Ah, so it’s the imperialist US military that is keeping you from emigrating to China or Belorussia then.
The reason civilized societies developed military forces was to protect the territorial integrity of the State (or proto-state in the historical context.)
If the society/State itself values individual freedoms, then the military that protects said State’s territorial integrity protects the framework that allows those individual freedoms to flourish. But you don’t have freedom just because you have guys standing on a wall, because there’s lots of societies that have plenty of that and very little individual liberty.
In the year 2010 the military does not in fact protect our territorial integrity on a regular basis, but they serve the same purpose those guys who manned the walls of ancient cities 6,000 years ago did. They aren’t there just for the very day the barbarians are coming out of the hills, they have to stand post at all times or they may as well not even bother.
If we adopted pacifism tomorrow and totally eliminated all of our military forces (including the national guard and any form of self defense force) we’d actually probably be safe from territorial incursions for a long time. (Depending heavily on Mexico’s ongoing stability.) However, at some point in history who knows what might happen.
While societies create military forces for the purposes of defenses, larger and more complicated societies developed standing armies for a mixture of reasons. Standing armies/professional militaries are usually a tool of State power and are used to expand that State’s power and its influence. Militia forces tend to be more about self defense. However, it’s an arms race sort of situation, once societies started to develop standing armies all of their neighbors had to seriously consider doing the same, regardless of whether they had expansionist designs. Because a militia defense force will fare poorly in major conflicts with professional armies. Then once you have a standing army, regardless of why you created it, there is a desire to use it and justify the large amount of money being spent…
Which may be why young Marines are taught that his career ended with World War I.
Butler exposed an embryonic plot against FDR in 1933. A few years later he wrote a bestselling book, War Is A Racket, about (inter alia) the Marines’ banana republic actions of the interwar years, many conducted at the behest of US corporate interests.
That is a very different claim from saying “if they leave us alone, they’ll love us.”
I have difficultly believing that anyone would NOT realize that U.S. foreign policy results in it being a popular target for terrorism. It seems almost stupidly obvious, in fact. The reason Islamist nutballs consider the U.S. their primary target, at least after Israel in some circles, is that the U.S. is the most important and influential of Western powers. You’ll notice al-Qaida did not attack Switzerland.
This doesn’t mean the U.S. is necessarily WRONG in pursing a given foreign policy goal, or should become isolationalist. Sometimes you have to be willing to piss people off.
It is worth injecting a note of caution that there is not actually the slightest bit of evidence the Business Plot even existed. All we have is the word of Butler, who himself claims to have spoken to only one person. One person isn’t a “plot,” much less when it’s hearsay.
I think this sort of terminology is explained by the era when the US armed forces started to grow.
In the 30s and 40s it seemed that new radical political experiments were challenging old ones. The new ones looked like blocks that threaten democracies universally. A lot of that was superficial. Italy became a puppet of Germany because it was ultimately industrially so weak. Spain had no intention to make sacrifices for Germany. Belgium got overrun because it was on the way and France for a revenge, neither because they were democracies. Poland was not even democratic. Japan’s intentions were clearly not to promote any ideology but conquer. Still, Germany and Japan did pose a threat to the liberty of millions of people and Joseph Goebbels did his best on the radio to convince everybody that this was a contest between systems.
After the war, the rise of communism reinforced this idea. The communists originally thought that the proletariat is in this together and must stick together. Again, I think a lot of it was superficial. In Europe, the so-called Euro-communists had a hard time to cope with Stalinism from early on. The example of China, Albania, Yugoslavia and even Romania to some extent shows that spread of communism leads only to fragmentation of the block. In their turn, Cuba and Vietnam show that countries that welcome soviet support and readily provide bases for them don’t necessarily increase Soviet strength significantly.
So the US troops felt they were literally defending liberty when they were shipped to far-away places because both their leaders and the leaders of their antagonists believed in permanent struggle between systems. This was always defending the liberty in North-America, Europe and Japan and no effort to ensure the liberty of allied people in Latin America, Africa or Asia was made. This came naturally since originally Britain and France were denying the liberty of much of this area and many of the areas had no tradition of democracy. The soviets in their turn lowered the standards of leftism of their allies. At the time, most people saw the dozens of military rulers in either camp as evidence of their power. In retrospect, they had to be bribed with tanks and money and they took part in struggle only in a very local level, usually to promote their own interests.
Ultimately I believe that Domino Theory is wrong and national interests are such powerful animals that they tear apart any ideology that tries to stand on their way. This is purely an after-thought and I don’t think I knew anybody who thought that in the 80s. But the notion of US troops defending US citizen liberty abroad is a relic of the cold war that should be dropped.
Not at all. Entirely factual. I am, as indicated, a non-White South African. I used to live in a police state, which was for a long time also backed up by the US MIC. I have nothing but disgust and distrust for the military.
And the United States, and the United States military, in concert with other states throughout the world help pressure your police state out of existence.
In fairness, you did not indicate it until this post. (Maybe you’ve said so in another thread, but who can remember stuff like that?)
The fact that you are a non-white resident of the RSA is a rather enormous factor in judging the meaning of your first post - now what you said is quite understandable. If I’d grown up in a country that was psychotically opposed to my essential humanity and used the army to suppress it, yeah, I’d be suspicious of the military, too. Before, without the context of your nationality, it seemed more in line with what a crank would say.
I see, it makes sense now. I had always presumed (stupidly I might add) you were white and were fighting for the blacks freedoms.
So basically you were on the shit end of the stick. Probably still are to some degree.
I still like you anyway.
