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Obama Sets End of Iraq Combat For August 31st
eldavojohn writes "President Barack Obama has announced that on August 31st the United States will cease all combat operations in Iraq, although 50,000 troops will remain until the end of 2011. It's been a long seven-and-a-half years, with no guarantee of this announcement actually signifying the end of violence. Pundits are already speculating on whether or not this withdrawal speech is 'Mission Accomplished 2.' It's possibly the most significant confirmation of and commitment to a withdrawal the world will hear from the United States in Iraq."
It's about time.
What a scoop!
The war, over there, has been over for years. Now, they are just working as cops. Not the type of job the military was ever cut out to do.
On the contrary. You announce the date and pull out sooner. When the little shits come out of hiding you nail them.
The president used a microphone to make the announcement. Microphones are technology.
Real Americans don't give up so easy. A measly 7.5 years? Puhlease... If McCain had been elected we'd be there for another 7.5... along with 30 years in Iran and who knows how long on the Korean peninsula. I mean really, which party would you rather have in office?
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
Yeah, right! Because if you don't notice it one month ahead, then insurgents would never notice that Americans have left and will stay home. They are that dumb you know.
You make it seem as if Iraq is going to be completely undefended or something. In reality, there's the Iraqi military and police forces, right?
Let's have a little bit of faith in them, okay.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
Let's hope the insurgents and other ne'er-do-wells get the message they're supposed to stop blowing people up on August 31.
From TFA: "While the US has been scaling down its troop presence in Iraq it has been stepping up its military commitment to Afghanistan, with the president ordering a surge of 30,000 additional soldiers there. " So, we're pulling our armed forces out of Iraq, just to send them to Afghanistan. A couple of nukes and they can all come home! I'm just saying...
It's my understanding that AQiI is pretty much dead, now, and JAM has devolved into civil disobedience now that al-Sadr is in self-imposed exile. If there are any insurgent groups left, they will be local, disorganized, and without the kind of tacit police protection JAM had up until 2005. They will also have no popular support whatsoever.
We shouldn't have been there in the first place.
You mean when Saddam invaded Kuwait? We've 'been there' since that time. Just the level of troops and mission changed.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
Target practice?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
You're kidding, right? It guarantees that the few remaining insurgent groups will prepare for the date, and then attack with whatever they have left.
That was the criticism in the article based on two car bombs and a drive-by killing eight in Iraq today -- the day of this announcement. I guess a better question should have been "will Iraqi security forces be able to contain the unavoidable violence following this withdrawal?"
That's why you *don't have a specific date* nor do you release your plans to the enemy.
Or perhaps you gamble and show the world that the situation is under control by releasing your "plans" of withdrawal showing that those now in charge are very capable hands. Otherwise what do you do? Sit there and then just magically disappear one day? And when that happens, you think you're not in the same scenario you just mentioned? No matter how you cut it, it's a delicate situation.
My work here is dung.
>> You announce the date and pull out sooner. When the little shits come out of hiding you nail them.
Is this a military tactic, or a birth control method?
This probably just means we can now devote more of those troops to Afghanistan. *sigh*
I wonder how much we're spending on all those troops in Germany, South Korea and Japan? Bring all the troops home from everywhere, cut the military budget in half, and we'd have no economic woes, and still have a gigantic military.
So does this means the libs are admitting that the surge worked?
With which the owners of this site can buy technology, so yeah, it's technology related.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Way to read the article, champ.
Where did you get "end of violence" from? It's the end of combat operations, not the end of military presence. I suggest you look into the meaning of the term "combat operations" before making assumptions. We'll still have 50,000 troops there... essentially to prevent exactly what you are foreseeing.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I was thinking something similar (that it's easy to declare you will leave on a certain date, but hard to do it if the situation on the ground doesn't match at the time), but I think the way they are doing it is actually good.
They aren't declaring the specific date to leave, they are planning on the specific date to stop fighting. Basically on August 31st they are going to turn everything over to the Iraqi government (who at this point can probably handle anything the insurgents throw at it), but they are going to stick around, just in case. That way if the insurgents do throw everything at them, there'll still be troops around to help deal with it if they really need help. If they can handle themselves for a year, it is a sign we can safely remove the troops. The Iraqis still won't be alone, we can give them air superiority almost instantly if any insurgency gets too bad, and we can easily re-conquer the country within a month if necessary.
Obama did well on this one. Let's give him credit.
Qxe4
if bush i in iraq i had decided to push on to baghdad and topple saddam in the early 1990s after racing across the desert unimpeded, then the world would have seen that as justified
however, the political fear of americans coming home in bodybags was too much, so they turned around and left saddam in power. kuwait was liberated, saddam was cowed, end of story... not
of course, the shiites who revolted under the false impression or false covert promise of american support were massacred. and of course, the tragedy is saddam was removed when war hawks in the usa sensed the political will finally existed after 9/11 to finish the job. not that 9/11 had anything to do with saddam hussein, but it had everything to do with agendas and the willpower to get them done. the world sensed this massive disconnect and the seedy trumped up lies, and therefore did not support the americans at all the second time around
and it was done at the price of probably many more american, and iraqi, body bags, many years later, under bush ii in iraq ii
so colin powell and assorted numbnuts: you screwed up in 1991. you should have gone all the way. if you start a job, finish it completely. leaving it half done meant a problem that festered
yes, you had the highest and noblest of intentions in mind, but war is messy and has nothing to do with nobility and good intentions, and you need to take some ugly jobs to completion, or don't start the ugly job at all
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Silly troll, the Obama halo will make it so.
Guarding the oil.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
Violence isn't the problem, extricating US troops is the problem.
It didn't matter when Saddam was killing Iraqis, and it won't matter when we hand off to the locals again. The insurgents "attacking" /= "winning", and UNLESS Iraqis buy their country with their own blood sacrifice it won't mean anything to them. There is obviously much more tribal violence to come, but that's normal in that part of the world.
It's called "self-actualization" and there is nothing much Caucasian Colonials can do about it.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Yes, because obviously the presence of troops means that combat operations are underway.
Oh, wait...
Jesus Christ. Not only are you trying to play the race card, you're trying to play it in a game of marbles.
So, we are ending "combat operations" but keeping the soldiers with guns there? It's only slightly comforting to hear that nothing has changed in the military since I got out (Only in an "at least it isn't me" way). This used to be the trick they would pull on all the missions I was on. When people get tired, just tell them it's almost over, whether it really is or not. Since I'm allowed to think now, what does an end to combat operations really mean? It sounds like they are just going to end combat pay.
Escorting Haliburton trips to nowhere?
November 2 minus August 31 is two days?
Let me guess . . . you just graduated from high school in Texas?
