"...It's time we recognized the nature of the conflict. It's total war and we are all involved. Nobody on our side is exempted because of age, gender, or handicap. The Islamofacists have stolen childhood from the world." [FReeper Retief]
"...That the totalitarian force pitted against freedom wears a religious makes this civil war among mankind all the more difficult to engage. Loving freedom as we do, it seems reprehensible to deliberate against a religion. But this is no ordinary religion as it demands absolute obedience of all to their religion at the cost of freedom itself." [FReeper Backtothestreets]
I scrolled all the way to the bottom. :)
The Soviet Union and China fought a vicious border war against each other in the last 1960s.
The Chinese think just as much of Siberia belonging to them as they do of Taiwan.
People desperately want to simplify the world - particularly the bad guys. The world is a complicated place.
Nations cooperate when they have common interests and are in conflict when they don't. There's no grand ultimate conspiracy of everyone that isn't best buddies with the US. Sometimes some of those nations cooperate, other times they have (exploitable by us) differences.
We were convinced there was a grand unified centrally-controlled Soviet Communist bloc - we now know that bloc was a lot more fractured than we thought - not only the Soviets and Chinese, but also the Chinese-Vietnamese border war, etc.
BUMP FOR LATER
here is one from 2006 that needs to be bumped