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French troop pullout from Afghanistan to start in July

Under civilian control, there is the possibility of self correction through elections or impeachments. Nixon was impeached during Vietnam, and the Republicans lost the presidency during the Iraq war.

Under authoritarian control self correction is not as likely.

Well, nobody has suggested that the military be removed from civilian over sight. There you go trying to make things black and white again. What has been suggested is that history is clear about the results of non-serving citizens interjecting tactics upon serving practitioners. Nothing is more dangerous than the politician (or civilian) that looks at the military and states that he knows "exactly what to do."
 
truth is that our morality is tied up in our interests.

We obviously were raised differently. My morality doesn't include killing others to make ourselves richer.
 
We obviously were raised differently. My morality doesn't include killing others to make ourselves richer.

That's a helluva accusation.
 
We obviously were raised differently. My morality doesn't include killing others to make ourselves richer.

Your morality, tied to international laws that dismiss morality and hinge on "stability", is false. Once again, your "morality" has nothing to do with the reality. "Making ourselves richer" has never been a mission. Our mission has been to preserve the American opportunity and lifestyle so that individuals like you can make yourself rich. Insisting that your sense of morality greets the world that you live in does nothing constructive and acts as a wall from understanding. You are free to explain this......

Revolutionary War - Freedom

War of 1812 - Freedom

Civil War - Freedom

War in the Pacific - Defense & Revenge on the Japanese

Afghanistan - Defense & Revenge on Islamist extremists


With these five events aside, explain the rest. Explain what the majority of all our activity abroad was about. Explain what deploying our troops across these oceans have menat to the world. I can explain what each one was about and what it meant to the world. And it isn't as simple as a gaffe like "oil." An entire world hasn't folowed us down the path we paved and guard today because of Exxon.

And my learning and understanding go beyond my early years of being raised.
 
Then obviously you haven't read his support of wars for hegemony

Well let's see.....

The world without "hegemony" is a world full of empires that created Colonial competition and World Wars. Slaughter and mayhem was the norm. This was the world when America isolated from the old world. After World War II the world quickly faced a Soviet Communist path. Only the U.S. could compete against this, and with our way of life in jeopardy, so we did and prevailed. Today, we are the last standing "empire." It's been a bumpy path that the old world provided, but we travel it better than anybody. We've been paving it ever since. You should be thankful that nobody else stands to suck the world into World Wars anymore.

Look at it another way....

You want to know "a" reason that the old world looks down upon us? It's because we proved to be able to do what they proved they could not. Being the world's most powerful nation after World War I, we shared this power and created the League of Nations for or so called "parents" in Europe so that they could finally have peace. Proving incapable with World War II, we again launched across the Atlantic Ocean. This time, being the most powerful nation in history, we shared or power and created the United Nations. No one before us ever shared power like this. No one before us ever cared to do anything that would humble absolute self-power.

Hegemony is a vicious word used by people who have twisted history to fit a cynical idea of the world they live in. "Hegemony" has saved the world from untold travesty. You may bitch about Vietnam or Iraq, but try accepting that another World War could have easily replaced such smaller events. The world without American "hegemony" cost hundreds of millions of lives. Another reason why the old world hides its embarassment behind the lie of disgust.

By the way, do you have any idea how many empires went down just in the 21st century in events that you do "support?" Do you realize that those events went towards today's "hegemony" and cost far more lives than anything else put together? Once again, I call out your idea of your "morality." Killing is a part of war. And whether you support one war or another, it is all murder so let's not pretend that you can choose when and when not to apply your sense of "morality." Your "morality" is either solid or it is wavering to your personal agendas of support.

Understand your world and your nation's history and you won't waver so much. And given that hypocracy is human nature and it is the only way to survive or prosper in this world, accept a bit of that too.
 
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Then obviously you haven't read his support of wars for hegemony

I've read your posts and I say again, that's one helluva accusation.
 
