I’d wage a war of targetted assassination personally. I’d go after leaders.
As we all know this scenario is deeply flawed because of the naval issue, in that the US navy could sink every other big ship in the world, and still have ships available. Let alone their economic ties to us.
However, going further, it would be a different kind of war from Iraq, I am certain that SOME insurgents in America would be engaging in tactics like you described above, but other Americans would be launching cheap spy satellites. The American populace would be MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH (can’t say it enough times) MUCH more militarily advanced than the Iraqi populace simply due to the amount of incredibly advanced tech that’s just lying around.
Give me a radio controlled airplane, a topographical map of the area, and a target. I’ll fill that baby up with C4 and airplane fuel and fly it right into a Chinese basecamp.
I also don’t think that Americans would side with the Chinese in the same way that some Iraqis did with the Americans. The political landscape is different. They had an oppressive leader that they deplored. Saddam Hussein can’t happen here because the American populace is one of the best armed forces in the world. There are guns aplenty here.
I don’t judge the Iraqi insurgents. Really, I think we are in a war we shouldn’t be in, and it’s a clusterfuck. It’s not our business. Who am I to judge how they get people out of there? We created a no win situation for them, and then we look down our noses at them for behaving like cornered rats.
It was a very long OP, and this got buried toward the end. I did put it there to make sure that we didn’t get into a “might equals right” debate, or who we could beat up on the playground. It was to set the scene of escalating tensions between this country and others, with a subsequent occupying force. Likewise, a discussion of whether democracy was observed in the 2000 election also sidestepping the issue; at least half the voters in this country thought that it wasn’t, so why not other countries with an axe to grind? You want to say that democracy was never compromised, then fine; I’ll say that there never were WMDs, but that didn’t stop the invasion, did it? It’s not like this country hasn’t had its hand in interfering with democratic elections in other countries.
I was looking for a debate over the feelings that an insurgent might feel. I think that those who are taking the “it would never happen here” are avoiding discussion of a real issue; that of a person who sees their homeland invaded by foreigners who want to tell them how to do things “the right way”.
I have no problem with those who bring up the suicide bombers who kill innocents; I think that it’s a very real issue in the insurgency. And I think that it is legitimate to debate whether an occupier could bring a better government to this country, considering the number of folks that seem to have a problem with this one.
And hey, if China gets those 1920s Style Death Rays I’ve been hearing about, this really could happen…
Cite? Maybe half the posters on this message board might believe that, but I doubt half the voters in the US thought that.
I guess I don’t understand your point. If the US left Iraq tomorrow, the insurgency would not stop-- it’s a largely Sunni operation that wants to prevent democracy from taking hold. Democracy is the last thing the insurgents want, since they represent a minority in a very fractured country. In fact, it’s unlcear exactly what the insurgency’s political agenda is, other than disruption of the process to hammer out a new government.
Look, it’s still bullshit. Liberal democracy doesn’t mean that your side always gets its way, or even that the majority always gets its way.
And this:
You’re not thinking things through. You don’t agree that nationalism is always a force for good, do you? You don’t agree that everything your country does is automatically right, do you?
Would you fight to preserve a totalitarian dictatorship in America merely because the people fighting to destroy the dictatorship were foreigners? Are you really that nationalistic?
How many Germans today would volunteer to go back in time to fight the Allies and preserve Nazi Germany? How many Japanese would go back in time to fight the Allies and preserve Imperial Japan? How many Indians would go back in time to fight the British and preserve the Mogul Empire? How many southerners would go back in time and fight the Union and preserve slavery? How many of those southerners would be black?
Self-rule is a principle worth fighting for. But a dictatorship doesn’t have self-rule, fighting to preserve a dictatorship is wrong even if the dictator is a member of your ethnic group. Fighting to install a native dictatorship against a foreign-imposed liberal democracy is wrong. Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
Foreign rule is usually unfair because the foreigners typically treat the conquered country unfairly. But I’d rather be ruled over by a foreign liberal democracy than a homegrown dictator any day.
Look, bub, the Arab-Islamic world is poor and backward precisely because of the failures of their own governments and their own political cultures. You can blame this on American meddling and Jewish perfidy, and many people in that benighted region do. What’s more, their own governments encourage them to blame those failures on Westerners and Jews to draw attention away from their own spectacular corruption and incompetence. It’s a lot less painful for them than facing up to the fact that they fucked up big time and ended up as an impoverished region that doesn’t export much except oil and lunatic violence. Like it or not, profound structural changes have to be made in the Arab-Islamic world. Those changes will be difficult, painful and fraught with peril, and the West will have to intervene directly with military force to bring those changes about. The moral issue today is whether or not liberal democracy will succumb to Islamic fascism, just as the moral issue in 1941 was whether or not liberal democracy would succumb to German and Japanese fascism and militarism. It’s a rat’s nest that has to be cleaned out, whatever the risk. This is a clash of civilizations, and God motherfucking damn it, * I want the West to win!!! *
Myself, I think I just pinch my arm so I’d wake up…either that or switch to another drug as the one I was using is obviously making me hallucinate.
Next time just come right out and ask the question you want to ask instead of all this pussyfooting around. There really is no need to post something like this that actually has less chance of happening than a snow ball in hell…or than Mexico asking to be Annexed by the US to use another example.
I’ll take a quick shot though at answering this fantasy honestly. If somehow the rest of the world banded together and managed to make the US Navy, Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, National Guard…well, anyway, if they somehow made them all disappear and at the same time magically found a way to transport and sustain a credible field force to the US (enough to actually occupy a continential sized nation who’s citizens are armed for the most part and how’s population who has several million pissed off citizens able to fight), I’d certainly take up arms against the invaders. Pretty much a no brainer. I seriously doubt that (if I were being serious, unlike John Mace and Furt) anyone would strap on bombs or blow up markets or churches full of US civilians…even if they were collaborators (I’m sure there would be some). Not the American way. Now, drive by shooting…yeah, I could see that (THATS the American way after all .
Rot, sheer rot. The only thing that makes “Islamic facism” so important is that they attacked us. Our wild overreaction has killed and endangered far more people than Osama ever could have. The vast majority of Muslims have no more interest in world domination than the Methodist Church is likely to lead an invasion of Jerusalem.
If AlQ had killed 3,000 people in Denmark on Sept. 11, would we still be talking about it?
I’m sure the Euro’s would be. What do you figure the EU’s reaction would have been (and still be today) had Paris or London (or Berlin) been hit with multiple planes full of their own citizens killing several thousand? Would they have tossed flowers at them? Mass protest (of who though? )? Or would they have invoked their NATO treaties and done a Bosnia on someone’s (Afghanistan’s perhaps?) ass? Maybe they wouldn’t have bothered with Iraq (probably not)…but perhaps last year they would have jumped on Iran instead when they started getting froggy.
Myself, I’ve never really noticed (from a historical perspective) all this European restraint nor they willingness to turn the other cheek when the next slap is coming. Also, I got to figure that the US would be sufficient worried so that we wouldn’t exactly have been dragging our feet to invade Afghanistan…especially if NATO had been envoked.
If you dissagree, please indicate which parts of the Arab world are wealthy via anything but oil, and which parts of it have contributed significantly to global arts or sciences in the last century.
Wait a second - the premise is that China, North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and Libya invade the United States because our government wasn’t democratically elected? Anyone else seeing a problem there?
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