The OP is not a Democrat, nor even from the US. But nice try, Sam.
[QUOTE=jimmmy]
Having said that, the OP asks if the U.S. causes “constant war” to test weapons true or false. False. That is wacky. I’d love to see someone try to make the case that was even a tertiary cause of a “war”.
[/QUOTE]
For the record, I agree with this, and the Nazi implications are rather distasteful.
On the other hand, US has pushed the development of weapons that allow for more palatable wars, for example, attack unmmaned vehicles. Its politically easier to apply the hammer when theres no risk of having a flag drapped coffin and a caption asking “Why?” on the papers… as if ever.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
Is this what passes for critical thinking in the Democratic party these days?
The U.S. doesn’t need to go to war to test its weapons. They have these things called ‘weapons tests’ which do that. They also have constant wargames, alone and with allies.
Do you honestly think generals sit around going, “Man, that Predator drone sure looks purty! I wish we could start a nice war so we could shake the bugs out of it.” ?
I mean, seriously?
[/QUOTE]
I’m not subscribing to the idea that the USA in constant war to test out new weapons, but it’s been my professional experience with (non weapon) software systems that no matter how much you test a system, there WILL be bugs found under actual working conditions. I doubt even a wargame isn’t going to test a system fully, vs uncontrolled, live ammo environment of actual warfare.
And just curious, why the shot at the Democratic party? Was the OP one of the official Dem planks that I have to hear about?
Besides which, last time I checked, Eisenhower was a Republican.
[QUOTE=spoke-]
The OP is a little too conspiracy-minded, but I do think Dwight Eisenhower was right to warn us of the growing influence of the military-industrial complex on our government. He considered it a great enough danger to make it the central theme of his farewell address in 1961. Here’s the text of that speech. And here’s the crux of it:
The excellent documentary Why We Fight takes a look at the power of the weapons industry in lobbying our government.
[/QUOTE]
I’ve see it several times, I have it on DVD
[QUOTE=Ale]
I´ve always seen the US military industry as a big, fat socialist program…
Pause as conservatives unhinge.
As I see things a huge industry is being fed, mainly, for the purpose of not having to lay off the workforce and face the political concequences of an angry mob of Joe Bombmakers.
So the powers that be keep shoveling money into it to keep prospective voters well fed and happy.
In other words a welfare system to keep the weapon manufacturers out of the streets.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t think the number of American workers involved in the arms industry is large enough to support such a calculus. I.e., it would mean no significant social upheaval if all were laid off.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sOIe5Ql0v8 Ben Cohen explains the “defense spendiing”
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
I don’t think the number of American workers involved in the arms industry is large enough to support such a calculus. I.e., it would mean no significant social upheaval if all were laid off.
[/QUOTE]
As of 2002, the defense industry employed some 3 million Americans (excluding military personnel).
[QUOTE=spoke-]
As of 2002, the defense industry employed some 3 million Americans (excluding military personnel).
[/QUOTE]
Without some more information about his sources, that’s not a very reliable figure. It’s awfully nice and round.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
Is this what passes for critical thinking in the Democratic party these days?
The U.S. doesn’t need to go to war to test its weapons. They have these things called ‘weapons tests’ which do that. They also have constant wargames, alone and with allies.
Do you honestly think generals sit around going, “Man, that Predator drone sure looks purty! I wish we could start a nice war so we could shake the bugs out of it.” ?
I mean, seriously?
[/QUOTE]
I’m what you would probably call a lefty and I agree. This is absurd.
We have test ranges and do battlefield simulations for this. We don’t NEED to do field tests of weapons systems by starting new wars.
Besides, lets see some evidence that the ‘USA are in a constant war (more or less)’. What is your evidence that this is the case. Has the US gone to war more than the historic record shows for past super powers? How are you defining ‘war’ in any case? And what wars do you consider the US to have been in exactly where we are testing out these sooper sekrit weapons or whatever we are supposed to be doing?
Until I see whatever tortured logic you are using to define ‘war’ and to indicate what supposed wars the US was supposed to have been in (and over what time frame we are talking about) AND until I see some kind of comparison to the historical record I’m going to go with ‘false’.
As an addendum why not ask why all America’s beat their wives?
-XT
[QUOTE=spoke-]
It’s distressing that Hillary, with her last ad campaign, seems to be fearmongering in chorus with the neocons.
[/QUOTE]
Hillary will bring with her the ghost of Iraq if she becomes the new president
[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
Why would the weapons industry care whether or not the military goes to war? You can just as easily replace broken weapons in peacetime as wartime. If you really want to make a killing (ba-dum-ksh) the money’s in the ammo. If you have the power to get the the gov to start wars, you’d just mandate that all the ammo stocks must be shot off in training every so many weeks. Much safer and much more reliable in the long run.
Aside from which, lots of companies, many of which have no connection to the government in most years, instantly became part of the “military-industrial complex” in wartime. There are cloth makers down the road here who got large, pricey cost-plus contracts to operate churning out uniform material. So they do.
Besides which, gonzomax, don’t you know who the “neocon’s” are? They’re left-wingers who came over because the Democrats couldn’t handle anything remotely resembling security or military. Most of them were and are very leftist on social affairs. They tend to be academic types, and often atheists. For some reason, a lot of the older ones were (ethnically) Jewish, too. I dunno why.
