Re: France, suddenly has backbone
Why allow the competition? The point of meeting challenges is to overcome them. However, the longer you wait , the harder the challenge.
Then why doesn't Walmart invade K-Mart? Unless you're a militaristic imperialist country, competition means that you compete in the market and only on the battlefield if you have to.
There were two separete wars going on. We declared war on Japan out of revenge. Call it defense or whatever. In the end, they hit us. We hit back. The fact that Japan didn't attack any American soil in the almost year it took to hit back should tell us that Japan's goal was the Pacific, not the U.S. Hawaii was an inconvenience.
However, it took Roosevelt years and years to convince Americans that the real war was in Europe against Germany. Americans couldn't understand how this was true since it was Japanese that attacked Pearl Harbor. The fact is that Roosevelt recognized the economic instability that Germany was causing in the face of Europe's inability to fix it. Our war in Europe had everything to do with economy. What else explains that throughout the first half of the 1940 we conducted business with germany even as we bank rolled the war for the Allies? It wasn't until 1944 that we got locally involved and really chose a side (I mean away from the microphone).
Roosevelt actually though Europe was putitng too much pressure on Germany and that was what was leading to our problems. However, do we really want to go over the entire history of WWII here? To my point, it worked this way:
Just before 8 on the morning of December 7, 1941, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. The barrage lasted just two hours, but it was devastating: The Japanese managed to destroy nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and almost 200 airplanes. More than 2,000 Americans soldiers and sailors died in the attack, and another 1,000 were wounded. The day after the assault, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan; Congress approved his declaration with just one dissenting vote. Three days later, Japanese allies Germany and Italy also declared war on the United States, and again Congress reciprocated. More than two years into the conflict, America had finally joined World War II.
Pearl Harbor — History.com Articles, Video, Pictures and Facts
Roosevelt, no matter what he thought, did not bring us to way based on anything else other the Attack on Pearl Harbor (I won't get into the mistake you seem to be making in the comparison you hint at here).
Exactly true. But we are hardly absent a core moral value just because we have had to play in the gutter the world provides. This is what I keep trying to make clear to people. Our "moral high ground" stems from the fact that we don't conquer and keep and how we behave.
Your point is a false one, like the false choices Bush gave us. Nothing about this gutter requires us to act against a core moral value, if of course we really value anything moral. And while I understand you trying to paint history in a much nobler light than it was, and I really don't want to do history class here, the fact remains, when you get in the mud, you become the pig. It is one thing to get dirty when
NECESSARY, and another to wallow in the mud.
And make no mistake, keeping is a bit of a gray area. We don't have to add a star as you said earlier to keep. Frankly, better for us if the government
APPEARS spearate and not answerable. But we've taken some choices off the table, imposed our designs in more subtle ways. If we make them adhere to our interests, then we are keeping to a degree.
Aggression is often excused, especially when it is in reaction to an offense. Even two atomic bombs on civilian cities was easily forgiven given that we won. You think you could convince Americans that they didn't need revenge after Pearl Harbor? Japan wasn't going to attack our continent yet the world needed to know our reaction. Germany was never going to attack our continent, yet it was identified as more important to a wider picture. Afghanistan was revenge. Iraq was identified as more important to a wider picture. People don't mess with us because we have a way of meeting each slap with a closed repeated fist. After the last ten years, do you think any nation or organization is going to test us any time soon?
Trouble is to no real degree did either country offend. Not to any level justifying invasion. This is that false comparison you hinted to earlier. The point doesn't hold because Japan did in fact attack us. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq did, hence they fail to meet the same critieria Japan met. Too often this lazy comparison was issued during the lead up to the war. As those how attacked us were not who we slapped, especially in Iraq, we did nothign to make them fear. Hell, we did exactly what they hoped we would do. OBL wanted us in Afghanistan, but we were more capable than he thought. had we stoped there, we'd have escaped more of the cost of this reckless aggression. But, as noted by Schueller, we gave them a second bite at the apple and Iraq help our enemies more than anything we could have done. It was even more foolisha nd reckless than Afghanistan.
But the point is, your comparison doesn't work.
But we didn't invade Afghanistan or Iraq for Democracy. We invaded Afghanistan to rid ourselves of the Al-Queda threat (revenge). And we invaded Iraq to rid oursleves of the UN mission to preserve exactly what Osama Bin Laden used to argue 9/11. Providing opportunity (through democracy) was just to avoid the other easier option...another dictatorship.
We did not rid our self of Al Qaeda. Last CIA report I read (sometime ago), they stated Al Qaeda was as strong as ever. In fact, we helped with recruitment. And no, we could have just walked away form the UN mission if ridding ourself was our goal. I think you know better than that.
However, Bush's rationale to the public was WMDs. Followed by WMD programs. Followed by WMD program related activities, followed by spreading democracy. And may conservatives argued that by spreading democracy, we'd end terrorism, the fact they ahd no actual evidence to support that escape their perview.
Why did we invade Iraq? Your guess is as good as anyone's. But the best explaination I heard came from the conservative think tank Straffor. While criticizing Bush for telling the worng lie (wmds), they said we needed to invade Iraq to have a base there in oreder to better surround Iran. Can't swear it's true either. But I accept nothing I've heard as a real justification.
Apparently, I have waged conflict in three seperate regions over the course of 20 years so that Washington can look like it does today. You think anybody in Washington represents you at all? My lack of faith in democracy stems from my lack of faith in people. I believe we could take a lesson from the Turks. When the democracy begins to fail, it's time for a re-boot. Our constitution say's something about that doesn't it?
But the cold hard truth is that none of us take an oath to protect American people or our government. We protect and ideal. To Defend the Constitution of the United States. This makes us core idealists. And Americans hate idealists anymore, don't they?
You don't sound like an idealist. But let me ask you, from your point of view, have you fulfilled your oath? What about Iraq, for example, was protecting the American ideal? The constitution?
