Right, when you've lived five years in Saudi Arabia, come back and we'll talk

Well, when you've lived there for five years as an infidel citizen, I think your contributions to the conversation would be more meaningful.

Yep. They will be faced with a survival choice, whether "forced" or not. They would be governing a trade center and a commercial nexus, will they or nil they.

If you have gone thru what others in the military have the things they have seen, you might have an understanding of why.. people need to realize that the military in every branch isnt even close to what the tv shows you may be proud yes but fact is your treated like complete crap, and to be honest from my experience the only people that go into the military are people that have no where else to turn.. as a last resort its either prision. jail or the military.

Disagree, many join for money, I knew many a college students that got their education paid for by the military.

They didn't choose right last time, ice. Why this time?

If you have gone thru what others in the military have the things they have seen, you might have an understanding of why.. people need to realize that the military in every branch isnt even close to what the tv shows you may be proud yes but fact is your treated like complete crap, and to be honest from my experience the only people that go into the military are people that have no where else to turn.. as a last resort its either prision. jail or the military.

read the red text

you may get treated like crap in basic training, that is because they are weeding people out.

that isnt true at ll.

My 19 year old son just started his second year at Purdue as an engineering major. His high school was one of the best in our state, and in his graduating class most male students either went into engineering or joined the military (usually the marines).

are people not reading what i said? so both you john and electric are saying that my experience is wrong.. im sorry i thought i knew more about the way i live what i do and what i see than others guess i was wrong... i say it again IN MY EXPERIENCE, and yes in MY EXPERIENCE it is 100% true regardless of what anyone says.

to weed people out? once basic training is done the marines dont do crap squat.. and once or twice a year they do a corse

a recruter for the PD where i live had a few marines that came in in their mid 20s.. completed there 5 years and guess what? they failed the course to become a police officer why? they couldnt do more than 20 pushups

thats great and i know not everyone that joins the mariens or military is a last resort.. in my experience is what i said.. im also glad that people like your son do it, why? it gives me a job. i build things the military uses marines airforce ect.

the retirement is great but to be just a marine from all of my buddies that are in there is not a good carrier path they sit around on gaurd duty get off do the normal stuff go back to guard duty.. most while not on active duty "overseas" are pretty depressed, again these are the people that I know from MY experiences i know that there is a more broad spectrum but i know quite a few people in all branches of the military and this is my general consensus from talking to them

i dont know you or your experiences so i cant comment on them.

As severe an indictment of the Indiana high schools as I have ever read.
They didn't get to choose, last time - they never had to face the music. By the time it was falling apart on them, they had a foreign army coming in.

The Taliban cannot govern a trade and commercial nexus of Asia in the manner they proposed - their government will fall apart, if they try.

They may not have faced the music, but they kept on singing. To religious fanatics, what does it really matter if the country is falling apart? And what defines a critical failure in this scenario?

Not the country, the government.

See "Soviet Socialist Republic, empire of". You can get away with that kind of failure in Albania, maybe, but not Afghanistan. It's a crossroad.