Well, apart from the ethnic “cleansing,” the invasion of small countries to steal resources, launching brutal wars of devastation for the conquest… The fact that he wasn’t in the same advantageous position doesn’t make him any better.
Well he did invade Iran as well back in 1980
Thanks, that series of things was what I was referring to.
NaturalBlondChap, I think you need to re-read my post.
Sorry - I don’t get it. Why does NaturalBlondChap need to re-read the post? I thought his response was a straight-forward reply to the question, “…would the UK them be willing to give up the Falklands?”.
Cmkeller was referring to their ancestors - as in would the Argentineans be willing to allow their ancestors to remain British - which they obviously cannot change.
In other words, ‘woosh’.
Yes I was pondering what I had missed over lunch and figured it had to do with the use of the word ancestor, which I had originally figured had just been used mistakenly in place of descendant. Wooshing happens a fair bit to me.
I wasn’t saying the US is militarily ineffective- obviously we’re maintaining a significant level of force in Iraq and Afghanistan. Firstly I meant more along the lines of bang-per-buck, given that we’re spending about the same per year adjusted for inflation as we did on WW2. And secondly, how little discretion to use military force how we want that expenditure buys us, although in reflection that’s a political problem rather than a military one.
If your philosophy is to do whatever is necessary to take out genocidal megalomaniacs there are a lot more worthy targets than Saddam Hussein who got sufficiently bitch-slapped out of Kuwait in Gulf War I. After that, he was of little threat to anyone except to make extravagant claims in order to keep Iran at bay (the same Iran that is now thumbing their nose at the US. “Hitler”?, far from it. As we’ve seen the only hope for order in a fragmented, ill-constructed country is a strong man. In Africa, there are plenty of more worthy candidates for extinction and in US history our government has supported too many of them.
P.S. Don’t get started on “the invasion of small countries to steal resources, launching brutal wars of devastation for the conquest.” Ever hear of “Shock and Awe”?
Hopefully the RN learned something from the previous conflict as well, like how point defense systems are no panacea against anti-ship missiles, and maintaining convoy lines across thousands of miles of exposed ocean is very difficult. The 1982 Falklands War was, among other things, the predominate post-WWII naval conflict of the 20th Century, and served as a test out of NATO naval strategy and tactics, exposing several critical flaws. One of the critical flaws was, of course, the dependence of the RN on air superiority coverage provided by USN supercarriers which it didn’t enjoy due to political conflicts between supporting Britain and (tacitly) supporting the conservative regime in Argentina. Although Britain still lacks true carrier coverage today, it could presumably beg surveillance support from the US (being one of the few allies in the “War on Terror” has to allow them to cash in a few chips now and again), and one assumes that they’d make best efforts to use their nearly invulnerable Trafalgar attack submarine force to harass and castrate the ASA quickly. The ability of the Trafalgar class to equipped to fire and control the Block IV BGM-109 ‘Tomahawk’ TLAM to some extent negates the lack of air coverage and could easily provide denial of access or support chain to Argentine troops on the island, which is the sine qua non of ending such a threat with minimal damage to island infrastructure or noncombatants.
In short, if the British are at all smart and have learned from the previous conflict, they’ll put a noose around the ASA and choke it until it can’t provide any support, and leave the cans (surface ships) out of range of land-based anti-ship cruise missiles. American surveillance support, which should be more forthcoming than in the previous conflict, will not leave the RN with a gaping operational hole. The Argentines have no realistic hope of holding the island indefinitely (nor did they in the previous conflict, but at great penalty to the RN and British merchant service).
[thread=447077]Here[/thread] is an old thread on the topic of the original Falklands War of 1982.
Stranger
The U.S. military could destroy all those countries where such things exists with only a few weeks notice. The problem is with nation rebuilding which is much harder and extremely difficult especially in Iraq and to a lesser extent in Afghanistan. It simply isn’t worth it to destroy a few capitals and hang the leaders in question.
I was dead serious when I called Saddam Hussein a Hitler figure. The resemblemce is uncanny even though Hussein didn’t get nearly as far thanks to the U.S. I don’t consider the History channel my main news source but they have run a documentary on what led up to Gulf War I including what was happening in Kuwait at the time. The satellite imagery does not lie and it is stunning. Saddam fully intended his tanks which were positioned right on the border to roll straight through Kuwait and then into Saudi Arabia. His complete intent was to take over much of the Middle East. The U.S. absolutely could not let that happen especially since Saudi Arabia is an oddly close ali.
Combine that with long-term genocide, spontaneous executions within his own government, and a brutal dictatorship that could brutalize anyone at any time and I fail to see why you don’t understand why Saddam was a Middle-Eastern Hitler in every way.
He was castrated in a way after Gulf War I but he still engaged in aggressive acts against U.S. and coalition forces. At some point, it had to end. He wasn’t executed by the U.S. The Iraqi’s did that happily.
FWIW, in NPR’s coverage of the Olympic torch’s arrival in Buenos Aires this morning, the adjective “Argentine” was used exclusively - no “Argentinian.” Always made sense to me - three syllables rather than five.