The Ultimate Irony

[Winstonm]

Back to the original question: US-sponsored terrorism is not a new invention. At least it is very hard to find a definition of terrorism that doesn't match what the US did in Nicaragua.

You just don't get it - when the U.S. sponsors terrorism, it is "spreading democracy"; when others do the same, it is "sponsoring hatred".

 

There are no bounds on the hypocricy.

[Winstonm]

I believe it is not in the US interest to have the come-and-get-us attitude.

 

Has it been so long since 9/11?

Speaking of 9-11, there was new video released today of the BBC reporting that World Trade Center 7 had collapsed - the only slight snag was the report that the buidling had collapsed occured 23 minutes before the actually did collapse.

 

A BBC woman journalist is shown in a live shot reporting that the building had collapsed, while over her shoulder the building can be seen completely intact - until her live feed mysteriously breaks up 5 minutes before the building came down.

 

I wonder who gave the BBC the news feed that WTC-7 "had" collapsed, and how did they know in advance that the building was going to collapse?

[mycroft]

Of course it matters to you.  I wasn't being sarcastic- if you don't like what we're doing, then do something about it.  Put up trade barriers and promise to bring them down when we leave Iraq (or whatever).  Offer us something we want in return for doing what you want, or threaten us with something we dislike if we keep doing what you dislike.  Heck, even trying to convince us Americans on forums is doing something. 

 

Of course, this brings us back to the original issue - Al Queda doesn't like what you're doing, and is doing something about it. All the "terror cells" in Iraq that were generated because of the occupation forces (funny, in 1943, those "terror cells" were the "glorious Resistance") don't like what the US is doing, and is doing something about it.

 

Because they know they can't do anything peacefully, because the US just ignores them, or can softwood lumber them into submission, and because they can't do anything else, playing by the Only Superpower's Rules (at least partly because they make the rules in such a way as to be impossible to defeat), they're doing something about it in a way that works. Sure the retaliation for those tactics is nasty and overbroad, and affects lots of innocent people, but that's okay to a lot of people in the organizations - all those affected people come to sympathize with the insurgency and provide troops (and therefore power) to the non-troops in those organizations.

 

What really annoys me about this whole thing is that it isn't good for Americans, either. What would you prefer - 20 hours out of your life, every year, waiting in security lines, full-time tracking of your movements, your phone records, your spending habits, your library checkouts, for someone's sake - or a 0.0002% increased chance of dying in a terrorist attack? Who is it good for? Follow the money. Where are Your Tax Dollars being spent in their Billions? Follow the power. Who has more power over you now? Who is more free in what they can do than before? Who has the power that the money gives them?

 

Is it you? Or I? or the Average American?

Michael.

[jtfanclub]

Mycroft...go back and reread my first post in the thread. Not the one about the world's policemen. I know the propaganda about how we're the good guys and they're breaking the rules is BS, but it must be convincing somebody, or we wouldn't spend so much disseminating it.

 

What would you prefer - 20 hours out of your life, every year, waiting in security lines, full-time tracking of your movements, your phone records, your spending habits, your library checkouts, for someone's sake - or a 0.0002% increased chance of dying in a terrorist attack?

 

Hmmm...20 hours a year, or no 9/11? I'll take the 20 hours a year. Not because I care about the terrorist attack more than I do about, say, Hurricane Katrina, but because we go apes**t every time terrorists 'get' us. As far as tracking our movements, I assure you that we'll get that fixed. The government is a slow moving ship. When it gets hit by a big wave, it gets rocked from side to side a bit. Things like this have happened before. I wouldn't assume that we've gotten a permanent list to the right.

 

The truth is, in spite of what people may whine to the polls, most Americans are happy with the level of government interference in their life, or at least not unhappy enough about it to even write a letter to their local paper. Tracking our movements etc. is something that most Americans are willing to live with, at least for now.

[BebopKid]

Who appointed the USA as the world's policeman.

I believe the U.N. did when it made the USA a permenant member of the Security Council. There are four other members, but when a job is needing to be done, one shouldn't wait around to see if someone else is going to do it first. One should take charge.

[pbleighton]

"I believe the U.N. did when it made the USA a permenant member of the Security Council."

 

You seriously misunderstand the role of the Security Council, and of the U.N. in general.

 

"There are four other members, but when a job is needing to be done, one shouldn't wait around to see if someone else is going to do it first. One should take charge."

 

As we have done in Vietnam and Iraq, and as the former U.S.S.R. did in Afghanistan?

 

Peter

[the hog]

"My point was not that I was personally big and powerful, but that for a nation that is so very powerful, we have shown an enormous amount of restraint."

