[Harmattan]

Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, Kuwait, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi are all fabulously wealthy, intensely hostile (ideologically), and extremely weak (militarily). Why should the United States not colonize these countries and seize their resources? The reason for capturing them is not greed but preventing our enemies from capitalizing on them while supporting terrorists. Why do we give so much deference to a bunch of extreme clerics and oil sheikhs?

What an excellent plan. I mean, nowadays, there are not that many terrorists. But with all the people that you're going to kill, this will make a vary large number of people who lost their family and are willing to get revenge at any cost. Expect mass terrorism after that. And if you think that you can defend against those, well, maybe you can, but it will be at the cost of even more of your freedom. And you don't have much left already since the 9/11... Unless you think you're free when the NSA watches all of your communications (and do not say "it's just metadata" because it's just metadata for just the phone, not for everything else).

Destroying your country and sacrificing many of your boys for a fistful of dollars, is it worth it?


And actually I say a fistful of dollars, but look at the Iraq war's cost: creating those enclaves and defending them while making sure that you lose as few people as possible costs a lot and many Ameican lives are lost by the way. And how do you think that the rest of the world is going to react when you're going to start your little racist war? Are you sure that European borders will stay opened to your products? Or do you plan to try to conquer Europe also?

[dcomplex]

Nonsense. Who is going to supply them and arm them?

Terrorists cannot exist and prosper without state backing.

[dcomplex]

Well, let's think of it like this. If Cecil John Rhodes wasn't a liberal, then what was he? Also, if Napoleon III wasn't a liberal, then what was he?

Clearly they were all fascists because they were MEAN!!! [/sarcasm]

[Rei Murasame]

Exactly, being a 'mean person' doesn't change a person's ideology. Another way that I like to illustrate it is with this:

Colonel William Tavington Tribute
[youtube]P5zREFNznK8[/youtube]

Tavington was basically fighting to safeguard early capitalism (or as they say 'heroic capitalism'), an industrial ideology called British liberalism, back when British liberalism was still the most progressive tendency in existence.

The whole of that movie, The Patriot, is one set of more advanced liberals (British Empire), fighting against another set less advanced liberals (American agrarian rebels).

While it is true that Third Positionists (all the Axis powers, and Ba'athists, their successors, and so on), share Tavington's sense of determination as seen after 1:20 in that video and essentially admire it (see: Mussolini's writing on this), since it is a different stage in history the economic structure they are defending will be different.

Basically, it's not the action, it's the system that it upholds that counts.

For example, when Syrian Ba'athist soldiers are cutting their way through hordes of jihadists, they are doing it to uphold right-socialism (fascism). When American soldiers cut their way through hordes of jihadists, they are doing it for liberalism. But in both cases, jihadists die. But for different reasons.

Another example:

CSIS: What Battlefield Lessons Have We Learned from Twelve Years of War?
[youtube]HzlWZi_2LBQ[/youtube]

Skip straight to 33mins 07secs, and play from there. General James E. Cartwright (ret.) adds as his final point about the development of precision striking, that unfortunately a problem has been created where they are now so precise in their attacks that they have not been able to actually cull the Afghan population in the resisting areas to a stage where they are ready to surrender. In other words, he is saying that non-decimation of the civilian population is a potential problem which remains to be addressed.

General Cartwright is a liberal, and the United States is certainly a liberal country. Yet that question appears, because it's an obvious and unavoidable question, whether your name is James E. Cartwright or Bashar Al-Assad.

[Harmattan]

Nonsense. Who is going to supply them and arm them?
Terrorists cannot exist and prosper without state backing.

Terrorism in your home country does not need any backing. There are plenty of people with complete skills to build a cheap bomb (and more who have a partial training and can use the Internet to assemble the missing pieces). A network may help for the logistics, sure, but the hardest thing to find is candidates to suicide anyway. Which is exactly what you would create.

Islamic armies in foreign countries need backings from other countries however. But they can exist as a mere resistance without them: many people already do have guns at home. They would be inefficient, they could not win in the first place, but they would still manage to kill many of your boys, enough to ruin your profitability and send you home. And they can afford to lose 100 lives for every life of yours they take. Let's not mention money: your boys want air cooling, video games, daily showers, ice cream in the middle of the desert, life insurances, psychological assistance, training, rehab, 100M-dollars planes to cover their back and scout the field, etc. Making a genocide or just being tyrannic and cruel would not make it cheaper, quite the opposite, as you would still need to neutralize and control the whole country to secure your position. Unless you attack with enough nuclear weapons to raze everything. But then there would be no locals left and the land would be inhabitable, so those oil fields could only be exploited by your boys in radioactive suits for ten times the usual cost. Maybe an army of drones (including land and sea drones) would do the trick. But then you would try to automate them to save money and then they would become autonomous and then... well, remember Terminator? This could realistically end that way.

And finally... There will be countries backing those terrorists. Believe me, once you start invading those countries with large resources, be sure that Russia, China and Europe will arm your opponents. Remember who armed the Talibans first and why? Hint: it was not a Muslim country.

[warsmith17]

And finally... There will be countries backing those terrorists. Believe me, once you start invading those countries with large resources, be sure that Russia, China and Europe will arm your opponents. Remember who armed the Talibans first and why? Hint: it was not a Muslim country.

This would be just one of the major reasons why it wouldn't work out.

dccomplex is trying to recreate something when the conditions are completely different from the time it was created. The conditions now are completely inimical to the idea of empire. Because of the media there would be no way of hiding the masses of casualties, men who in most views would be being lost for absolutely no gain. It would be financially unsustainable just as Britain's empire was post WWII. The manpower required would be enormous since we wouldn't even be able to rely on collaboraters to support the operation.

[dcomplex]

There are many in Africa who would prefer recolonization.