And in what may at best be called a response to this, the US bombed cambodians (viet congs and others alike) back to the stone age. A supposedly CIA-backed coup-detat disposed of the King for allowing vietnam to “violate” cambodias teritory. These events paved the way for the rising of Pol Pot and the Kmer Rouge.
I’ll be 40 next week:eek:
And I can write a check with 4 digits, form my own conclusions and am fully cognizant of our country’s past and present leadership’s so-called ideology.
And I’ll be what is commonly refered to as a “liberal” until that term is further corrupted into something I’m not.
No, Great Britain. Canada wasn’t a separate country until 1867.
The British were stopping American ships and forcing American sailors to serve on British ships - an early version of the draft, and committed on American citizens.
Cite.
Regards,
Shodan
The world is considerably smaller than you might think in this respect. “Instabilities” can have profound effects far beyond their borders.
You are, of course, correct. There’s virtually no way that things would have happened just as I described. But remember, although it’s true that the “domino theory” never materialized, it failed to do so in the face of constant, continuous and sometimes ruthless opposition.
Take away that opposition and Vietnam falls by 1960 (if not 1954) rather than 1975. Laos and Cambodia would have followed shortly given Ho Chi Minh’s desire for an Indochina united under Vietnamese rule.
Given a communist Indochina unified under Vietnaese rule by 1960 and you’ve changed the history of south east asia rather significantly.
By the way, I’d be a lot more impressed by the “humanitarian” aspect of Vietnam’s intervention in Kampuchea if they had invaded as soon as they learned of the atrocities being committed instead of waiting until Kampuchea began staging attacks on Vietnamese territory. (see “The Pol Pot Regime by Ben Kiernan)
Another aside; after the Vietnamese intervention my country supported a loose coalition of opponents of the Vietnamese and expressed regret at the time that there was no way to support these groups without some of the money finding it’s way to the Khmer Rouge.
But a question for you; if the US had shown itself unwilling to fight, what would you say were the chances of Taiwan and West Berlin remaining free?
You’re correct. The actions of the US certainly helped destabilize Cambodia. But Pol Pot began fighting at least as early as 1962 when the Khmer Rouge (or KPRP as it was then known) assassinated Tou Samouth. And Sihanouk’s regime was already badly destabilized by 1966 due to the theft of literally two thirds of the Cambodian rice harvest by the Vietnamese which, since the Cambodian government relied on a tax on rice for it’s revenues, left Sihanouk bankrupt.
I think it was Grenada that we invaded to protect the freedom to drive big honking SUVs. :rolleyes:
Stop the presses! December tacitly concedes that some Democrats, and liberal Democrats at that, have done something praise worthy. Second Coming imminent.
Thanks for the cite Shodan. It didn’t state any reasons though.
I knew Canada wasnt a country yet, hit submit too fast.
From what I remembered of it, the impressment was just a minor irritance. The main drive behind the war was expansionism and the presence of Tecumseh, which bred fears of indian uprisings.
With Britain engaged with Napoleon the US saw its chance.
Anyways, here’s just some cites on the reasons for the war of 1812.
http://amh.freehosting.net/1812.html
http://www.city-net.com/~markd/roots/history/us_war_of_1812.htm
http://www.galafilm.com/1812/e/intro/index.html
zigaretten:
First of all i wonder which opposition you are refering to, since this word is usually used of other groups of citizens in the country. It seems that you mean to say American opposition to Soviet influence in Vietnam. Whether Vietnam would “fall” or not is, apart from still being speculation, a take on what you put into the word “fall”. The Vietnamese seem to have been more concerned of “falling” to US military, as suggested by their willingness to fight the same.
This opinion, believe is at best, heavily controversial, even if you try to back it up with heavily segmented quotes. The latter of which i believe only mentions the communist parties in those countries uniting (in unspecified way).
Kampuchea staging attacks on Vietnam still amounts to more agression than Iraq has shown towards the US. That doesnt stop pro-war debators from pointing out the humanitarian benefits they hope will come out of an intervention.
So they gave money effectively making it’s way into Kmer Rouge pockets, they knew it, but they were sorry about it. At present the US reserve the right to freeze the assets of any organization the US suspect has a link to Al Qaida in any way. Need i mention that Pol Pot was responsible for deaths of numbers hundredfold to that of Bin Laden.
As a side note, US administration is right now excersising a boycott of foreign aid to any organization that is in any way related to abortion.
In the case of West Berlin, very high.
If the (alleged) rice theft was a major factor, how come then Pol Pot rose to power a full decade later?
Phew!
