Smedley Butler on Interventionism Here is what the most decorated American in WW1 says war is about. He was a General and was in charge of making countries safe for business. That is what the military is for.
So? Just because General Smedley Butler has an opinion does that make it automatically true?
Your name sake would be utterly appalled at the world state sentiment. I’m not as appalled, but we do not have that moral obligation by any major American moral standards.
One country’s moral obligation is another country’s oppression. Let’s do what we can without overdoing it.
Indeed, it really is that simple. I’m as amazed as you must be the previous two empires failed doing “merely” that in Afghanistan, and the current empire failed to do that, well, everywhere it’s tried to invade in the past 40 years.
I’m also apalled those “tired defeatists” like McCrstyal wanted yet another 40,000 more troops recently just to get him out of jail, this is after all merely Afghanistan, merely old style imperial aggression, it always works in Afghanistan and always works for the USA.
What on earth is the matter with these tired defeatist far leftists that they want to learn the lessons of history, want to recognise old style imperialism does not work anywhere anymore, and don’t want to continue with George W. Bush’s well-conceived Asian ground wars.
I saw that on Fox News too!
I agree with this sentiment. I just cannot figure out what the rank and file Faux News fundies do with their brains. (The ones that have oil or munitions stocks are more understandable.) Why would the US public want to spend the inflation adjusted equivalent of $1 trillion on Vietnam or Iraq or even $200 billion on Afghanistan unless it was an immediate threat? If not the money, at least the lives? The closest I can figure for these folks is that they consider war among nations kinda like a sports league and the US is a combination of the Yankess, Lakers and US Olympic Basketball team. They don’t seem to understand that they have to pay for these wars. While I agree that action in Afghanistan is and was necessary, Iraq wasn’t. With the money we owe in future taxes and the interest on it, every American house could have had a large flat screen television in every room. But of course liberals like me would object to having it near running water as an electrical hazard.
I supose there are echo’s in the way populist opinion from within the empire - if not all opinion - saw the British Empire during the Victoria era; it was a wonderful thing for the world to have the Anglo-Saxons export their religion and ideas and order.
Less attention, again from within, being paid to the cost to indigenous peoples, whether in the wars of conquest themselves, the crushing of ancient social, religious and political structures or the pillaging of natural resources.
I mean, it’s a good thing we’re doing for these backward peoples, they should welcome the world’s “policeman” who’s only doing all this good stuff out of a moral obligation.
‘White Mans Burden’ is was back then, I wonder what Curtis LeMay and Sam Stone and the rest of the imperialists call it these days.
I’m against Pax Americana for the reasons of expense in blood and treasure and the simple fact that we have no right to tell people what to do. But as far as the oppressiveness of it, the cultural part of the Pax Americana is okay with me with respect to rule of law. We are spreading the rule of law concept rather well. But we don’t need to do it militarily. For example, there is a large part of the Chinese government that seems committed to following rules and traditions (this is to be expected with their culture anyway). But their extension of this to not having invaded Taiwan seems to be in part US influence and following rule of law. And yes, I know that the Chinese government breaks the rules in other areas. But less than we do. And I do want to make clear that I do disapprove of using US military to secure resources. What we do is wind up stealing the resources from the natives and still paying the American “owners” full if not more mark up.
And let thousands of Afghans die in the next round of civil war fighting that will come. If we keep the troops there we can keep the Afghan government afloat long enough to help build Afghanistan and educate it’s people.
What a ridiculous statement.
What “ancient social, religious, and political structures”? You mean oppresseive sexist and/or classist structures like the caste system? Plus incidentally enough some ideas of “White Man’s Burden” was actually true-though I’m not racist at all (I’m Asian)-for instance had the United States withdrew from the Philippines Japan would have seized it and used it as a military base for further conquest. Plus Anglo-American civilization is the most advanced and forward thinking society on the planet-I don’t see what’s wrong with destroying outmoded reactionary tribalism to pave the way for global democratic capitalist society.
You’re a parody poster, right? You’re having a bit of fun.
Come now.
Canada isn’t *that *advanced.
No. Are you implying aliens don’t exist for example?
It is ridiculous to suggest that womens rights are the reason or even a reason we are in Afghanistan. It is about zero in the calculations. If Bush said we are going into Afghanistan to get womens rights he would have been greeted with silence. That is a terrible argument. Wars are about money.
I knew it.
It’s quite difficult to continue when one of us in this conversation is wearing giant feet, has a large red nose and keeps honking a horn.
I don’t really give a crap about reasons-I care about results. Plus the reasons for the Afghan War was in response to the mass terrorism of the Taliban on September 11th 2001 not money. Have you already forgotten that day when 3,000 Americans were slain?
No, you just don’t want to answer me. :rolleyes:
I must have, did the Taliban have any thing to do with it? Answer…zip. can you say Al Queada? You do know 19 of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. They also financed the operations. But you must know that too. You have to really do some fancy dancing to blame the Taliban.
They used Taliban Afghanistan as a base. And even if they had handed over Bin Laden other terrorists would still have used it as their base.
As a soldier in the 101st Chairborne you must be really pissed off that our limp-wristed generals now want to negotiate with the Taliban. Why not join up and go over there and show guys like Petraeus how real Americans kick ass?