Your morality, tied to international laws that dismiss morality and hinge on "stability", is false. Once again, your "morality" has nothing to do with the reality. "Making ourselves richer" has never been a mission. Our mission has been to preserve the American opportunity and lifestyle so that individuals like you can make yourself rich. Insisting that your sense of morality greets the world that you live in does nothing constructive and acts as a wall from understanding. You are free to explain this......

Revolutionary War - Freedom

War of 1812 - Freedom

Civil War - Freedom

War in the Pacific - Defense & Revenge on the Japanese

Afghanistan - Defense & Revenge on Islamist extremists


With these five events aside, explain the rest. Explain what the majority of all our activity abroad was about. Explain what deploying our troops across these oceans have menat to the world. I can explain what each one was about and what it meant to the world. And it isn't as simple as a gaffe like "oil." An entire world hasn't folowed us down the path we paved and guard today because of Exxon.

And my learning and understanding go beyond my early years of being raised.


I am not opposed to defensive wars. Like libertarians, I support a strong defense. I do not however support wars for hegemony, such as Vietnam and Iraq, and what the war in Afghanistan has become.
 
I am not opposed to defensive wars.


Like libertarians, I support a strong defense.

I know this. BUT,.....


I do not however support wars for hegemony, such as Vietnam and Iraq, and what the war in Afghanistan has become.

...this is where your idea of morality and support contradict. You are hung up on the word "hegemony" and are applying it wrongly. Nobody is preaching about a march across planet earth conquering everyone, planting flags, and declaring ourselves king of the hill. This has never happened. And since we have been the lone superpower (hegemony) since the Berlin Wall came down, can you really use the idea of "hegemony" and apply it to a quest in regards to Iraq and Afghanistan?

I assume you support our activity across Europe during World War II, despite Germany not attacking us. Like most, you wrap Germany up in the same package as Japan, despite America's leaders and citizens at the time being quite clear on their differences. Taking down Germany and Italy (as well as the Japanese) removed three more empires that blocked our path to this superpower hegemony status. It has never been about domination as much as it has been about security. I hate that you don't step back and realize this. I mean it literally bothers the crap out of me. This is the world without American hegemony.......

- Fighting under the British Empire's flag in 1759, colonists proved how easily a European Empire could fall at Quebec on the Plains of Abraham when the French were defeated.

- The greatest empire at the birth of America was the British Empire. Our Revolution didn't just rebel against distant masters. It championed the political and economic rights of man. It made a global statement to European colonies everywhere. First we drove them out with our Revolution and then we relegated them to the Canadian territories in the War of 1812.

- Flanking both sides of the War of 1812, was the Barbary Pirates Wars. At the advent of the 19th century, we secured our trades through the Mediterranean Sea with the Barbary Pirates War. Unable to pay the ransoms that Europeans had made habit of paying, Americans boarded ships and went to war along Northern Africa to fight against Muslims in the Ottomon Empire's North African regencies.

- The Mexican–American War, also known as the First American Intervention, saw that empire cut in half in order to secure a southern border.

- Our Civil War came next and this was an internal purge where we cleansed from our soil the last European notion of hereditary authority and human subjugation.

- Then we had to deal with the Spanish in the Spanish-American War in 1898. After addressing the harsh treatment of Cubans by the Spanish, we spanned the globe and dismantled the rest of Spain's brutal colonies. This time we not only defeated a European Empire, we destroyed it. Spain is still recovering from this.

- The First World War weakened the rest of Europe's Empires. Though we were late to recognize that an unstable Europe was important to our economic security, we launched across the Atlantic and stopped near Belleau Wood. This single battle did not win the war for the Allies, but it did prevent the Allies from losing. We were alligned against three more Empires: Germany's Second Reich, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottomon Empire. Our presence guaranteed their destruction.

- Then came the biggie. In the Second World War we saved the world from absolute evil tyrannies. We destroyed the Japanese Empire and decided the outcome in Europe. Yes, Russia lost the most in the East, but it was America's oil and treasure that had been funding the Allies from the beginning and our Normandy invasion that divided and guaranteed the destruction of Germany's Third Reich. We can also add the Fascist Italian Empire to the tally. The British Empire and the French Empire simply collapsed from the continental devistation.

