What do you think about Cruz saying the US has never targeted civilians when dropping bombs and alike, and Trump saying he wants to try to broker a deal with Israel and the Palestinians?

Tariffs were proven detrimental to consumers years ago. It will kill Wal Mart, the auto industry, and Silicon Valley. Plus you won’t get all those things we all like.

Cruz is delusional; we have targeted civilians going back to WWII. It just isn’t our proudest moment.

I wanna live in Cruz’s America! Which way do I go?

@Espiritus_Corvus Into the light, I think.

I’m getting really tired of fighting flamboyant ignorance with simple Google facts, this election season.

Cruz has said he would attack DAESH.ISIS.ISIL with carpet bombing.
Cruz believes carpet bombing was widely used, and effective, during the Persian Gulf War.

“Christopher Harmer, a former US Navy officer and currently a senior naval analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, told Business Insider in December that ‘you have to be deliberately ignorant of the nature of ISIS … [and] of the limits of air power to advocate carpet bombing.’”
“Harmer pointed out that carpet bombing ‘really doesn’t do anything except hit a bunch of civilians and maybe a few ISIS fighters’ and only applies when you’re trying to level entire cities or destroy civilian populations.

Trump defies all logic.

@ibstubro What does this “I’m getting really tired of fighting flamboyant ignorance with simple Google facts, this election season” mean exactly? Tired of who? Cruz?

Tired of Cruz and Trump of those that remain, @JLeslie. You have to admit Carson had some pretty “out there” ideas (Pyramids as grain silos?) and it’s only because he’s faded from memory that we aren’t still shaking our heads over some of the crap R.Paul said.

@ibstubro Google facts? Everything is on google. Bullshit and facts. It all depends on what websites you are relying on for the “facts.”

It’s because of what @ibstubro describes above that I’m surprised anyone wonders what to think of their comments. These are people who, when not behaving as if they’ve utterly lost their minds, say whatever their wacko base wants to hear. How can anyone take them seriously?

I think it’s the Religious Right inspired Republican party, @dappled_leaves.
Accept your leaders on faith alone has expanded from the purely religious to the political.

Noah built an ark.
America never targeted civilians in war.
Shall we pray?

So, you don’t think Trump is sincere about wanting to try to broker a peace deal for Israel and the Palestinians? He was not pandering to the Evangelicals with that. The Evangelicals tend to want to blindly support Israel in a right wing, no compromise, way.

@JLeslie I don’t think he’s even sincere about wanting to be president. If he were to win, he’d hire someone to answer the phones, and go on vacation.

Lol. Ok.

A couple of points. I know this will entice all the ‘hate America crowd to chime in but there are some pertinent facts to consider. First there is a difference between collateral damage and targeting civilians. Even when you know there will be civilian casualties. On 9/11 the pentagon is a military target, the World Trade center was not. Even the A-bombs in WWII were targeted to the naval bases in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Did we know there would be civilian casualties? Of course. I can’t say I agree with ‘Carpet Bombing’ but if we did it, it would be to target ISIS not the civilians. Since ISIS hides among civilian populations, there would inevitably be collateral damage but that wouldn’t be the purpose (target).

As for the Palestinians and Israel, why not? Trump fancies himself a great negotiator and quite likely believes him could do it. Many have tried with much less ridicule. Negotiating with them doesn’t hurt nor cost us much, why not try?

Just a note on the tariffs Trump has proposed. It would be wonderful to reduce our trade deficit and it would have a dramtic affect in bringing back the economy. We do however have some historical evidence that it is a double edged sword. When Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff back in 1930, it set off a trade war that had serious repercussions. World trade dropped by over 60% by 1932. The depression got much worse and it is one of the reasons the depression lasted as long as it did. Maybe we could afford to do some tariff adjustments but it shouldn’t be done arbitrarily. Hoover’s tarriffs were so bad that the pendulum swung totally to the other side and we’ve been operating on Free Trade for quite some time. Is there a middle ground? I don’t know.

@Jaxk About Israel, I actually believe Trump wants to try to broker a deal. I was more wondering if the collective thought it was ridiculous to try at this point, like the other candidates on the stage thought.

In Hiroshima and Nagasaki the collateral damage was so extreme it’s difficult to ignore. I think America shouldn’t try to boast about not targeting civilians, even if technically we have only had “collateral damage.” I’m not so sure that’s really true. Terrorizing the population helps exhaust their willingness to support the war probably. That might have been part of out strategy sometimes, I don’t know.

I agree with you that the Palestinians hide among civilians, including their own families. Israel often tries to warn Palestinians they are going to bomb to let them get out. Still, their death and injury toll racks up when Israel fights back.

@jaxk Right.~

Is there a difference between knowingly carpet bombing in order to take out enemy guerrillas in areas where our intelligence reports there are civilian villages (“acceptable” collateral damage) and just bombing civilians with impunity? I see no difference. I certainly don’t think the civilian casualties do either. Neither do our democratic allies, the majority of whom are themselves civilians.

Yes, we have bombed civilians with impunity. Cruz is either lying, or one of the most ignorant people of his generation. I cite the following operations:

Menu, March 1969 – May 1970: Cambodia and Laos, both neutral countries. 3,852 B52 sorties, 108.823 tons of ordinance dropped. DOD estimates 4,247 civilian casualties.

Rolling Thunder March 1965 – November 1968. 3,600 sorties, 864,000 tons of ordinance dropped. (In comparison, 653,000 tons were dropped during the entire Korean War and 503,000 tons in the Pacific theater during the Second World War.) Greater North Vietnam. CIA estimated 72,000 civilian casualties.

Linebacker II, December 1972, Hanoi and Haiphong Harbor. Hanoi claimed 1,624 civilians killed.

There were more, and there have been more since. These are just the early ones I personally remember occurring in my adult lifetime, when I was still tender enough to be shocked by them.

I don’t hate America, pal. And it pisses me off when people like you say that.

I’d just like us to live up to our own ideals—and that’s not going to happen if we keep re-writing history which allows the darker elements in our government to repeatedly kill civilians with impunity. A highly respected conservative magazine (The Nation) recently published an article seriously exploring the idea of summarily shooting prisoners at Guantanamo. Do we really want to keep going there? Is that who we are? That’s not who I am. And I carry the passport.

Granted, the civilian casualties in the above operations weren’t primary targets. They were secondary targets—potential guerrillas. Cruz and his growing ilk are full of shit. We target civilians and the collateral damage was justified as such, after the fact. We waterboard prisoners. We are discussing at this very moment how to justify shooting prisoners within the Geneva Convention rules. We have strayed from our expressed ideals.

There is always going to be a world cop. This was an onus thrust upon us after the world went crazy for the second time, although I’ll admit we weren’t exactly unenthusiastic in accepting it. I’d rather it be it my guys than any of the alternatives I see out here. Nobody ever said being world cop was easy, but if we can’t even live up to our own ideals, then we become one of the enemy—in the eyes of our allies and in our own, whether our leadership wants to admit it or not. It’s as simple as that.

@Espiritus_Corvus – All good points but I can’t see how you paint Cambodia and Laos as neutral. Guerillas would come across the border, attack us and then fade back into what they considered a ‘safe haven’. We weren’t bombing potential guerillas but rather actual guerillas. The truth is ‘war is hell’ and unfortunately we are and were in a war. I can’t and won’t defend everything we do or did but to say we were intentionally targeting civilians is over the top. The bombing during Vietnam is the way we were able to stop the war. It brought the North to the table allowing us to negotiate a cease fire. Without it we would never have been able to stop the fighting.