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Military Grounds Stealth Bomber Fleet
Ponca City, We Love You writes "America's entire B-2 stealth bomber fleet, which has played a crucial part in all major US conflicts since 1989, has been grounded after one of the jets crashed near a military base in Guam. The crash — the first involving the B-2 — was the most expensive single aircraft accident in history. (The planes cost $1.2B each.) Officials assume the crash was caused by either mechanical failure or human error, but have grounded all B-2s to ensure there is not some fundamental fault developing in the 21-strong fleet. The crash occurred Saturday morning local time as the B-2 was taking off from Andersen Air Force base on Guam, a US territory south of Japan. An Air Force spokesman said, 'The cause of crash is unknown, pending an investigation. The pilots had ejected safely — no serious injuries. One is mobile, one is still in the hospital under observation.'"
First off, many instances of "massive violence" during WWII by the US was the testing of experimental weapons on populations. There was no need to fire bomb German (and Japanese) cities and nuke Japan except to try out some fancy new weapons. Sure the nukes might have shortened the conflict with Japan, but we would have still won and spared countless civilians at the same time if we had not. It's interesting how genocide by Germany was inexcusable, but genocide by the US can be justified on the grounds that it simply made things easier for the military. Also, maybe the Europeans can overlook mass murder of their own populations by the US since they hated Hitler so much, but it still doesn't mean it was morally justified.
As for the competency of the military, we were certainly not instant experts. We got our butts kicked in Africa for a while until we started to figure things out. And it's a complete distortion of reality to portray the US military as having the ability to simply sweep through and clean up Europe without much effort. There were many hard fought battles, not all of which were won.
Your ignorance continues to show when you claim that Saddam gained power through genocides. I guess you're not aware of the fact that he was working for the US to depose the democratically elected leader that was currently in power. Once that guy was gone, he walked through the door that WE opened for him. Yes violence was part of his tactics for obtaining and maintaining power, but the US gave Saddam the chance just because we didn't like some new democracy getting out of line and nationalizing resources (a very common trend with the US).
Lastly, I don't know where you get this idea that liberals think all ideologies are true or good. And then you say this idea needs to be defended by violence? WTF are you talking about? You completely lost me. No liberal or conservative in their right mind would justify suicide bombings. What you're probably getting confused with is the idea, that more liberals seem to grasp, that the US is at least partially responsible for much of the violence that is plaguing the world (Ron Paul being a rare exception).
The US has engaged in secret, economic imperialism since at least WWII. We've destroyed economies of already poor countries, and demanded their natural resources as payment for their debt to us (disguised as terms for economic "aid"). We've almost made it a policy of deposing democratically elected leaders just because they feel their natural resources should benefit their own populations, not US corporations (Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Chile, Vietnam, etc...). Before and during WWII, we had no sizable arms industry. We simply converted factories over to producing weapons. After WWII the military industrial complex came into being, and has been used primarily to support corporations turn larger and larger profits at the expense of poor countries everywhere. If we can't accomplish that goal through "free trade" agreements (which are skewed in our favor and destroy native industries), or through bribery and coercion of corruptible politicians, we send in the military. And what a surprise, the people in the countries we've screwed over hate us.
Finland has Nokia.
I have this feeling that things will have to get a lot worse before they will get better again, and I also think that the end of oil can't come soon enough.
It's a bit like pulling a bad tooth, better get it over with. Let's hope we can get over our addiction and into some kind of reasonable sharing of the globe without murdering too many innocents.
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