When Israel and the U.S. decide to bomb Iran, the U.S. troops in Iraq are going to be in some serious trouble. My perception of the country is that the population feels a much stronger affinity with their religious beliefs than with any concept of Iraqi nationalism. What do Obama and friends expect the Shiite majority government and military in Iraq to do when Israel and the U.S. start dropping bombs on their Shiite bretheren across the border? I'm guessing that U.S. soldiers are being pulled back inside fortified positions in preparation for the inevitable counterattack.
I sincerely hope I'm wrong and that this pullback process is somehow proceeding as planned.
I think those are the guys who the insurgents keep blowing up, right?
Since 2005, according to the icasualties.org website, there's been 3078 American casualties and 8286 ISF casualties.
While I mourn for the loss of life, it seems to be like the ISF aren't going to be able to handle the load alone. Not that the U.S. should bear this load alone (and we haven't), but it seems like those folks still need help.
I can only imagine that after the U.S. leaves (and other countries will probably follow, soon), Iraq is going to be the center of out-of-control violence like we've not seen over there.
...except we already invaded Iraq and were doing military operations against it on a daily basis.
It's just that they were "nice clean air attacks" so no one really paid attention or objected. Our forces were pretty much completely safe. We were basically playing the role of bully. So there were no body count to disturb the Television viewers back home.
Iraq War 1 never really ended.
People just didn't care because it didn't seem to impact them.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
First, this "draw down" is a perfect example of political agendas fucking up military strategy. We should have drawn down a long ass time ago! Recent interviews I've read talk about the lack of professionalism in the IA/IP, the lack of running water and electricity, and have heard in numerous interviews with Iraqi's a theme, that at least dictatorship was more merciful on the general population. Any other similar wars like this going on....? We should have never been in Iraq in the first place, and we must expose and punish all those involved in blatantly sending Americans to their deaths and to kill innocents. My prediction is that Afghanistan will follow this pattern, the shift of focus to another "enemy" (Probably the unjustly demonized Iran) and in while the American public forgets about Ganny we will do the same thing, will the same ambiguous and debatable results, with almost no benefit to America other than some control of natural resources. We despise and often actively undermine true democracy in the middle east (See Iran, Lebanon etc). This is all just political posturing with little tangible improvement for us, but I guess its better late than never...
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
They were stealing Iraq's oil.
So, what... The solution is for the US to stay forever?
Remember to maintain your supply of
Starting a war (even a war with collateral damage) is not a war crime; the idea of a war crime is simply to state that one's legal means to wage war is not unlimited. Deportation of entire populations for deprivation and/or genocide, for instance, is right out. To compare US conduct in Iraq to such things is histrionic nonsense.
Well, if the carnage remains or intensifies after this month, that will show that it is not about the foreign invaders and never was. It's about embracing the 13th century over the 21st century that the real world is living in.
Oh, and here's what we end up with for our efforts and our dead. Muqtada al-Sadr, the influential Iranian supported insane religious nut hate monger, is withdrawing his so-called "support" for the current Nouri al-Maliki compromise government. We will have exchanged a fairly dangerous hateful sectarian dictatorship for an extremely dangerous hateful totalitarian religious madhouse insanity like the ones in Iran and other such hellholes. You remember, the general type of scum who were actually behind 9-11. Not the Iraqis as they were.
The US has had a long sequence of stupid and ineffectual presidents with little substantive difference between the two sides of the aisle. And so it continues.
We still have troops in every nation that we defeated post WW1. Why would Iraq be any different, especially given all the oil that's there?
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Sums of 5 years worth of casualties can hardly be used to analyze the on the ground competence and readiness of the current forces in such a rapidly changing environment. Hell, any environment. Check out the Civil War casualties, did the North apparently lose?
If we're ready to pull out in one month time, then it should be perfectly possible for the U.S to pull out right now. Sure, that won't be ideal, and I'm not saying we should leave right now. But how many folks here think Iraq will remain 99 percent stable if we removed all troops right now?
Soldiers grow back, forests don't.
You've never planted a tree? Seriously, you put a seedling in the ground when it is small, and years later you come back, and it is actually bigger. Plant a soldier and come back in a few years, and all you have is the same small stone with the name of someone's kid on it.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
Except france!
So how long can we afford to maintain 50000 troops in Iraq?
Remember to maintain your supply of
Stuff That Matters.
Iraq's oil production capabilities are around $20B/year. We're spending $300B/year on the war. There literally isn't enough oil in the ground there to pay us back for the last 7.5 years, and it would take a century even if they tried. Can we please do some basic math and stop the stupid "it's all about oil" line of attack - it makes you look like an idiot.
Do you have ESP?
When did the US defeat France post WW1? I seem to recall them liberating France from Germany during WW2, but not the US defeating the French.
How long have we maintained 40,000 troops in Korea?
Attack what? The primary point of attack has been convoys, on the road. Essentially laying mines and waiting for people to drive over them. If our troops are in bunkers, they'll be safe.
Now, if they attack the military bases, They Are Going To Lose. In fact, such a case would be readily welcomed by our military tacticians. We'd love if they just came out into the open and opened fire at our guys. Because they'd survive, return fire, and liberate the fuck out of them.
Also, just why do you think there are "few remaining insurgent groups" left? There are still a lot of Iraqi's in Iraq, and as long as they return fire, look menacing enough, or simply get in the way, they're going to be labeled as insurgents. So we can shoot them. Just as in Vietnam, the question "who is the enemy" has becomed muddled. And that's one of the big reasons that the occupation of Iraq is coming to an end.
Its a civil war, it doesn't matter who wins, everyone still looses.
We no longer need the oil! Obama motors has designed an electric cat that can travel 40 miles a day for the low price of $40,000! That's almost as far as an electric golf cart can go that you can get (with government rebates) for $0! Since nobody needs to live farther than 20 miles (you need to drive back home after work), the need for oil is now non-existent! We have no need of any fossil fuels since we have electric cars now!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
I'd say the one item that is worth thinking about is why would Iran allow a non-functioning state to exist on its border? If there was nobody to stop them, why not just annex the place so they can have law and order?
No, not the TV show - Iran doesn't like Western TV.
Clearly, nobody in Iraq is going to stop a takeover from Iran. The US is going to sit it out as well. So there is nobody left to object. Besides, the Iraq/Iran border was just something made up by the British.
Yeah, about that. How much is that costing us anyway?
And for what?
I understand that we, you know, conquered Germany and Japan. And poured money into rebuilding them. Part of that was establishing our dominance over them and all that jazz. That portion is over. We are no longer keeping the huns down. The emperor will not rise again. And if they do, they'll be allies.
So really, what purpose are the foreign military bases serving?
What the hell are you smokin,' boy?
-- Ethanol-fueled
Troll weed, obviously. At least I amuse myself...
