[Pindar]

(Original post by SpicyStrawberry)
We need the armed forces to protect us from terrorism

Sorry but this is *******s. What is the army going to do when 99% of terrorist attacks are perpetrated by people posing as ordinary civilians in our cities? The army is completely useless against terrorism.

[Larmas]

(Original post by Stefan1991)
Sorry but this is *******s. What is the army going to do when 99% of terrorist attacks are perpetrated by people posing as ordinary civilians in our cities? The army is completely useless against terrorism.

The army has not been completely useless against terrorism. The SAS has been systematically killing many of the Al Qaeda leaders. In doing this they have weakened a structure that relies on the top to give orders when to attack. Al Qaeda is not a willy nilly free for all. Also by finding them in there dens they havehat has uncovered a huge amount of intelligence that has stopped other attacks.

[Yung Mon£y]

(Original post by Stefan1991)
This is a tenous point.

Sure it is. Grass is purple and pigs fly yeah lad?

[lilyrawstorne]

(Original post by Alpharius)
And here come the pseudo-intellectual liberals...

The fact of the matter is we do not live in a utopia. For as long as we do not live in a utopia, we need to be able to defend ourselves. That is what the army does.

When we live in a utopia, we still might need to be able to defend ourselves. Independence Day, anyone?

Threads like these show how people in Britain today have been living in bubble-wrapping. Freedom hasn't always been automatic, and there will be challenges to our freedom in the future. The army protects it.

I was nodding my head and then you cited Independance Day

[Alpharius]

(Original post by lilyrawstorne)
I was nodding my head and then you cited Independance Day

That was a little joke, tbf. I don't see aliens visiting us anytime soon

[SpicyStrawberry]

(Original post by Stefan1991)
Sorry but this is *******s. What is the army going to do when 99% of terrorist attacks are perpetrated by people posing as ordinary civilians in our cities? The army is completely useless against terrorism.

Well, they aren't psychic. They do the best with the information they have, there's no need to swear.

[Pindar]

(Original post by SpicyStrawberry)
Well, they aren't psychic. They do the best with the information they have, there's no need to swear.

I didn't swear. *******s isn't a swear word unless your under 5 years old.

[DynamicSyngery]

Exhibit for the defence:



Berlin, 1945

[When you see it...]

(Original post by Yung Mon£y)
A civilised society does not use an army for murder... Sometimes you have to take a life to protect others

Wow.

[Rhadamanthus]

(Original post by jumpingjesusholycow)
Providing the article is well sources, there's no reason Wikipedia can't provide a decent database of information. As iterated previously, as you've chosen to blissfully ignore, I'll repeat: There was a modicum of unusable chemical weapons found in later half of the 00's that were manufactured before 1994. The Chemical Weapons production facilities had been out of commission for over 10 years before the invasion in 2003.

Conclusively, there were no mass weapons of either a biological, chemical or nuclear nature and no ability to fire within 45 minutes as claimed in the dossier used as a pretext to go to war with Iraq.

Ignoring the other guy you were debating (which is probably wise), although Iraq did not have the capability to launch any weapons and certainly not within 45 minutes, the WMD 'line' was not fabricated by Bush and Blair to dupe us into supporting the invasion. The intelligence failure was not a conspiracy set up to provide a subtext - Germany's intelligence agency said that Saddam was three years away from developing WMD even though Germany was a country staunchly against the invasion. Saddam's WMD programme was only temporarily halted during the untenable sanctions and inspections regime. The Duefler Report, whilst admitting that Saddam did not have the capability in 2003, said that he certainly aimed to redevelop the weapons. ("Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq's WMD capability ... after sanctions were removed and Iraq's economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities to that which previously existed. Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability - in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks - but he intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities".) I don't know if your opinion is that we should have waited until he had the weapons before we acted, but this would have been worse for reasons I don't even feel I have to explain and takes the meaning of 'preemption' to a ridiculous extreme.

In 1998, UN inspectors were expelled from Iraq and the country went for three years without any subsequent inspections. Saddam only accepted the return of the inspectors when he knew that provoking the UN and the coalition states would result in harsh consequences. He would have expelled them again when the time was right. There is no doubt in my mind that any acquisition of WMD by Saddam's regime would have plunged the region into the state of insecurity and conflict that caused the coalition nations to intervene in the First Gulf War. A small group of inspectors could not patrol a state as large and secretive as Saddam's Iraq, and even if it came across incriminating evidence, the overwhelming pool of wealth available to the Hussein crime family, thanks to the illicit sale of oil during the sanctions regime, could mean that any weapons that Saddam was forced to destroy could be replaced.

It is not absurd to claim that Saddam had a fetish for biological and chemical weapons, considering his previous use of them, having used a chemical nerve agent to massacre tens of thousands of Kurdish Iraqis in the northern areas of the country, as well as Shi'ite Iraqis. His invasion of Iran in 1980 prompted him to use chemical weapons, bringing the death toll of that conflict to over one million. He and his regime, upon their invasion of Kuwait in 1991, fired biological WMD (Scud, Seersucker, and Silkworm missiles) at the country. He also ordered Scuds to be fired at Israel. We can see that the continuation of inspections into an unknown point in the future was unlikely to work. Saddam's own stated desire to continue the weapons programme is testament to this.

