Would You Support Military Action?

[hrothgar]

If capitain Kirk had been intelligent, he would have forced the leaders of the two sides to include themselves obligatorily in the next in line for oblivion.  Put a stop to war? Only when those who declare war are obliged to be in the front lines.  Then it would stop fast.

Actually, that's the story. The daughter of one of the leaders ends up on the Enterprise and demands sanctuary, as she's next in line to be killed. Part of the point of the story is that it doesn't make a damn bit of difference whether the leaders are included or not. Fanatics don't care if they die, as long as the cause is right.

 

I guess since you think it would stop you, it would stop most people.

 

It was clearly a war crime for us to attack Nazi Germany. After all, what had they done to us? Only blown away a few ships carrying weapons to Russia and Great Britian, clearly an act of self defense. We should have fought the Japanese and negotiated with the Germans- they get Russia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, and leave the rest of the world alone. I'm quite sure they would have agreed.

 

At least that would get rid of most of these moronic arguments.

The United States didn't declare war on Germany until December 11th, 1941.

 

Hitler issued orders to the Germany Navy authorizing unrestrained attacks against US shipping on December 8th and followed this up with a formal declaration of War on December 10th.

[jtfanclub]

Hitler issued orders to the Germany Navy authorizing unrestrained attacks against US shipping on December 8th and followed this up with a formal declaration of War on December 10th.

We could have negotiated a settlement with Germany long before Pearl Harbor. We'd been antagonizing them for some time, especially with supply to Russia (without which Russia would not have survived).

[Al_U_Card]

Yes indeed, the Mil-Ind. complex had been spoiling for war for some time but the populace wanted nothing to do with it. Roosevelt determined that they had to sucker Germany in and feigning weakness by their ease of attack and defeat at the hands of a "surpise" attack seemed the easiest way.

[ralph23]

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5057/

 

FDR is often mildly misquoted as "We have nothing to fear except ....". The entire speech is well worth reading, and even more, listening to.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infamy_Speech

 

Mildly misquoted often as "a day" rather than "a date" .... he replaced "world history" with "infamy", making a handwritten change to the text, apparently not long before delivery of the speech.

[pbleighton]

We could have negotiated a settlement with Germany long before Pearl Harbor. We'd been antagonizing them for some time, especially with supply to Russia (without which Russia would not have survived).

 

Delusional piffle.

 

We were not the aggressor in our relationship with Nazi Germany or Japan.

 

Your analogy with the current U.S.-Iran situation is ludicrous.

 

Peter

[jtfanclub]

We were not the aggressor in our relationship with Nazi Germany or Japan.

Really. And all that time in '39, '40, and much of '41, when we were delivering supplies to Russia and Great Britian, how exactly was Germany the aggressor?

[cherdano]

We were not the aggressor in our relationship with Nazi Germany or Japan.

Really. And all that time in '39, '40, and much of '41, when we were delivering supplies to Russia and Great Britian, how exactly was Germany the aggressor?

Wtf are you talking about?

Maybe because Germany invaded Russia in the first place? Is delivering weapons to a country that is fighting a defensive war against a country that invaded one country after another suddenly called aggression?

[pbleighton]

Really. And all that time in '39, '40, and much of '41, when we were delivering supplies to Russia and Great Britian, how exactly was Germany the aggressor?

 

They were engaged in conquering a continent.

 

Peter

[jtfanclub]

Wtf are you talking about?

Maybe because Germany invaded Russia in the first place? Is delivering weapons to a country that is fighting a defensive war against a country that invaded one country after another suddenly called aggression?

You mean like the way we're arming Iraq to stop the invasion by Iran? Quds forces have already been captured in Iraqi territory.

 

But, if that's what makes it legal, then I have a simple solution. Give the nukes to Maliki and friends, and have them nuke the Iranians. Apparently, that's cool with you. Arm the Kurds, who were slaughtered by Saddam in spite of the Sanctions? Apparently legal. Go in there and deal with him directly? Apparently illegal. Etc. etc.

