What about its secret police? You can’t have a communist utopia without secret police, or at least I’ve never heard of one that didn’t.
No, you read (on this board, in the Lybia thread) that Sudan attacked a town in Libya —and even that appears to be an unfounded rumour. Somalia has no border with Egypt, and its government can’t control its own territory, much less attack outside its borders.
To hunt down terrorists. You do realize this (plus Ethiopian troops) helped prevent at least one Islamist horde in 2006?
That is because today nobody(in college/college age) knows what is going on, nobody understands Iraq, nor Libya, nor Yemen, nor Afghanistan. There are no “teach-ins” on every campus in America like there was during Vietnam. Who cares?
Nobody knows about Yemen, and therefore nobody cares about Yemen.
Unlike Vietnam, nobody today is getting drafted to go kill Yemen children.
Big difference, BIG! difference!
Because Afghanistan and Yemen are wars of defence to defeat Al-Qaeda.
And teenagers today are fortunately less suspectible to the shitheads who formed hippie/“teach-in” (ie propaganda sessions) movement.
No, most of them just don’t give a fuck about anything but updating their facebook statuses. I don’t know why you’d call people who campaigned against the Vietnam War shitheads. Wars aren’t all “good” just because your country waged them. Some were bloody, vile follies, others are and were probably necessary.
Don’t you realize the Kafkaian absurdity of saying you are waging wars in order to prevent wars from being waged ?
Not to mention the hypocrisy of it, of course. America is waging wars when it suits its interests, that’s about it.
The first Gulf War was not about defending the innocent people of Kuwait, but keeping an oil producer on the “right” side. The only somewhat defensible US military action that happened during my lifetime was the Kosovo conflict. Preventing a genocide without gaining anything in the process, that you may get off on calling “noble” or whatever. Afghanistan I suppose had a good casus belli, but putting boots on the ground was a really stupid and overly destructive way to go about fighting a criminal organization (not to mention, AQ picked up sticks and moved out of Afghanistan within, what, a year ? Six months ?).
Oh. Well, if no *American *lives are lost, then I suppose everything is hunky dory. Morally sound reasoning, that.
Couldn’t it have been both? I mean, there’s no question that it served our interests not to have Iraq in control of Kuwaiti oil, but Iraq had just aggressively invaded and annexed Kuwait, and by our invasion, we did set the Kuwaitis free from Iraqi occupation. There’s got to be at least a few karma points in that.
I’ve got George Orwell on the phone - it’s for you. Come on, please. Saddam was already suing for peace before the US even invaded.
I guess, but one doesn’t get to say an action is noble or honourable when the decent components of that action were completely secondary and negligible in the decision making process that led to it. Much less pretend those secondary and negligible factors are what really matters and what the action should be judged by on an ethical basis.
I mean, the Romans might have incidentally given us sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health; but they didn’t conquer the country for that :).
I think your post is ignoring ideological choice. The true source of the soldier spitting meme was military intel, meant to disrupt the war protestors. Same as the “Support the troops” unquestioning meme that, if I might say has been very successful on a self absorbed American fascist controlled society. The difference is that the draftees then had no choice. Today people decide to join for mercenary reasons… the American dream with great ignorance and ideological forethought. Blindspot. Our military learned from the Nazi SS pioneers as a model. Infuse great political ideaology and patriotism and elitism with enough gratification whether that be dirty money or some psychological reward (false patriotism, righteousness, and moral superiority) and people will kill and destroy at your behest with great fanaticism and lack of judgement.
Your whole post rests upon choice and non choice… Draft and mercenary armies are much different. Seems like your army today is an army that denies personal responsibility… something that seems to be a great point of pride among the conservatives on this board.
The Military today has only the best marketing team. They try and succed at making death appealing. But i guess sociopaths have to eat too.
Death Mongering is at an all time high. Jus look at the price of gasoline.
Its not as if students are not politiically conscious. Indeed they are more socially liberal than any previous generation and strongly went for Obama in '08. Its just that they are more constructive politically and prefer not to riot, and call soldiers “baby killers” and all that.
What I mean are bigger wars from being waged. And it has happened before.
And its interests are reasonable.
Al-Qaeda can’t be fought with just the FBI and CIA. Indeed when we killed Bin Laden we sent in SEAL Team not anything else. And as pointed out in PGW I we helped the people of Kuwait while working in our interest,
[QUOTE=devilsknew]
Death Mongering is at an all time high. Jus look at the price of gasoline.
[/QUOTE]
Sex slavery is at historical highs…have you seen the price of creamed corn lately?? :eek:
Politicians and the government have the best marketing teams. They try and succeed at making the economy appealing. But, I guess anorexics have to eat too, ehe?