In a working modern democracy, the military does not protect any freedom. The three seperate powers with a good fourth estate to watch the government protect your basic rights, which include freedom.
When under the Patriot act, the CIA arrests you because you somehow got on a suspect list, and ships you off to Gitmo for “interrogation” (read torture), how does the military protect your freedom and right of habeas corpus and proper trial?
When the police break down your door at night and shoot at you because the SWAT team misread the adress on the no-knock warrant/ a perp gave your adress in cooperation/ 2 years ago a drug dealer lived at your adress - does the military protect your freedom and right to no warrants?
When somebody voices his opinion on the internet or newspaper defending the attitudes (but not the actions) of some Anti-American muslim groups, and he is charged with treason for assisting Americas enemys - does the military protect his freedom and right to free speech?
And so on. In a democratic country, the police has to obey the laws, and the courts punish them if they don’t, and the media watches them. The parlament has to make laws that don’t run counter to the constitution, or the courts send it back.
So I’ve always understood people who make this claim to be completly ignorant of how a democracy works and/or be living in a militaristic state, instead of a democracy. (But of course, the USA is not a democracy, but a republic, which in AE somehow are seperate concepts, instead of complimentary aspects).
Not in this reality, they didn’t, anymore than claiming that Reagan was responsible for the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The end of the Apartheid regime in South Africa was first the result of the struggle of the opposition in South Africa, and secondly, the effect of the economic and social boycott of many countries, plus diplomatic pressure.
The US military, or any other country’s military, had fuck-all to do with it. And though I’m not a South African I consider it rather insulting to their dedicated, passionate struggle to claim that liberation and overthrow was achieved by the wonderful US military.
So the only way to have influence is either threaten an invasion or similar military action, or watch as the Chinese buy up the place? Really, there are no other methods possible to influence politics?
The mind boggles. All the more sad since that’s apparently shared by many Americans even at govt. level.
You’ve got the wrong order of things. The US can allow itself to pursue an aggressive, egoistic, one-sided, short-sighted economic and general foreign policy because they know they can bully every other country, either with economic sanctions or military repercussions if they don’t want to play along and hand over their lunch money.
Then you need the military to keep you “safe” if the people you beat up for lunch money suddenly decide they don’t like this and want to have revenge.
If you stopped being a bully and tried for cooperation in the first place, with real, long-term benefits for both sides, partnership, then you would need the military far less in the second place.
Oh, how silly of me. cooperation is for socalists, isn’t it, because the US has the Manifest Destiny to rule the world and exploit it, right?
Because Americans are born as Good Guys, and therefore, dictatorships can only come from abroad, right. And because everybody always wants to attack and overrun the continental US. Really, when was the last time anybody had that plan since 1812? Hint: not even the Soviets wanted to attack and overrun you! They wanted to nuke you to be safe from your nukes, but would have left you alone, because occupation is simply logistically impossible.
But don’t let facts disturb your paranoia about how the US is so special everybody wants to attack it and take over, while your politicans take away freedoms right and left.
Lay off the drugs, the US definitely backed South Africa’s Apartheid regime over Mandela’s ANC. Cant trust niggery commies. Good old white boys on the other hand, they’ve always been a trustable stock.
In order to protect your freedoms, the government has to take them away. They must read your emails, listen to your phone calls and have enormous intelligence gathering of American civilians.
Could you give some examples of the US forcing other countries to play along or hand over their lunch money, because I can’t think of any. In fact, ISTM that the lunch money generally flows in the other direction, and has for most of my lifetime.
Again, can you give some examples? Because right now your rant just seems like, well, an anti-American screed of dubious though obvious heartfelt quality.
Probably why we don’t have any partnerships with any countries, no doubt. It would be nice if we had partnerships with countries in, say Europe, or Asia, or the Middle Easts, or perhaps Africa. It would be great if we had some sort of relationship with Canada or Mexico, or with countries in Latin American. It would be wonderful if, say, we had relations with places like Australia, or the Pacific rim countries.
Sadly we don’t seem to have any of those long term relations (in your universe), and we simply beat up all the countries we can, then shake them down for lunch money and rely on our military to simply bully everyone to keep us top dog. It’s why we have such a huge positive trade imbalance, no doubt, because we force all those countries to trade with us on our terms…terms that practically keep the rest of the world our slaves! If they don’t see to us a prices we want and buy our goods and services at inflated prices then BAM! We send in the guys with the big hammers to teach the wogs What’s For™!
Just wait until we start our colonization efforts and turn all our ‘allies’ (read ‘slave nations’) into colonial producers who’s sole purpose will be to make whatever good or service we require from each…then people will REALLY see the value of our military and how it protects our /Mel Gibson shout FFFFRRRRRREEEEDDDDDOMMMM!!!
-XT
Before deciding if the military defends our freedom, we must define freedom. For those on the right, “freedom” means little more than lower taxes, less government, and no gun control laws.
The freedom that I care about is intellectual freedom. I want to be able to investigate different points of view, and express my opinions without legal, financial, or social sanctions. Before about 1968 the right inhibited with intellectual freedom through witch hunts, black lists, and loyalty oaths. Now the left does with the restrictions of political correctness.
During the War in Vietnam I was told that the service men in Vietnam were fighting for my freedom. After they lost, my freedom did not get any less. In my humble opinion, the U.S. military does not defend my freedom. Instead it projects American power where it is not wanted and does not belong.
Perhaps not our freedom but our lives. By denying Al-Qaeda a safe haven in Afghanistan they can no longer as easily plot terrorist attacks on the US.
What about the freedom of the Vietnamese people and the long-term struggle against Communism?