjc well said mate...
Unfortunetly, we have collision between different cultures... And this is maybe survival of the fittest...I truly believe all people can co-exist...and damn we are all same...no matter of race, nation, culture...
However, there are some greater interests..these so-called leaders are only puppets... Somebody controls this world behind the curtain...I know you will say I'm conspiracy theory lunatic but nowadays everything is possible... People don't know what to believe in anymore
BACKGROUND
In the aftermath of the Second World War, the Balkan states of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia became part of the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. After the death of longtime Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito in 1980, growing nationalism among the different Yugoslav republics threatened to split their union apart. This process intensified after the mid-1980s with the rise of the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, who helped foment discontent between Serbians in Bosnia and Croatia and their Croatian, Bosniak and Albanian neighbors. In 1991, Slovenia, Croatia and Macedonia declared their independence; during the war in Croatia that followed, the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army supported Serbian separatists there in their brutal clashes with Croatian forces.In Bosnia, Muslims represented the largest single population group by 1971. More Serbs and Croats emigrated over the next two decades, and in a 1991 census Bosnia’s population of some 4 million was 44 percent Bosniak, 31 percent Serb, and 17 percent Croatian. Elections held in late 1990 resulted in a coalition government split between parties representing the three ethnicities (in rough proportion to their populations) and led by the Bosniak Alija Izetbegovic. As tensions built inside and outside the country, the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his Serbian Democratic Party withdrew from government and set up their own “Serbian National Assembly.” On March 3, 1992, after a referendum vote (which Karadzic’s party blocked in many Serb-populated areas), President Izetbegovic proclaimed Bosnia’s independence.
STRUGGLE FOR CONTROL IN BOSNIA
Far from seeking independence for Bosnia, Bosnian Serbs wanted to be part of a dominant Serbian state in the Balkans–the “Greater Serbia” that Serbian separatists had long envisioned. In early May 1992, two days after the United States and the European Community (precursor to the European Union) recognized Bosnia’s independence, Bosnian Serb forces with the backing of Milosevic and the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army launched their offensive with a bombardment of Bosnia’s capital, Sarajevo. They attacked Bosniak-dominated town in eastern Bosnia, including Zvornik, Foca, and Visegrad, forcibly expelling Bosniak civilians from the region in a brutal process that later was identified as “ethnic cleansing.” (Ethnic cleansing differs from genocide in that its primary goal is the expulsion of a group of people from a geographical area and not the actual physical destruction of that group, even though the same methods–including murder, rape, torture and forcible displacement–may be used.)
Though Bosnian government forces tried to defend the territory, sometimes with the help of the Croatian army, Bosnian Serb forces were in control of nearly three-quarters of the country by the end of 1993, and Karadzic’s party had set up their own Republika Srpska in the east. Most of the Bosnian Croats had left the country, while a significant Bosniak population remained only in smaller towns. Several peace proposals between a Croatian-Bosniak federation and Bosnian Serbs failed when the Serbs refused to give up any territory. The United Nations (U.N.) refused to intervene in the conflict in Bosnia, but a campaign spearheaded by its High Commissioner for Refugees provided humanitarian aid to its many displaced, malnourished and injured victims.
ATTACK ON SREBRENICA: JULY 1995
By the summer of 1995, three towns in eastern Bosnia–Srebrenica, Zepa and Gorazde–remained under control of the Bosnian government. The U.N. had declared these enclaves “safe havens” in 1993, to be disarmed and protected by international peacekeeping forces. On July 11, however, Bosnian Serb forces advanced on Srebrenica, overwhelming a battalion of Dutch peacekeeping forces stationed there. Serbian forces subsequently separated the Bosniak civilians at Srebrenica, putting the women and girls on buses and sending them to Bosnian-held territory. Some of the women were raped or sexually assaulted, while the men and boys who remained behind were killed immediately or bussed to mass killing sites. Estimates of Bosniaks killed by Serb forces at Srebrenica range from around 7,000 to more than 8,000.
After Bosnian Serb forces captured Zepa that same month and exploded a bomb in a crowded Sarajevo market, the international community began to respond more forcefully to the ongoing conflict and its ever-growing civilian death toll. In August 1995, after the Serbs refused to comply with a U.N. ultimatum, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) joined efforts with Bosnian and Croatian forces for three weeks of bombing Bosnian Serb positions and a ground offensive. With Serbia’s economy crippled by U.N. trade sanctions and its military forces under assault in Bosnia after three years of warfare, Milosevic agreed to enter negotiations that October. The U.S.-sponsored peace talks in Dayton, Ohio in November 1995 (which included Izetbegovic, Milosevic and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman) resulted in the creation of a federalized Bosnia divided between a Croat-Bosniak federation and a Serb republic.
INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE
Though the international community did little to prevent the systematic atrocities committed against Bosniaks and Croats in Bosnia while they were occurring, it did actively seek justice against those who committed them. In May 1993, the U.N. Security Council created the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague, Netherlands. It was the first international tribunal since the Nuremberg Trials in 1945-46 and the first to prosecute genocide, among other war crimes. Radovan Karadzic and the Bosnian Serb military commander, General Ratko Mladic, were among those indicted by the ICTY for genocide and other crimes against humanity.
Over the better part of the next two decades, the ICTY charged more than 160 individuals of crimes committed during conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Brought before the tribunal in 2002 on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, Slobodan Milosevic served as his own defense lawyer; his poor health led to long delays in the trial until he was found dead in his prison cell in 2006. In 2007, the International Court of Justice issued its ruling in a historic civil lawsuit brought by Bosnia against Serbia. Though the court called the massacre at Srebrenica genocide and said that Serbia “could and should” have prevented it and punished those who committed it, it stopped short of declaring Serbia guilty of the genocide itself.
My personal view - seeing as we won't do the job properly due to lack of political will, we should blockade the area, refuse all support, and let the duke it out once and for all.
This may well be our least worst viable option. Even then, it will do what it did before; their wars will boil over and harm their neighbors and whatever major non-Islamic power they've decided to demonize at the time. Ideally, we would find a way for the Sunni and Shia factions to get along, but that seems unlikely.
I don't believe the human race is capable of "getting along" and biblical prophecies aside, never will for two simple reasons. Someone will always want what someone else has and someone will always want to decide what everyone else can do. It permeates our very existence. Every day, every where these two things are at the core of everything we do.
Man against Woman, White against Black, Islam against Jews, Religion against Homosexuality, Sunni against Shiite, rich against poor, country against country, tribe against tribe, person against person etc.
Fighting for something that happened centuries ago? Invading and taking a country in this day and age like it somehow restores your country to a more glorious state and rights a wrong from the past? Oppressing those who are different than you or have different beliefs than you (of which neither even remotely has any bearing on your personal life whatsoever?)
What is the point of it all? I'm sorry to say, but if we hadn't removed Saddam all those years ago we probably wouldn't be in this situation right now. His removal created an imbalance in that region which is now bearing fruit.
I agree with the original statement, but have no answer. "When is enough?" How many schools need to be shot up before we've had enough? How many blacks or gays or Christians or Jews or women or "insert whatever" have to be murdered/beat down/controlled/ruled/conquered before we've had enough? How many bombs need to go off? How much money does one need to have? How much power? Nothing is ever enough some. And as long as some people aren't affected by it. Nothing will change.