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
In the campaign, Obama promised to pull out the combat brigades within 16 months. If you start counting from his inauguration, it's been 19 months. Wow, a President doing something he promised he would do, within 3 months of the date he said he would do it. Yeah, it's clearly a conspiracy.
So when can we expect Obama's version of "Mission Accomplished"?
there will be 50,000 US troops there through 2011...this is just the end of "combat operations" whatever that means
Hell, we still have troops in the South!
50,000 troops in an advisory role? Like one advisor for every four Iraqi soldiers? Sounds more like squad leaders to me. This is now really turning into Vietnam. Eerie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_Army
Only I can judge you.
But Korea is fun. The women are good looking and the booze is good.
Only I can judge you.
There were French forces under the collaborationist Vichy government in North Africa fighting along side Italian troops when the US and UK invaded Morocco. I don't believe they tried very hard, though.
Hey now. Don't get your politics up in my cool technology. The Volt is some cool shit even if it's just an intermediary step on the way to better solution. Please do not troll the Volt.
(The Volt includes an unknown glowing substance which fell to Earth, presumably from space. Do not taunt the Volt.)
I have trained the Iraqi security forces (military and civilian) and they are pretty much not trainable by western standards. You have grown men/working professionals who don't know their right from their left. You spend one week trying to teach them military drill that takes the average 8th grader 20 minutes to master. Add a loaded rifle and an "Insha Allah" attitude, and you only make everything worse.
Granted, they have pretty severe brain-drain in that country. All the smart ones left years ago (in the 80s, then again in 1990, then yet again in the 2000s). If security ever improves, I have several friends and colleagues that would go back. The problem is, security won't improve without the likes of them returning and bringing their advanced degrees back to their homeland. It's a total "chicken-or-the-egg" conundrum.
It's called "self-actualization" and there is nothing much Caucasian Colonials can do about it.
It's nice to hear your racism coming out and all, but the Iraqis are Caucasians too. Look it up.
There's good evidence the Iraqis have reached the point of self-actualization already. See, for example, the spring offensives, and others. Only the future will tell, of course, but there are huge differences between the Iraq occupation and the European colonies of previous generations. The biggest may be that the Europeans went and considered themselves to be taking care of the ignorant savages. They were weaklings that needed to be taken care of. Generations of people ruling over you with this kind of belief is going to wear on your psyche.
The soldiers in Iraq, on the other hand viewed the Iraqis as people to be trained to take care of themselves. There is a huge difference in respect levels between these two viewpoints. And the evidence points to the fact that the Iraqis have thrived and will be able to take care of themselves. Only time will tell, of course, but so far it's looking good. Which is why Obama is willing to start the withdrawal.
Qxe4
Don't be asinine, I can't begin to comprehend the differences in the world had the South won that war. How long would slavery have persisted? How would the two countries have expanded west? Two different American foreign policies during the World Wars? Everyone loses in most wars but to pretend the results make no difference to the world we live in is foolhardy at best.
Wait, we should have sent Stormin' Norman in to do the job so we wouldn't have to a decade later?
The reason Bush the Elder didn't take him down was EXACTLY because he foresaw what happened when Junior did it: a quagmire and a mess we can't possibly win. If Bush I had sent troops all the way in, it wouldn't have solved any part of the problem, it would have just made it happen 10 years earlier.
The problem was invading Iraq in 2003 for no adequate reason and therefore no realizable goal.
As you said, we should have just stayed the heck out.
So how long can we afford to maintain 50000 troops in Iraq?
We are already paying those troops. Might as well be doing something while they are getting paid.
Hear hear. I watched the Bush administration grapple unsuccessful to justify starting that war for over 6 years and I sincerely doubt some comment on slashdot will solve the riddle now.
huh, well for starters, I think the troops should stop making plywood out of mahogany. Really, what were they thinking?
~
No, he's just doing his math in octal.
I am officially gone from
Which is also stupid. Our troops should be defending our country. And with our troops in places like South Korea, we could very well be doing more harm than good.
we should not have military bases in 130 different countries.
either you are an empire or not. behave like one or don't. no one is giving out gold stars for being a "nice" empire, whatever the hell that is supposed to mean. it's not like the middle east is joyful we didn't kick out saddam hussein. no one on the arab street is going "the usa is a nice empire, they left saddam hussein stay alive". no, they are going "evil american empire left their anti-iranian puppet in place as a reward/ {pick your own consipriacy theory)"
there was absolutely nothing gained stopping at the gates of baghdad, whatever the hell our agreements with the saudi were, which reflected the insecurities of a few nitwits in the saudi ruling class, not the man on the streets of riyadh or baghdad
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Obama did well on this one. Let's give him credit.
Obama did well? Obama opposed everything that allowed Iraq to be in this position now. Obama had no plan for Iraq except a campaign promise (and like all of his campaign promises, it comes with a expiration date). Bush, and Patraus more so, deserves the credit here. They put all Iraq on this path, all Obama did was follow the blueprint given to him by Bush. A plan that called for the removal of troops in late 2010. Obama had no plan of his own
50 years? Hell they've been fighting over there since the first one learned how to pick up a stick and hit something with it. I say we pull everything out of there, rely on our own oil in the US/Alaska. Let them fight and kill themselves off and Allah gets to sort out who gets what virgins and how many.
--- If the bible proves the existence of God, then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman.
"Moving the vehicles is a hidden, really tragic problem."
Nice troll, but vehicles usually move by ship and are not crated, since crating would make them much more difficult to handle and serve no purpose. (IHMTTTSB- "I Has Many Trips To The Sand Box").
Most military gear isn't crated, but travels in either generic or purpose-built ISO containers. SOME of those have hardwood floors, but not of valuable mahogany. (/me lubs ISO containers, owns three as shop buildings, and worked out of many while deployed.)
I don't care about your feelings regarding casualties, but your are on a tech forum and shouldn't post misleading information regarding technology used to transport (anything).
https://www.marcorsyscom.usmc.mil/news/syscomnews.nsf/StoriesDisplay/7383A3E4E9F11DD1852573BE0051E8F1?OpenDocument
For ISO containers, just GIS "military ISO containers" for an overview.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I'm baffled by our strategy in Afghanistan.
It seems all we've done is flushed some of the terrorists into hiding into the nether regions of Pakistan. Wouldn't it be easier to find and bomb them if we allowed them to openly congregate in an open space like a desert for their terrorist training camps? I think we should withdraw our troops and just increase satellite and predator drone coverage. Isn't it also safer to drop bombs on Afghanistan, than a nuclear possessing country like Pakistan? Where is the common sense in strategy here?
Tim S-
Your pithy comment might look good on a bumper sticker or t-shirt, but it's not really this same thing and we both know it. It's about as dumb as the arguments from the right "when will we stop occupying (Chicago or other city) as there are more deaths there in (time period) than Iraq.
