[Mumitroll]

Actually it was as much a product of French policy as American policy, perhaps even more so. If France didn't attempt to retain to it's holdings there, the whole situation never would have happened to begin with.

largely agree.

So there's no difference between the US invadig and simply supplying a local faction? Sorry, but I don't buy it, and neither does anyone else. The world court said the US was responsible for supplying weapons and finding the contras, not commiting genocide.

there is minimal difference. it's a major crime either way. I really dont understand what you are arguing about. in the Nicaragua case the world basically made a verdict: US guilty. what is there left to defend about US policy here?

The little fact that the forces there were not under US command for one. Sure, you can make a strong case that the US should not have funded the contras once it became clear what kind of people they were. However, that doesn't mean you can hold the US accountable for all their actions.

i think it's fairly naive to think that the CIA at the time "did not know what kind of people" the Contras were. what did they think they were, a tea club? thats ridiculous. of course they knew what they were, and of course they had a good idea of what would happen. the CIA itself has used similar methods repeatedly, why should it care about them? the mujaheddin/Taliban case in Afghanistan is rather similar, except that now the same people are shooting at EU and US troops instead of Soviet ones.

Japan on the other hand had 40 fully equipped divisions in the home islands with another 25 ready, but lacking gear as well as thousands of aircraft. Sure, Japan couldn't win the war, but they weren't quite beaten either. Even with the atomic bombs and the Soviets invading the Kuriel islands a good number of Japanese officers wanted to continue fighting. In fact they even attempted a coup to stp the surrender from taking place. No, Japan could not have won, but they did have a realistic chance of repulsing the initial landings and getting a better deal. Without both the bombs and Russia entering the war, the Japanese likely wouldn't have surrendered until Kyushu fell at the very least, which would have been very bloody.

it's all speculation. in reality, the continental Manchurian JP forces were gone in less than a month. a simple blockade of Japan with a threat of using a nuclear bomb (perhaps after a prior demonstration on some far-off military object) would have already led to their surrender.

While the Russians may not have conducted strategic bombings, they did a fine job killing people on the ground.

Nothing comparable to the US or UK.

That's WWII for you, a madness that humanity must never again repeat.

nobody would disagree. the problem is that the US has been actively pushing the world towards a WWIII in the years since WWII.

So we're agreed that there are situations where Israel would use nuclear weapons then?

yes, but not as a first-strike. as a response to imminent defeat in an ongoing war, yes.

See buying arms doesn't give you logistics. It's not a matter of just throwing money at the problem either. It's a matter of making sure you have the trucks to bring up the food and ammunition for your soldiers, the repair crews to keep your vechicals operating, things like that. You can't buy a few thousand tanks and send them someplace. An army that tries it usually ends up dead.

right, but all of that is in the end also a question of money/effort. also, the more sophisticated technology becomes, the less important ground war actually is. while historically Arabs in general proved poor soldiers, if they obtain a very large number of modern tactical missiles (even with conventional warheads), and modern strike fighters, they could already make the situation very bad for Israel without actually invading it.

There's a big difference. One is saying, "ok, we have this plan in case we ever have to invade Lebanon, you guys think this would be ok?"

thats not an accurate formulation. the more correct one would be "Invade Lebanon as soon as you can. Do it. Now."

You honestly don't see the difference between presenting a plan, which the US approves on condition that they don't use the cluster bombs, and Israel throwing away that plan and using them anyway? It's basicly a doublecross.

it's an invented difference. you cling on to little technicalities of one particular conflict, if you go to many others you'll see the same picture everywhere. take for instance the proxy governments of South Vietnam, Georgia, or even Iraq under Saddam Hussein in the Iraq-Iran war, or Suharto in Indonesia. they were all directly supported by the US in their wars.

Because pro-israeli lobbiest groups have a lot of money and influence and speaking out against Israeli policies is spun by your political opponents as meaning you're anti-semetic. Look at the criticism Carter faced just after the 2006 war by suggesting that Israel made a mistake by invading Lebanon and shared responsibility for the Palestinian crisis.

correct! now why do you still think that Israel is not under direct US protection? can you imagine the criticism and uproar by the pro-Israeli lobbyist groups if there is a serious military threat to Israel and the US fails to help?

