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Originally Posted by Mumitroll
well - white people arent the majority in the world, you know. US committed mass genocide against the Vietnamese population (both South and North), killing between 2 and 5 million (depending on source). it never paid any reparations or even apologized. in another completely clear case, the World Court ruled the US guilty of aggression and genocide in Nicaragua and ordered it to pay $2 billion in reparations already in 1986. The US flat out ignored that and continues to do so till today. you dont hear much about that in the media, do you?
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For starters, not all those deaths in Vietnam were caused by US forces. You seem to be forgetting that the US wasn't simply bombing with impunity, there was an actual ground war. If there were a lot of civilian casualties, it's because a lot of the figthing was done in civilian areas.
As for Nicaragua, while the US did illegally fund the Contras, the US did not in fact contribute forces as anything other than advisers. The decision had nothing to do with genocide claims either. Of course I wouldn't expect facts to get in the way of your arguements.
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well, just look into history. teh justification for the two nuclear strikes performed historically was to "save our youngsters" (quote Truman). it is regarded as a valid and correct decision up until today officially - the US also never apologized for that. even although it was a horrible, deliberate war crime - the bombs were dropped not on military targets (of which there were plenty), but on large cities, deliberately killing many thousands of women, children, etc. the Hiroshima bomb (I was there last year) was dropped merely a few hundred meters away from the city hospital.
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If we had invaded Japan, the casualty figures on both sides would have been far far higher. Also you fail to understand the concept of total war. In a total war, civilian populations are a military target. That's how WWII was fought on all sides.
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and no Israel will not do a preemptive nuclear strike. it's suicide. what they would do if they had "information" on Iran "planning" a strike would be an air raid with conventional weapons, perhaps also cruise missiles.
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And if those cruise missiles don't destroy the targets? Israel will do whatever it takes to ensure their survival. If Iran is about to launch a nuclear strike, do you really expect Israel to not use everything they have to stop it? Of course we're dealing with very low probability scenerios here, but low probablity is not zero probablility.
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if Israel were to attack Iran preemptively with a nuclear strike, all chance for any reconciliation would be lost forever. no Muslim would be content until Israel were destroyed completely, and earlier or later it would happen - latest simply when other Arab League states would obtain nuclear weapons. from a purely military standpoint, Israel ultimately fights a losing battle - they are merely around 8 million against half a billion Muslims even in the Arab League states (and more outside of it). that is occasionally admitted even by fairly high-ranking Israeli officers. I agree about the Arab states being largely bad at war, but even with that, the 1973 Yom Kippur war went far worse for Israel than the previous 1948 and 1967 wars. yes, they can so far survive by drafting women and receiving immense military support from the US, but if there were another major war in the near future, Israel would probably no longer be able to win conventionally and would have to resort to nuclear weapons.
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Is there any doubt that Israel would resort to nuclear weapons though? Especially if we're talking about a scenerio where they had already used some. Also you seem to be overlooking the logistics of the situation. The Arab league simply cannot maintain an army like that in the field.
US approval of the plan is not the same as US approval of launching the plan. Besides, the plan the Israelis actually carried out was not the one mentioned there.
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this is a minor technical detail. akin to the attack dog biting someone in the knee instead of the ankle where its master ordered it to.
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No, it isn't a minor technical detail. It's a complete departure from the plan your sources claim Cheney (who has no authority to do so by the way) approved. Of course the US supported Israel regardless, as to do otherwise is political suicide in this country.
If North Korea were to invade South Korea, the US would send troops. If someone invaded Germany, the US would send troops. If someone invades Japan, the US would send troops. When people have invaded Israel, the US gave the Israelis some logistical and intelligence support. The US sent no troops. The amount of money we spent on assistance isn't really relevent. When the shit hits the fan so to speak, Israel's military is on the front lines alone.
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the extent of control possible then was far from what is possible today. today it is possible to control a place by many means, and having a military presence there is merely one (and if you check http://www.ppu.org.uk/pm/US-military-bases-2001-03.jpg you'll see that it's not much less than the territory of the British Empire). other means of control are things like the IMF or NAFTA, military and economic aid, proxy governments (as in the Ukraine, Georgia, etc).
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One big difference there though. Those are soverign nations that have US forces in them. In the end if they decide they want to be responsible for their own defense and ask the US to remove it's forces, the US would have little choice but to comply. Of course we'd try to offer all kinds of incentives to keep them there though. The British Empire on the other hand directly ruled 1/4 of the Earth, not simply had lots of influence on the local governments.
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also, the speed with which a country can be punished for disobedience is much higher today than it was back then, for obvious technical reasons. which is also one of the reasons why the US has made so many military interventions since WWII - a lot more than the British Empire in any similarly long period.
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True, though that's not really relevant and only speaks to the success of the British that they were able to do so much with far less in the way of technology.
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overall it is really a simple case for any historian to prove that US influence today is unprecedented, way higher than that of the British or Roman Empire. just read a bit on that, you'll easily find sources.
