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A question for people about the use of military

Craig234

Craig234

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How do you get people to view a selfish use of military force, harming people, as 'wrong'?

There is a strong bias to do the opposite, to support the selfish use of military that harms others.

It makes people feel powerful, it gives them a sense of pride, they say they 'won' things, it can result in gaining land, money, power, basically, 'the people who were there lost, and you benefit'. Whether you take things, or those people have to become subservient to your interests, etc.

And there a lot of blinders to not see why it's 'wrong'. They include - almost always - finding some sense of grievance to justify the action, or disliking the 'enemy', or many other things.

And there are many arguments against opposing the selfish action - you can be attacked as 'unpatriotic', or 'snowflake', or 'sympathizing with the enemy', or many other things.

In short, it's easy for people to look at *others* using military power selfishly and causing harm and saying 'that's wrong'. But not when it's 'your side' (or your allies) doing it.

For example, there are human beings in, say, Yemen. And a lot of 'corrupt' interests in the use of military there, powerful and wealthy interests (Saudi Arabia) who can use that wealth for violence for their own selfish agenda. You can point to wrong happening to human beings there. Now, try to get an American to care - even about our role, in supporting Saudi Arabia for selfish interests, selling billions in weapons, etc.

We in the US have the luxury of not being vulnerable to the wrong use of military power against us basically at all. And that seems to make it hard for people to care about the issue of when we do it, though people are quite happy to say they care, when it comes to what others do, if it justifies our attacking them.

For an example of how insane these blinders are, think about Vietnam for a minute. I won't get into the real issues, but even on its face, it was a war killing 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese people who weren't a 'threat' to anyone where the trigger for the war was a claimed attack (that didn't actually happen) by a Vietnamese ship on a US destroyer involved in harming North Vietnam (though we lied it was out of their waters).

How much sense does that make? We're sending forces to their country, after supporting denying them freedom from colonization (we insisted France fight a way to colonize them and paid almost all the costs of the war), and because a rocket or two might be fired, we have that war?

Notice the blinders, how little that question was asked, and how immediately it was just about 'our honor' (so-called) and 'winning' and some perverted idea of 'patriotism', all that harm for what? How hard it was to say 'this is wrong'.

When has a country ever been able to say that? Rome? Nazy Germany? England? Us? Genghis Khan? Alexander the Great? Putin?

Yet, we're able to look at some other conflict and say 'that was bad'. Ironically, even that can be warped - Saddam attacking Iran, with a million casualty war, we didn't mind earlier because 'we don't like Iran', yet it was useful as evidence of Saddam as a bad guy when we wanted to attack him later.

It's easy to see injustice for the wronged side. We're quite happy to say how great it is we rebelled against English oppression in the late 18th century. That's not what's needed.

How can a 'great' or 'powerful' nation recognize its own use of its military selfishly and causing harm as wrong? That's what's needed to prevent wrong actions, not for the people who are wronged to notice it's wrong.

the United Nations was one attempt - a collection of nations who could look at each others' actions and say 'that's wrong' and it's not allowed and take action - but it's fallen apart, in the constant weakening caused by nations preferring the freedom to act selfishly, no one more than our nation. And it's largely been corrupted by nations using their power to get weaker nations to 'lie' to vote how the powerful nations want.
 
Craig234 said:
How do you get people to view a selfish use of military force, harming people, as 'wrong'?

There is a strong bias to do the opposite, to support the selfish use of military that harms others...

...And there a lot of blinders to not see why it's 'wrong'. They include - almost always - finding some sense of grievance to justify the action, or disliking the 'enemy', or many other things.

And there are many arguments against opposing the selfish action - you can be attacked as 'unpatriotic', or 'snowflake', or 'sympathizing with the enemy', or many other things.

In short, it's easy for people to look at *others* using military power selfishly and causing harm and saying 'that's wrong'. But not when it's 'your side' (or your allies) doing it.

For example, there are human beings in, say, Yemen. And a lot of 'corrupt' interests in the use of military there, powerful and wealthy interests (Saudi Arabia) who can use that wealth for violence for their own selfish agenda. You can point to wrong happening to human beings there. Now, try to get an American to care - even about our role, in supporting Saudi Arabia for selfish interests, selling billions in weapons, etc.

We in the US have the luxury of not being vulnerable to the wrong use of military power against us basically at all. And that seems to make it hard for people to care about the issue of when we do it, though people are quite happy to say they care, when it comes to what others do, if it justifies our attacking them.How can a 'great' or 'powerful' nation recognize its own use of its military selfishly and causing harm as wrong? That's what's needed to prevent wrong actions, not for the people who are wronged to notice it's wrong.

the United Nations was one attempt - a collection of nations who could look at each others' actions and say 'that's wrong' and it's not allowed and take action - but it's fallen apart, in the constant weakening caused by nations preferring the freedom to act selfishly, no one more than our nation. And it's largely been corrupted by nations using their power to get weaker nations to 'lie' to vote how the powerful nations want.
Click to expand...

