I think one leading politician of the day (can’t remember who – definitely not TR) said of the Spanish-American War: “It wasn’t much of a war, but it was the only war we had.”
About as much chance as Pat Robertson marrying Jerry Falwell in a nude underwater gay wedding presided over by Osama bin Laden.
From The Last Starfighter, of course! 
(Tip: If you’re ever the “top scorer” in a video-arcade game, never answer the prompt to enter your name or initials. That’s how they know where to find you.)
You miss my point entirely. Why were we there at all? Or in Vietnam? A territorial war, thousands of miles away, which affected the American people not one iota. Why are we the policeman of the world? Do you think any of the people in North or South Korea, or North or South Vietnam, or Kosovo, or Iraq, or Iran give one shit what America thinks they should do with THEIR country?
The lesson that Vietnam (or any of those other places) teaches us is that a foreign people, with different values, morals, religions, history are NOT interested in being TOLD how they should act, just because we remained standing after WWII. Goes the same for the Russians. Didn’t work in Afghanistan. Didn’t work in the whole of Eastern Europe, after Lech Walensa had the balls to stand up to them. People say Reagan brought down the Berlin Wall and Communism. Bull Fucking Shit! The oppressed peoples brought down that wall. As they will in every situation. We should have learned to keep our noses out of other people’s business! 
Oh no, yet another asshole bringing up the White Man´s Burden.
Go buttfuck yourself with an M-16 or whatever the hell it is your Imperial Legions use nowadays.
Dipshit.
:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
I’ve always preferred an SMLE Mk III for my Imperial Legion’s armament needs.
Seriously though, there’s a lot to be said for the argument that the world was better off when the British/French/Spanish were running things… provided you were, in fact, British, French, or Spanish. As someone who would qualify as “British” given the criteria of the time (being a caucasian, descended from British settlers) there’d be no real downside for me, as well as plenty of opportunities in the form of travel, big game hunting, and wearing a Pith Helmet as part of everyday dress.
The problem is, that system fails to take into account the equality of our coloured or Islamic brothers and sisters, which is of course a point of contention for most right-thinking people in the modern world. Still, I remain convinced that Neo-Imperialism is ostensibly a good thing and can be made to work, but I also accept that view borders on Tinfoil Hattery in most places.
I hear Tinfoil Pith Helmets are all the rage in British Africa at the moment, though… 
So it is. So are Nazism and Communism. Look up the work “ostensibly.”
Dubya certainly learned that lesson – you didn’t see him getting involved in that, now did you? :rolleyes:
Don’t jump into the colonial mess of another great power (in this case, France.)
Don’t fight a guerrilla war against an enemy that has support from a country that borders the one you are in, when said country in turn has support from the other superpower in the world.
And I watched a news clip in which Bush made the suggested “not to quit” quote the other day and it was most definitely not in direct response to “what have we learned from Vietnam” or whatever. Since this isn’t GD, I don’t feel obliged to dig up this clip.
Because the United States took that responsibility after World War II. This is the way FDR intended it, this is the way the United Nations was set up, so that the great powers would function as policemen of the world. Obviously that goal was somewhat soured when the two greatest powers decided to wage a decades-long Cold War against one another.
The idea is collective security. Wilson sought it after WWI and FDR and Truman and the rest of the allies achieved it after WWII. It’s the idea that wars of aggression will be fought against and stopped by the collective power of the world.
Basically, it’s an attempt to criminalize and prevent aggressive warfare. That’s why the UN voted to intervene in Korea, and that’s why we sent troops there as part of that intervention, we were making the statement that the doctrine of collective security was not just empty platitudes, but something real, and something that was going to be enforced.
You are incredibly wrong when you say that the Korean war did not affect America at all, it did affect America. If we had sat by and done nothing we’d be allowing the world to be a place where one nation can invade and conquer another nation at a whim, simply because it ones to, where wars of aggression are the norm and are not condemned or prevented.