Except that Georgia fired first and isn't exactly a close ally. There are no treaties guarranteeing mutual defense either. Also no, sorry but the "western media" did report the facts.

hahaha, good joke. I was following Western media very closely right at the start of the war, even wrote a long article about it.

http://www.debatepolitics.com/bias-m...t-your-tv.html

the absolutely overwhelming picture, in all major newspapers and all TV channels, was "Russia invades Georgia".

The facts were reported first, then it was changed.

the facts were not reported. CNN has not directly reported on the Georgian offensive on Tskhinvali on the night of August 8th even until now, only in the context of "Russians claim ... ", "Gorbachev claims ...". their own article titles: "Russian military pushes into Georgia", "NATO grapples with an angry bear", "Russian warplanes target Georgia", etc. feel the difference? the first time some real facts about the start of the war were actually clearly reported in major Anglosaxon media was the cover article in NY Times 5 days ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/wo...in&oref=slogin

Funny how we overlooked getting one with our good buddy Israel, considering we've got one with so many other countries.

no treaty is needed with Israel. it's the 51st state. a treaty with it, from a US administration standpoint, is about as meaningful as a treaty with Florida.

Not likeing US foriegn policy is not the same as hating the US...

"hating" is a stronger version of "not liking". its just that a certain percentage of the people who dont like the US feel stronger about it. either way, its a pointless argument. unless you are completely oblivious to reality or have never been in other countries, it should be apparent to you that the vast majority in the world does not like the way the US behaves.

You forgot the war of 1812 where the British burned down Washington DC.

umm.. ok... tbh it was so small that I didnt even know of it. the far better known 1812 war is Napoleon vs Russia (about 20 times as large).

Oh it would most certainly change it. Nuclear weapons would then be considered a vaild weapon.

oh really. against whom? Saudi Arabia?

Wiping out the supporting population. A nuclear strike on the US by terrorists would push the US in that direction, not the "oh we should revise our foriegn policy so they won't hate us" direction.

that would be a great way towards suicide. also, "wiping out the supporting population" would mean.. a nuke on Saudi Arabia? who's gonna provide the oil then?

However, massive attacks on the US will only put the American population into the military action camp and give the neo-cons power once again.

perhaps. it's a stupid and dangerous reaction though. you can call it "American psyche".. I just call it idiocy. a kindergarten level reaction. a simple analogy is something like this: a big bully with a knife beats up everyone on the block except a few other big kids with knives he's afraid of touching. some little kids team up and secretly drop a flowerpot on him or something in revenge. he is enraged and randomly beats up unrelated little kids, and even goes so far as to pick fights with the other big kids, who obviously respond by becoming more aggressive as well. every juvenile psychologist will tell you that the likely way this situation is going to end is with the bully or some other kid getting stabbed. the correct way out of this situation is - obviously - to work with the bully and make him understand that he should stop it. in RL, this is most commonly accomplished by other kids ganging up on him and beating him up. now, to transport this analogy to the real world, the big kids with knives are the states with nuclear ICBMs - the difference from knives being that you are practically guaranteed to be able to stab back. sadly, there is no effective way for other states to gang up on the US and "beat it up", so the only real chance for the change of the bully psychology has to come from inside. or, as an alternative, he would have to get stabbed so bad that he wouldn't be in any position to bully anymore. which, transferred to real life, is not something that we all want.

Yet they still bothered to try. I'm taking about a US that wouldn't even bother with that, which is exactly what we'd get if terrorists detonated a nuclear device in a US city.

whether they have a pretext or not, it doesnt change anything in the big picture. the actions count, not the words. its not like anyone remembers the exact pretexts for US invading Vietnam or the USSR invading Afghanistan.

As I thought you don't understand what it means. It means, no attempts at coiliation building, no trying to get support. It means the US would go in, bomb the hell out of a place, and pull out. No pretending to justify it, just bombing.

so WHAT? for the place that gets bombed its all the same thing. and the only difference would be that everybody else would be much more hostile to the US, compared to having a proper propaganda campaign tune the majority into the right mindset the bombing.

