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| Thread: Should all U.S. forces return home? |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 · NEXT» |
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markkur
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posted January 08, 2016 03:16 PM |
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Should all U.S. forces return home?
I'm changing the title of the following Doc-link a wee bit to "The World Without the U.S. in the role of defender".
Over the years, as an American, I have swayed back and forth between the two represented concerns of this program. I'm much to old to be starry-eyed about every move the U.S. has made but realistic enough to know that much evil has been deterred without "reward nor recognition" by the younger generations of nations we defend.
<imo> As wrong as we have got it sometimes, regardless no other country has shed blood, nor spent the people's tax-dollars to save 'others' like the USA. However, as we often hear today; "That was 60 years ago".
I've posted this because he does a 'decent' job of representing the real-world TODAY and "our" problems for American international diplomacy.
Please "watch first" and comment only after you have seen the whole mess as it is today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEVqk-eAqy0
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Zenofex
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posted January 08, 2016 03:33 PM |
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markkur, honestly, only a US citizen can believe that the US has ever done anything outside of its borders for someone else's "good". No country on this planet has altruistic foreign policy and this is a hundred times more valid for the Great Powers. You guys should constantly remind yourselves that when you watch TV, read articles or whatever. I'm not even talking about the regular media bull**** for the mass viewer, just plain common sense.
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blizzardboy
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posted January 08, 2016 03:40 PM |
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No, they shouldn't. US armed forces intervening in conflicts can and has been highly beneficial, both for itself and for international stability, happiness & commerce. The world would be a poorer, more dangerous place without its role in the 20th century.
A few good examples:
-Yugoslavia
-Persian Gulf 1
-Current peacekeeping missions in Africa
-(WW2 obviously, but that's a bit too distant I think)
It also has the presence of "soft power" to keep various disputes in check. This forum is eastern European so it will be skewed, but if you had people from the South China sea area, basically nobody outside of China is going to complain about the US navy. The vast majority would want a larger presence.
These were smart, calculated interventions because they satisfied two important criteria:
- Substantial support from the inside of the region (doesn't really work without it)
- Wide-reaching international support
You really need both of those for it to work. More unsavory marks such as Vietnam and Persian Gulf II are exactly because those conditions weren't satisfied, and the government knew it, but the hawk lobby went ahead and warred anyway, for various reasons, none of which were good ones. Megalomania, energy insurance, underestimation of locals, etc.
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markkur
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Once upon a time
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posted January 08, 2016 03:50 PM |
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Zenofex did you trouble yourself to watch the Doc???
If you did you are as set in stone as I think possible. There are 2 views present for Americans to favor and neither is a very good solution.
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Zenofex
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posted January 08, 2016 03:58 PM |
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Not yet, I've been replying mainly to this:
Quote:
As wrong as we have got it sometimes, regardless no other country has shed blood, nor spent the people's tax-dollars to save 'others' like the USA
... which only lacks the 50 stars on a blue background and the red/white stripes to complete it. You are a sensible person normally so such a sentence in a post of yours looks like an anomaly.
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fred79
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posted January 08, 2016 03:58 PM |
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from what i read, watched, and understand, much of what has happened internationally in the last 50 years or so that the u.s. has gotten involved in, were a direct result of an earlier time that the u.s.(or, more precisely, the cia/pentagon) were out snowing snow up. how many times have the u.s.(cia/pentagon) helped someone into power that was trained to be a tyrant? how many times have the u.s.(cia/pentagon) trained foreign militias and militaries, then later have to go and fight that same militia or military? how many times have the u.s.(cia/pentagon) given weapons to foreign parties that ended up killing a lot of people, and sent the u.s. military and other countries in to clean up the messes created by that, afterward?
to me, there really is no question at all. if anyone should get involved in foreign issues, it should NOT be the u.s.
ever.
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somi
Known Hero
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posted January 08, 2016 08:53 PM |
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Edited by somi at 21:04, 08 Jan 2016.
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Love the propaganda video. The only problem is that the video is full of snow and lies and wants to present something in one way with posting twisted information (or just incorrect one).
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Drakon-Deus
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posted January 08, 2016 09:42 PM |
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I have to say that America did both good and bad, objectively, with interventions. However, it's a country that as far as I know fought against extremists and not for them. And I think I prefer that to isolationism and non-intervention.