The second strategy, the threat of a preemptive strike or the actual use of force, is a form of deterrence. It would have involved saying to Saddam, if you do not disarm we will intervene to disarm you. Of course, the use of this threat is pointless if there lacks the political will to carry it out. We should not have threatened armed intervention against Iraq unless we meant it, and this means stomaching the idea and building up the political consensus necessary to carry out an invasion and occupation. If Saddam had armed himself with WMD then threats against him would have become harder to uphold. The umbrella defence that the USA provided states like Japan in the Cold War could not be carried out with regard to Middle Eastern states like Kuwait. Britain and the USA were never going to accept the risk of antagonising a WMD state purely to protect Middle Eastern countries. Of course, these states will be under impending pressure to develop their own WMD in response.

[PinkPhazer]

(Original post by OSharp)
Well let me put it this way,

Would you feel safe is you where standing next to a stranger with a pointy stick if you didn't have one?

(if your going to Neg me atleast tell me why)

I would feel safer if the guy with the pointy stick didn't have a pointy stick and started to have a friendly conversation with me.

[PinkPhazer]

(Original post by SpicyStrawberry)
We need the armed forces to protect us from terrorism and other issues, if we got rid of all our defences, we would be invaded. I for one wouldn't like that one bit.

The armed forces also do a great deal of humanitarian work, they don't just go to war and shoot people.

Ha, if we got rid of our defences we would be invaded?! What rubbish.

[SpicyStrawberry]

(Original post by PinkPhazer)
Ha, if we got rid of our defences we would be invaded?! What rubbish.

What a fantastic argument.

[SpicyStrawberry]

(Original post by Stefan1991)
I didn't swear. *******s isn't a swear word unless your under 5 years old.

*You're

If you're going to swear at people, at least do it properly.

[123maz]

what are you trying to ask??

[cid]

I think OP is questioning why we have Armies or even wars for that matter.

It just how we have developed as a species, from the earliest days when obtaining and defending resources ensured your own survival. It then grew from that to groups joining forces to more efficiently ensure the survival of themselves and their own, then onto countries fighting each other over resources and survival, then into trained (to a greater or lesser degree depending on era and nation) individuals fighting other trained individuals on the behalf of their respected nations.


It is only in the last century or so that sovereignty of a nation and trying to make the most use of your own nations resources as opposed to seizing the resources of weaker nations has become a concept of the moral compass of society.

Unfortunately not everyone would is happy to respect other's sovereignty or even existence and will use force to threaten that. If they did not have a army to do this, then there would be no need for an army to prevent this. Its really the same as the argument for nuclear disarmament but either way, it would not be sensible to disband our nations military so long as other ones exist.

[Kiss]

You're complaining about the people who protect us?

[PinkPhazer]

(Original post by SpicyStrawberry)
What a fantastic argument.

Do you really want to try and defend that statement? Come on really?

Who would invade us? The reason we are not getting invaded at the moment has got nothing to do with our army. We are a valuable world asset.

and lets say somebody did, Europe and America would not let us get invaded it would be bad for their economies et.c

We do not need an army to not get invaded.

[SpicyStrawberry]

(Original post by PinkPhazer)
Do you really want to try and defend that statement? Come on really?

Who would invade us? The reason we are not getting invaded at the moment has got nothing to do with our army. We are a valuable world asset.

and lets say somebody did, Europe and America would not let us get invaded it would be bad for their economies et.c

We do not need an army to not get invaded.

Okay, thankfully we have an army so we don't have to see what would happen if we didn't have one, so this argument is pointless.

[Michaelj]

...Soldiers join the army because of poverty, not knowing what else to do in life and poor education. Sure... A rare few join for patriosm, to see the world and for a career. But are these bad people? No. They are just like you. They aren't brain washed. They aren't murderers. They are people with personalities. The armed forces doesn't consist of 100% infantry either. There are roles such as logistics, medical etc which aid for civilians. Look at what they've done to help third world countrys. Giving them supplys and stuff.

You say soldiers don't know what to do with terriosm? Bull****. Look at the SAS operations that have got them fame. The armed forces are doing a lot for olympics. They won't be armed with guns, they will be armed with detectors... They will be forced to stand 12 hour shifts. They won't enjoy the job probably but they will have to do it. It's a duty.

Do they want to go to Afghanistan and fight? Rarely. If they do want to go, it'll be because its a chance to earn more money to feed their families. They defending each other and protecting their forces. Why? Because they got told to go there.

~If you want to have a rant, rant at the government.

The Falklands war was a truly tragic event in which 255 people died to defend a continent that was ours. The falklanders were initially British.

And you think a soldier who lost two arms and two legs shouldn't get help?

You make it sound like the armed forces consists of hooligans, murderers and rapists...