I'm just claiming that achieving that goal for itself wasn't important to Bushy.

hoho then you're probably not quite in the clear on the background of the Bush administration. or the "oil administration" as some people call it. practically everyone there has an oil background. Bush himself was subsequently in the board of 2 oil companies - Arbusto and Spectrum 7 (and later Harken) - both of which (coincidentally) kinda failed. Cheney is a major oil man as well. Rice is a former Chevron director. etc.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1138009.stm

It is a sensible idea, if one ignores the human price after all.

ya, sensible, much in the same way as the Nazi Lebensraum idea was sensible.. "why do those backward people need their land and resources.. all that could also belong to us, the proud Aryan race".

Though I'd argue that D-Day was an imporant battle, as it opened a second front against Germany.

it would have been important in 1941/42 - which is when Stalin was desperately pushing the US and UK for it. Roosevelt and Churchill famously refused in order to let Stalin sacrifice his people and win it by himself. in June 1944, Germany had already largely lost the war, and the main reasoning behind the landing was not to give all of Europe to Stalin.

Except you're forgetting one little detail, the US never invaded North Vietnam. Many of those civilians killed were South Vietnamese killed in battles. So, no you're comparison doesn't really hold up.

the US invaded South Vietnam - where nobody except for the US-installed proxy government wanted it - and bombed the hell out of it when people resisted.

See, once again you're wrong. The US didn't invade Vietnam, we were asked there, admittedly by a government we helped install, to defend them against the North.

hahaha. it's exactly the same thing as when the USSR invades Afghanistan after installing a proxy communist government there (with about zero popular support). ya sure, it's "helping"... on paper. its like when Nazis invade the Czech Republic "helping" the Sudetendeutsche minority there. xcept that tehre wasnt even any such minority in Vietnam.

Yet you're still more than willing to give that share of the blame to the US.

the USAF participated in the bombing of Dresden to a similar extent as the UK. on february 13th/14th, the USAAF 8th division was supposed to start the bombing, but the weather was bad, so the RAF took over with overall 539 planes in two waves. on 14th/15th, the USAAF bombed, with 431 bombers (316 of them bombing Dresden) and 784 protecting fighters,

the firebombing of Tokyo (and obviously the nuclear bombs) was US work exclusively.

Yet why is it that North Vietnam survived relatively intact? Maybe because most of that ordinance was dropped on supply lines in the jungle rather than Hanoi? The question isn't the number of bombs used, but where they were dropped. For most of the war major cities like Hanoi were off limits to US bombers. So no, it was not a total war.

thats true to an extent. but my point, as you may have already noticed, that the main target of US attacks was not North, but *SOUTH* Vietnam. Against the South Vietnamese population (which was harboring and supporting the Vietcong), it was a total war alright, with horrible atrocities.

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/mac...etnamBombs.pdf

a random quote: "only 11 of 3,500 Quang Tri villages were left unbombed by the end of the war"

Funny, you'd think in such a climate politicians running on an anti-American platform would do well. That they don't is rather telling.

it's mainly historically rooted. while the USSR and the Iron Curtain existed, there wasnt really any option of any anti-Americanism for West European countries, as they would not be able to defend themselves against the USSR alone (well except UK and France maybe). most of the politicians that are around today still more or less have the mindset and the connections of that era. the young ones gradually tend to be more and more independent, but it will probably take another couple of decades for old EU to become more independent of the US politically. also, the US is a major trade partner for most EU countries, and able to exert much economic pressure as well. the newer EU members are an even easier case - for now, they mostly simply whore themselves out for US military and economic aid.

That's more perception than fact.

perhaps, but I've rather good factual evidence for that i've driven so many cars - several hundreds - in so many places, that I think I can tell. the best highend cars (and the best cars overall) are German ones. just ask around among car enthusiasts (who have money to afford German cars). Japan makes lots of reliable mid-range cars, but few top level ones - the GT-R being one recent exception. Italy makes some really flashy highend cars like Lambos (in the meantime German owned) and Ferraris, but tbh they are overall, for various reasons, not as good as a Porsche - although a lot of fun. the US.. it's hard for me to name even one good US car. the Ford GT maybe. although it famously kept breaking down when Jeremy Clarkson bought it.. the Corvette Z06 might also be not too bad - I am currently trying to get one for a test drive - although I already know I am not getting it because of its dismal interior.

And the US economy is larger today, so that number represents a smaller percentage of the US GDP.

except that that number is also much higher today.