So, you have my respect. Others can hate all they like.
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markkur
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Once upon a time
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posted January 08, 2016 09:55 PM |
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Hm, the only 'anti' responses are in the extreme. That's not good.
Let me rephrase, 'If you are NOT American and if you watched the video, you see no truth nor dilemma for the American people presented...at all?"
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Zenofex
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posted January 08, 2016 11:10 PM |
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Edited by Zenofex at 23:14, 08 Jan 2016.
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I watched some of it and don't like how it's being presented. It reminds me of Kissinger's "Diplomacy" where the US is shown as the world's Godfather.
@markkur, it is never that simple, no "pro-" and "anti-" crap that people throw at each other when they want to make the fights personal to avoid using actual arguments. "It's been 60 years", what the hell is that? Some Hollywood movie where the only two sides in World War II were the US and Germany? You should know fairly well, judging from your interests in history, the Western Front was by all means the backyard of WW2, the real fights happened in the east, between Nazi Germany, Italy, Hungary, Romania, etc. and "the evil empire". So what's the meaning of this "it's been 60 years"? 60 years since what, not allowing Stalin to occupy Paris (he was perfectly capable of doing that in just a few more months)? Then Yugoslavia, where nothing happened and didn't happen without the US' permission... And so on.
In international politics moral and ethics are just a tool, usually used for propaganda purposes. The states care about interests only. Their nations' interests, private interests, certain social groups interests, whatever - but never about how moral some action will be. That's the supreme rule of Realpolitik and no state that has even remotely independent foreign policy has ever strayed far from it for centuries. For powerful states that's a law. Wars in particular are hugely expensive, you don't spend fortunes for the well-being of people living thousands of kilometres away from you, people who you don't know, don't understand and for whose existence you may have only heard once or twice before the media started shouting at you about their personal dramas and your moral obligations to help them by dropping a few kilotons of democracy over their oppressors' heads. Especially when "tax" is like a curse-word for many of your compatriots. Even if we don't think at all about the real reasons which could be behind the military interventions of the US around the world, it is terribly obvious that your expenses have to have some returns at some point, otherwise you'll go broke. With that in mind, do you seriously think that any of your leaders who has the executive power to start a war will do so because his or her heart is bleeding for those strangers living in the middle of nowhere?
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blizzardboy
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posted January 09, 2016 04:07 AM |
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Yes actually, I do. Although I don't agree with his decision, I'm 98% positive that George W Bush had a noble vision when he started Persian Gulf II. That he believed he was a benefactor who was doing the right thing. To some extent, in spite of my more deeply negative opinion, I might even say the same thing of demagogue men such as Trump or Putin, although they both display a certain megalomania which GW Bush did not.
Either way, your post is a polemic. People's motivations in life are complex and multi-faceted. Just because states aren't going to jump to intervene in a conflict purely out of benevolence (otherwise we would be far, far more involved in Africa), doesn't mean that empathy doesn't play a role in decision-making, even on a state level. The state isn't run by Megatron. There is a collection of human beings at the helm, and they have emotions and passions and visions and a complex network of varying aspirations just like any other human being.
I also see a clear trend, that as human relations become more developed, and national borders gradually start to have less and less intrinsic meaning to the public, that empathy will gradually play a larger and larger role at the higher up level, and taxpayers will be more wiling to foot the bill in order to maintain stability (and commerce). For those that disagree, I really wish I had a time machine available so they can go back to the 19th century and enjoy the imperial nations brutally squabbling with one another like the fickle Greek gods of folklore.
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Minion
Legendary Hero
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posted January 09, 2016 04:55 AM |
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Edited by Minion at 04:59, 09 Jan 2016.
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Blizz,
In 2008, the Center for Public Integrity completed a project in which they went over the public statements by eight top Bush administration officials on the topic of Iraq, and found that no fewer than 935 were false, including 260 statements by President Bush himself.
So he lied because he believed he was doing the right thing? The most systematic campaign, probably ever in the history of America, to lure the nation into a war... But he had noble intentions? You are free to believe that he has a noble character, but in light of the evidence of what was done that seems rather gullible.
