My Views

"Hence it is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity."
The Prince, Chapter 15, Niccolo Machiavelli

Bush's war is justified if taken into the arena of political tactics used by world leaders to maintain domestic and international influence. Bismarck fooled both Austria-Hungary and France into waging wars with Prussia, and assumed control of their territories to unify Germany and bring it to existence. It's called realpolitik. Marvelous.

Mussolini whored himself to the Church, the industry and the Army so skilfully that they didn't know what hit them when all of a sudden, the Fascists had destroyed labor unions, infiltrated the Army, and blackmailed the Church into financial obligation.

Now one must ask why would leaders do such a thing.
It's quite simple.
Power.

The Republican party, after eight years of silence under Clinton and the Democratic party's rule from 1992-2000, isn't going to drop everything and let their moment of glory be taken. And it is doing precisely what any world ruler in need of maintaining his power, would do.

War is the perfect compilation of nationalism and illustrating armed victory. Mussolini was so angry that Hitler had stolen his tactics of Fascism and was controlling almost all of Europe, that he invaded Yugoslavia to reassure Italians that Italy was still capable of armed victory. Because the Italian African empire wasn't glorious enough, apparently.

In his case, the Slavs beat the shit out of the Italians and Mussolini was forced to call Hitler in to help. Hitler made the detrimental mistake of pausing his three-prong strategy of taking over the Russian front and sent in help to the Balkan peninsula. Unfortunately for him, by the time the German troops returned to Russia to finish the invasion, one of the worst winters in Russian history hit the front and wiped out any chance Hitler had.

The first worst winter in Russian history wiped out Napoleon's troops. Which is why I am fully convinced God must be Russian.

This isn't a matter of morality,
because the innate human need for power will always surface.
Machiavelli pointed that out centuries ago.

"Milk, almonds and pistachios."

Well bmx, if you look at the timelimes and the info, you see that we were involved in the gassings, we supplied the gasses along with many of our european allies, we knew he was gassing, we helped strategize and give intelligence and training on gassing.

So I don't think you covered that in your reply, buddy, we did some serious wrongs there from what I thus far understand. Just like the Bush Sr. pull out. How we even helped Osama and Al-quaeda against the russians or whoever. We are stupid, it would seem, and we don't take enough responsibility for our actions, and this is why the world hates us, and I don't blame them if everything is true. I'm sure there is more to the story, but I have no trouble believing our leaders acts to be corrupt, we will do whatever we want or feel would help US, not so much others, unless it somehow helps us. All Iraq means to just about anyone is oil, plain and simple, thats why we ever got involved in the first place, we didn't jump in when hilter invaded, so its no different from saddam invading kuwait, fighting Iran, none of it, we fight for oil there.

I'm not trying to belittle your efforts in the least, there may be some sad fact here, but that doesn't count against you troops personally, its politics. But I just want to say that hopefully some true good comes out of it all. But Saddam being taken out is very hypocritical and nonesensical if the info is currect, especially given the WMD situation as it stands now.

According to that we did not just say, oh shit, he started gassing people, no we helped with that little buddy. This is probably why we "knew" their were WMD's at one point, we helped put them there. And the fact of the matter is, other places were and are more dangerous than Iraq at time of invasion, more leaders and lands are hotter hotbeds for terrorists than Iraq, from what I understand, I claim to know nothing for certain, this is an issue where the government will lie if it can get away with it.

"The Greatest Enemy of Knowledge is Not Ignorance, It is the ILLUSION of Knowledge. Stephen Hawking"

Oppressed people my ass.
How about the United States go and liberate all of Latin and South America, eh?

You can't step outside your house without getting shot.
And what the hell is the pro-war advocates' main argument? "We liberated oppressed people." Well, saddle up your horsies and get yer asses down south, ya'll. You got some nasty messes to clean up, startin' with Guatemala and workin yer way down, cowboys n' cowgirls.

Now shut up and get to work.
I want to see Latin and South America in first-world condition by the end of this week.
And have fun with the dictators the US put into power down there. Technically, it's the same idea as Iraq so it shouldn't bother you too much.

"Milk, almonds and pistachios."

But Bmx, its still deeper than you are either stating and or realizing, Russia was our ally first too, all our enemies seemed to have been, and you need to get out of the frame of mind that everything America does is right and just, that's simply not the case. Thats the obvious Pro-American spin.

And had it only been say one or two monsters we helped or even created, then that would be one thing, we have an almost if not 50-60 year history of doing just that, time and time again, of making allies of so called evil people than turning on them unless they get the chance to do it first, which is usually just what we want or need to be able to take them out once they have completed OUR dirty work. We don't help them because it helps them, but because it helps us, and usually, not in a right or just way, the help we often give is illegal and often a war crime, thats serious shit by OUR standards, yet Oliver North is one of the only ones to get but in the ass, our government gets caught trading arms for hostages and other illegal acts of the sort and Oliver is the only one to blame? Give me a break.