[/QUOTE]
I seams to me that many (or some) of those who where far to the left in their younger days have a problem to see clear after the cold war ended. Some of them remind me of those who grew up in a religious sect and didn’t know what to do when the left the sect.
A person named Wolfowitz comes to my mind
I read a couple weeks ago that the peace loving USA has bombed 23 countries since WW2. I think we lead.
http://members.aol.com/superogue/bomb.htm
A little short we have bombed 28 in our relentless quest for peace.
<deleted to look at Gonzo’s marvelous cite…>
-XT
Each and every time we bombed ,we used new and exciting weaponry. You were probably not around during Iraq 1 . We showed all our marvelous and exciting bombs ,that were so accurate. Every time we trot out all our nifty killing toys. That is just the way it was and is.
PS. I do not believe that is why we go to war. But I see some evidence that backs it up. You of course can not.
[QUOTE=xtisme]
Besides, lets see some evidence that the ‘USA are in a constant war (more or less)’. What is your evidence that this is the case. Has the US gone to war more than the historic record shows for past super powers?
[/QUOTE]
Holding the present US to the same standards as, let´s say, the Huns, Imperial Brittain or the Persians is a retrograd stance, in my opinion.
But that may be just me with my fancy ideas of a progressive civilization.
[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
Besides which, gonzomax, don’t you know who the “neocon’s” are? They’re left-wingers who came over because the Democrats couldn’t handle anything remotely resembling security or military. Most of them were and are very leftist on social affairs.
[/QUOTE]
Citing Henry “Scoop” Jackson:
Well, it wasn’t really worth looking at (big surprise there).
Let’s see:
We bombed China during the Korean War? I must have missed that one. A quick Google search doesn’t turn up much about the US bombing China (other than bombing CHINESE troops who were in NORTH KOREA). Perhaps that is what they meant.
I hardly think Korea would count as an indication of US warmongering as North Korea invaded South Korea, but what the hey.
Putting in ‘US Bombed Guatemala 1954’ into Google simply shows your cite (and a few similar one’s). My guess is it is referring to this :
If you have further details about this I’m all ears. This one only seems to be listed on cites for crazy people…but I admit I don’t actually know anything about possible US intervention in Guatemala.
This one brings a similar list of sites (pretty much identical to the last one) when you Google ‘US bombed Indonesia 1958’. Makes me a touch nervous as you can practically feel the waves of ‘nutball’ coming off some of those cites. Again, I don’t know anything about supposed US bombings in Indonesia during that time frame. They must have been covert and pretty small scale though (if they happened at all…no idea).
Ah HA! Ok, I assume this one refers to the Bay of Pigs Invasion:
So…we funded an aborted invasion by anti-Castro rebels. Not EXACTLY bombing, but I have high confidence that with this one at least SOMETHING military actually happened.
All of this stuff seems pretty small potatoes however when compared to the OTHER superpower of the time, the Soviet Union. But I’m sure we laughed in a much more manic way as we did them so…
Not going to bother with these…why ruin the last success? If anyone had details about the evils the US perpetrated on these two peace loving nations during these time periods let me know.
Ah HA! Another winner! Indeed the US bombed all three of these countries (though I’m surprised the, um, cite, didn’t try and claim 4 for this…North Vietnam and South Vietnam being separate at the time and all). If we are going without context and simply talking about bombing then that is now 3 (or perhaps 4…not sure about Cuba).
Poor Guatemala! :eek: They have seemingly been bombed by the US back into the stone age in the last 40 years!
Yep. Another set of winners!
Only did a quick Google search on ‘US Bombed El Salvador 1980’s’ and got a bunch more crazy sites so fled immediately. Again, if someone has details I’m all ears…preferably details from a respected historical web site.
No idea. Again, only crazy sites come up when I type in ‘US bombed Iran 1987’. Afaict no one has bombed Iran since the Iran/Iraq war…not even Israel.
Another winner.
Another example of those war mongering American’s attacking a helpless nation…
:smack: Um…yeah. Sure. I guess bombing Iraqi military positions IN Kuwait counts, ehe…?
Yup…another hit. Blind squirrels and nuts and all that.
Another winner!
Clinton was getting busy…but yeah, another winner. This was a classic ‘toss some tomahawks’ situation (I guess cruise missiles count as bombs).
This seemed to have been a NATO incident. But what the hell…they all look alike…
Um…wasn’t that the Cole incident? Maybe some of these are counted if the US is bombed instead? Perhaps New York and Washington DC are on the list to??
Yup…no fly zone and all that. I’m just wondering if we had the UK’s help here or…well, maybe the maker of this wonderful site means we bombed the UK regularly during that period too! :eek:
And yes…we did bomb both countries during that period to.
Even leaving aside the obviously crazy ones (or at least the one’s I either had zero memory of and could find no worth while cite for) it’s a pretty impressive list seemingly. However, based on this criteria I’m guessing we could make an equally long list of, say, France, or the UK…and we could CERTAINLY make a longer list for the OTHER major Superpower of the time. The USSR bombed a hell of a lot more countries than even the extended nutball list…especially if we count any and all covert activity (which I’m guessing were many of those on the crazy folks list).
But wait…there were some bonus ones on gonzo’s wonderful site!
I’m shocked…SHOCKED…that New York and/or DC didn’t make the list as well! 
-XT