I can tell you don’t know much about the Burmese drug lords. They have their own armies. Real armies. Besides fighting themselves, they routinely fight the Burmese army and not infrequently the Thai army. And they’re happy as ticks about it.
That’s funny. That’s what the other side says about YOUR view.
No, they say that my side is the “reality based community”. I, on the other hand, call them fools and monsters.
And this isn’t about what people say, or believe. Saddam’s Iraq was not a haven for anti-American terrorism. If the other side says otherwise, they are lying or ignorant, period. Reality is not a matter of opinion.
Oh, I wouldn’t dream of suggesting that you don’t know it all. :rolleyes:
Pretty much.
Ironically, that dude is making the OP’s entire point.
Sadly, the notion that good people can use the same set of facts to honestly come to opposing viewpoints without any evil or malignant intentions is pretty much toast. And I’m not a supporter of the war.
The pro war side is “evil and malignant”. Or stupid and ignorant.
I hope I’m not speaking out of turn by going back to the OP, though of course there’s never enough discussion-time spent on the Iraq war.
I take two separate views in regard to the term Pacifism. For one, I reject absolutely the claim that a pacifist is anyone who only supports defensive wars or only supports “necessary” wars. Simply because in the real world nearly any war can be labeled defensive/necessary if one is willing to be willfully ignorant.
Even wars that are legitimately defensive in nature my be brought about entirely by the defender. For example imagine a situation in which Country B gets all of its fresh water from a river that goes through Country A, let’s presume this is happening in a void in which there is no international organizations or even any formal agreements between these two states. Country A decides to dam up the river and Country B now has very little water for its people and pretty much no water for agriculture. In effect, Country A is killing Country B. Country A has done nothing to violate the territorial integrity of Country B, but Country A is most certainly destroying Country B, just without the hassle of using military means to do so.
Country B attacks Country A and destroys the dam that Country A built. A lot of us would agree with Country B’s action, some of us wouldn’t (some would say there’s never a justification to invading another country, period.) But either way, all of us would agree that technically speaking in fighting this invasion Country A would be fighting a defensive war. It doesn’t matter that the war would never have happened if Country A hadn’t built the dam, nor does it matter that Country A was in effect committing a genocide–technically speaking Country A was attacked and was not the aggressive party in the conflict.
My opinion is a true pacifist would oppose this war, because a true pacifist believes there should never be a war between states, period. Even by fighting a defensive war, you’re committing an immoral act.
I’ve never viewed pacifism as an “easy” ideology but rather one only people with very strong convictions can buy into (not defending oneself is naturally quite at odds with our base human nature to survive.)
I believe there are two types of pacifism. One is on the State/Geopolitical level and the other is on the personal level.
Someone may, for example, be a politician who advocates wars but still, on a personal level, buy into a philosophy in which they never commit any personal acts of violence.
However, I’d say the norm is that while some people may be pacifists in the geopolitical sense, fewer are pacifists in their personal dealings.
This question and answer is from a website which has a few answers from an Amish individual (obviously the questions were asked and answered through a third party individual who uses computers as Old Order Amish aren’t exactly tech-savvy.)
That’s what I’d consider “real” pacifism. Meaning that you support no wars and that you’d do nothing violent to defend even your own life or the life of loved ones.
Interesting.
I wondered if by pacifism you meant the idea of no killing or if you meant no warfare. As you included the Amish post, I take it you mean no killing.
In that case, technically, Country B could take out the dam without killing anyone in Country A. If that were possible, they’d have been at ‘war’ but pacifistically.
And if Country A responded to the non-lethal destruction of its dam by attacking Country B, would it be a war of agression?
Sorry, didn’t realize you were a CUNT*
*Citizen Unencumbered by Natural Thought
SSG Schwartz
Bolding mine
Did you ever served in a **war zone **where people are firing on you? Yes, I agree. No one ever wants to fight in a war, we all enlist for the college money. If the war lasts more than a week we should flip a coin to decide the winner. :rolleyes:
Yes, I have served in a war zone. Yes, I was exposed to indirect and direct fire. I served on a Forward Operating Base that was mortared for 30 days straight. Did you? Were you outside the wire, ever, in your service?
SSG Schwartz
Cite? Hasn’t happened since Vietnam.
Good question. I think you’d have to say the war of aggression was started by the pacifists in blowing up the dam. But in terms of what defines a pacifist, I think they could still be called that if nobody is killed and if that was definitely possible and completely predictable, for the sake of the example.
It goes to defining the word pacifism which is what I was pointing out; whether it’s about not killing humans or about not going to war. This will be even more interesting as technologies develop with more drones and such; one could imagine an entire war within a certain industrial area going on without any human life involved. That would do interesting things to the practical meaning of the word ‘pacifist.’
I’m guessing the reverse. That most people would be happy to have a war they thought we could win. Each person might have a different target in mind, but I’d guess if you put a list of countries in a survey, that each person would be happy if we invaded at least one of them.
Not for aggrandizement, necessarily, but to “solve” a problem. Cuba, Lybia, Syria, North Korea, Sudan, Chinese Tibet, plus the other hot spots like Northern Ireland and Vensuala. If we invaded and were in charge, boy, things would be better, you betcha.
<quibble>
Teddy wasn’t a military person at this time. (He was in the War Office, or Secretary of the Navy office, but as a civilian.) He didn’t become a military person until he resigned to help organize the Rough Riders.
</quibble>
Everything I’ve read indicates that most military leaders are more against war than civilian leaders. War is riskier. In peace you command your desk, in war you can lose battles and get fired. Not that there aren’t some, but they’re a minority. As an example, things were quieter under Eisenhower than under most presidents.
Without war at all, we’d have so much money to spend now in the defense budget that you might be flippin’ burgers on Mars. I’m not saying it is possible, but we could do a lot more useful things with money now spent on munitions.
And did you find that experience fullfilling?
No, I had other options available to me besides join the Army or flip burgers.
Just stopping in to see how the personal attacks are going. Quite well I see.
What do you expect? Somebody says they want soldiers to suffer trauma because their job is to support traumatized soldiers and they don’t want to lose their job. This may not be the Pit but nobody has a license to say any stupid thing without some *mild * repercussions. I am just surprized this has stayed out of the pit.
I’m just waiting for someone to present an innocuous descriptor whose acrostic spells out MOTHERFUCKER.
Minor Obstructionist That Hears Every… something.