 

Really??!! That is news to me. If you will allow me to look at some of the past foreign policies decisions - I live and work in an area on which the US dropped more bombs than were dropped on Europe in the whole of WW2, and this is a country with which the US was not even at war, and in fact denied even being involved in. The place today is littered with UXO's, (unexploded ordinances), which the US has not bothered to remove. The UN and teams from Japan and Australia are involved in bomb disposal.

 

The situation is so bad that we have to be extremely careful not to stray from cleared areas. The villagers are not so lucky as they have to go about their daily lives. Virtually every day we hear of someone stepping on one of these "gifts" with the expected consequenses.

 

So, JTFanclub, don't talk bullshit. They people I work with and live near did nothing to deserve this. I wonder how the people of the Middle east will feel in 20 years time. I can guess.

[helene_t]

[.....] for a nation that is so very powerful, we have shown an enormous amount of restraint.

Arguably GW is less of a ruthless imperialist than Julius Caesar, Dengis Khan and Queen Victoria. Hurra for GW.

[jtfanclub]

Really??!! That is news to me. If you will allow me to look at some of the past foreign policies decisions

And you're looking at these compared to what, exactly? How wonderful and peaceful the British were? The Spanish? The Catholic Church? The Romans? I understand those Mongols were a social bunch.

 

I invited you to compare our actions with the actions of previous regimes who had overwhelming military superiority. So far, the only responses from you I've gotten are looking in a vaccuum.

 

If you think Cambodia is bad, imagine how bad it would have been had the U.S. government not been trying to keep it a secret from the public, and instead used nukes with public approval? Do you really think the British would have said "Well, we have machine guns, but we're not going to use them because they're too horrible"?

 

Go take a look at what the European powers did to this continent a few centuries ago, and tell me they wouldn't have done worse to Cambodia. Entire cultures were slaughtered to the last man, woman, and child, because they were in the way. I'm sure there were lots of generals in the U.S. who would have been in favor of doing the same in Asia.

 

But they didn't.

 

Arguably GW is less of a ruthless imperialist than Julius Caesar, Dengis Khan and Queen Victoria. Hurra for GW.

 

Yeah, well, it's been less than 200 years since Victoria. Evolution has its limits. Maybe in 20,000 years the Icelandic Empire will show us all how it's done. In the meanwhile, Democrats like myself do what we can, but there is progress.

 

Sorry that it's not enough to satisfy you.

[the hog]

This is a foolish response. Just because one nation or empire behaves badly does not mean that another is given carte blanche to do so. Have you, (we), learnt nothing from History. If not that is a sad state of affairs.

 

Incidentally I live in Laos, not Cambodia.

[mikeh]

Who appointed the USA as the world's policeman.

 

You're abosultely right. We should stop be the world's policeman, and take the view of all other nations when they became the most powerful militarily in the world, from Great Britain to the Huns to the Arabs Caliphates to Rome to the Byzantine Empire.

 

I can't remember any nation, when finding themselves clearly the strongest militarily in the world, rolling over on their backs as much as we do. Can you really imagine late 18th century Great Britain being satisfied to be 'World Policemen'.

 

Who are YOU to say that we can't nuke our enemies and potential enemies, and force the rest of the world to kowtow or face nuclear annhilation? Do you think the Romans would have hesitated?

 

I say, if you don't like what we're doing, come and get us. You know where we live.

This reveals a profound ignorance of some relevant history: as recently as 1815 and the Treaty of Ghent.

 

The USA had started a war with Great Britain, aiming to invade and confiscate Canada (or the version of Canada that then existed.. the actual Confederation of Canada was more than 50 years distant). It lost. It lost resoundingly.. indeed the then White House was burned to the ground.

 

The only military victory won by the US was of marginal importance given that the Battle of New Orleans was fought two weeks after the peace treaty was signed. Travel and communications were a little less speedy than today, so the combatants in NO didn't know about the treaty.

 

The point is that GB was generous in victory, due to the statesmanship of the Foreign Secretary of the day, who declared that the sole purpose of the British Government in the immediate post-napoleonic times was the preservation of peace for all nations.

 

Thus, depite crushing defeats, the US was able to convince itself that it had at least 'tied' the war.. because the Treay of Ghent restored all nations to their pre-conflict boundaries.

 

So while I agree that history usually teaches us that the super-power of the day acts selfishly, that is not a universal truth... and it is entirely possible that much of the history of the world would be quite different if the British had been ruthless in 1815. As Stephen Gould wrote, the Treaty of Ghent, allowing the US to avoid admitting defeat, also led to the presidency of the winning US general at NO, who would probably not have been able to win were the battle viewed as part of a national disaster rather than a national victory.