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"These friends probably started using condoms after having produced the most optimum amount of offsprings. Kudos to them for showing at least some restraint" - Tsar-ivor
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fred79
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posted January 09, 2016 06:27 AM |
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bush jr... noble reasoning in invading iraq? blizz, this isn't the vw. 
if you're serious... then i'll state that nothing about bush jr is noble. if he was noble, he wouldn't have been a draft dodger, decades before he ever became president twice. the first time, fraudulently, no less.
but that's neither here nor there, because politics are all rigged anyway. nobody has a choice; that's just one of the illusions, regarding any populace and those who govern it.
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Drakon-Deus
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posted January 09, 2016 06:48 AM |
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fred79 said:
because politics are all rigged anyway. nobody has a choice; that's just one of the illusions, regarding any populace and those who govern it.
 The truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, the naked truth.
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blizzardboy
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posted January 09, 2016 07:01 AM |
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This article explains well the common misconceptions about Bush supposedly lying to get the US into the war.
More importantly, I like the end point about why it matters. Keeping a pulp fiction pedaling as though it were truth has bad ramifications for future events where a president may need to act. It might realistically be next to impossible to get the average person in the Middle East to recognize that (some people still can't get over the urge to kill Jews, how can we expect them to grasp this?) but it's not a fiction that should flourish in the US proper.
@Minion:
I don't know/care about the report without a link, because what you said as it is is extremely vague. Several hundred "false" statements? What does that mean? That they stated something incorrect? Does it tally each time an identical statement was made which was repeated? Why was the report conducted? What was their goal?
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fred79
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posted January 09, 2016 07:19 AM |
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blizzardboy said:
This article
won't let me read it without joining the site. guess i'll just have to take your word for it, that this one article clears up all the bullsnow that was pushed out into the world by that corrupt and rotten numbskull. 
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Minion
Legendary Hero
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posted January 09, 2016 07:24 AM |
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I can't read it because it needs a subscription to Wall Street Journal. I am now though curious how they paint it as...
http://www.publicintegrity.org/2008/01/23/5641/false-pretenses
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"These friends probably started using condoms after having produced the most optimum amount of offsprings. Kudos to them for showing at least some restraint" - Tsar-ivor
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Zenofex
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posted January 09, 2016 07:25 AM |
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@blizz, there are really only 3 options:
1) The US is like any other major power and its every act is guided by the interests of its ruling elite and some other internal interests and sometimes pursuing these interests happens to have positive outcome for somebody else, coincidentally. That's what I describe for the most part.
2) The US has noble intentions when it intervenes somewhere. With time it turns out that the noble US interventions create more problems that they are supposed to solve, i.e. you guys suck very badly at doing the noble thing for extended periods of time (something like a clumsy, incompetent super-hero).
3) It's a mixture of 1 and 2 (your stance, it seems). In this case what matters is the predominant motive, except if you believe that there's a 50:50 split between noble and pragmatic, creating some True Neutral warrior with 10d10 damage vs. good and evil alignment. Here the facts usually don't work in your favour. Saddam was an US ally before he became an US enemy just like many other dictators before him. Assad was a not-so-bad and fully acceptable guy shortly before the start of the Syrian civil war. The Serbian rapists were bad but the Croatian rapists were not. Annexing Crimea is a huge offence to the civilized world but forcefully detaching Kosovo from Serbia is not despite the fact that both were officially justified identically. The list can go on and it looks like some spoiled 10-yeard old's morality if we assume that moral has anything to do with it.
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Tsar-Ivor
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posted January 09, 2016 09:48 AM |
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Are we talking about US national forces exclusively or the UN ones too (they're not necessarily any different in practice or organisation tho).
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frostymuaddib
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posted January 09, 2016 10:35 AM |
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blizzardboy said:
No, they shouldn't. US armed forces intervening in conflicts can and has been highly beneficial, both for itself and for international stability, happiness & commerce. The world would be a poorer, more dangerous place without its role in the 20th century.
A few good examples:
-Yugoslavia
The whole mess with Yugoslavia (and I'm talking about everything after 1948) came to pass because of US and Great Britain. And in the end, US armed forces just came to protect US interests, it was never about peace or ending conflict or bringing happines.
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"lol" -- VERRIKER VON ERWINSSEN
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