Never?
Surrounded by a strange religion and strange politics having to combat a mercurial opponent who can assume the shape of any seemingly innocent civilian?
The founders were able to assume the form of anyone, not just civilians and actually they very rarely did so. Only a handful of times in the span of five years. When they did they assumed the form of key persons in order to accomplish a mission. The enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan are hard to distinguish from the civilians at times simply because they do not wear uniforms.
Mounting depression? Sabotage? Casualty lists? Futility?
Elements of any war.
Hell, that recently discovered fabricated document by the CIA linking Saddam to 911 which helped kick everything off and enlist international support reeked of In the Pale Moonlight...
I remember rolling into Baghdad. One of the first things we saw was a billboard depicting a poster of Saddam Hussien himself holding two Ak-47's, smoking a cigar and standing in front of the twin towers as they burned. There were several billboards like this in many different variations all over main highways in Iraq. Funny how he had nothing to do with it, but bragged about being the mastermind behind it.
DS9 was about terrorism, rebuilding cultures, building democracy, surviving occupations, occupying worlds
Which is what made it interesting, I agree. Doesn't make it a mirror of anything though. There have been countless situations in Earth's history involving those such ideas. Doesn't mean that all literature of television is mimmic of all those situations.
justifiable terrorism by the good guys
I assume you're refering to things like the prison incident. That was never justified. There were attempts to justify it by those involved. The rest of the military shamed them though, and those individuals were delt with to the fullest extend that military law would allow. I.e. having been ordered to do so granting a measure of leniency in the case.
unjustifiable terrorism by the bad guys
Yes. In real life, the actions of the enemy are unjust. They are terrorist insurging into Iraq to take advantage of the situation and make an attempted stand against the United States. The Dominion, on the other hand were justified in their cause. The Federation invaded their territory. In the case of the war with the Dominion, the good guys actually started it.
fear and paranoia. DS9 could only be made in a time of relative peace because it would be seen as a condemnation of any warfooting some power block might have been in support of.
Dispite the timeframe, it appears that is what you view it to be. So in that regard, Ds9 could have been made in any time frame because the same risk would be present in any. This therefore flaws your entire line of reasoning.
Have you watched the show?
Yes. The question I would ask of you is, how much involvement have you had with the war? What, praytell, firsthand experience on the subject have you had that has given you such a keen outlook and understanding of the finer aspects of the entire situation?
Thank you for attempting to ostracize me Odo's bucket for having a critical opinion about the war. It made my point that alternate views are frowned upon. And really how is this is an alternate view?
I've made no attempts to affect you in any manner. You mentioned paranoia. Ironic.
Just because your view is not an alternate one, and may be shared by others, it does not mean that you are right.
Alternate views about the war are not frowned upon. In fact, having a view on any subject, even the wrong one, is a freedom and the U.S. only goes to war in times were freedoms are being curtailed. Just as they were being curtailed for the Iraqi civilians by Saddam and his regime. If anything, you should consider this war to be an example of hard this country has fought to insure you right to disagree with or even badmouth it's attempts to secure your rights.
The original post was about Politicians not Soldiers.
Soldiers, more than anyone else, are most directly affected by politics.
Considering you could have been in theory told to sacrifice your life
I was never told to sacrafice my life. I offered it freely the day I took the oath to serve this country. In constrast to your statement though, the military does not want you to sacrafice anything but your efforts. They want you to come home safely, not all of us get to though. In fact, it's common knowledge amongst troops that you are not allowed to die without permission.
because of the opinions and judgments of that single civilian sitting at the top of your chain of command
That single civilian just happens to be the President of the United States, the most powerful, most important, most widely targeted man on the planet, who has the most responsibility of any human being alive. Among his responsibilites is to insure the freedoms and safeties of civilians. Not just American civilians, but all civilians, the world over. The people of Iraq needed us. Having spoken to them first hand, having had conversation with those who lived under Saddam's regime and who thanked me personally for being there, I know this to be true. In order for the president to insure the safety of civilians, he has to use the military. People like myself. People who volunteer and join willing, knowing full well that we might one day have to go into combat. We do not fear such a prospect. Else we never would have joined to begin with. We joined because we knew, deep down inside that we had what it takes to do what others are afraid to do.
There are those though, who join for selfish reasons, college benifits lets say. They wine and cry when it's their time to earn their pay and they give a bad image to the rest of us. They also help fuel the civilian opionion that we are all pawns and are being lead by cruel warmongers and other such nonsense.
I would think that you'd be interested in the possesses he might have went though before it became your ass on the line. You still have to do what you're told, but it would be nice to know if he's lying, incompetent, mentally deficient, insane, back on cocaine again or merely drunk.
You don't just follow the orders you agree with. You follow them all. Since, as I mentioned before, I understood the reasons we went, and the reasons we did what we did, your entire comment serves no purpose.
What about Tennyson then?
"Their's was not to question why, their's was but to do or die."
Oscar Wilde. you name someone vague, I'll name someone vague. He had nothing to do with either Deep Space Nine nor the war in the middle east.
Classic poem about soldiers given bad intel and forced into a killing field regardless because of the incompetence of their superiors ending in a mass slaughter. It is the same story over and over again.
It may not have been true that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Bush believed they existed though, because of the intelligence reports given to him. He was not lieing. He believed it to be true. However, the existence of weapons of mass destruction are not the only reason to liberate a country. I would think that and even larger reason to do so would be MASS GRAVES, of which we found quite many. I remember standing witness to countless sites where the bodies of those Saddam did not approve of, or simply did not believe deserved to live, lie dead, buried together in twisted mangled mess of corpes. Thousands upon thousands.
We did the right thing when we removed him from power.
sorry if my facts were off. I checked what I recalled against the pages of Wikipedia and accordding to that, the US hit several terrorist training camps while not actively engaging the Taliban during the first movements of operation enduring freedom as a legal target.
Terroist training camps are legitiment targets.
They did have a dialog with the Taliban, probably telling them to get civilians out of the way before certin bombing runs, but it wasn't until they refused to hand over Osama that the US and friends decided to topple the Taliban.
We didn't want to kill innocent civilians and took measure to avoid do so. Where's the harm in that?
It does seem kind of cruel though? Giving the illusion of continued sovereignty if they sit on their hands and cooperate while a foreign army races form one side of their country to the other if they just waited long enough for the States to just get over themselves.
So in order to catch a bankrobber, a cop should blow up the entire bank and kill every civilian inside? I guess so by your line of thinking.
So really, I had to wonder if the taliban would still been in charge of Afghanistan if they had handed of Osama, if it was within their power to do so, when the US demanded it be done? Y'know if they didn't provoke the US by saying that they couldn't get Osama for them, would all the coalition troops gone home 6 or 7 years ago... Why am I thinking of George McFly doing Biff's Homework? "Think McFly, think! I can't hand in my homework with your handwriting."
No. We'd still be at war with them. We would remain until the country is stable and has a legitiment military that can protect the country and the freedoms of the civilians. The same that we are attempting to do for Iraq even after we caught Saddam.