 

And Abraham Lincoln was later to consciously model his political persona (the image of the man from the relative frontiers) on Andrew Jackson, and without Lincoln, who knows how the US would have unfolded: perhaps slavery would still be prevalent in the deep south? And so on.

 

 

As for 'rolling on our backs'... do you have a single example, since WWII, of an instance in which American foreign policy was driven by any factor other then (usually short-sighted) geopolitcal or economic self-interest??? Individual Americans, such as Soros and, more recently, Gates/Buffet have done remarkable things, but governments?

[pbleighton]

"Who are YOU to say that we can't nuke our enemies and potential enemies, and force the rest of the world to kowtow or face nuclear annhilation? Do you think the Romans would have hesitated?

 

I say, if you don't like what we're doing, come and get us. You know where we live."

 

They did, 0n 9/11.

 

This is an extraordinarily foolish attitude.

 

Technology changes everything.

 

Was 9/11 possible 100 years ago?

 

How about a nuke smuggled into a harbor?

 

Get a grip.

 

Peter

[mike777]

The United States declared War on Great Britain on June 12, 1812. The war was declared as a result of long simmering disputes with Great Britian. The central dispute surrounded the impressment of American soldiers by the British. The British had previously attacked the USS Chesapeake and nearly caused a war two year earlier. In addition, disputes continued with Great Britain over the Northwest Territories and the border with Canada. Finally, the attempts of Great Britain to impose a blockade on France during the Napoleonic Wars was a constant source of conflict with the United States.

 

http://home.earthlink.net/~gfeldmeth/chart.1812.html

 

http://library.thinkquest.org/22916/excauses.html

[Winstonm]

I invited you to compare our actions with the actions of previous regimes who had overwhelming military superiority. So far, the only responses from you I've gotten are looking in a vaccuum.

 

The overwhelming military advantage is overstated; while it is true that in technology and nuclear capacity the U.S. has vast superority, in numbers of available combat troops we are no match for China. And history has shown us in Vietnam and now in Iraq that technology can only go so far in a war, and bombing alone cannot ensure victory. It really doesn't matter that we can place a bomb precisely down an air vent unless we have adequate ground troops to control the area after the bombing stops - a fatal error of Rumsfeld's thinking.

 

A huge reason that the U.S. military might has not been unleashed more frequently is because the U.S is woefully dependent on the rest of the world to support its economy - and thus the costs of its war efforts.

[mike777]

"...unless we have adequate ground troops to control the area after the bombing stops - a fatal error of Rumsfeld's thinking."

 

We may never have adequate ground troops to control the area, any area. I hope this does not give comfort to those who wish to do us harm. Of course reading these posts I get the idea no one wishes us harm except ourselves. :)

 

That would be the Ultimate Irony. ;)

[Winstonm]

We may never have adequate ground troops to control the area, any area.

 

If that is the case, then there is no point in starting a war - it can never be won - unless you use a total nuclear holocaust. If you turn sand into glass, you can probably station enough troops to control the odd scorpion or beetle that survives.

[mike777]

We may never have adequate ground troops to control the area, any area.

 

If that is the case, then there is no point in starting a war - it can never be won - unless you use a total nuclear holocaust. If you turn sand into glass, you can probably station enough troops to control the odd scorpion or beetle that survives.

I agree, we should not be starting wars. Of course it seems "the other guys" always start any war...pick any one. ;)

[the hog]

We may never have adequate ground troops to control the area, any area.

 

If that is the case, then there is no point in starting a war - it can never be won - unless you use a total nuclear holocaust. If you turn sand into glass, you can probably station enough troops to control the odd scorpion or beetle that survives.

I agree, we should not be starting wars. Of course it seems "the other guys" always start any war...pick any one. ;)

Ok Vietnam war. This was a direct result of Kennedy's policy of containment and the falling dominoes. After Dien Bien Phu the US could have sought rapprochement and relations with Indo China; it didn't. Why? Scared of the communist, (read nationalist), bogeyman. The result is like I have described in Laos, above.

[mike777]

Well I hoped my comment was ironic. :)

 

I meant pick any war by anyone in the history of the world, do not the bad guys, other guys always start it somehow ;)

[Winstonm]

We may never have adequate ground troops to control the area, any area.

 

If that is the case, then there is no point in starting a war - it can never be won - unless you use a total nuclear holocaust. If you turn sand into glass, you can probably station enough troops to control the odd scorpion or beetle that survives.