*** NOW, up to this point we see a clear path. How can you not? America's mission to secure economy, trades, and defense has manifested into a path of hegemony that wrecked conquering and dominating empires along the way.....

- Only the Soviet Union stood as an Empire in the world after World War II. With Turkey and Iran asking for America to make the Soviet Union leave their lands, and the Soviet Union gaining influence over most of the world by the end of the 1950s, the Soviet Empire kicked off the Cold War. This is where Korea comes into play. This is where Vietnam came into play. This is where the Cuban Missile Crisis came into play. Instead of invading Moscow, we fought in distant lands to block or prevent Soviet/Chinese communism from growing. We played the dictator game with the Soviets to prevent that powerful military building oil from flowing so freely to the "Evil Empire." We shoved our values aside in the shadow of nuclear holocaust to dal with this last empire that stood to threaten our securty. With the destruction of the Soviet Empire, we answered the question of the imperial idea and human subjugation. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, we achieved hegemony.

We destroyed or helped destroy 11 empires in the last 250 years and paved the world's bumpy roads along the way. List them:

01) France
02) Britain
03) Mexico
04) Spain
05) German Second Reich
06) Austria-Hungary
07) Ottoman Empire
08) Italy
09) Germany Third Reich
10) Japan
11) Soviet Union

This was the world without American hegemony and the world knows it. We won and the world is better for it. Despite the theme of institutional anti-Americanism within these former empires rising and dropping from one event to the next, the world knows the alternative. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, those who believed that man should govern himself from below had defeated those who believed that man should be governed from above. Man's entire previous history of governance had finally come to a victorious truth. And that truth is that with over 120 democracies being created since 1900, colonials in early America had finally put the old world behind. Despite the struggle of those who believed so earnestly in the great "isms" (Fascism, Socialism, Communism), the future belongs to citizens in Demcracies, hence even Arab Muslims now "springing" on the band wagon. None of this history would have happened if America didn't venture out to secure its own interests and make social and economic statements along the way. But attaching our "hegemony" to a conquering mindset is wrong. It defies the history. And since we achieved hegemony before Afghanistan and Iraq, doesn't it stand to reason that these two events fit in with everything else in our history? We deal with nations in order to stabilize regions because, historically, our security has always relied on the health of foriegn regions. With plenty of oil coming out of almost all regions, why do you think so much focus is given to the world's last remaining unhealthy region?

Where we have screwed up is that while destroying the old world, we lacked and still lack vision for a new order. The old order belongs to kings, kaisers, tzars, and military dictators. The new order belongs to populations, many of which are stranded in misery and violent tribal upheaval behind unnatural borders that those former empires drew. Due to our status as the victor of the "Age of ideology" we are condemned to lead[Ralph Peters]. But our tool box contains outdated global organizations that seek to preserve the ancient laws of the old world and former empires still seeking a way to sooth bruised egos. Of course, this is a whole seperate gripe I have that you and I probably differ on as well so I will end this here.


Oh, and by the way, I am not branding America as perfect. The first thing critics like to do is jump to point out the slaughter of Native Americans and then slavery in order to dismiss our greater history and global role. These issues are acknowledged and they do prove our imperfection (Given the imperfections of the former empires, our imperfections could be far worse). But even these issues resulted in positive global spanning statements.
 
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I know this. BUT,.....

...this is where your idea of morality and support contradict. You are hung up on the word "hegemony" and are applying it wrongly.

The hell you say!


Nobody is preaching about a march across planet earth conquering everyone, planting flags, and declaring ourselves king of the hill. This has never happened.

Well good, I wasn't talking about that either.

And since we have been the lone superpower (hegemony) since the Berlin Wall came down, can you really use the idea of "hegemony" and apply it to a quest in regards to Iraq and Afghanistan?