Americans, at least in the last 100 years, are not naturally "warlike."

Woodrow Wilson was elected on a promise to keep us out of wars. It took 3 years from the sinking of the Lusitania, through unrestricted submarine warfare, to a German "memorandum" (Zimmermann Telegram) to get us in toward the end.

FDR desperately wanted the US to get into WWII, but it took a sneak attack on Hawaii to push us into war with Japan, and it still took Hitler's declaring war on us to also include Europe.

It took an invasion of South Korea for us to go to war with North Korea.

In your own example, it took a "faked" attack to get involved in Vietnam.

Finally it took an attack on 9/11 to create such "fervor" that we not only mobilized against Iran (again) but also Afghanistan (but not the nation who supplied the terrorists, Saudi Arabia)

Note that 9/11 "panicked" so many people it lead to the Patriot Act, FISA Courts, and a slue of other liberty restrictions we still suffer in the "War on Terror."

So where is the foundation of your premise, we like and support military adventurism?
 
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What, exactly, are you even talking about?
 
I couldn't read it all because I am drunk, and because you were meandering or something.
 
Craig234 said:
How do you get people to view a selfish use of military force, harming people, as 'wrong'?

There is a strong bias to do the opposite, to support the selfish use of military that harms others.

It makes people feel powerful, it gives them a sense of pride, they say they 'won' things, it can result in gaining land, money, power, basically, 'the people who were there lost, and you benefit'. Whether you take things, or those people have to become subservient to your interests, etc.

And there a lot of blinders to not see why it's 'wrong'. They include - almost always - finding some sense of grievance to justify the action, or disliking the 'enemy', or many other things.

And there are many arguments against opposing the selfish action - you can be attacked as 'unpatriotic', or 'snowflake', or 'sympathizing with the enemy', or many other things.

In short, it's easy for people to look at *others* using military power selfishly and causing harm and saying 'that's wrong'. But not when it's 'your side' (or your allies) doing it.

For example, there are human beings in, say, Yemen. And a lot of 'corrupt' interests in the use of military there, powerful and wealthy interests (Saudi Arabia) who can use that wealth for violence for their own selfish agenda. You can point to wrong happening to human beings there. Now, try to get an American to care - even about our role, in supporting Saudi Arabia for selfish interests, selling billions in weapons, etc.

We in the US have the luxury of not being vulnerable to the wrong use of military power against us basically at all. And that seems to make it hard for people to care about the issue of when we do it, though people are quite happy to say they care, when it comes to what others do, if it justifies our attacking them.

For an example of how insane these blinders are, think about Vietnam for a minute. I won't get into the real issues, but even on its face, it was a war killing 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese people who weren't a 'threat' to anyone where the trigger for the war was a claimed attack (that didn't actually happen) by a Vietnamese ship on a US destroyer involved in harming North Vietnam (though we lied it was out of their waters).

How much sense does that make? We're sending forces to their country, after supporting denying them freedom from colonization (we insisted France fight a way to colonize them and paid almost all the costs of the war), and because a rocket or two might be fired, we have that war?

Notice the blinders, how little that question was asked, and how immediately it was just about 'our honor' (so-called) and 'winning' and some perverted idea of 'patriotism', all that harm for what? How hard it was to say 'this is wrong'.

When has a country ever been able to say that? Rome? Nazy Germany? England? Us? Genghis Khan? Alexander the Great? Putin?

Yet, we're able to look at some other conflict and say 'that was bad'. Ironically, even that can be warped - Saddam attacking Iran, with a million casualty war, we didn't mind earlier because 'we don't like Iran', yet it was useful as evidence of Saddam as a bad guy when we wanted to attack him later.

It's easy to see injustice for the wronged side. We're quite happy to say how great it is we rebelled against English oppression in the late 18th century. That's not what's needed.

How can a 'great' or 'powerful' nation recognize its own use of its military selfishly and causing harm as wrong? That's what's needed to prevent wrong actions, not for the people who are wronged to notice it's wrong.

the United Nations was one attempt - a collection of nations who could look at each others' actions and say 'that's wrong' and it's not allowed and take action - but it's fallen apart, in the constant weakening caused by nations preferring the freedom to act selfishly, no one more than our nation. And it's largely been corrupted by nations using their power to get weaker nations to 'lie' to vote how the powerful nations want.
Click to expand...

No, we did not "insist" that France fight to continue their colonization. The French are the ones who wanted to stay in Vietnam, because their pride had taken a massive hit after the rapid defeat at the hands of the Nazis. They didn't want to risk losing their empire on top of a national humiliation which had seen them "rescued" by others. Your argument is fundamentally flawed from the getgo.
 
Craig234 said:
How do you get people to view a selfish use of military force, harming people, as 'wrong'?