 

My point isn't on one side or the other. My point is this trying to turn wars into the kind of stupid simplicity that even third graders would laugh at is pointless. Wars are complicated. The decision to go to war is complicated. And the usual stupid one-liners about them just make us all dumber.

 

WWII wasn't a war of aggression on our part. But then, neither was Iraq.

[mikeh]

Wtf are you talking about?

Maybe because Germany invaded Russia in the first place? Is delivering weapons to a country that is fighting a defensive war against a country that invaded one country after another suddenly called aggression?

You mean like the way we're arming Iraq to stop the invasion by Iran? Quds forces have already been captured in Iraqi territory.

 

But, if that's what makes it legal, then I have a simple solution. Give the nukes to Maliki and friends, and have them nuke the Iranians. Apparently, that's cool with you. Arm the Kurds, who were slaughtered by Saddam in spite of the Sanctions? Apparently legal. Go in there and deal with him directly? Apparently illegal. Etc. etc.

 

My point isn't on one side or the other. My point is this trying to turn wars into the kind of stupid simplicity that even third graders would laugh at is pointless. Wars are complicated. The decision to go to war is complicated. And the usual stupid one-liners about them just make us all dumber.

 

WWII wasn't a war of aggression on our part. But then, neither was Iraq.

I agree with much of what you have said, in this and other posts, but the invasion of Iraq was, in my view, clearly a war of aggression.

 

It is worth noting that, in many wars, the aggressive country sets up a sham provocation. Not always, of course: WWI was an example of a war triggered almost by default, due to the interactions of egos, treaties, and mis-calculations. But WWII was triggered by an invasion of Poland in 'response' to an alleged act by Poland.

 

While the Polish incident was, I gather, a complete fabrication, the trigger for the invasion of Iraq had a little more basis in reality.. but that just made the lies more believable, not more real.

 

There were no WMD. There was no attempt to buy uranium. Remember the portable biochemical laboratories that Powell referred to before the Security Council? Whatever happened to them?

 

And the story that Iraq was invaded because it was in breach of UN resolutions.... that did not give any right to an individual member of the UN to attack.. any more than the fact that drug dealers routinely sell drugs on street corners throughout most major US cities, in violation of the criminal law, gives private citizens the right to assault them.

 

The UN, whose resolutions were being defied, did not authorize the act of aggression into which the US tried to dupe the UN.

 

While I am no apologist for Hussein, nor do I think that the US can honourably abandon the Iraqi people to the horrors that the US has put in store for them (altho I think it will.. because the only alternative is to institute a draft.. no other way exists to put enough troops on the ground), any attempt to argue that the US did not instigate a war of aggression flies in the face of the evidence.

 

Had the invasion occurred during the first Gulf War (when arguably it should), then my view would be quite different. But it didn't, and it turned out that Hussein's last minute compliance with the UN's directive for a full accounting of his WMD programmes was, altho woefully and inexcusably late, pretty accurate as far as I recall. The US ignored this, claiming (wrongly) that it was a fabrication and a stall.. a stall, probably... a fabrication... apparently not.

[Al_U_Card]

Correct Mike. Had it occurred pursuant to the Gulf War, no problem. But as Cheney said at the time, "Why would we get involved in that quagmire?" Oh how times and motivation change.

 

The US wanted at Germany in the 2nd world war and repeatedly violated its terms of neutrality in an effort to get them to declare hostilities. It was an internally avowed position of the "War" cabinet of FDR advisors.

[pbleighton]

WWII wasn't a war of aggression on our part. But then, neither was Iraq.

 

Then what was it?

 

Iraq wasn't attacking us. We had 10 times the population, and 1,000 times the economic might. Our armed forces were vastly superior.

 

Here's a quote by a senior Bush aide, which pretty much sums up their world view:

 

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine...9e162076ei=5090

 

You don't like the term *war of aggression*? How about *imperial overstretch*?

 

Peter

[pbleighton]

While I am no apologist for Hussein, nor do I think that the US can honourably abandon the Iraqi people to the horrors that the US has put in store for them (altho I think it will.. because the only alternative is to institute a draft.. no other way exists to put enough troops on the ground), any attempt to argue that the US did not instigate a war of aggression flies in the face of the evidence.