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Only because of advancing technology.
So you admit you made up those figures and they have no basis in reality other than what you think sounds right?
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the scale was different. nobody has ever killed more people on a single day than the US.
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Right... It may have taken them a bit longer than we could do it today, but they still manages to rack up kills in the hundreds of thousands or even millions in short periods of time. The second deadliest war after WWII? That would be the An Shi Rebellion in China from 755-763. People can kill other people just fine without bombs and nukes. All you need to do is cut off their food supply and watch them starve.
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yes. in the US, UK, or Russia. in Pakistan? i wouldnt bet on it.
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For now they are. However, that would change if the current government there is overthrown. I believed I mentioned Pakistan's nukes are the most likely source. However, that also means they'd be the place international intelligence agencies would be keeping a close watch on.
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well, you see, earlier or later that "American psyche" will change. the latest would be after all major US cities are destroyed and tens of millions are dead - i.e. a large-scale nuclear war. a local nuclear explosion destroying a single city might or might not be enough. dont know for sure.
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See, that's the thing, everyone seems to think the US doesn't have the stomach for a bloody conflict. Massive attacks don't make Americans cower in fear, they make Americans swear revenge. This has been shown time and time again. The only way such a thing would work is if the feat showed that we couldn't win against them because they're simply too powerful. If terrorists were to drop an astroid on the US that might work. It would show a level of technology and infrastructure we couldn't win against. A terrorist detonating a low yield nuke from a boat on the other hand, not so much.
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thats already largely the case today.
the "case" was completely laughable, and everyone not-brainwashed knew it. the one and only reason for this war is geopolitical control of the region with world's 2nd-largest oil resources.
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The US today plays lipservice to international law. We did attempt to make a cae for invading Iraq, we didn't simply go ahead and invade. Add a nuclear terrorist attack and that lipservice ceases to exist. I'm not sure you understand what that means.
Also, you're assuming compotence and conspiricy on the part of the Bushy adminstration, when clearly they displayed a lack of the former, which is a prerequsite for the latter. No, I'm afraid the reason wasn't anything so grand. It was simply a case of Bushy wanting to finish what his father started. If we got control of Iraqi oil, so much the better. However, it wasn't the primary reason. I know there's a tendency to assume someone in that position wouldn't use military force for such a foolish reason, but sadly it just isn't true.
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well, what else did you learn in school? probably you also learned that Japan provoked the US into dropping nuclear bombs on its cities, that the US won WWII, that space exploration started when Americans went to the moon, etc?
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Yes, because I'm American it means my education was grounded in a firm base of propaganda.
No, I learned exactly what caused WWII, how the war was fought, and the US' true role, building the trucks that allowed the Russians to concentrate on building tanks and planes to grind the German Army into dust.
Sorry, but not all American education consists of "America fuck yeah!!!" Some of us even learn geography. Of course considering your obvious bias, I don't expect you to believe that.
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what you probably didnt learn is that the US killed far more civilians in Vietnam than Japan did in Nanjing - a number overall comparable to all of Japan's war crime victims.
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Except the US didn't kill all those civilians. You're quoting the total number of casualties who died at the hands of both sides. Considering that much of the fighting was done in civilian population centers, the numbers are to be expected. Also once again you're compairing one incident to an entire war.
If by rough estimate you mean pulled out of your ass, I guess you're right.
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Japan's total war crime victims for WWII are at around 5.5 million according to R. J. Rummel. Statistics of democide: Genocide and Mass Murder since 1900 Transaction. US civilian victims in Vietnam are around 4.5 million total (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War) - some sources count differently and have figures of around 3 million. either way, its a comparable figure.
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Once again, you're not comparing the same numbers. Now you're taking a subsection of the total Chinese casualties, those killing in direct war crimes, while comparing it to the total number killed, including military dead by the way, in vietnam. If you want to compare that number to the total number of Chinese dead in WWII,
20-35 million, depending on the source. I didn't want to play your little game, but your deliberate misrepresentation of those numbers left me little choice.
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a big difference is that Japan apologized for its crimes and paid reparations. the US never did.
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The order of magnitude higher thing isn't a big difference then?
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and Vietnam wasnt a total war? where the napalm bombing of civilian population was par for the course?
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No, it was not a total war. There wasn't a round the clock bombardment of North Vietnamese population centers throughout the war for one thing. Bombing of North Vietnam was heavily restricted though most of the war. The closest it came was operation rolling thhunder, but even then Hanoi itself was off limits.
Remember, most of the Vietnam war was fought in the South, with the US on the defensive do to fears an invasion of North Vietnam would bring China and Russia into the conflict directly.
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i did mention Dresden above.
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Yes, in the context of not mentioning it.
At which point I said that you can't blame the US of that one as it was largely a British attack. The US has done a lot of things wrong. No need to go around blaming them for more.
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yes. nevertheless - its a clear fact that most of the EU governments are (for political/military reasons) running a course that is far more US-friendly (you could also say subservient) that what the majority of the population wants.