There is a strong bias to do the opposite, to support the selfish use of military that harms others.

It makes people feel powerful, it gives them a sense of pride, they say they 'won' things, it can result in gaining land, money, power, basically, 'the people who were there lost, and you benefit'. Whether you take things, or those people have to become subservient to your interests, etc.

And there a lot of blinders to not see why it's 'wrong'. They include - almost always - finding some sense of grievance to justify the action, or disliking the 'enemy', or many other things.

And there are many arguments against opposing the selfish action - you can be attacked as 'unpatriotic', or 'snowflake', or 'sympathizing with the enemy', or many other things.

In short, it's easy for people to look at *others* using military power selfishly and causing harm and saying 'that's wrong'. But not when it's 'your side' (or your allies) doing it.

For example, there are human beings in, say, Yemen. And a lot of 'corrupt' interests in the use of military there, powerful and wealthy interests (Saudi Arabia) who can use that wealth for violence for their own selfish agenda. You can point to wrong happening to human beings there. Now, try to get an American to care - even about our role, in supporting Saudi Arabia for selfish interests, selling billions in weapons, etc.

We in the US have the luxury of not being vulnerable to the wrong use of military power against us basically at all. And that seems to make it hard for people to care about the issue of when we do it, though people are quite happy to say they care, when it comes to what others do, if it justifies our attacking them.

For an example of how insane these blinders are, think about Vietnam for a minute. I won't get into the real issues, but even on its face, it was a war killing 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese people who weren't a 'threat' to anyone where the trigger for the war was a claimed attack (that didn't actually happen) by a Vietnamese ship on a US destroyer involved in harming North Vietnam (though we lied it was out of their waters).

How much sense does that make? We're sending forces to their country, after supporting denying them freedom from colonization (we insisted France fight a way to colonize them and paid almost all the costs of the war), and because a rocket or two might be fired, we have that war?

Notice the blinders, how little that question was asked, and how immediately it was just about 'our honor' (so-called) and 'winning' and some perverted idea of 'patriotism', all that harm for what? How hard it was to say 'this is wrong'.

When has a country ever been able to say that? Rome? Nazy Germany? England? Us? Genghis Khan? Alexander the Great? Putin?

Yet, we're able to look at some other conflict and say 'that was bad'. Ironically, even that can be warped - Saddam attacking Iran, with a million casualty war, we didn't mind earlier because 'we don't like Iran', yet it was useful as evidence of Saddam as a bad guy when we wanted to attack him later.

It's easy to see injustice for the wronged side. We're quite happy to say how great it is we rebelled against English oppression in the late 18th century. That's not what's needed.

How can a 'great' or 'powerful' nation recognize its own use of its military selfishly and causing harm as wrong? That's what's needed to prevent wrong actions, not for the people who are wronged to notice it's wrong.

the United Nations was one attempt - a collection of nations who could look at each others' actions and say 'that's wrong' and it's not allowed and take action - but it's fallen apart, in the constant weakening caused by nations preferring the freedom to act selfishly, no one more than our nation. And it's largely been corrupted by nations using their power to get weaker nations to 'lie' to vote how the powerful nations want.
Click to expand...

Oh man, take your thoughts and apply them to the constitution, yep, the founders of this country understood all of your concerns because this has been occurring in history throughout mankind. If we have the right to assemble, we have the right to free speech, we have the right to arms then we have the right to defend ourselves from anything. Give up those rights and we will repeat history.

Currently, our military is used to protect corporate interests with political power.
 
Tigerace117 said:
No, we did not "insist" that France fight to continue their colonization. The French are the ones who wanted to stay in Vietnam, because their pride had taken a massive hit after the rapid defeat at the hands of the Nazis. They didn't want to risk losing their empire on top of a national humiliation which had seen them "rescued" by others. Your argument is fundamentally flawed from the getgo.
Click to expand...

France had an interest in having the colony if it could, and it did suffer by losing, but it was more and more willing to accept the situation. France had a century of 'investment' in Vietnam. The US politics were dominated by 'losing' China and the strongly wanted France to continue to have the colony at first, paying up to 90% of France's war costs until they were finally defeated. You're missing the larger point, which is not changed by this small topic.
 
Craig234 said:
France had an interest in having the colony if it could, and it did suffer by losing, but it was more and more willing to accept the situation. France had a century of 'investment' in Vietnam. The US politics were dominated by 'losing' China and the strongly wanted France to continue to have the colony at first, paying up to 90% of France's war costs until they were finally defeated. You're missing the larger point, which is not changed by this small topic.
Click to expand...

France only became "willing to accept the situation" after defeat at Dien Bien Phu....where they wanted the US to use nuclear weapons to bail them out.

Operation Vulture - Wikipedia

France was the one desperate to hold onto the colony for the sake of trying to regain national pride and prestige. Blithering about Americans "making" the French want to stay is flat out silly.

