No sympathy for gunning deaths? Call to mP

by jgnat 68 Replies latest members adult

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  mP

  laika:

  I guess its more important to call me an idiot than forget the millions who have died while the US has played war. Lets all forget those poor souls so we can rest easy and pretend it never happened.
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  besty

  good too see you chip in with more insults, simply because you disagree

  what insult? All I said was you are a moron that needs ignored if possible :-)
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  Simon

  How many wars the US started? How is that relevant to someone committing an attack on a US naval yard?

  What is relevant though is the precedent of arbitrarily classifying civilians as legitimate targets and executing people who are not in a war / combat situation and without trial .

  This is something the US has been doing and for the same reason we condemn the actions in the ship yard, it's a bad, bad policy that does not make people safer and should be stopped. It promotes exactly this sort of incident as being the new theatre of war ... on the streets, at your workplace, wherever.

  So yes. US naval yard shooting = bad. Drone strikes on people who 'look suspicious' (wedding party) = bad.

  Is it really so difficult or something we need to argue over?
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  Laika

  MP, I never called you an idiot. You did however call Jeff an idiot. Twice.
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  sammielee24

  I don't believe the murder of all those people on that base was karma. I believe it was a tragic, horrific incident carried out by someone with a lot of his own personal demons or issues.

  I don't think a broad brush should be used on ALL people who have been or are in the military, as somehow choosing to be the shadow of destruction and death on other people. The Draft for instance. When any government pulls up a Draft, you force others to engage in killing that they are not equipped on an emotional, personal or any other level, and in doing so, you alter their whole psyche and persona. That then extends to people in thier lives who then pass down those issues into their families until it takes 3 generations to remove.

  I see much of the problem as being more complex. It is sometimes as if everyone knows why the USA is really occupying or attempting to gain a foothold in other countries but nobody really comes out and explains why. When a President says they need to 'protect US interests'..in his dialogue with citizens and as a way to 'get people on board' with any military action, he never tells you what those interests are. That's part of the problem. On one hand if you tell your citizens that they are going in to a country to better control oil, and then name the oil companies you are going to protect the oil for, then people would get irate - if instead you get them to believe you are doing something humane, like saving 500 kids from a chemical weapon attack, you get a pass. In reality, after killing 300,000 in another country by bombing them yourself, and then claiming that 500 kids dying in a chemical weapons attack is worse - that starts the problem with what is real, honest and reasonable. Indonesia. Vietnam. The reasons for going to war don't seem to be as a way of defending a country in as much as defending interests. Maybe more dialogue is needed to explain in detail what those interests are and how they benefit the people and what cost we are allowed to apply to other countries to gain security for our interests. How much collateral damage should we be allowed? Or should it be all in? Did we need to drop 2 atomic bombs on Japan? Should we have sanctioned major corporations for taking prisoners from Nazi camps to work in the factories making tanks being sold back to the Nazi's that imprisoned them in the first place? Should we have demanded a trial for the Nazi's but only after we cherry picked a few of the best scientists, engineers, doctors in the group for ourselves to use?

  I don't think the military is bad. I think there is a place for any force in every country - but I do think that a lot of people have died in the past by being forced to fight for patriotism when in reality it's been primarily for corporatism. There are a lot of good people in the military - there are a lot of reasons people enter the military - sammieswife
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  Frazzled UBM

  My view for what it is worth is that a strong US military is a necessary evil. If the US were to unilaterally disarm it would cause global instability - China might have a go at invading Taiwan and perhaps also the Spratleys and generally throw its weight around the region, Iran might invade Iraq, other regional powers with pretensions (Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, Nigeria, India etc.) may also throw their weight around and start skirmishes.

  I agree with mp and slimboyfat about the US misusing its military power to intervene when it shouldn't resulting in loss of innocent life, illegitimate interference in the politics of sovereign countries and other unintended consequences (the success of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979 was a direct result of the overthrow of Mossdeq in 19532 and putting the Shah in his place). There are countless examples of this from Iran 1953, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Guatemala in the 60s, Vietnam, the overthrow of Allende in Chile in the 1970s, Grenada in the early 1980s, Somalia and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq during the second Guf War. I count the First Gulf War as a proper use of military force to reverse an illegal invasion of another sovereign country.