Germany is a strategic ally and fellow NATO member. Simply having operational bases in a country is not the same as occupation. The US does not patrol the streets of Germany, nor do they perform operational missions within Germany's borders aside from training simulations. Assignment in Germany is normally a cushy job and one many soldiers hope for.
US presence in Germany was scaled back following the re-unification of the two Germanys. Early in the Clinton administration early discharge was offered to many US soldiers as a scaling back "peace dividend" (I remember this personally because my wife took the opportunity to return to civilian life). Many troops who were stationed in Germany were moved to Saudi Arabia.
"Clearly, nobody in Iraq is going to stop a takeover from Iran."
Not so clearly, as Iraqis and "Persians" are historic enemies, which facilitated the Iran-Iraq War. The Iraqi government could call the US for help, and the US could use that as a figleaf to take out Iran.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Your calculation is wrong.
You assume $20B/year - $300B/year = $-280B/year
This is how the people running the war see it.
$20B/year + $300B/year (in cost plus contracts) = $320B/year = War oil is much better than regular oil!
This is politics for nerds. Has been for several years. I resisted it for a long time, but now I just play along and bitch about people who vote differently than I do - just like everyone else. Sometimes there is something interesting that comes up technology-wise. Sigh.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
Don't forget UAVs and other unmanned air systems that can be driven from the comfort of the Air Force base just outside of Las Vegas. No physical presence =! no projection of force.
The Nuremburg Trials have been criticized for bringing up the "war of aggression" charge, which never existed before that trial. It certainly is not in the Geneva Convention, which regulates only the conduct of war, not its existence. The problem with the "war of aggression" charge is that it is so vague and nebulous that it can only possibly be applied by the winner to the loser. For instance, if the US has tried Saddam for a "war of aggression" with regards to belligerent actions in UN no-fly zones. It's a ridiculous political charge. Not a war crime.
Also, who has jurisdiction to bring such a charge? The International Criminal Court is specifically prohibited from exercising jurisdiction over "crimes of aggression" (at the moment, the term is left undefined by the Rome Statute, and therefore unenforceable, because no nation on earth would willingly give up the prerogative to unilaterally initiate war).
You mean the Iraqi's and the pissed off Iraqi's?
It's all about the oil.
Let's say we're protecting oil wells owned by Shell capable of producing oil that will give Shell a profit of $5 billion. Now, the US government may spend $50 billion per year to protect those wells, but that costs Shell only $500,000 in bribes^H campaign contributions, so this arrangement is quite agreeable to Shell because they collect $4.5 billion in this arrangement.
Now you might think that the various fiscal responsibility types in Congress would raise a stink about this sort of waste, but they generally don't.
I am officially gone from
That wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. I ascribe the current calm to "exhaustion", not "change of heart" among people whose feuds go back centuries.
If they bleed a bit more they may tire a bit more, and when people tire of schismatic savagery (Europe certainly had its share!) they may become more reasonable. When thinking in historic terms, casualties are mere statistics and the outcome is what matters.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Do you know how long it takes to pack up all that stuff?
Hmm . . . the first primary after August 31 is Guam, on September 4. That's two days, yer betcher! Yee-haw!
The next one after that is the Virgin Islands, on September 11. That's . . . two days agin! Whoopee and a holler!
Durn, you gotta slow down there. Yer makin that there Texas Board a eddecashun look like a bunch a smarties!
Oil companies don't have to pay for the wars, US taxpayers do. Same people who expected to get rich are going to do so.
"Two different American foreign policies during the World Wars?"
Practical in WWI. Might have avoided US involvement in a squabble between Euro empires.
The Second World War would not likely have happened or happened the same way given a divided "former US".
US imperial reach into the Pacific may well have been different as there might not have been a Spanish-American war to whet the US appetite for Pacific involvement. The US oil/iron embargo that provoked/triggered the Jap attack in 1941 might never have happened because the fascination of US missionaries with Chinese might not have occurred.
Westward expansion could have been handled by the ballot box.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
It means keeping G.I.s in the FOBs and outsourcing military involvement to contractors. :)
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Starting a war (even a war with collateral damage) is not a war crime
It is unless there's a clear self-defense justification (and not a BS one like "Saddam Hussein will give his mortal enemy Osama bin Laden non-existent weapons of mass destruction"). It was defined as the war crime of "aggression" at Nuremberg as a crime against peace, again in the UN Charter (Principle VI), and is also within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
Now, in practice, hardly anyone gets charged with it, but in theory most of the Bush administration could be.
I am officially gone from
> Once you realize (or admit) that government is a business with a primary goal of generating profit, from that point on everything government does will make perfect sense.
What? I mean... what?? If Government was a business it would have been defunct decades ago. What business can print it's own money? In what business do you get to keep your job no matter how bad a job you do? What business (besides the auto companies, which are practically government owned now) can go into debt more each year and still stay in business?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
As everyone knows, before Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, he was a real sweetheart. Gassing Kurds, brutally oppressing any competing political parties, fighting the Iranians. And just how did he hold on to power for so long?
Back in the 60s, the Iraqi government was getting real friendly with the Soviet Union, which was bad news. Our installed dictator in Iran was keeping the oil flowing, but Iraq had a lot more of it and was right next door. So we supported a young man named Saddam Hussein and has Ba'athist Socialist party when the former government was coincidentally overthrown (wink wink). We liked Saddam, because he was a secular lawyer who liked Western culture, and in his 1970 Iraqi Constitution even mentioned things like equality for all religions, races, and genders. Even if it was an empty promise, that was some pretty radical stuff for an Arab state. But he also had stuff like, "Iraqi resources belong to the People," so we continued to favor the Shah in Iran. That is until 1979, when after decades of secret police torturing and killing Iranians so they could sell their oil more cheaply to Western powers, they overthrew their government and the Ayatollah came to power. From then on, Saddam became our primary political tool in the region, mostly for fighting the proxy war against Iran.
My favorite moment in US-Iraqi relations is when Reagan removed him from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list in 1982 so American firms and other international corporations could sell him biological agents and weapons. I'm sorry, I meant "dual use technology" and "farming equipment."
Or maybe it was when Ambassador Gillespie told Saddam that the US didn't care about Arab-Arab border conflicts just days before he sent his troops in to take over Kuwait.
Or maybe it was when the Kuwaiti Ambassador's daughter got up in front of Congress and lied about Saddam's troops placing babies on the floors so they would die - which was an amazing piece of propaganda, and a total fabrication.