Yes, your larger point that you are so desperate to blame the US you are willing to ignore the facts is noted.
 
Captain Adverse said:
Americans, at least in the last 100 years, are not naturally "warlike."...

So where is the foundation of your premise, we like and support military adventurism?
Click to expand...

I'm not going to try to write a book on the topic in this post, but I'll try to at least give a partial bit of answer.

Your statements are factually fine, but greatly 'warped' in terms of selective history - and you also misunderstood my post. I never described the American people as "warlike" - a word you put in quotation marks despite it not appearing in my post. In other words, one of your errors is writing a straw man based on misunderstanding my post.

Books could be written on topics such as the nature and projection and use of American power, which are typically not by wars, but that's another topic.

The topic for this thread is how to get people who have power and a strong military to view its selfish use that causes harm as wrong.

You write a narrative intended to paint the US as not interested in war at all, but that's far from correct, while again the point I'm making isn't about how "warlike" the US is other than having some serious amount of war activity we're talking about - but this topic isn't just about the US, but about any country who has such power and has used it.

So since you challenge that history, let's briefly establish that yes, the US has a history with things other than reluctant entry into the World Wars.

I'll let the then-highest decorated military leader in our history, Marine General Smedley Butler, summarize his view of his decades of service a century ago:

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

Later, I can point you to any number of activities, and ask you to show me one of them - or those in the quote above - where the American people showed a strong concern for the harm done to others, where the American people put a real check on the military action out of that concern, with the sole exception eventually of Vietnam: take our installing dictators in places such as Iran, Guatemala, Chile, and many others, accompanied by support such as 'secret police' forces who would
terrorize, kidnap, torture, kill thousands of students, labor leaders, intellectuals, peace activists and others who did not support the regime, including forces trained at the "School of the Americas" used in Latin America - there are dozens of such cases - often it's the US causing/supporting the activities of others, not our own military doing them, but the same issue applies of our citizens caring about the wrongs done.

I used the people harmed in Yemen for corrupt reasons as an example; I could ask about the victims of policies in Africa, Asia - take Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia for example. It was estimated our sanctions against Iraq killed 500,000 children, followed by hundreds of thousands killed in the war and millions of refugees - how much concern was there for those people from the American people?

The topic is, how can you get a people who have more power to care about the wrongs their forces can do, if we want to prevent more of those wrongs?
 
Tigerace117 said:
France only became "willing to accept the situation" after defeat at Dien Bien Phu....where they wanted the US to use nuclear weapons to bail them out.

Operation Vulture - Wikipedia

France was the one desperate to hold onto the colony for the sake of trying to regain national pride and prestige. Blithering about Americans "making" the French want to stay is flat out silly.

Yes, your larger point that you are so desperate to blame the US you are willing to ignore the facts is noted.
Click to expand...

You're fundamentally ignorant and dishonest in your post - even if you get some things factually correct - such that I do not plan to bother with your posts to the thread.
 
Tigerace117 said:
No, we did not "insist" that France fight to continue their colonization. The French are the ones who wanted to stay in Vietnam, because their pride had taken a massive hit after the rapid defeat at the hands of the Nazis. They didn't want to risk losing their empire on top of a national humiliation which had seen them "rescued" by others. Your argument is fundamentally flawed from the getgo.
Click to expand...

I agree that his premise concerning Vietnam was wrong. Truman sold France $80 billion in US WW II military surplus from 1950 to 1956 specifically so France could continue to hold their Vietnam colony. However, he does make a good point about abuses of the military.

The US has repeatedly used the military whenever its interests were at stake, even when they had to lie in order to accomplish it. For example, when President Polk declared the US Army was attacked by the Mexican Army in 1848 in order to start the Mexican/American War, the US Army had already invaded Mexico and was more than 100 miles into Mexico before the Mexican Army attacked. Or when President Wilson lied about the manufactured Zimmerman Telegram in 1917 in order to force the US into WW I. Or LBJ's Gulf Of Tonkin lie, or Clinton's Kosovo genocide lie. All of them were Democrat Presidents by the way. Are we beginning to see a pattern?
 
Glitch said:
I agree that his premise concerning Vietnam was wrong. Truman sold France $80 billion in US WW II military surplus from 1950 to 1956 specifically so France could continue to hold their Vietnam colony. However, he does make a good point about abuses of the military.

The US has repeatedly used the military whenever its interests were at stake, even when they had to lie in order to accomplish it. For example, when President Polk declared the US Army was attacked by the Mexican Army in 1848 in order to start the Mexican/American War, the US Army had already invaded Mexico and was more than 100 miles into Mexico before the Mexican Army attacked. Or when President Wilson lied about the manufactured Zimmerman Telegram in 1917 in order to force the US into WW I. Or LBJ's Gulf Of Tonkin lie, or Clinton's Kosovo genocide lie. All of them were Democrat Presidents by the way. Are we beginning to see a pattern?
Click to expand...