 

Mike, what level of troops over how many years and (quite importantly) what terms of engagement would the U.S. need in order to accomplish your objectives there? And, of course, what would you expect them to accomplish?

 

I agree that the U.S. has a huge responsibility, but I don't think that there is any practical way we can discharge it in the near future. To *pacify* Iraq would, IMO, require killing millions of Iraqis. Does this make it better, that we have killed them, rather than they killing each other? They are in a civil war, and it's getting worse, absent us doing the killing for them.

 

I think that the least bad solution (and it is terrible) is to let them have their civil war, and get tired of it, as countries do. Our departure will accelerate the fighting, but will also hasten the political reconciliation/partition which is the only way they will have peace.

 

There will be a place for us at that point (whether we choose to accept it is very questionable) in economic help. They may also need and request an international military force, though the presence of U.S. forces probably would be unwelcome.

 

What's your plan?

[jtfanclub]

Then what was it?

 

Iraq wasn't attacking us. We had 10 times the population, and 1,000 times the economic might. Our armed forces were vastly superior.

If you're going to base your thinking on a New York Times article that pretty much starts with the assumption that "I (the author) am reality based, and people I don't like are fantasy based", there's nowhere to go but down.

 

The reality is that we had a considerable force in the Middle East simply enforcing the sanctions and trying to prevent Saddam from committing genocide, which we were only partially successful in doing. There's no question in my mind that had we simply left at that point, Saddam would have slaughtered the Kurds, quite possibly killing every last man, woman, and child among them, with Iran and Turkey either applauding or helping.

 

If we had a moral responsibility to help fight against Nazi Germany's attempt to slaughter and subjugate an entire continent, did we not also have that responsibility to fight against a similar slaughter in the Middle East? We couldn't keep up the status quo forever, even if we wanted to. In 2002, my opinion was very clear: we should get approval from the U.N. to attack Iraq, and if they wouldn't give it, we should pull out completely and let them deal with the slaughter. Of course, that probably wouldn't have worked either: Europe is always sighing and clucking their tongues when Turkey wipes out Kurdish villages because they're part of 'the resistance'. Still, the threat needed to be made, and who knows, maybe Europe would have manned up for the first time in half a century.

 

Regardless of the hyperbole and what (if anything) was going on in Bush's Brain, the reality of the situation was that we couldn't stay in Saudi Arabia forever. And I will certainly give Bush this- as bad as things have been and may get in Iraq, they aren't as bad as they would have been had we simply left Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in 2003 without invading, and without anybody taking our place.

[pbleighton]

If you're going to base your thinking on a New York Times article that pretty much starts with the assumption that "I (the author) am reality based, and people I don't like are fantasy based", there's nowhere to go but down.

 

Nice way of avoiding the quote by the Bush official. Your post has nowhere to go but down :)

 

The reality is that we had a considerable force in the Middle East simply enforcing the sanctions and trying to prevent Saddam from committing genocide, which we were only partially successful in doing. There's no question in my mind that had we simply left at that point, Saddam would have slaughtered the Kurds, quite possibly killing every last man, woman, and child among them, with Iran and Turkey either applauding or helping.

 

1. There's a difference beween the status quo ante of the Iraq war and the war. It's the war. Try a little bit of intellectual honesty. I promise, it won't hurt.

2. Of the dozens of rationalizations put forward by the Bush administration, I can't remember saving the Kurds. This is revisonist history.

 

If we had a moral responsibility to help fight against Nazi Germany's attempt to slaughter and subjugate an entire continent, did we not also have that responsibility to fight against a similar slaughter in the Middle East?

 

We got into WW II because Japan attacked us and Germany declared war on us. Read your history.

 

We couldn't keep up the status quo forever, even if we wanted to.

 

We could have kept it up until Saddam died.