Absolutely, since neither represented anywhere close to a military threat to the US.


I assume you support our activity across Europe during World War II, despite Germany not attacking us.

Japan attacked us and Germany was invading its neighbors, neither of which Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan were doing.
 
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Absolutely, since neither represented anywhere close to a military threat to the US.

I will state this again.......Germany was about the region, not just Germany. Iraq was about the region, not just Iraq. You are closed minded at this point. Even Sunni fighters throughout the region managed to see how bigger Iraq was than you. I have to assume that you choose not to see our history. Nobody on earth has been a military threat to the U.S. since the War of 1812. So...explain the rest. You can't because it means you would have to acknowledge the uncomfortable that your protesting has dismissed.

In fact, where was the military threat to the U.S. in Bosnia and Kosovo? Why would we send our military to deal with such things if they aren't a direct threat to our soil? What part of America did Germany attack? What part of America did Germans attack during Europe's first great civil war? What about the Spanish? Did they attack Florida? Did Somalia attack Virginia? Obviously Iraq and Afghanistan was about more than just those two countries, but you choose to seperate them (along with Vietnam) as some anomoly to American history. Why? I believe it is because your stubborness is so great that you refuse to grow beyond February 2003 and this is why your morality contradicts itself from one event to the next.


Japan attacked us and Germany was invading its neighbors, neither of which Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan were doing.

So....Germany attacked its neighbor (not us) so we marched to Berlin to take down the dictator, but Iraq invading its neighbor means marching only to the Iraqi border and then preserving the dictator? Our white allies in Europe rate our involvement in World War II, Bosnia, Kosovo, but our brown allies in the Middle East can suck it? We had far better moral reasoning to take out Saddam Hussein ("our" dictator) after we starved out his population for a decade than we did marching to Berlin to take down one of our trade partners. We didn't even know about the Holocaust at the time. You don't get to pick and choose when your morality kicks in. Either it is solid or it is wavering. At least admit what the basis of your protest really comes from. By the way, Vietnam could have easily just been another country. But Kennedy chose Vietnam to stand against Soviet/Chinese Communism, which was a threat to the free world order of capitalism and economic growth. ....or take the simple way out..."Vietnam didn't attack Idaho!"

Hegemony is an indirect form of imperial dominance in which the hegemon (leader state) rules sub-ordinate states by the implied means of power rather than by direct military force — by intervention and occupation. The problem with your accusation is that we do not seek to rule either one. Democracy and offering people their chance to choose their own leaders tends to strip your obtuse argument away. In fact, we were clear on our eventual departure from Iraq and are clear about Afghanistan now so where's the kind of "occupation" that hegemony defines? Hegemony is also an aggression or expansionism by large nations in an effort to achieve world domination. Are we seeking world domination or have we dominated since the Soviet Union fell? Truth be told we really dominated the world even before this. The Berlin Wall coming down was merely symbolic.

Let's look at another type of hegemony. Cultural hegemony is the philosophic and sociological theory that proposes that a culturally diverse society can be dominated (ruled) by one social class, whose dominance is achieved by manipulating the societal culture (beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values, mores) so that its ruling-class worldview is imposed as the societal norm. The problem with this, despite the false global criticism of America injecting its culture into theirs, is that the world pulled our culture in after World War II. We forced it on nobody. Everybody wanted to be like America. In fact, the single time we imposed to push a leader too far, too fast to modernize was the Shah of Iran. Other than this, the entire world wanted our fashion, entertainment, and commercialization. Today's minor backlash is a rejection of what they had (and still) demanded for decades.