Wow. There's so much wrong with your claims it's hard to even know where to start.

First, the casus belli for the Mexican American War was the Thornton Affair

Thornton Affair - Wikipedia

Which is near the modern day city of Brownsville, not a hundred miles into Mexico like you claim.

There is no evidence that the Zimmerman Telegram was "manufactured". Imperial Germany despised the US and very much considered us to be incompetent and foolish. German agents had also been attempting to spark a war between the US and Mexico for years, as well as conducting sabatoge incidents in the United States.

"Germany had long sought to incite a war between Mexico and the United States, which would have tied down American forces and slowed the export of American arms to the Allied Powers.[4] The Germans had engaged in a pattern of actively arming, funding and advising the Mexicans, as shown by the 1914 Ypiranga Incident[5] and the presence of German advisors during the 1918 Battle of Ambos Nogales. The German Naval Intelligence officer Franz von Rintelen had attempted to incite a war between Mexico and the United States in 1915, giving Victoriano Huerta $12 million for that purpose.[6] The German saboteur Lothar Witzke — responsible for the March 1917 munitions explosion at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in the San Francisco Bay Area,[7] and possibly responsible for the July 1916 Black Tom explosion in New Jersey — was based in Mexico City. The failure of United States troops to capture Pancho Villa in 1916 and the movement of President Carranza in favor of Germany emboldened the Germans to send the Zimmermann note.[8]"

Zimmermann Telegram - Wikipedia

Claiming the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a "lie" is also sketchy; there certainly was a clash between the Maddox and North Vietnamese torpedo boats two days before the second incident which was the result of false radar images.

And the Serbs absolutely committed numerous atrocities in Kosovo.

Račak massacre - Wikipedia

Izbica massacre - Wikipedia

Velika Kruša massacre - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suva_Reka_massacre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vučitrn_massacre

Yes, I am seeing a pattern......of you being ignorant, and quite possible a partisan hack to boot.
 
Craig234 said:
You're fundamentally ignorant and dishonest in your post - even if you get some things factually correct - such that I do not plan to bother with your posts to the thread.
Click to expand...

:lamo

In other words, you are throwing a tantrum because you have been exposed as someone who is only interested in blaming the US for everything and anything that comes to mind.

Noted.
 
Tigerace117 said:
Wow. There's so much wrong with your claims it's hard to even know where to start.
Click to expand...
Manufacturing lies from Wikipedia is hardly a credible source. At least we now know the source of your misinformation.

Even the UN acknowledges that NATO forces, primarily the US, killed far more Kosovars than than Serbs ever did.
 
Glitch said:
Manufacturing lies from Wikipedia is hardly a credible source. At least we now know the source of your misinformation.

Even the UN acknowledges that NATO forces, primarily the US, killed far more Kosovars than than Serbs ever did.
Click to expand...

Wikipedia literally lists its sources at the bottom of its articles. Here, have some more.

During World War I, Germany Unleashed 'Terrorist Cell In America' : NPR

World War I Intrigue: German Spies in New York!

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Invasion-Germanys-Terrorist-America/dp/0062307568

‘Thornton Affair’ Triggers Mexican-American War

The Thorton Affair

https://www.hrw.org/news/2000/03/20/serb-gang-rapes-kosovo-exposed

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kosovo/cleansing/

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/world/europe/27hague.html

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-catalogue-of-serb-atrocities/
https://www.hrw.org/news/1999/07/26/kosovo-atrocities-recounted-detail

Going "lies all lies" is not an argument. Reality doesn't care that the facts hurt your feelings. They are the facts.

And yet, the people of Kosovo are still deeply grateful to the US for saving them from Serbian death squads.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37761383

You desperately trying to downplay the atrocities is rather......interesting....though
 
Tigerace117 said:
Wikipedia literally lists its sources at the bottom of its articles.
Click to expand...
They are all lies. The fact remains that those Serbian "Death Squads" killed a grand total of 45 Kosovars in the so-called "Račak massacre," while NATO (without UN approval) slaughtered between 489 and 528 Kosovo civilians, destroyed bridges, industrial plants, public buildings, private businesses, as well as barracks and military installations. Clinton bombed the crap out of Kosovo, and didn't give a damn who got hurt in the process.

Clinton did his best to try to accomplish what Hitler attempted in 1939 with NATO's invasion of Kosovo by creating a Greater Albania. The Serbs also fought NAZI Germany, just like they fought the US.
 
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Glitch said:
They are all lies. The fact remains that those Serbian "Death Squads" killed a grand total of 45 Kosovars in the so-called "Račak massacre," while NATO (without UN approval) slaughtered between 489 and 528 Kosovo civilians, destroyed bridges, industrial plants, public buildings, private businesses, as well as barracks and military installations. Clinton bombed the crap out of Kosovo, and didn't give a damn who got hurt in the process.