It seems to me that most of this post has been spent discussing communism and how the US “stopped the communist invasion and thwarted world influence by soviets and other communists yadda yadda yadda” Now the US may be against communism and not believe in it and I must admit that i dont like the idea myself, but i dont think we really had any right to fight over it. It seems that there is a double standard where the US can spread its influence anywhere it wants and we can call it “freedom”. But if some other group tries to spread its belief we object to the point that we will use force. So now we are the superpower with fairly dominant influence in much of the world(relatively), but how are we any more honorable? Can we ever just mind our own busness and take care of ourselves?- seems to me our resources would also be better spent that way…
Some responses:
DD Goose: I hear your point but I don’t see how the Supreme Court does any “fighting” for anything. They review cases passed along from lower courts, and I believe there have been some recent decisions which make the assertion that they are all about defending our civil rights quite debatable. In any case activist courts are generally frowned upon in the US. Now JRDelirious’ further explanation of your response is praiseworthy and very reasonable in a legal sense, yet I still question how a Gulf War vet can honestly make the claim that he “fought for my freedoms”. I just don’t see it.
zigaretten: except we did lose Cambodia, see all above under “Khmer Rouge”. India and Indonesia used to get most of their weapons from the USSR, and now both are ostensibly democracies, without us having to lift a finger. I simply can’t envision a scenario where France and Italy would have gone Communist if not for US pressure, France especially, who to this day prides herself on not being in anyone’s camp but her own.
Shodan explains well why I say the 1812 war preserved American freedoms.
Really, eye-roller? I thought Grenada was Reagan’s convenient and feelgood response to the Beirut bombing of the Marine barracks. If you think those US med students’ freedoms were under clear and present danger from those Cuban runway contractors, well I just don’t know what to say other than I disagree. Is it your position that the troops who invaded Grenada were fighting to preserve American freedoms? Which ones? What about the troops who died invading Panama just to nab Noriega?
Well, really, i think (hopes) Shodan was being ironic. You’re on our side, right Shodan 
Tha fact that we lost Vietnam but did not lose any of our freedoms (in fact the counterculture and protest movement arguably won us some freedoms) is demonstrative.
Gjorp is on the right track. At the time it was deemed that inaction would entail greater risks of eventually losing our freedom. Plus you might say that they were fighting for freedom in an idealistic rather than actual sense (exept for the people in the countries we defended/liberated).
The real question is the actual intentions of those we feared to be threatening our freedom. Don’t be so quick to make WWII an exception to the OP. I could go so far as to as to claim that the notion that the Axis powers would have conquered the US is the greatest myth of the 20th Century. Hitler’s primary goals were to destroy the Soviet Union and create lebenraum in the East. Japan’s were to create an empire in East Asia–but the US was starting to interfere. They figured that eliminating our "chess pieces"at Pearl Harbor would compel the US to back off.
Hitler hoped to avoid war with Britain and France and in fact they declared war on Germany, not vice versa. After the fall of France, Hitler offered “generous” peace terms to Britain, and there are claims that the preparations for Operation Sealion were an elaborate bluff–indeed the Krauts never developed a truly adequate capability to invade Britain. As for their attempts to bomb the Brits into submission, “submission” in this case meant aquiescense, not occupation.
Hitler declared war on the US in hopes that the Japs wouls reciprocate against the USSR, and to clear away the sticking points that US neutrality was creating for his U-boat campaign. He figured that Pearl Harbor meant the US now lacked the naval strength to challenge the U-boats and project its power into Europe. Both Axis figured that once the US got its “fingers burned” across both oceans we would lose the stomach for war and be content to dominate our own hemisphere. Hitler went further in figuring that the US and GB would adopt a can’t-lick-em-so-join-em attitude to divvy the World up among the “Big Five” dominant powers.
As the war progressed, Germany and Japan did indeed seek ways to attack the US, including the possible use of WMDs. But at all times the goal was to knock us out of the war in order to give them a free hand in their respective spheres of conquest. An invasion of North America was out of the question. The military problems posed by such an undertaking would have been insurmountable, even with Germay and Japan working in tandem (I could go into a bit more deatil).
Not all of the above is readily citable; it’s a summary of what I’ve gleaned from a lifetime of stuying WWII, but I stand by it. No threat to US freedom in WWII.
I may have to rethink my policy on irony and sarcasm, since too much of it is flying over the heads of other posters. Even the whooshing sounds must be subsonic, like those produced by a dog whistle.
Regardless of RTA’s rather inane invoking of the SUV Bogey, I think I see a bit of what’s bugging him. Statements about “I fought the war to protect your freedoms” often carry an undertone of “I bravely carried the flag in our country’s military so that little knee-jerk hippie swine like you could give aid and comfort to the enemy”. The idea that freedom to protest should exist yet not be used by patriotic Americans tends to surface at times like these (there’s a pit thread seemingly devoted to this very theme right now).