  It should also be noted that through its history the US has lurched between isolationism and reckless interventionism, both of which are problematic. The reckless interventionism is a result of its messianic vision (its view that it has a mandate - perhaps from God) to bring liberal democracy to the world - the idea that the world would be a better palce if everyone was like us - where ahve I heard this before - oh that's right, Witnesses.

  The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War reinforced this view by the US thinking they had won that ideological struggle. Often these military interventions involve a misperception of either the situation on the ground (WMDs in Iraq for example) or the threat to US interests (Vietnam) or both.

  Still on balance, particularly when the US using its power responsibly as a deterrent to aggression by others, it promotes global stability.
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  Simon

  The US didn't win any cold war ... they are following the path of Russia by military-spending themselves into bancrupcy when 'more' isn't needed.

  No one is saying 'disarm' but it's dangerous to have such a big military and high military spending because people start looking for wars to justify having it and to ensure new orders are places for used munitions (I'm talking expensive missiles, not regular bullets).

  Do you have enough Abram tanks in storage yet?
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  Simon

  It should also be noted that through its history the US has lurched between isolationism and reckless interventionism, both of which are problematic. The reckless interventionism is a result of its messianic vision (its view that it has a mandate - perhaps from God) to bring liberal democracy to the world - the idea that the world would be a better palce if everyone was like us - where ahve I heard this before - oh that's right, Witnesses.

  Spot on.

  It seems to go from charging in and doing too much for idiotic reasons to then doing nothing and claiming they have no power to act when there are clear abuses and easy solutions. When they are acting they start attaching crazy religious ideologies to it that make them look just as much crazy fundamentalists as Iran but may be contrived to hide the fact that it's usually about someone having some oil reserves.

  Yugoslavia went on for years and stopped within weeks of Nato bombing.
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  sammielee24

  A Brief History of U.S. Interventions:
  1945 to the Present

  by William Blum

  Z magazine , June 1999

  

  The engine of American foreign policy has been fueled not by a devotion to any kind of morality, but rather by the necessity to serve other imperatives, which can be summarized as follows:

  * making the world safe for American corporations;

  * enhancing the financial statements of defense contractors at home who have contributed generously to members of congress;

  * preventing the rise of any society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model;

  * extending political and economic hegemony over as wide an area as possible, as befits a "great power."

  This in the name of fighting a supposed moral crusade against what cold warriors convinced themselves, and the American people, was the existence of an evil International Communist Conspiracy, which in fact never existed, evil or not.

  The United States carried out extremely serious interventions into more than 70 nations in this period.
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  Frazzled UBM

  Hmmm - let me guess, is Mr Blum a revisionist Historian who sees economic interests and commercial interests as paramount? While I certainly would not deny that economic and commercial interests may have a bearing and that the US is seeking to extend its political and economic hegemony (by trying to mold the world to be more like the US politically and economcially), I think this is not a complete answer.

  It has a lot to do with how the US sees its role in the world. Before it was preventing the spread of communism which it saw as evil because it was the enemy of liberal democracy (it is misconceived to see this in terms of defending capitalism - this is the bias of the revisionist historians who often have Marxist backgrounds) - even though many of the regimes it supported in the interests of fighting Communism were far from liberal democratic. This was the messianic vision of the US - promote Lockean Liberalism in the world.

  Now it is combatting terrorism, upholding international security and promoting democracy. Both the US and the UK saw the invasion of Iraq as necessary to uphold international law relating to security because they thought (wrongly) that Iraq was breaching UN resolutions about WMD (but dressed it up as promoting the development of democracy in the Arab world, hence the support for the Arab spring movements even thought he main vbeneficiaries have been Islamic fundamentalists - another example of misperceptions).

  And while they are selective about upholding international law related to security issues (aggressive economic sanctions on Iran and North Korea are also examples) there are lots of other instances of them not doing this where it is not practicable or it is inconvenient (Israel's nuclear capability is an example).