Clinton did his best to try to accomplish what Hitler attempted in 1939 with NATO's invasion of Kosovo by creating a Greater Albania. The Serbs also fought NAZI Germany, just like they fought the US.
Click to expand...

Murdering 45 civilians is still a massacre bud. Not to mention a war crime. Again, you being willing to excuse and downplay said atrocities says a lot about you.....none of it good.

Yes, Clinton bombed the crap out of your hero Milosevic’s thugs to prevent them slaughtering anymore civilians. As I have already shown, the people of Kosovo still love him for it.

Lol no, the US preventing the Serbs from slaughtering innocent civilians is not even remotely close to anything Hitler did. Perhaps if the Serbs wanted to keep Kosovo they shouldn’t have raped and murdered innocent civilians,

....Which does not excuse the atrocities they committed in Kosovo or earlier in Bosnia.
 
Craig234 said:
How do you get people to view a selfish use of military force, harming people, as 'wrong'?
Click to expand...

Thank you for this intelligent and thoughtful post. I understand exactly what you're getting at.

From what I understand of this forum in the short time I've been here, it would appear that it may be difficult when focusing on actions involving the USA as that's too close to home for contributors. But the topic isn't really about any particular country - it could happen anywhere. I think your point is about human nature in general.

The issue is that it takes maturity, empathy, self-awareness and an understanding of history and geopolitical context to distinguish between "legitimate" and "wrong" use of war. Those are qualities that are too often in short supply. In my opinion most people are capable of these qualities, but the same people are often having busy lives and most aren't interested in politics. And even those who are, were often misled by extremely biased and misleading news coverage, which effectively constitutes propaganda and brainwashing. Add on top of that all sorts of unconscious biases and assumptions, as well as human tribalism, and you've got a recipe for trouble.

The USA gets a hard time online because it is the big power. Don't get me wrong - of course US action has been harmful overseas since 1945. But does any one think that another country would have been much different? Britain for instance has its own colonial history. The Romans had theirs.

I think education is very important. It's probably the best place to start. Students should learn to question propaganda and to recognise it when they see it. Further, the media plays a crucial role. There is a major problem with misleading "news", fake news, journalists not asking enough questions, and unconscious media bias. I think there should be more standards so that media outlets can't get away with highly misleading, provokative and dishonest content. I also think education should teach more about how to distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources of news. I acknowledge though that is a difficult issue. But basically, we need to teach more critical thinking.
 
Tigerace117 said:
:lamo

In other words, you are throwing a tantrum because you have been exposed as someone who is only interested in blaming the US for everything and anything that comes to mind.

Noted.
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I think the OP over reacted to your post. Out of curiosity, have you two interacted before? Or is this your first conversation?

Any way I don't think he is anti US specifically it could apply to any country. The US touches a nerve for many so perhaps it might have been better to start with an easier example like the nations of WW1 or something. The US gets mentioned no doubt simply because it happens to be the big potato right now.
 
PersianCavalry said:
I think the OP over reacted to your post. Out of curiosity, have you two interacted before? Or is this your first conversation?

Any way I don't think he is anti US specifically it could apply to any country. The US touches a nerve for many so perhaps it might have been better to start with an easier example like the nations of WW1 or something. The US gets mentioned no doubt simply because it happens to be the big potato right now.
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We have debated one major time before; he got upset because the facts didn’t support his claims then either.

Trying to blame the US for France wanting to hold onto its colony is pretty clearly anti US. The US is a convenient boogeyman for a lot of people, true, but that doesn’t mean such rhetoric is justified.
 
Glitch said:
I agree that his premise concerning Vietnam was wrong. Truman sold France $80 billion in US WW II military surplus from 1950 to 1956 specifically so France could continue to hold their Vietnam colony. However, he does make a good point about abuses of the military.
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And you seem to be wrong also, but as I said, it's a non-issue to the thread topic. It'd be hard for Truman to sell France anything to 1956 when Eisenhower won in 1952 - and then paid up to 90% of the French war costs.

The US has repeatedly used the military whenever its interests were at stake, even when they had to lie in order to accomplish it. For example, when President Polk declared the US Army was attacked by the Mexican Army in 1848 in order to start the Mexican/American War, the US Army had already invaded Mexico and was more than 100 miles into Mexico before the Mexican Army attacked. Or when President Wilson lied about the manufactured Zimmerman Telegram in 1917 in order to force the US into WW I. Or LBJ's Gulf Of Tonkin lie, or Clinton's Kosovo genocide lie. All of them were Democrat Presidents by the way. Are we beginning to see a pattern?
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More precisely, Polk simply declared a new border with Mexico far inside Mexican territory and then put US troops on the new 'border'. When a few soldiers there encountered Mexican troops and there was a conflict, that was the 'justification' for the war to steal half of Mexico. US Grant called the war the most immoral war in the history of mankind as I recall.