When he was following orders, we ignored his crimes. When he stopped following orders, we suddenly remembered them. Unfortunately for us, the rest of the world doesn't stop and start history at our whim. An Iraqi will not forget that Americans were training Saddam's men to torture in the 1980s. They won't forget being left to die after the first Gulf War when we decided taking Saddam out would cause too much instability, and our choice to let Saddam mow people down with helicopters while we were still in control of their airspace. They will not forget starving in the 90s due to our embargo. They also won't forget that Saddam was our man until 2003. They won't forget our choice to use American companies to rebuild their infrastructure instead of Iraqi companies, or our choice to let Western oil companies get their pick of the oil field contracts without any input from their own government. They also won't forget that "terrorist" and "freedom fighter" can be the same person, depending on our political strategy that day.
They will never forget that the Americans cannot be trusted to act on any set of principles, because we simply don't have any. And the moment the Iraqi people try to kick out our corporations, we won't be too shy about reminding them.
Yes, but, the $300 billion comes from tax dollars, and the $20 billion goes to friends of George Bush and Dick Cheney. (A lot of the $300 does, too, for that matter.) Granted, it's not a perfectly efficient system. But oil executives and defense contractors are not the ones shelling out.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
Yeah, that oil in the US and Alaska should last us at least, what, 5 years or so? Plenty.
On a side note, I hadn't realized that Alaska finally seceded. Thank god for your knowledge of foreign and domestic issues.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
That is incorrect. A "war crime" has a legal definition that does not fit what you've just said.
And everyone knows the hair-growing consequence of self-amuse
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Careful... if you say anything bad about the anointed one you are likely to get marked as a troll. Oops. Too late. No bias on this site. Not at all.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
"Hell, we still have troops in the South!"
The North by and large didn't want military bases, the South by and large is supportive, so guess where they accumulate?
You insisted on invading, so enjoy sending us money and having us vote in national elections.
Self-determination may apply in former Yugoslavia, but it doesn't fly in the forcibly-United States of America.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
And most importantly, North Korea only sinks ships every now and then, there are no daily RPG attacks on our bases and trucks.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
The problem is, security won't improve without the likes of them returning and bringing their advanced degrees back to their homeland.
Oh there's an xkcd strip about that.
We still have troops in England, and the war of Independence ended in the 1780's
True, most Iranian's speak Farci, not Arabic. And Saddam's Sunni-led government was certainly an enemy of Shia Iran. But the majority of Iraq is made of Shia, many of whom are sympathetic to Iran. Muqtada Al Sadr has been a guest there for some time. And he's been in the news lately campaigning for office in Iraq again.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
After getting involved in two horrific world wars we didn't start the general thinking was keeping peace (stopping smaller conflicts from escalating into giant ones) in the rest of the world was the best way to defend our country. Not saying it's the right idea, or even that we've kept to it, but that was the general mindset that led to a lot of this projection of power.
No physical pilot presence != no presence. Someone has to secure the base, fuel and maintain the aircraft. And while UAVs are great in the mountains of Waziristan, they're not very helpful in rooting out insurgents in Baghdad. As long as our mission is to protect the Iraqi citizens we're going to need boots on the ground.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
A bit like recruits during America's own civil war:
Of course, back then all anyone expected a private to do was stand in line, fire his musket in the general direction of the enemy, and try not to die too fast, so it didn't matter all that much if he was as dumb as a box of rocks...
Read my blog.
So all Obama has to do is announce the violence will end on a particular date and it is done. Make is so number one. Engage!
The predator drones, yes, I'd imagine they need someone close by. The global hawks? Not so much. Also, UAVs can now be refueled in the air, there is no need for them to land if done properly. Not only do the global hawks have a much longer range, they also have a greater payload, and longer loiter capability.
http://www.google.com/search?q=air+refueling+uav
http://www.gizmag.com/uav-autonomous-aerial-refueling/8460/
A quote from the Gizmodo article:
"By adding an automated aerial refueling capability to UAVs, we can significantly increase their combat radius and mission times while reducing their forward staging needs and response times," said David Riley, Boeing Phantom Works program manager for the AAR program.
Emphasis mine.
But we don't get any cut of the $20B/year. So, it's $300B/year. I actually agree with what you're saying about war profiteers, but the bottom line is that the pittance of oil in that country is unrelated.
Do you have ESP?
Slavery is alive and well. How do you think most license plates are made? Go read the thirteenth amendment. It specifically allows for slavery, as long as you're convicted of "a crime." Anything. And both the federal and the state legislatures spend all day, every working day, coming up with new ways to qualify citizens for just that role. So much so that is has become understood and broadly accepted that if you engage in many harmless acts between entirely consenting adults, you're now qualified for enrollment in the slave program, and as an additional bonus, relegated to the new, unemployable underclass.
And strangely enough, if you look into any prison, you'll find that the majority of the residents are the same color as those who used to work in the plantation fields.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
yro=yeah right, obama
You almost had something going there but it can be read too many different ways.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
What makes you think that oil companies need to get the oil out of the ground in order to get rich? The more supply an oil company controls, the more say they have over the price. Shut down oil production in Iraq, sell the middle east oil from surrounding regions at a high premium, and they'll still get rich.
There will be 50,000 US troops there through 2011; no doubt after 2011, there will still be troops there. If you need something to compare this to, you know the "yellow / orange / red" alert the idiots flash on tv? This is like that. A superficial change in announced status that means absolutely nothing.
Iraq is presently seventh among all nations in the amount of petroleum products exported to the US. That tells you exactly what will happen with our troop presence: nothing that would allow that status to diminish by dint of action by the natives.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Interesting. Thanks for the link. A useful tool, no doubt, and perhaps a replacement for manned aircraft in many cases. But never a replacement for a muddy-boots Soldier or Marine. Now when the robots can take and hold ground...
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
You don't get my point.
The health care bill is going to cost many of us a lot and we get nothing in return. Health care costs are going to go up a lot. Someone has to pay for all of those people who will not pay for their health care. That is what the added cost the rest of us are paying is being used for. Forcing everyone to have health care only hurts those people that are working. Usually the middle class. So much for no taxes or tax increases on the middle class (or those making less then $250k, er $200k, er .. what ever the amount is now).
This new health care system is for citizens of the United States. So if you are not a citizen, sorry you pay. That would be good to see but it will never happen. If you have your own health care coverage, use that. No free rides.
I would always joke that the problem with the Iraqi's is that the words for left and right are Yamiin and Yasaar, respectively, so you can't hold up you finger and thumb with the left hand forming an "L" for "left" like you can in English.