And yet in general, I think that veterans’ thoughts on imminent conflict deserve respectful attention. I’m not comfortable with cherry-picking the wars in which participation means having fought for our freedoms. We should listen to the views of those who served in the military - not necessarily agreeing, but listening.
Like JR said, it’s a figure of speech. It isn’t meant to be taken literally.
Example: The Decatur Kiwanis Club paid for building a really nice park down by the lake. People who joined the Kiwanis Club since then–people who had no part in the original decision–are nevertheless allowed to take credit for the Kiwanis Club’s having built that park. They’re allowed to say, “Yes, we [meaning the Kiwanis Club] built that.”
And by the same token, then, a Gulf War vet, who is a member of the “club”–the armed forces–of the government that sent its armed forces to defend your freedoms in 1776, 1812, and 1941, is allowed to say, “Yes, we [meaning the United States armed forces] defended Freedom.”
Here’s a list of some of the other important civil rights decisions the Supreme Court has handed down.
http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/crights/scdec.htm
The current members of the Supreme Court, even though they may not have been personally involved in any of these decisions, can still take credit for them. They are allowed to say, “Yes, we [meaning the Supreme Court] handed down the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling”, which was the one that outlawed segregation in schools and guaranteed equal access to education for all American schoolchildren, regardless of skin color.
If you really don’t see how the Supreme Court is “fighting for” your civil rights, then I can’t help you. I suggest you look through the link above and consider how your life might be different without those decisions.
If Brown vs. Board of Education hadn’t been handed down, you would have gone to school in an all-black or all-white school. If Heart of Atlanta Motel vs. the United States hadn’t been handed down, when you stayed in a motel or hotel, it would have been an all-black or all-white motel or hotel.
The Supreme Court was responsible for deciding that private colleges like Bob Jones University aren’t entitled to any federal funds if they aren’t going to uphold federal standards of non-discrimination.
Pssst, zigaretten, wanna buy some elephant powder? Good stuff: I’ve been using it continuously, and the elephants ain’t got me yet!
Daniel
The War of 1812 was fought at least partially to preserve the freedom of the US. The impressment of American sailors occurred most famously in the Chesapeake incident.
And the freedom of Americans from kidnapping by a foreign power is pretty fundamental.
Very few wars are fought entirely for pure and noble motives, but the defense of American freedom is generally one of the reasons America goes to war.
Unless I’ve been whooshed.
Regards,
Shodan
How about making sure that those instabilities in other parts of the world don’t grow into a threat that can actually end up in our land?
And yet I can’t help but feel the world is a better place for not being dominated by the Third Reich and Imperial Japan.
Yes, I’m referring to US opposition to Vietnam becoming both communist and a member of the “Soviet Bloc.” In the absence of such opposition this “fall,” or call it what you will, seems to me to have been inevitable given the Viet Minh victory over the French at Diem Bien Phu in 1954.
I’m sorry if you don’t want to believe that Ho Chi Minh envisioned a greater Indochina under Vietnamese rule. It was a fairly basic part of his overall philosophy. Any decent biography should cover this point. And in fact Vietnam did invade Kampuchea in 1978 while Laos, whose politics are considerably more complex, was well protected by the 30,000 Vietnamese soldiers stationed within its borders.
And given that the Communist Party was the actual ruling body in the Soviet Union and in all Soviet Bloc nations, talk of uniting the three parties amounts to uniting the three governments.
As for the influence of a 1960 communist Indochina on the history of SE Asia, I can, of course, only speculate. I doubt, however, that it would have been to the benefit if the US. And given the difficulties that Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, amongst others, had with communist insurgencies during the 70s, despite constant, continuous and sometimes ruthless support from the US, I suspect that it could have been very much to our disadvantage.
Yes, I’m willing to go somewhat off-topic but this is too much.
Well. I admire your optimism if not your reasoning, but given the following………
June, 1948 to May, 1949……………Soviets cut off all ground traffic to West Berlin, Truman begins to airlift food and supplies.
November, 1958………Krushchev issues an ultimatum giving the western powers six months to withdraw from West Berlin, after which they will have access to West Berlin only at the discretion of the East German government.
After meetings between the “Big Four” powers he withdraws the ultimatum and agrees that the Berlin problem and “……all outstanding international questions should be settled, not by the application of force, but by peaceful means through negotiation."
August, 1961……….the Berlin Wall is built.
…….I’m afraid that I can’t share that optimism.
Destabilized regimes often last for quite some time; and this one was being propped up by the US, remember?
Oh, and for the “alleged” theft of rice see How Pol Pot Came to Power: A History of Communism in Kampuchea by Ben Kiernan
Well, Shodan, I was commenting on your statement that the Grenada war was for your liberty to ride big shiny SUV:s! Or at least I thought i were?