The Zimmerman telegram was not a lie - what was a lie was that the British got it because they were spying on American diplomatic communications (the telegram was actually sent by America because America had agreed to send German diplomatic cables for them), and Britain lied about that to the US.

Your attempt to make this partisan is absurd, and Republicans will lose badly, if you try, especially since Vietnam, when Nixon lied a lot worse than Johnson about the war, for example, hiding his treasonous sabotage of LBJ's peace talks to win the election and his expansion of the war into Cambodia, including keeping a false set of air force flight logs.

There's Ford lying about his secret agreement for Indonesia to invade East Timor and kill hundreds of thousands of people using US weapons sold on condition of no offensive use, Reagan's lies on Iran-Contra and the Iraq-Iran war, hell, all I need is three letters - "WMD" for one of the most cynically and dishonestly prepared lies for war ever.

I'll actually add one to the Democrats' list - FDR seems to have engineered as Japanese attack on the US to get us in WWII - but the price for that is that Republicans had promised not to enter the war, and were a lot friendlier to getting along with Hitler and fascism. But this thread isn't about the US or its history or war and lies, but about the people's willingness to recognize the wrong use of its military and power, caring about the people that harms.
 
PersianCavalry said:
Thank you for this intelligent and thoughtful post. I understand exactly what you're getting at.

From what I understand of this forum in the short time I've been here, it would appear that it may be difficult when focusing on actions involving the USA as that's too close to home for contributors. But the topic isn't really about any particular country - it could happen anywhere. I think your point is about human nature in general.

The issue is that it takes maturity, empathy, self-awareness and an understanding of history and geopolitical context to distinguish between "legitimate" and "wrong" use of war. Those are qualities that are too often in short supply. In my opinion most people are capable of these qualities, but the same people are often having busy lives and most aren't interested in politics. And even those who are, were often misled by extremely biased and misleading news coverage, which effectively constitutes propaganda and brainwashing. Add on top of that all sorts of unconscious biases and assumptions, as well as human tribalism, and you've got a recipe for trouble.

The USA gets a hard time online because it is the big power. Don't get me wrong - of course US action has been harmful overseas since 1945. But does any one think that another country would have been much different? Britain for instance has its own colonial history. The Romans had theirs.

I think education is very important. It's probably the best place to start. Students should learn to question propaganda and to recognise it when they see it. Further, the media plays a crucial role. There is a major problem with misleading "news", fake news, journalists not asking enough questions, and unconscious media bias. I think there should be more standards so that media outlets can't get away with highly misleading, provokative and dishonest content. I also think education should teach more about how to distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources of news. I acknowledge though that is a difficult issue. But basically, we need to teach more critical thinking.
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Thank you for that helpful post, and you're right. This applies to any people and country. Some try to rush to fit the topic into a narrative they want about 'is it anti-US'. If only the US had no history that made this an issue, but we like many others do. (You're right about the especially nasty history of European colonies - which the US, especially JFK, were leaders in opposing eventually, though not some, like France and Vietnam).

There's a good example of some of this has worked on public opinion in the US, when Allen Dulles as the CIA made close relationships with media leaders, and seduced them with bits of intelligence and recruited 'friendly' figures who would spread the messages to the public he wanted, allowing him a lot of power to mislead the public.

This practice has continued, as a more general practice of intelligence agencies and the military focusing on the media to try to be able to get 'their message' - and we can look at example after example of the media 'getting it wrong' when it needed to get it right - e.g., WMD, or Vietnam coverage - followed by mea culpas later showing they did get it wrong.

But the issue I'm raising here - to this day, take Vietnam. The right's narrative is, "we lost because we weren't allowed to kill enough', some say 'use nukes'. the left's is, 'what a tragic mistake costing 58,000 American lives'. But you almost never hear regret or guilt for 'we wrongly killed millions of Vietnamese people'. How do we get people to care about the people harmed like the Vietnamese, killed in the name of our 'anti-communist' hysteria and our domestic politics?
 
Glitch said:
Manufacturing lies from Wikipedia is hardly a credible source. At least we now know the source of your misinformation.

Even the UN acknowledges that NATO forces, primarily the US, killed far more Kosovars than than Serbs ever did.
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As I understand it, the Muslim Croats were against the Serbs, but weren't strong enough to defeat them. Here's a good article from just before the war in 1992, with the background:

The Bosnia Crisis: Serbs, Croats and Muslims: who hates who and why: Tony Barber in Zagreb traces the ancient roots of a culture clash that has shattered what was Yugoslavia into warring pieces | The Independent

It concludes:

"The real losers, then, are the Muslims, who have been left with almost no land. Both Serbs and Croats have claimed that Muslims are not a genuine nationality but are 'really' Serbs or Croats beneath their religion. Both have also claimed Bosnia-Herzegovina as part of their own historic territory. The Muslims might once have preferred to stay in a united Yugoslavia where their ethnic and religious rights were protected, but now they are locked in a struggle for their very survival."