No problem. I don't think you'll ever replace folks on the ground completely, but you if you can get to the point where you can project power from the air and garner survillence (Global Hawks), resupply remotely (KC-130s outfitted with UAV intelligence), and also automate ground forces (lots in dev with DARPA, nothing on the ground yet), you need *very few* soldiers in forward areas. Send some of the Phalanx CIWS weapon platforms on land vehicles with treads along, and with your air and land robotics, you as a single soldier can be a formidable "army of one".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS
No military force has ever walked away from Afghanistan as a winner.Not Alexander the Great, not the British Empire, not Russia nor will the U.S.. The only winners are those that just walk away.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Health care costs are going to go up a lot.
They're already going up yearly without any government assistance.
Someone has to pay for all of those people who will not pay for their health care.
We already do. This isn't new and it wasn't started with the recent health care bill.
That is what the added cost the rest of us are paying is being used for.
Actually, the added cost is mostly to cover bullshit administrative tasks. A point that gets ignored by most of the public despite it being one of the most critical points against the bill.
Forcing everyone to have health care only hurts those people that are working.
Meh, hurts the employers a lot more than the employees. (Note: One can argue that hurts the employees as consequence. Fair enough point, but that still puts the initial pain on the employer.)
So much for no taxes or tax increases on the middle class (or those making less then $250k, er $200k, er .. what ever the amount is now).
Wake up to reality: People promising you tax cuts are full of shit and do not have your best interest in mind. They want your vote and they don't give two shits with respect to how much you'll benefit from a 1% tax cut. More importantly, these tools don't give a damn about balancing our debt problem; that's what you should care about in the end, because long term debt will determine tax rates when debt and Social Security payouts end up driving the government's "income" dispersal.
They put all Iraq on this path, all Obama did was follow the blueprint given to him by Bush.
Indeed, it is true, but he didn't have to. He could have really messed things up by now if he had gone about things differently. Instead, he followed the advice of his generals, went forward, and now has success. I am happy with success, and just because other people have done well doesn't mean Obama didn't do well.
Qxe4
The difference between them is Dubya's daddy didn't know when to pull out.
Much of it boils down to cold war thinking, and not re-thinking that strategy since the fall of the Soviet Union. Particularly Germany. The U.S. thoguht from the 1950s through the end of the 1980s that the next big war would be fought to repel a Soviet / Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe. And (then West) Germany was of course strategically important.
In Japan, we are obligated to stay by the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan. In a nutshell, the Japanese are limited by treaty in regards to what type of Military they are permitted to develop. To bridge the gap, and because it was once in our strategic interest, we base forces there to help protect Japan. You can argue that we protect them from China now, but I don't hear anyone claiming that China has been doing much saber rattling.
Also, all the bases we maintain it has to do with a policy called "Global Reach". It's the same reason we maintain so many Super Carriers. The idea is that we can have warplanes overhead within a few hours, and boots on the ground in a day or so anywhere on the globe that they're needed.
South Korea is different, and quite unique. First, remember that the Korean war never ended. There's just a cease fire. The war is still technically going on.
Second, The North continues to threaten the South. If there were no U.S. troops there, or if there were a small number of advisers in-country with little formal presence (say 400 troops) then if the North Koreans were to attack, that probably wouldn't really be enough to draw us into a shooting war with the North Koreans.
Now 40,000 troops aren't enough to make a huge difference in an all out assault by the North on the South. Not militarily. The ROK will either hold their ground or be overrun with or without those 40,000 troops. But the North knows they're there, and they know that attacking the South, which is "defended by" 40,000 U.S. troops, would have to draw the U.S. into the war. We could not ignore it.
The 40,000 troops in Korea are in effect, a trip wire. They serve as a deterrent against North Korean aggression. They say to the North "Make no mistake: we have far too much invested in this country to consider turning a blind eye toward your aggression". They ensure that the North Koreans don't make the same mistake with the South that Iraq made with Kuwait. I'd rather have 40,000 troops sitting to babysit a tense peace, than have to mobilize 500,000 troops to war (As was done for Kuwait) because it was left undefended.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
I have crafted 5 excuses for your enjoyment:
1) 2 Days, 2 Months, 6000 years, 14 billions years, big deal?
2) I did my Calendar math on a Pentium.
5) I forgot to consult the Book of Armaments.
despite being pedantic, because one would hate for people to think *we'd wasted money we'd spent on your education (Assuming NCSU is your alma mater or current school): http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/get-down-to-brass-tacks.html it's brass tacks, not brass tax some federal funding right? that's why it's we.
Only I can judge you.
You can argue that we protect them from China now, but I don't hear anyone claiming that China has been doing much saber rattling.
Then you've clearly not been paying attention to the news over the last decade or two. North Korea and China have been saber rattling, but more so has been North Korea. You don't remember Japan being pissed off about North Korea launching missiles over Japan to make a statement to both Japan and the US? That was practically a blink in time ago.
Sorry, that should have been a trillion dollars... not a billion... and that doesn't even count the fucking patriot act and the "homeland idiocy" department costs.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Are you sure that's the correct strip you wanted to link?
:n
Americans only have so much resolve. If you hold out long enough we will give up and go home.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I fail to see how the second largest oil reserves in the world aren'd taht much especially if Saudi Arabia has been bullshitting the world about reserves. Remember that Matt Simmons was one of the few people who admits he was part of Cheney's Energy task force.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
amazing that the american people didn't take to the streets to oppose a war against a company that began under false pretenses because bush, cheney, and rice lied about the WMD's. my position all along was if iraq has WMD's, who the fuck cares, because they don't have a delivery system. Without ICBMs, WMD's are not much of a threat.
George W. Bush & his entire regime should be in prison for lying to the american people and sending thousands of soldiers to their deaths for their campaign of deception. Iraq was not a war we needed to fight, nor could afford to fight, and financing it through loans from China could end up spelling the end of American global dominance. this corrupt and stupid show of hubris still makes me angry, for I know how great america could have been, had we not flushed trillions of dollars down the toilet at the whims of a silver-spooned sycophant who deserves nothing better but to be offered up to the Hague as a war criminal, along with our apologies to the Iraqi people.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Ever since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I have held the opinion that "bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq" is so much BS, and that within 6 months of forces leaving, Iraq will experience civil war and finally devolve into an Islamic republic which will not look favorably on the West.
Finally, someone speaks the truth!
Has anyone played Risk? 1) You strategically place a number of soldiers in country A 2) Invade neighboring country B 3) Strategically move soldiers to country B 4) Invade country C . . Look at the Iraq/Iran/Afghanistan map, it's all there in black and white. Iraq: Oil - Secured. Afghanistan: Trillion-dollar mineral deposits - Un-secured. Iran: Nuclear power = Less imported oil = Oil prices drop = That's a no no from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etc..
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Although, it would be truly hilarious if, contrary to stereotypes, he were tremendously under endowed. Then he could whip it out and say, "See, white men? You have nothing to fear from my tiny penis!" and we could all live in interracial harmony and peace.