We have a history of exterminating people of third world countries. Its a fact, according to ex government officials who spoke up.

Astarte, as things stand now, I don't think you want the US down there, but mind you, they are on the list, big time, its just that we need to secure our oil first.

There are people being slaughtered and terrorized all over the world, many by us (past and present) and we don't do it to help them either, not the way they need to be helped.

You would not believe the direct comparisons and the realities of our past and present conflict situations. And you wouldn't be so quick to send America to anyone's rescue if you did.

"The Greatest Enemy of Knowledge is Not Ignorance, It is the ILLUSION of Knowledge. Stephen Hawking"

Believe it or not, minus the world wars (I'm not informed enough about them at the sources yet), we had much more of a hand in most of those wars then you seem to realize, then I ever realized, and for god's sake, do you really think you know all of the country's past mistakes? Don't be ignorant, most were and are still kept secret, over the past 50 or so years there have been over 3,000 secret wars involving CIA ops and trained forces and leaders (of other counties) at our command. We do so illegally, by even our standards, even what is allowed under the protection of our national security.

Tell me, where did you knowledge come from, I'm not asking to offend or to act all knowing, I'm honestly asking. Information is a big issue in our country.

You say you know our country has commited wrongs, well, the wrongs we have commited are the same as those we use as an excuse to invade others (even to the point where we are attacking someone for something we helped do), do you think we were properly punished, or that things were properly fixed? Thats a dangerous assumption if you are wrong, is it not?

"The Greatest Enemy of Knowledge is Not Ignorance, It is the ILLUSION of Knowledge. Stephen Hawking"

Leftwood, I'd rather the US not be anywhere. But if the warmongers MUST be somewhere at all times, might as well direct them to regions that would correlate with their arguments so we wouldn't have such a debate AFTER they chose the wrong places to go.

If I don't tell them now where to go, they might end up attacking the Federated States of Micronesia.

--
I'm getting historically irritated, bmx. "And when u get to thinking about it, most of the Major conflicts during the 20th century were started when a major event occured,"

Spanish-American War, the USS Maine Blowing up. WHY? The question we must ask ourselves, did WE as a nation do something or were doing things that pissed them off that badly? Yes.


World War 1, the Sinking of the Lusitania. No actually, it was when Germany issued Austria-Hungary a blank check of support if it were to go to war with Serbia following the assasination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The U.S. was sitting around on its ass helping both sides and making bank until Germany decided to use its U-Boat tactics on us.

World War 2, Pearl Harbor . Wrong again. 1939, Hitler invades Poland and again, the US sat around on its ass helping the UK secretly after declaring openly it would be neutral. Then in 1941, after Japan's army finalized its takeover of the country after decades of painful planning, it attacked Pearl Harbor. And even then, that was another war in itself because Japan didn't really give two shits what was going ON in Europe - it was just on this imperialistic rampage of the Pacific because it was pissed off the West didn't consider the Japanese anything but yellow people.


Korea, The Chinese Invasion of Korea. What! China came in AFTER the Koreas were duking it out with themselves. Here's another note: Both the UK and the US compromised with China over this Communist hullabaloo by trading Tibet in, despite the repeated appeals by the Dalai Lama, to make sure China wouldn't start World War Three. So technically, we allowed China to take over Tibet.

And extra note while we're at it about the US Armed Forces and some of the people that have served in them: MacArthur had this insane idea of nuking Beijing and Moscow as a quick way of eliminating enemies. He was going to go through with it until Truman told him to piss off.


Gulf War 1, The Invasion of Kuwait and the impending invasion of Saudi Arabia. Yes, and let me add Kuwait is not the innocent victim here - it was fucking around economically by playing games with Iraq in OPEC and in the international oil markets. I don't agree Saddam should have invaded, but talk about tensions.

And you forgot Vietnam. Kthxbye.

"Milk, almonds and pistachios."

I hear we are working on taking over never never land, the phantom zone, oz, and the twilight zone, while attempting to retrieve the ring of power which is said to be in the vatacan basement.

"The Greatest Enemy of Knowledge is Not Ignorance, It is the ILLUSION of Knowledge. Stephen Hawking"

I got dibs on Narnia.

"Milk, almonds and pistachios."

Oh, we've already established a puppet dictator, the white queen is back baby.

"The Greatest Enemy of Knowledge is Not Ignorance, It is the ILLUSION of Knowledge. Stephen Hawking"

Then let's pass around the Soma and kill some more savages. Rawr.

"Milk, almonds and pistachios."

Oh my.
*shakes her head*

You didn't propose with a cool, dinky metal ring from the vending machine at the grocery store. I already promised myself that's the only guy I'll ever marry - the one who saves the money and gets me the cheap ones that I already get anyway.



Now what on earth was that for?!

"Milk, almonds and pistachios."