One of the most common motivations for 'terrorism' is to provoke a response which can then be used to rally support against the stronger force. (Most Americans to this day don't seem to realize that was the purpose of the 9/11 attacks - to get the US to react by invading Muslims areas in a hope to rally Muslim support against the US).

So, the Muslim Croats launched 'terror attacks' in Serbia, acts like murdering police officers, in attempts to provoke Serbia to attack them - which eventually worked. And they had the savvy to have hired a US PR firm which successfully spread the message in the US that the Serbs, for that counter-attack, were literally the 'new Hitler', rallying US support for war against Serbia, exactly the purpose they'd had. And it worked.

(The success of this manipulation reminds also of incidents like the first Iraq War, when the Kuwaiti government in exile hired the American PR firm where Bush's former chief of staff worked, who created a disinformation campaign where the ambassador's daughter lied to Congress and national media that she was a nurse who witnesses 'Iraqis taking babies from incubators' which greatly changed public opinion from being anti-war to supporting war.)

As an aside, I met a man who was from the former Yugoslavia. He got tears in his eyes and spoke passionately about how good things had been under the communist Tito in Yugoslavia, before communism fell and it was divided, about how 'people would hold hands and sing' as the culture... was interesting, in contrast to the bleak stories about former communist states we usually hear.

One more aside, for some interesting writing about how the war affected people, see Chris Hedges' book, "War is a force that gives us meaning", which has some of his experiences as a war correspondent there.

Hedges' book, like this thread, is about the psychology of people, but his book is about how societies develop sort of mass consensus and hysteria, and later amnesia, in response to war. One of his anecdotes is that he had close friends in Argentina who hated the military junta ruling the country - but when the Falkland Islands war broke out, they immediately supported the same military junta.

I'm no expert on that war, but it does seem like lies dominated it from Croats, from Serbs, from the US to defend its policy, etc. I think most of America has forgotten it and not learned much from it.
 
Craig234 said:
As I understand it, the Muslim Croats were against the Serbs, but weren't strong enough to defeat them.
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The Balkin wars, or more accurately the Yugoslav Wars began in Slovenia with the Ten-Day War in 1991. That is when all the ethnic cleansing began. Then the Croatian War for Independence started and the ethnic cleansing continued. Finally in 1992 that ethnic cleansing migrated into Bosnia and Herzegovina, and that is when Serbia got involved. The Serbs had absolutely nothing to do with the ethnic cleansing of Slovenia or Croatia, and only interceded after Bosnia and Herzegovina began their ethnic cleansing in 1992. I did not support the Serbs actions in Bosnia, or in Kosovo, but I understand their concerns.

NATO continues to support a Greater Albania. Now that they control Kosovo, NATO has been pushing into Macedonia in order to split that country apart. Exactly as Albanians had hoped Hitler would do, and did do, in 1939. All Albania needs now is Montenegro and they will have achieved their 150-year goal to create a Greater Albania.
 
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Craig234 said:
I'll let the then-highest decorated military leader in our history, Marine General Smedley Butler, summarize his view of his decades of service a century ago:
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Sorry, but aside from your highly biased ranting, your using General Butler as proof has largely destroyed your argument.

Yes, Smedley was a legend, the winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor on 2 separate occasions. And even most Marines admit he was largely a political animal, who was first made bitter because he could not get higher political appointments, and then was denied the chance to become Commandant of the Marine Corps. And then later was somehow convinced that a scam by some salesmen was an actual coup attempt against the President.

No, his late life rantings are largely laughed at because they were the ramblings of a bitter man.

In fact, both his father and grandfather before him were Congressmen. He tried for many years to get (and sometimes got) political appointments outside of the Corps. Many of his later speeches were lambasting the Governments response to the "Bonus Army", even though he himself was one of the most critical opponents of that movement, and encouraged even more severe attacks against them. And his Marine career was largely ended after he instigated a diplomatic incident after making public remarks about the leader of Italy. He was forced to retire after that, instead of getting Court Martialed.

You have this remarkable ability of going on these rants, and do not appear to actually understand the others or even care about what they may think. You purposefully take the writings of a man who was bitter because he was a great combat Marine but largely a failure as a politician (he was fired from his post in Philadelphia, then later denied command of the Oregon State Police, then lost the primary when he tried to get elected to the Senate). He was a lifelong political animal, from at least 2 generations of political animals.

In fact, it is long believed that he only became a Marine Officer because of the influence of his father. His father after all was a member (and later Chairman) of the House Committee on Naval Affairs. He was to young to serve as a Marine Officer, and lacked the education and background to serve as one otherwise.
 
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