Hegemony is a false word because you don't understand enough of what's going on to criticize properly. Therefore you choose words like "puppet" and "hegemony." You hinge on terms like "they didn't attack us" as if you can pick and choose when that matters. You don't get to celebrate globalization and pretend that unhealthy regions don't affect the health of other regions. Why do you think the base of Al Queda has gone from Saudi Arabia to Sudan to Afghanistan to Pakistan to Somalia to Yemen? What is it about this region that offers so much threatening support from place to place? For that matter, what type of local environment did Germany provide where Islamists could plan out 9/11? 9/11 could have been launched from anywhere in this region. Al-Queda had many to choose from to hunker down in for protection. Afghanistan merely offered a government that wouldn't be compelled to work with Washington (another reason our annual allowances to these pathetic nations is important). Therefore, Afghanistan and Iraq had more to do with the region, not individual nations, which you rely on for simple protesting. And how far beyond the border has Syria's BS already gone? Even Russia is personally involved. Everybody sees it. Why can't you? It's about REGION, the same as Bosnnia and Kosovo were.
 
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I will state this again.......Germany was about the region, not just Germany. Iraq was about the region, not just Iraq.

Then be honest that Germany was a threat to its region, and Iraq was not following the Persian Gulf war and the ten years of sanctions.

You are closed minded at this point. Even Sunni fighters throughout the region managed to see how bigger Iraq was than you. I have to assume that you choose not to see our history. Nobody on earth has been a military threat to the U.S. since the War of 1812. So...explain the rest. You can't because it means you would have to acknowledge the uncomfortable that your protesting has dismissed.

Germany was invading its neighbors, Iraq had no such capability after the Persian Gulf War and ten years of sanctions.

In fact, where was the military threat to the U.S. in Bosnia and Kosovo? Why would we send our military to deal with such things if they aren't a direct threat to our soil?

You got a link to a decade long US occupation in Bosnia and Kosovo to compare with the decade long hegemony efforts in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq?

So....Germany attacked its neighbor (not us) so we marched to Berlin to take down the dictator, but Iraq invading its neighbor means marching only to the Iraqi border and then preserving the dictator?

Did you somehow miss the Persian Gulf war that destroyed Iraq's military capacity to be a threat to its neighbors, as well as the 10 years of sanctions that we enforced that prevented them from rebuilding it?
Hegemony is an indirect form of imperial dominance in which the hegemon (leader state) rules sub-ordinate states by the implied means of power rather than by direct military force — by intervention and occupation. The problem with your accusation is that we do not seek to rule either one. Democracy and offering people their chance to choose their own leaders tends to strip your obtuse argument away. In fact, we were clear on our eventual departure from Iraq and are clear about Afghanistan now so where's the kind of "occupation" that hegemony defines? Hegemony is also an aggression or expansionism by large nations in an effort to achieve world domination. Are we seeking world domination or have we dominated since the Soviet Union fell? Truth be told we really dominated the world even before this. The Berlin Wall coming down was merely symbolic.

"Definition of HEGEMONY
1
: preponderant influence or authority over others : domination <battled for hegemony in Asia>
2
: the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group "

Hegemony - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary

"The US maintains to this day over a dozen direct dependencies, the largest of which is Puerto Rico. Its military forces are active over most of the globe: at last audit about 226 countries have US military troops, 63 of which host American bases, while only 46 countries in the world have no US military presence - a projection of military power that makes the Roman, British, and Soviet empires pale in comparison. The bulk of this document will deal with what is alternatively referred to as "neo-colonialism", "hegemony", "proxy rule", or "informal empire": roughly, a system of "dual elite" political rule, in which domestic elites (the proxy) recieve backing from (are dependent on - to varying degrees) a foreign elite, and in return protect (to varying degrees) the foreign power's interests in the country (security, economic, or domestic political interests). This is, at least, the framework within which I use the terms - as it is generally accepted by students of history. To take an explanation cited by Ariel Cohen as "One of the more successful attempts made to create a coherent theory of empires" in Russian Imperialism:

"Empire is a relationship, formal or informal, in which one state controls the effective political sovereignty of another political society. It can be achieved by force, by political collaboration, by economic, social, or cultural dependence. Imperialism is simply the process or policy of establishing or maintaining an empire."

--Michael Doyle, Empires"

Enforcing American Hegemony - A Timeline
 
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