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So then vote for people who doesn't support such policies? That people who support such policies keep winning re-election says that even if most Europeans don't like them, they at least acknowledge they're necessary.
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McDonalds and movies are good cases, I'll give you that. the US auto industry though.. is pretty much on its deathbed at the moment. GM does own Opel, but it just recently asked for a €40 billion rescue package from the German government. i think I dont need to explain how bad the situation is for Chrysler and Ford.
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True enough. However, I wouldn't say the US auto industy is on it's deathbed. Even without a government bailout they could survive by selling off some of their european and asian namebrands to raise cash. At least Ford could. Chrysler is probably in the worst shape and doesn't really have any divisions left to sell. GM can recover, but they'd need a quick infusion of cash and I'm not sure they could sell off a division in time.
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regarding the software question - yes that industry is one of the few remaining US strengths. although to be accurate i'm typing this in a German X terminal on my Linux server box
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Fair enough, I gambled on the odds you'd be using a windows PC and lost.
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reduced the people count - slightly. 1.5 mil active personnel + 1.5 mil reserve as opposed to about 1.8 mil active and 2 mil reserve at a local peak during the 1991 Gulf War. the military spending however has increased dramatically. $651 billion total projected for 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militar..._United_States
thats an unprecedented figure and more than the rest of the world combined. its over 100 billion more than at the peak times of the Cold War even if you factor in inflation.
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Once again you manage to manipulate numbers. The US military decreased it's size following the collapse of the Soviet union, then built it back up following 9-11.
From your own source: "This is historically low for the United States since it peaked in 1944 at 37.8% of GDP (
it reached the lowest point of 3.0% in 1999-2001)." Of course that 38% number is during WWII, so should be considered an artifical high.
The US doesn't even make the top 10 in terms of military expenditure by percentage of GPD.
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There are very major doubts about that. For example, regarding Trident missiles, tests were performed by the US with more than 8 warheads per missile, directly violating START-1. Russia complained about that, but nothing happened.The warhead covers used on Trident-1 and Trident-2 violated the treaty agreements for inspection options by the Russian side. Russian inspectors have been repeatedly denied access to nuclear subs which should have been inspected in accordance to the treaty. British missiles with nuclear carrying capacities were flight-tested at US sites - another treaty violation. US has announced that it did not have plans to use the B1 fleet as carriers for long-range nuclear cruise missiles, and agreed to seal the mounting pylons for heavy cruise missiles on B1s by welding which would require a factory visit to undo - which could be verified by Russian inspectors in accordance to the treaty. However, in reality, not welding was used, but an adhesive seal, which can easily be removed locally at the base where the B1s are stationed - which adds for another uncontrollable 1000+ deployable nuclear warheads - another major violation of the treaty. Yet another one was the scrapping process of the LGM-118 MX Peacekeeper missiles. According to the treaty, all stages of mobile BMs have to be scrapped - the US just scrapped the first stage of the MX missiles, which could in practice be replaced with the Castor-120 stage - which would allow to restore all 50 MX missiles with their 500 warheads within a short time. Yet another point is the deployment of US ABM defense - which also contradicts the treaty.
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Except for the ABMs, which don't work anyway, all those things have more to do with doing it cheaply, rather than doing it correctly. It's a fact that the US has dismantled actual warheads in accordance to treaties such as
SORT. If we skimped a bit on the delivary vechicals, well we shouldn't have, but a delivery system without a warhead to deliver isn't much of an issue. A working ABM system would be a huge issue though, especially with reduced arsenals, which is why you see Moscow making a bigger deal about that.
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Thats just the tip of the iceberg, i'm too lazy to type it all off. Go inform yourself, it's all publicly available information. Basically the US circumvents the treaty wherever possible to keep and build up a large nuclear arsenal and a possibly advantageous situation for using it. Obviously you dont read all that in the NY Times though...
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Yet the US still reduced the size of it's nuclear arsenal greatly. The Russians also retain a large nuclear arsenal, yet reduced it greatly from it's height. Maintaning a large nuclear deterrent in not necessarily in violation of the treaties in question.
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the Soviet Union never even was a "nation"
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They were as much a nation as the US would have been under the articles of confederation. That's close enough.
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the point is that this guy knows what he's talking about - different to the "many more who disagree". while I agree that Russia itself is not at all interested in resuming the Cold War, they dont really have any choice. they have to do something against the continuing military pressure from the US. and their measures like deploying anti-ABM missiles in Kaliningrad, developing new nuclear subs and BMs, and continually increasing military spending, are just logical consequences of US policy.
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Russia's actions could be much more accurately explained as an attempt to re-assert itself and show that it's a powerful nation once again, rather than some alarmist reaction to US policies that aren't directed against it. I'd contend that Russia in fact does not seek an antagonistic relationship with the US and is conducting it's current actions more to say thet they're not weak and we'll need to work with them to get things accomplished rather than because they feel directly threatened by the US. In short, Russia's saying they're not a nation we can dictate to.