 

In 2002, my opinion was very clear: we should get approval from the U.N. to attack Iraq, and if they wouldn't give it, we should pull out completely and let them deal with the slaughter. Of course, that probably wouldn't have worked either: Europe is always sighing and clucking their tongues when Turkey wipes out Kurdish villages because they're part of 'the resistance'. Still, the threat needed to be made, and who knows, maybe Europe would have manned up for the first time in half a century.

 

The Ugly American in action.

 

Regardless of the hyperbole and what (if anything) was going on in Bush's Brain, the reality of the situation was that we couldn't stay in Saudi Arabia forever. And I will certainly give Bush this- as bad as things have been and may get in Iraq, they aren't as bad as they would have been had we simply left Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in 2003 without invading, and without anybody taking our place.

 

What in your opinion would have happened which would have made the Mideast worse than it is today?

 

Peter

[P_Marlowe]

Wtf are you talking about?

Maybe because Germany invaded Russia in the first place? Is delivering weapons to a country that is fighting a defensive war against a country that invaded one country after another suddenly called aggression?

You mean like the way we're arming Iraq to stop the invasion by Iran? Quds forces have already been captured in Iraqi territory.

 

But, if that's what makes it legal, then I have a simple solution. Give the nukes to Maliki and friends, and have them nuke the Iranians. Apparently, that's cool with you. Arm the Kurds, who were slaughtered by Saddam in spite of the Sanctions? Apparently legal. Go in there and deal with him directly? Apparently illegal. Etc. etc.

 

My point isn't on one side or the other. My point is this trying to turn wars into the kind of stupid simplicity that even third graders would laugh at is pointless. Wars are complicated. The decision to go to war is complicated. And the usual stupid one-liners about them just make us all dumber.

 

WWII wasn't a war of aggression on our part. But then, neither was Iraq.

Ok, you dont argue serious? Than i would suggest

you stop.

 

The US was supporting Britain, due to whatever reason,

culural bonds, economic bonds.

 

Similar Britain / France went to war because Germany

attacked Poland. There was a treaty between Poland

and Britain / France, which made the declaration of war

by Britain / France automatic.

 

Now Germany invaded Russia. There is an old saying,

the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And if someone

is at war with the same guy I am at war, it will help, if

this other country can fight on.

So the US was supporting Russia because it did help

Britain.

 

Comparing this scenario with Iraq / Iran is just bullshit,

sry, maybe this gets censored, but it is.

 

With kind regards

Marlowe

[TimG]

We got into WW II because Japan attacked us and Germany declared war on us. Read your history.

Was it really that simple?

[jtfanclub]

Nice way of avoiding the quote by the Bush official.  Your post has nowhere to go but down  :)

 

Yes, an anonymous quote in the the the least reliable newspaper in this country. Regardless of whether I believed it happened, and that some official was speaking for Bush, etc. etc., it's moot anyways.

 

1. There's a difference beween the status quo ante of the Iraq war and the war.  It's the war.  Try a little bit of intellectual honesty.  I promise, it won't hurt.

 

OK, let's start with: the Iraq war from 1991 ended with a peace agreement, and that Iraq repeatedly broke that peace agreement. Arguing that it would be OK if we'd invaded in 1991, but not when they broke the 1991 accords, is intellectual dishonesty.

 

2. Of the dozens of rationalizations put forward by the Bush administration, I can't remember saving the Kurds.  This is revisonist history.

 

I see. Reality isn't what makes it an unlawful war. It's what the Bush administration said that made it an unlawful war. Got it.

 

Bush wasn't going to declare that we couldn't sustain keeping our troops in Saudi Arabia. It would be both an admission of weakness, and an admission that the terrorists had a point about us occupying Saudi Arabia.

 

We got into WW II because Japan attacked us and Germany declared war on us.  Read your history.

 

Rrrrright. The Flying Tigers, Lend-Lease, all of that was because we looked into our crystal balls and saw that we were going to be attacked.

 

Come on. Try some of that vaunted intellectual honesty. The only reason that Russia hadn't already fallen was because we kept them going. We were sending troops to fight the Japanese, under disguise as mercenaries, before Pearl Harbor. We had been at war with the Axis since '39. That we didn't have any troops actually present is completely off-point, it was our guns that were killing them. We left Germany and Japan no choice but to attack us.