Seriously though, that whole attempt to denigrate the black race by dehumanizing them kinda backfired, "Those blacks are ANIMALS! Huge, hulking, sexy animals with magnificent physiques and throbbing, oh God damn it, why didn't we think this through? Ladies! It isn't true! It was meant as an insult! Where are you going?"
The truth is, race is and always has been a red herring used in the class war by the aristocracy, as a means of keeping the proletariat divided.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Absolutely.
How does that strip relate to the conversation?
:n
There's plenty of Oil in Iraq to pay us back, and then some.
http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aairaqioil.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves#Estimated_reserves_by_country
However, that is not the point. Do you really think that the private oil corporations care how much tax payer money is spent securing those oil fields? But even that is a secondary point. Controlling energy is much more important than making money off it.
Google a bit about James Baker, silk road, Afghanistan pipelines, to see plans drawn up in the 1990's to limit China and Russians access to oil and natural gas reserves in the region. Basically building a bunch of pipelines all the way to the Caspian sea. Its no surprise that we are in Afghanistan.
Now.... the powers that be may have waited until they had an excuse to enter those countries, but control of energy, power, and money are huge factors in deciding to go to war. For proof, please see any genocide in Africa, and the US response to it.
Touche, but since NCSU is largely an engineering school I'd be more concerned if I WAS paying for someone to spend days researching the etymology of random phrases during the course of a college education. I should have picked up on that in my own reading. But I suppose that's what Carolina is for ;)
Because nothing says, lets put aside the differences we've fought over for hundreds of years and work together like blowing up a sacred monument and creating hundreds of thousands of martyrs.
Do you think if Al-Queda blew up the white house that Americans would realise they were beaten and just give up?
No. Thought so.
Then why the hell do you think blowing up Mecca will help?.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Hiding?
You do know that US forces are not in control over there. The Green Zone gets attacked on a weekly, if not daily basis.
Besides this, they are spending most of their time and forces fighting each other. When the US forces leave, only the death toll of Americans will go down. But then again, this never was about the Iraqi's
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Citation needed.
Is that Iraq's current production or Iraq's 1998 production because I'll clue you in sparky. Iraq has not been permitted to trade that much oil since 1992 on account of the UN embargo against them. The gulf patrols and no fly zones which the US, British and Australian navies maintain to this very day.
What are the reserves?
That's because those who envisaged this war never actually understood that maybe, the Iraqi people dont want to be liberated and will resist them or start a civil war. Bush and co never imagined the war would cost US$300B in total let alone US$300B a year for over 7 years.
The war was to gain control of Iraq's oil reserve. Don't let the fact that they failed to achieve that objective convince you otherwise.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Can we please do some basic math and stop the stupid "it's all about oil" line of attack - it makes you look like an idiot.
Bad figures aside, what do you figure it's about?
Bringing democracy to the middle east? Believing that is what it was about really shows up the complete, utter, ignorant stupidity of the people who thought it up.
Bush Jr wanting revenge on the guy that, supposedly, was responsible for a hit team targeting his dad? Ditto.
Corporate lobbyists looking for a war to fill their coffers?
Then what, exactly?
How little you know.
1) The US isn't in a position to bomb anything at the moment.
2) Israel will never bomb Iran. Israel knows that Iran is not a threat and has not really fought a war of aggression and won, they know this. Defensive wars give Israel the upper hand. Unlike the US, Israeli military leaders will not follow a failed strategy just because they started it.
The strange thing about the Jewish (Israel) and Persian (Iran) people is that they get on like a house on fire. When the Islamic republic started expelling certain religious people (Zoroastrian leaders, Baha'i, Jews and so forth) most of them fled to... Israel. There are several Iranian Jews are members of the Israeli government, Moshe Katsav, 8th president of Israel was Iranian. If Israel attacks Iran this will galvanise the people under the Islamic government and Israel knows this. If Iran attacks Israel, Iran knows full when Israeli tanks, lead by Farsi speaking Persian Israeli's arrive in an Iranian ville, no one will give a shit what religion they follow because someone's uncle has come home. Persian Iranians (Read, the vast majority of Iran) dont hate Jews or Israel, the Arab government hates Israel but knows it can never attack them without losing support of the people because the animosity between Arabs and Persians is legendary.
Now the Islamic government of Iran is facing a crisis it has never head to deal with. When the Iran Iraq war of the 80's started to deplete the Iranian population the leaders issued an edict, "start making babies" and the people followed. How old are the babies born in 1984-1989 today? Now a large, young population is angry and want to express it, they've never had 20 somethings in any significant number before, they aren't old enough to remember how bad the Shah was and why the Islamic revolution was supported. All they know is that they dont like the current government.
So Iran is no threat, if anything Israel has taken to supporting the current regime in order to distance Tehran from their Israel hating allies (Hezbolla and Hamas).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
That's a fine bit of revisionary history there.
There was never a good reason to be in our current iraq war. First it was because 'Saddam has weapons of mass destruction' then it was 'Saddam supported terrorists' which was also blatantly false. Then we went in to liberate the population, inviting terrorism into their land. Now we're there because we can't remove ourselves from the tangled mess we created.
The whole war has been bullshit, and many Iraqi's were better off under Saddam.
I propose that when the Islamists hit us, we hit them back harder; with maximum effect, and minimum cost. They do not have bombers; bombs; military worth consideration... etc. What they have are young men who will strap on bombs, go out, and with no effect on the family other than lowering their food bills, blow our shit up.
It is my opinion that we should extend the cost of those boys back to the families, and more to the point, to the religion, that is spawning them.
We have the capability to hit them much, much harder than they can hit us. We should use that capability.
As for "sacred monuments", I don't give a rat's ass about their superstitions, or yours. If they want to preserve their culture, they need to learn to not attack highly technological cultures with big weapons.
But that's not going to happen; because we're not at war to win: We're at war to make money.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Sure, full credit to Petraus and Bush for the surge. However no credit to Bush for going into Iraq in the first place. Even Petraus said going into Iraq was a stupid idea before the event.
Obama does deserve credit for opposing the war before it started (which matches Petraus' position).
meh
The obvious difference is that American troops aren't being targeted and killed by hostiles in all those countries. So maintaining a presence there costs US money, but not lives.
The US was at war with France?
Of course it is not about oil money going to taxpayers. It is about the gov't subsidizing oil companies making profits on that oil.
Actually, you are wrong. It is about the oil. It is about the oil profits, actually: the US pays $300B/year for the oil companies to profit $XXX/year; $XXX might be less than $300B, but it doesn't matter: if those $300B were not spent, the oil companies execs wouldn't have the million dollar bonuses.
Yes...see list of belligerents.
"forcibly-United States of America" And don't you ever forget it was the North that had to clean up the South from the sin of slavery. Sherman didn't go far enough.