That type of world led to WWI and WWII, devastations to humanity that I really do not think we can take many more of, and that is why the UN was founded and why collective security is held as a noble ideal, because it is a genuine effort to try and stop aggressive wars.
Your last sentence has absolutely nothing to do with anything. North and South Korea weren’t “deciding how to run their country” North Korea was invading and conquering South Korea so it could run South Korea.
Are you genuinely making the claim that you want to live in a world where aggressive warfare for the purpose of conquest is not only the norm, but encouraged and allowed? Would you have stopped Saddam from keeping Kuwait?
And in Iraq’s case, Britain.
Well, the Shi’ite faction of the Iraqi insurgents may have some support from Iran . . . which is at least on friendly terms with China . . .
What’s that have to do with Iraq? The people aren’t mad because America is telling them how to act, nor are they mad that Saddam was toppled. Most Iraqis remain glad that Saddam is gone and in fact did not want Saddam and the Ba’athists to stay in power forever.
Most of the Iraqis are mad because we have not provided sufficient stability and security, and because their country has become an incredibly violent place. It has very little to do with them being mad because “America is telling them what to do.”
The rest of the Iraqis that are mad, are from power hungry factions that are mostly just interested in trying to achieve power, they are also not mad that America is trying to tell them what to do, they are just mad that America is supporting another group (the government) in the power struggles instead of their side.
This sort of situation isn’t analogous to Vietnam at all. South Vietnam had many communist sympathizers, and it’s evident by hindsight that the ideals of communism were in fact popular in South Vietnam, and we were propping up a dictatorship that was not representative of the people.
In Iraq, the ideals of Ba’athism are NOT shared by the majority of the population even a little bit.
In Vietnam we were fighting to prop up a corrupt dictatorship that’s ideology was materially different from that of the country at large. In Iraq we created a power vacuum and put a government in its place, because of the power vacuum many different factions are now vying for power. It’s really not the same situation as the one in Vietnam politically, not even remotely so. And your arguments so far that have made any relation to past international relation incidents shows that you are incredibly uninformed and probably get most of your information from pop culture or bumper stickers.
But how is such an arrangement to prevent aggressive warfare by one of those “great powers” – in this case the U.S.? (Which was clearly and unambiguously the aggressor in 2003, regardless of what reasons, stated or otherwise, may have existed for the aggression.)
Most specious connection ever? Maybe not, but it is close. Saddam and the Ba’athists had been ruling Iraq for decades, we didn’t jump in to Iraq the British colonial mess, that Iraq hasn’t existed for more than fifty years.
Maybe has some support from Iran…which is on friendly terms with China. Which is a major trading partner of the United States and not in a Cold War with the U.S.?
Why do you feel the need to make the association that Iraq = Vietnam? If you think our involvement in Iraq is bad, then say it is bad and explain why, on its own merits. If they are valid then they will stand out as valid without any associations with Vietnam being necessary.
It can’t, that’s one of its failings, if one of the great powers starts acting up the entire system is in doubt. That’s why collective security didn’t work so well during the Cold War, two of the great powers were at each other’s throats the whole time.
Bush made a genuinely good faith effort to bring collective security back to the forefront when the Cold War ended, and he very successfully rallied the world around expelling Saddam from Kuwait.
The existence of Iraq, as a state, is a British colonial mess.
Actually, the Iraq situation is more like a cross between Vietnam (the U.S. intervening to defend an unpopular government against an insurgency, and make no mistake, the Iraqi government is unpopular even though it was freely and fairly elected, for a lot of reasons, but mainly because everyone perceived correctly that the government would be a de facto U.S. puppet no matter who was in it, and because partitioning the country was not an option on the ballot), and Yugoslavia (an artificial multinational state held together by an authoritarian dictatorship which at any rate enforced some kind of peace and order and kept everything ticking along, followed by a “failed state” period when all the long-suppressed ethnic, regional and religious hatreds came bubbling to the surface). Combining the very worst aspects of both. Which any fool should have clearly foreseen in 2003. :mad:
Indeed, I never said otherwise.