The US, however, has honored it's treaty obligations when it comes to reducing actual warheads.

the problem is that the number of warheads even after reduction is far more than enough for US/Russia to destroy each other. and where the US is weaseling around is in the very crucial aspects of delivering those warheads and intercepting Russian ones.

The main violation is the ABM system, which will almost certainly be withdrawn soon given the change in adminstrations.

remains to be seen. so far I havent seen anything promising from Obama in this direction. his Berlin speech was.. hmm.. not so good. lots of Cold War time terminology and pathos. while it had a bit of a rockstar atmosphere in Berlin, it was received rather sceptically among serious political commentators here.

Yes, because it's not like tensions were building between Georgia and Russia for quite some time. No, the US must have instigated it. The Georgians simply though the Russians were bluffing and the US would back them. They were wrong.

thats a typical uninformed opinion. please go read my article on this above. it cites many other sources.

ABMs are not first strike weapons, they're defensive weapons which would do nothing against a Russian attack.

ABMs are a first strike weapon exactly BECAUSE they would be useless against a Russian first strike. they are ONLY useful in the event that the US does a first strike, and the ABMs are used to intercept the *remaining* Russian missiles.

Hell, they aren't even in the right place to defend the US in that case. Take a globe. Now find the shortest path from Russia to the US. Here's a hint, it doesn't cross Poland.

no. here are the flight paths towards some major US cities for the Russian BMs started from the Kozelsk base and some of the other more eastward bases:

http://programtree.com/pro.gif

as you can see the Polish/Czech Republic ABM system covers the Kozelsk (westernmost) base almost completely, and the trick is in particular, that (different from the existing base in Norway) intercepting BMs in the initial acceleration phase of the flight is FAR more reliable than in the end phase - and the missiles that are to be stationed in Poland are close enough, have a sufficient launch speed and a much better thrust/weight ratio than the BMs themselves, so they could do that with the BMs launched from the Western Russia bases. they cant do that with either Iranian or North Korean missiles since their launch sites are simply too far. another interesting fact that is not known to non-experts is that the ABM system in Poland/Czech Republic/Norway is useless for defending Europe itself - it is ineffective against modern BMs in mid- and late flight phase, and especially against MIRVed ones. so the only theoretical chance that it could intercept something from Iran or North Korea is if it would be a very lowtech BM with no separable warhead, no evasive capability, and no false targets. while in reality both already have more advanced BMs already now - Iran just recently tested one yesterday - and could rather easily get to the level of making them immune to the Poland ABM. it's a few minor technical steps. if the US wanted a reliable ABM system against Iran, it would have to be located near the Persian Gulf, to be able to intercept Iranian BMs in the acceleration phase. in fact Russia has previously offered the US to establish a joint ABM base in Azerbaidjan - which would be able to do exactly that. yet the US refused with vague reasoning...

so, to summarize, for anyone well-informed, its clear that its only real purpose is as a first-strike backup (as well as a method of political/military pressure) against Russia.

The portrayal of Russia in the media isn't a matter of national policy, but ratings. American media companies are just that, media companies, not news companies. They show what gives the higher ratings, and that would be "ebil ruskies" as opposed to former soviet republic does something stupid.

thats again a rather naive opinion. if that were the case, American media would be reporting on lots of spectacular things that you've never heard of. the attack on Tskhinvali for example was a most spectacular thing - Grads tracing the sky, tanks firing and burning, journalists running in the streets under Georgian fire... just watch the Russian TV footage on YouTube.

its a long story, but in a nutshell the US media are corporate controlled, and the corporations main interest is not actually the viewers. its the advertisers. who are in turn mostly also large companies. who want a certain picture of the world, and not something different. it's all very funny when seen from the outside - while many Americans have the illusion that they have a very wide spectrum of liberal media, in reality their major media span from their "ultra-left" to "ultra-right" is quite narrow, and waaay to the right (pro-corporate-interest, pro-national-interest) as compared to reality. it looks rather outlandish to most educated people visiting the US for the first time.

a similar effect exists in most EU countries, but to a lesser extent. the ones who report on this stuff much more objectively are interestingly mostly Asian papers and journals, since they sit outside and their advertisers/owners dont ahve such a major interest in drawing a pro-US picture of events.

anyhow, its a big subject, and others have written on it much better than i could do here. just read something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent for starters. its rather dry, and already a bit dated, but extremely convincing. nothing much has changed since the time it was written, too.