I’m sure you meant the above to sound profound or some sort of clear eyed assessment (of something) that takes no prisoners and tells it like it is, but sadly it comes off as random words jumbled together by a not particularly good Swahili to English translator using a dialect of ancient Romulan as a key.
-XT
[QUOTE=devilsknew]
I think your post is ignoring ideological choice. The true source of the soldier spitting meme was military intel, meant to disrupt the war protestors.
[/QUOTE]
So, attempting to translate this into English, what you are saying here is that in fact the US troops in the late Vietnam period didn’t come under public criticism or wrath from the anti-war protesters? That, in fact they were well respected and honored for their service while the true wrath of the protesters was directed where it should have been, i.e. at the politicians who involved us in that war?
Rather than ask for a cite I’ll just direct you to explain your opinion here to the OP, since it’s the core basis for his theory that US troops were hated during Vietnam and puzzlement as to why they aren’t hated today. Feel free to go into as much detail as you like…should be interesting.
Well, that seems like a strawman (i.e. the ‘unquestioning meme’ part seems over the top), but, again I’ll direct you to the OP who is the one who set up this scenario of hate vs love.
The draftee had no choice, and yet people blamed them for being in Vietnam when they had no choice. The volunteer is certainly a volunteer, however once they have volunteered they to have no choice. The military gets it’s marching orders from duly appointed civilian authority.
And it’s horseshit that the people who join do so ‘with great ignorance and ideological forethought’ whatever that is supposed to mean (it’s probably again a translation error coming from Swahili into English via Romulan…those pesky translators can be a real pain in the ass). If you had ever been in the military you’d know that people join for a variety of reasons, very few for ‘ideological’ reasons.
:rolleyes:
I assume you actually believe this bullshit, which is really sad.
Luckily, the ‘liberals’ on this board are mainly sane and rational, so the converse strawman doesn’t really hold true. Thanks for your input…it was, as always, entertaining. Like I said, feel free to direct your key points about the various ‘memes’ to the OP…it should be a hell of a lot of fun to watch.
-XT
What right wing source educated you on the era? Do you know how many Vietnam vets came home against the War? Some, but not all, actively protested it. I knew guys who gladly joined and others who kept their deferments in line–because they didn’t want to die in a war that was very different from Our Fathers’ War.
I remember one arty chick who criticized her boyfriend because he got drafted & didn’t fight it; she was a trust fundie & he wasn’t. But I don’t remember anybody spitting on soldiers or yelling about “baby killers.”
I was there. You weren’t.
(Am I the only one who thinks Commisar is just being cute? Is he a citizen? Does he vote? Does he have a Pit thread yet?)
ETA: Yes!
Only in the sense that Chamberlain got everything he wanted by forcing Hitler to the table at Munich. You would do well to look up the phrase “decent interval” as it relates to US goals at the Paris Peace Accords.
Of course they didn’t, neither did the South. The cease fire was promptly and repeatedly broken by both sides. The main points of the accord were a cease fire in place, the withdrawal of US troops, and talks between the North and South on a reunification to be carried out by peaceful means. Things to note here: the cease fire in place left tens and tens of thousands of NLF troops in South Vietnam. The vague language on future talks for an eventual peaceful reunification of Vietnam something that had been fought over ever since the division. And in another nod to Munich where Britain, Germany and France decided the fate of Czechoslovakia without any representation of Czechoslovakia even present, the negotiations were carried out between North Vietnam and the US, not only without any representation of the South Vietnamese being present, but in fact carried out behind the South Vietnamese’s back. As the Czechs were told by Britain and France to accept Munich or face war with Germany alone, Thieu was told he’d have to accept it despite his protestations. Nixon wrote him a rubber check that he knew would bounce by promising that the US would intervene with airpower in the event of a major NLF offensive as they had just done during the '72 Easter Offensive.
As to your notion that the South fell because the Democratic Congress wouldn’t provide the arms the ARVN needed, don’t be absurd. The South fell because the ARVN was a thoroughly unmotivated and ineffective force outside of a few select formations. The NLF collected a huge amount of US weaponry as war booty from the ARVN when the South fell. There was actually a glut of M-16s on the black/grey world arms market as a result of the resale of the nearly one million captured by the communists.
What bigger war was prevented by Viet-Nam ? Returning to Iraq ? Afghanistan ? Lybia ? And on the shadier side of things, helping Pinochet ? Arming the mujahideen ?
From an American point of view, of course. From the point of view of everyone else, not so much, no.