As a jumping off point (and not necessarily a response to your post), it is an interesting note that, iirc, Vietnam had about 59K killed in the (let's say 8 year) period that the War was happening. One could argue how long the war lasted, but that just muddies the waters. I would like to use the years that were the "peak" of Vietnam, if you can say such a thing about a war, where the US had causalities of about 39K. These deaths occurred between 1967 and 1969. It should also be pointed out that the 50,000 lost in Korea was during a 3 year period, and that it's a much higher mortality rate than Vietnam. Although WW2 had 400,000+ in 4 years (but in the time since WW2 ended, and Vietnam and Korea (and later day Iraq 1 and Iraq2/Afghanistan\, the technology of guns and armor has improved, as has the training of troops. So one could argue those #'s are inflated). I realize this didn't really ad much to the discussion, but I think they're important factors to remember.
controversial opinions: we lost the iraq war nuclear war isn't a fucking option dark knight was a terrible movie
The Iraq war technically isn't over, so we haven't lost yet. You could make an argument that we are losing though. I'm pretty sure everyone agrees that nuclear war is not an option. Whether you believe in military action or not, you'd have to be a complete moron to misunderstand the implications of nuclear war. Dark Knight owned (with the exception of Maggie Gyllenhal or however you spell her name).
I say it's over and we lost. Given our original stated objectives (to be greeted as liberators, find all the WMDs and be home in time for dinner,) it was a monumental failure. I'll let BrianFromWA cover this one. Brian? Come on, it was terrible. First of all, Bale sounded like he gargled with razorblades and comet every time he had the batsuit on. The joker was awful. They couldn't decide whether or not he should be the classic joker, like when he had the nurse's outfit on (which was the only good part), or if he should be some whiny emo joker who asks, "Wanna know how I got my scars?" I half expected him to just tell everyone to check his Deadjournal to find out. LAME. The pacing was blundered. It started too slow and then by the end it was going at whirlwind speed like they slapped it all together the night before. The fucking movie was like 3 hours and they still went from "We don't know where they are!" to "We know where they are because I'm there and I can see see through fucking walls all of a sudden" in the course of about 5 confusing minutes. The whole thing had this terrible Michael Bay feel to it with explosions and cars flipping over and high tech blah blah blah. By the end, I didn't care what happened, I was BORED. I loved Batman Begins (mainly for the first half of the movie, really) and would have loved for Dark Knight to have lived up to that in the slightest, but it didn't. I mean, they have Christian fucking Bale, who is an absolute genius, and they stuck him in a rubber suit and gave him laryngitis while they spent all their time on Heath Ledger acting crazy because his parents didn't understand him. Arghghghhfghfdg.
Not that I'm a die-hard proponent of nuclear war, but to say it's always wrong is being a) naive, b) short-sighted or c) not really in tune with the argument. For instance, one could argue (and most of western history has) that dropping the 2 bombs was unprecedented and horrible in how many civilians were killed. It was unprecedented only because of the mode. Two airplanes, two bombs. Around 140,000 killed. Horrible by any measure. But not nearly (imho) as horrible as the 150,000 or so who were killed on March 9-10 by 300 B-29's dropping thousands of tons of burning jelly on Tokyo. At least you generally go quickly when a nuke is dropped on you. Prehistoric napalm? No thank you. And that's just one of the dozen or so mass bombing raids from February to August 1945 JUST AGAINST TOKYO. Estimates are that between 500,000 and a million were burned in these incendiary attacks. But the attention of so many is focused on the big, bad nuc-u-lear bomb. Let's look at Truman's reasons. These are rehashed all over most military history books and the internet, but basically by killing 140,000 civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (aside: I saw last year the Japanese recognized a man who'd been a survivor of both) the war ended without an invasion of Japan that would likely have cost a few hundred thousand American soliders' and marines' lives and a maybe a million Japanese. The Japanese weren't paying attention to the Potsdam Declaration, and even after Hiroshima were talking about fighting to the death for their land. Fortunately, after Nagasaki (and the last firebombing of Tokyo on the 15th) the Emperor came to his senses and declared an armistice to allow unconditional surrender. Wasn't happening without the 2 nuclear bombs. So there is a time and place. That said, this isn't one of them. First, Japan's potentially our biggest ally in this particular fight, and they abhor anything nuclear. Weapons, plants, utilities, waste....forget it. (Understandable, I guess). So we'd be alienating our friend in the region. Second, you don't need nukes to take out North Korea's nuclear strongholds. Conventional weapons would work just fine. Third, tactical nukes would probably be a bad idea with the close proximity our troops would have to theirs. It's bad planning to nuke your own guys, even with "small" tactical ones. Fourth, Russia's the only other country right now (unless China's new ballistic missile subs have outfitted with their new MRBM, which my last intel said they didn't) that can touch the US with a missile-carried nuclear warhead. North Korea can't even get a "satellite" into orbit with the missile, and you think they could target the US with enough accuracy to be a "deterrent"? Nah. And Russia (last I heard, could have changed) wasn't exactly screaming to help the fraternal communist brethren of Kim Jong Il's persuasion. Though I'll say this. If something (Heaven forbid) does happen in terms of a WMD going off and killing Americans in the US; whether it's dropped from a plane, planted in a suitcase, flown as an ICBM, whatever....stand by. The only WMDs we have are nukes, and our stated policy is "reciprocate in kind". On an aside, I didn't like Maggie Gyllenhall as much as Katie Holmes, was sorry how it ended, thought it was pretty long, loved Two-Face in "Thank you for Smoking"; and thinks that since Saddam's terrorist-harboring oppressive 3-war-starting regime was gone, no WMDs have been used in a decade, there have been democratic elections in a place that hasn't had them in almost 30 years, infrastructure is being built up (our mistake in helping out the Afghans in the 80's), and there's been enough turnover of duties to the Iraqi police/military that our National Command Authority deemed that we were taking our troops out and moving them to Afghanistan, I'd call it at least a solid "C". Especially since it's at the cost over 5 years of less than double the citizens who died in NYC.