I see, so the U.S. forced Japan into Manchuria in the early 30's and demanded the Rape of Nanking? You do recall why the U.S. had those embargoes, right? This was the mid-century equivalent to sanctions that seems all the rage at the U.N. in lieu of doing anything productive. The Spanish-American war didn't whet American appetite for anything except salsa and bananas, which were the U.S.'s backyard.
Yep, WWII would have been different with a weak U.S. Hitler's or Stalin's minions would still be running Europe without the Jews, and those lovely Japanese and their deep respect for Chinese and whales would still be showing them the depths of their respect. Ever read about the Rape of Nanking? Yep, the world would be different.
Could I please have some of what you are smoking?
Yeah! We just told the enemy when we are going to surrender.
Before you start about this being "flame bait"... Why on earth would you announce "we are ending this war on [blah]". All this is going to do is let the enemy know when they can go back to business as usual and punish those that stood against them.
When is a war over? When one side surrenders. Last time I looked the enemy has not surrendered; therefore, we are surrendering -- they won. The troops that we have sent have died in vain, and for what??? Politics.
"Elections are coming around and my party is going to lose big unless I pull a rabbit out of my hat!" How many lives are worth a seat on the Senate?
I can only imagine if 9/11 (you remember, when they declared war on us) occurred with this man was in office.
can't stand it. anyone with a supple enough mind doesn't mind it
therefore i drive away brittle minds, so i don't have to deal with them, and brittle minds don't read my words, and don't have to deal with me. win-win
its the same logic tattooed/ pierced people use: they cannot deal with shallow feeble nitwits. so they mark themselves in a way that the nitwits can't deal with. anyone with a relaxed open mind has no problem. so the nitwits win: no scary tattooed people to deal with, and the tattooed guy wins: no nitwits to deal with. again, win-win
consider modified writing on the web an online version of people with heavy body modifications: you radicalize your appearance in order to manipulate how people react to you. you purposefully introduce noise of a certain frequency into the signal that in some minds drives them nuts and drives them away, and in other minds is not a bother. and i do this out of necessity: small brittle minds and small brittle thoughts make me want to kill someone. so i do it so i don't go into a murderous rage at how petty and feeble some people can be
this is my character, and this is how i deal with my weakness: the desire to kill people who are petty feeble and small-minded is not healthy, so i purposefully attenuate my appearance to the world to protect myself from such people, and also protect them from me. i am a moral person, i realize the desire to kill flaky people is not healthy, nor right. so i must protect myself, and them, from my murderous rage at the shallow end of the mind pool
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
But how long were we there that we were targeted? We weren't greeted as liberators with flowers and smiles in Germany.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
policy called "Global Reach"
Well yeah. But what has that really gotten us? This is one of the reasons that the rest of the world sees us as bullies. This is why our military costs what it does. This is dangerously close of making us the "bad guy".
, but I don't hear anyone claiming that China has been doing much saber rattling.
Well.... depends where you listen. Among the gun-nut types, China is the obvious next big enemy where all their paranoia is being directed. And there have been incidents:
Surfacing a sub in the midst of our carrier group.
Blinding spy satellites.
State sponsored hacking.
The usual tech espionage.
There was that flyboy who crashed into ours.
Most of it isn't quite saber rattling, but showing off that China is a modern military might.
In some cases, you were. Especially when there were Soviets in the east, with their rather brutal treatment of Germans, to compare with. A lot of Germans specifically moved from East to West Germany so as to end up in zones occupied by Western Allies, and most realized that it mostly meant Americans at that point.
On the other hand, the war there was very different as well - massive carpet-bombing of civilian targets etc. Survivors knew that Allies weren't joking, and that any further resistance would be crushed brutally and with no remorse. Compared to how military operations are conducted by US forces today in Afghanistan and Iraq - even taking into account the various deviations from rules of engagement and laws of war - it's pretty much all roses. It's one thing to become an insurgent when you mainly risk your own life, and quite another when your entire home city can be leveled to the ground in retribution.
Japan is technically forbidden to maintain a military by Article 9 of it's Constitution, not the treaty I linked to. So you're partially correct there.
The treaty I linked to is still in effect though. It's the 1951 treaty expired after 10 years. The newer treaty of 1960 was signed when the original expired. Rather than just renewing the text of the original treaty, they created a newer one that had two expiration clauses:
So either the U.N. can take over security for the region, in which case, we can walk away, OR after 10 years, either us or the Japanese can give notice of our intention to terminate the treaty, and it will expire one year from that date.
So since it's been more than 10 years, we could terminate with one year notice. But because neither party has done so, the treaty is still in effect.
I'm not defending Global Reach. At least not the way it's been scaled up. Just trying to inform.
Case in point: There are 22 "Aircraft Carriers" in the world today. This includes the silly little ski-jump ramp carriers like the British and others use, and a Japanese Carrier that can only field helicopters.
In fact, I think the typical American has an idea of that a modern carrier is:
12 of the 22 carriers on this list have these features. The French Carrier Charles de Gaulle is the only one of the 12 that's not American, and is far smaller than the 11 American Super Carriers.
Put another way: There are 11 carriers in the world. And another 11 super carriers. We have all 11 Super Carriers, and the rest of the world has the remaining 11 smaller ones (some of which are barely operational).
Once you've got four carriers, you've already doubled the number of your nearest competitor. Why does anyone need 11? With more under construction?
That said, to address your other point: I don't think it's the size of our forces that has the rest of the world seeing us as bullies. Our military was just as large in the 90s, through 2002. Nobody saw our participation in the Gulf War, Kosovo, or Somolia, as "bullying". Indeed, it was the philosophy of "Preemptive War" in Iraq in 2003 that seemed to sway world opinion. We attacked a sovereign nation, which was no threat to us, and of dubious threat to it's neighbors on flimsy, (later revealed to be fabricated) evidence. Eight years later we're still there. Nobody's going to stand up and defend Hussain, but this was probably not the way to go about deposing him.
So it's not the size of our forces that I'd say has the world seeing us as bullies, it's the use of those forces outside of
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
It's a lot cheaper to have them practice digging fox holes on a US Base than to station them in Iraq. They don't get hazard pay and supplying them is cheaper.
Yes but you are getting higher skilled troops who spend their time deployed.
The only real savings in redeployment is cutting out all the contractors.
The egg came first. History tells us the answer to long lasting peace. Conditions have to deteriate to a certain level before they lose the desire to fight. They obviously have it too nice over there. I think they need to lose at least 25% more people, perhaps even 50% more before they will become civilized. This has to be done by the indiginous people. Only then will they see how terrible it is and stop it. Then it's just maintenance for a decade or so. Even in the US, we really could use the duel. Get rid of some crazy people.