 

We could have kept it up until Saddam died.

 

How well did that work for us in Cuba, anyways? I mean, seriously, that was your solution? Saudi Arabia didn't want us to stick around. 9/11 did not happen in a vaccuum.

 

The Ugly American in action.

 

If the Ugly American is the one that points out that those who bitch on the sidelines have more responsibility than those who take the field and try to influence the outcome, then I'm proud to be one. If France, Germany, and other nations had some actual plan other than "wait around until Saddam dies" to share with us, it would have been nice to do so publicly, instead of putting us into an impossible situation and then then whining no matter which way we tried to get out of it.

 

Me, I'm generally in favor of the U.S. leaving the Middle East completely alone. We get something like 90% of our oil either domestically or from the Americas. If the Middle East got cut off completely we'd be whining about oil prices Europe would envy even now. Iraq invades Kuwait? Why should we care?

 

But we did. And the U.S., and the U.S. alone, actually did something about Saddam destoying towns and cities of those who had helped the U.N. in 1991. We negotiated the no-fly zones. We enforced them. Europe did nothing. Again.

 

Personally, I wonder if Europe actually encourages genocide. It's neat, it's tidy, and after all if all the victims are dead, who's going to mourn? The Turks invented modern Genocide. Germany perfected it. God knows, Europe did nothing to try to stop it in Iraq.

 

What in your opinion would have happened which would have made the Mideast worse than it is today?

 

If we'd simply up and left, about 5 million Kurdish deaths and a million Shiites. If we'd stayed, gradually more and more attacks on Americans similar to the Cole bombing until we were forced to make a move, at which point our choices would have been the same as before.

[jtfanclub]

My point is that your argument is a joke, and if you applied the same arguments to WWII as you do to Iraq, you'd get the same joke, only then it's actually funny.

 

Comparing this scenario with Iraq / Iran is just bullshit

 

Yeah, because it's so much easier to pass judgement if you don't look at context. That's OK, most of the "warmongers" won't look at context either. The truth was, there was no good solution that didn't involve Europe, and Europe would not get involved. And I'm really tired of people on both sides who think that this crap was simple.

[mikeh]

If we had a moral responsibility to help fight against Nazi Germany's attempt to slaughter and subjugate an entire continent, did we not also have that responsibility to fight against a similar slaughter in the Middle East? 

Nice argument :)

 

It supposes a premise that seems to have no factual underpinning: that the US entered WWII for moral reasons, based on an opposition to .Nazi Germany's attempt to slaughter and subjugate an entire continent'.

 

Where was the response in September 1939? Where was the response in June/July of 1941? The US did not enter the war in response to anything Germany did or did not do: including the Holocaust.

 

Wars are rarely, if ever, actually fought for the reasons advanced to the public by the leaders or the media. And after-the-fact arguments rarely impress.

 

The US came out of both world wars significantly more powerful than it was when it entered... in both wars it stayed out for a long time, and made a fortune selling to the combatants, and another fortune lending to them.

 

There can be little doubt but that Roosevelt personally felt that the US should join its natural ally, the UK, in WWII but he was unable to sway congress or the US public. So he and others in government did what they could to frustrate and provoke the Axis, and to help the Allies, while also deliberately NOT trying to persuade the Japanese not to attack. A friend reading a history of the entry of the US into WWII tells me that Roosevelt said, some time towards the end of the war (and his life) that had he known how ill-prepared the US military was, he'd have strung the Japanese along for at least another year. This statement appears to reflect a belief on his part that he could have readily prevented Pearl Harbour had he wanted to do so: I am not suggesting he knew exactly what would happen, but it seems clear that the US Government fully anticipated an attack of some sort, and planned to use it to trigger war. Even then, it should be noted that the US did not declare war on Germany. It may be that they understood that Germany would be forced to declare war first, but it is an interesting speculation to wonder what would have happened had Germany refused to declare. Would the US have continued to supply Russia? Could the non-US allies ever hope to have invaded continental Europe? etc.