I agree, we should not be starting wars. Of course it seems "the other guys" always start any war...pick any one. ;)

Gee, Mike, it sounds like you are coming around to my point of view - regardless of who starts it, if you can't fight a war with the goal of total victory, don't fight a war; instead, rely on police-type tactics, special forces, and intelligence to fight the enemy.

 

Long term, try changing their lives and attitudes so they have no reason to fight.

[Winstonm]

I meant pick any war by anyone in the history of the world, do not the bad guys, other guys always start it somehow

 

Iraq would be an exception to this rule - total unprovoked attack by the United States on a non-offending country.

 

Or does that make the U.S. the "bad guys"?

[mike777]

Well you seem to forget I was against going into Iraq based on the info published in the media. I just think if we send our children to fight we need to win, whatever that means. What are we doing in Afghanistan? Even Canada wants to pull its Nato troops out and not fight. Sure we invaded them 3 times in 1812 but that was just joking guys.

[Winstonm]

What are we doing in Afghanistan?

 

Well, I'm no expert but it seems what we've accomplished is to reinvigorate the Taliban, help ensure a bumper crop in opium poppies, and lose track of bin Laden, whom we are no longer interested in finding - which is odd, as I thought finding and getting bin Laden was the whole idea from the start.

[jtfanclub]

So while I agree that history usually teaches us that the super-power of the day acts selfishly, that is not a universal truth...

 

I can argue with your example, but I cannot argue with your conclusion. The point is I, and a lot of other people, are working to restrain the United States from the natural tendencies of all super-powers. People mewling how we're not doing it enough aren't helping things.

 

do you have a single example, since WWII, of an instance in which American foreign policy was driven by any factor other then (usually short-sighted) geopolitcal or economic self-interest???

 

Virtually every nation on the planet post WWII (I understand Finland actually paid us back...it was Finland, right?), but most especially Japan. The literally tens of billions of dollars in aid we give out each year. Israel. The base in the Philipines. Allowing foreigners to come to our universities. Our decision to not keep Grenada, or Guatamala, or Panama (or its canal). For that matter, I give you Bosnia, which is of no benefit to us at all.

 

We weren't slitting our wrists on these things. But we aren't anywhere near as cut-throat as we could be. In fact, I'll say that's our greatest act of kindness...we have allowed (IMHO) three nations/groups to become stronger than us economically, even though we were far stronger militarily. We had the opportunity to squeeze the EU long before it became the EU, and we did not. We forgave their loans and paid for their defense. Those subsidies, which they have no intention of repaying, are going to be our downfall. I guess that's what happens when a super-power stops being selfish. It stops being a super-power.

 

We're reaching the end of our run. If I live to be as old as my grandmother (may she rest in peace), the United States will no longer be a super-power. Even if India and Pakistan have no intention of going to war with each other, they have to keep their arms race going so that the stalemate remains. China is China, and Indonesia is finally start to flex its muscles.

 

As for the EU...the EU, who should be our major check in global militarism right now, can't or won't try to stop us. I mean, could we even have remained in Iraq for so long if Rammstein had been foreclosed? And yet, if there's a struggle anywhere, it's let the Americans handle it. I mean, getting Europe to send a few thousand troops to patrol a 21 mile border was like pulling teeth.

 

I don't know which was worse, what we did to Laos or what we didn't do to Pol Pot. Was Hiroshima worse than if we'd made a deal with Japan to allow them to take China as their personal slave pen? You guys, meaning foreign nations, could easily use economic carrots and sticks to get us out of Iraq, or have kept us out of there in the first place. I don't know if it's battered wife syndrome, or if it's you guys deliberately goading us into s**tholes like this in hopes of bleeding us to death, but I'm rather starting to suspect the latter.

 

Me, I'd rather have an enemy like Al Qaeda. At least they stab us in the front.

 

I'm just rambling now. If I wasn't before.

 

 

Edited to add: Huh, how odd. I just realized this argument could be used almost verbatim by the Republicans about the Democrats who write resolutions about how we should pull out of Iraq but refuse to actually do anything about it. Ah well. They've only been in power for a month, let's give them a year, at least.

[Winstonm]

As for the EU...the EU, who should be our major check in global militarism right now, can't or won't try to stop us. I mean, could we even have remained in Iraq for so long if Rammstein had been foreclosed? And yet, if there's a struggle anywhere, it's let the Americans handle it. I mean, getting Europe to send a few thousand troops to patrol a 21 mile border was like pulling teeth.

 

There is another side to this, although I do not claim it accurate. But simply put, is it not possible that the EU is comprised of nations who do not believe it is in their best interest to interfere in areas outside their own? Could it be that the U.S. struggles are the struggles of attempted imperialistic domination and that the EU wants no part in assisting?