 

So to today: the war on Iraq was not a response to the moral outrages of Saddam Hussein. If it were, it would have been fought years earlier. If it were, why isn't the US in Darfur? Why isn't the US in North Korea? Why did the US, for generations, support, and in some cases install, dictators around the world? Why did the US support and provide military assistance to Hussein when he was using poison gas on Iranians and Kurds? Why did the US back away from pursuing Hussein at the end of the first Gulf War when some of his population rebelled, expecting coalition support... they were abandoned, other than the imposition of a no-fly zone.

 

It always saddens me to see the extent to which people accept, uncritically, whatever leaders tell them, whether the leader be a politician or a religious leader, so long as it allows them to feel good about themselves... hey, we US citizens only go to war for good moral reasons! Now, this is hardly a feature unique to the US: it happens more there than elsewhere because the US has the most power. The UK did it (altho my reading of UK history suggests that the leaders were a little less hypocritical, probably because information was less-widely available, and naked power more acceptable), and I am sure that every empire does it. So, my American friends, this is a knock on human nature, not US nature.

[mike777]

I give my neighbor(A) a bunch of bombs and tanks and guns knowing he is going to use them against his other neighbor (:).

Neighbor B claims Neighbor A deserves to be attacked for reason (ABC). Neighbor A says Neighbor B is in the wrong.

 

In any event I send neighbor A some money and tanks to help him out.

 

On top of that assume I got my house by sailing over from Ireland and taking it from the Indians.

Canada stole their house from someone yes?

 

 

Is that the story here?

[mike777]

Or Iran sends money and bombs to Lebanon.......or gaza or wherever

 

Numerous people in Gaza and Lebanon use the money and bombs to launch rockets onto Israel. They claim Israel has no right to exist..they stole the land from them.

 

 

USA sends money or weapons to Israel.

Israel attacks...Lebanon, or Iran........

 

 

Is Usa committing a war crime? or who is?

[jtfanclub]

If we had a moral responsibility to help fight against Nazi Germany's attempt to slaughter and subjugate an entire continent, did we not also have that responsibility to fight against a similar slaughter in the Middle East? 

Nice argument :)

 

It supposes a premise that seems to have no factual underpinning: that the US entered WWII for moral reasons, based on an opposition to .Nazi Germany's attempt to slaughter and subjugate an entire continent'.

Arrrgh.

 

No, you're missing my point, because you're too smart. The point I'm trying to make is so damn obvious that you're looking for some deeper meaning that isn't there.

 

We provoked the hell out of the Germans and Japanese, as you correctly point out (and in many ways you don't bother to point out). We did not enter WWII for moral reasons; if anything, it was for fewer moral reasons and more Military-Industrial-Complex reasons than the Iraq war was.

 

But now, looking at it half a century later, we can say it was a just war because of slaughter and subjugation etc. etc.

 

Wars are complicated. The war of 2003 was not about 'aggression', and whether it's a 'lawful' or 'unlawful' war is for history to decide. I'm not trying to say that WWII and the Iraq War were directly parallel, I am saying that both tend to get simplified down to bedtime story level, and the truth is far, far more cloudy than the self-righteous here tend to want to admit.

[mike777]

Jfan I do not mean to put words into your mouth(posts) but you seem to infer that if the USA sends millions of bucks to the Brits or Ruskies so they can buy bullets to kill Germans and bomb German civilian cities that is somehow provoking to some Germans?

[jtfanclub]

We Americans have done an awful lot of bad things, and we've done an awful lot of good things for bad reasons. The invasion of Iraq was poorly planned and badly rushed for no good reason that I can find.

 

But of the three choices of going home and ending the no-fly zones, occupying Saudi Arabia for decades against their will, and invading, none of them were any good. Poor execution did not made it the wrong decision, and over the course of almost a decade, I have come to the conclusion that it was the right decision, and if we did rush into it in 2003, that is somewhat canceled out by the fact that we should have attacked in October of 1998.

 

The only truly wrong decision was sitting on the sidelines complaining instead of doing something about it, before we invaded or afterwards. And for those countries who did help, particularly England, I do appreciate it.