[Kamui4356]

Spoiler for overly long post:

Originally Posted by Mumitroll

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?

I'm argueing that the US was not found guilty for the crimes you claimed it was, ie genocide. Found guilty for supporting a militia in a foreign state, yes, but not genocide.

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.

Oh, I'm sure the CIA knew full well they'd be brutal, though not necessarily the extent of their brutality. Of course they were fighting "commies" so they probably didn't care. All wars are brutal, that's a given. What I'm argueing here is there should have been a line set on how much we'd be willing to tolerate before we cut off support.

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.

Informed speculation based on the forces the Japanese had left, easy enough to look up, as well as the mind set of their officers, demonstrated by their attempted coup. As long as Japan had the forces necessary to repulse an initial invasion, which they apparently did, there would be no reason for them to surrender.

Nothing comparable to the US or UK.

Only because they didn't have to. The US and Britain handled the strategic bombing.

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

Which is why the US has jumped at every chance to start it, like moving into east Germany when the Soviets blockaded Berlin, invaded Cuba during the missile crisis, conquered North Vietnam, sent troops into Afganistan after the Russians did... Oh wait, that's right they didn't do any of that. That was short sighted of those adminstrations. They could have had WWIII right there but blew it. Hell, why bother to wait for an excuse? Just launch against Russia, any civilization that survives isn't going to remember who fired first and that can be done at any time.

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

So they wouldn't see an imminent nuclear strike as an imminent defeat?

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.

I'd have thought that the NATO bombing campaign in Serbia would have disproved that. Sure anything moving on the ground is dead if your enemy has air superiority, but in dug in positions you can retain most of your combat capability. Not to mention that Israel has a modern, well trained airforce of it's own. If it's used defensivly, it'd be tough to gain that air superiority unless they managed to take out the israeli airfields in a first strike.

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

Which is a sign of the Bushy adminstration's incompotence, as it pushed US intrests in Lebanon back 10 years.

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.

It's not an invented difference. If the US signs off on the plan on the condition they dont' do X, and they go ahead and do x anyway, there's a problem. I call it going rouge, and the US should have cut off a shipment of shiny new bombs to Israel. Instead the US speed up the shipment of shiny new bombs. After all, Israel can do no wrong.

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?

Help doesn't mean sending troops though. Sure the US would sell the Israelis more weapons. Hell, in that case they might even get some F-22s, though I wouldn't bet on it. That doesn't mean the US would send troops.

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".

Which is true, Russia did invade. However, they also reported that Georgia moved into South Ossetia to trigger the Russian invasion.

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

If you're just going to look at headlines and ignore the content of the articles, you're absolutely correct. However if you read the articles you'll find they they mention Georgia's attack on South Ossetia.

Reports: 6 die as Georgia shells South Ossetia
This was a few days before the main attack.

Russians accused of 'bombing' Georgia as violence escalates
This one was coverage of Georgia's initial attack on Tskhinvali before the Russians counterattacked. Yes, it still has an anti-Russian spin to it, but it does make clear that Georgia attacked first and provides some background.

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.

Which is why the US has always committed troops to defend Israel. Oh wait, they haven't. You can claim what you want, but the facts say something else.

"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.

Yay for shifting goal posts! So it goes from most of the world is anti-American to most of the world doesn't like US policies? That hating is a stronger version of not liking does not mean they can be used interchangable. You said it yourself, most Americans don't like US policies. That doesn't mean most Americans hate their own country. That's one of the reasons Obama won, as he said he'd change many of those policies. Whether he actually follows through and say engages in diplomacy with Iran and works out a deal or not has yet to be seen.

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).

I don't think that excuse really works. This isn't a news story that got buried because something bigger happened.

oh really. against whom? Saudi Arabia?

Off hand I'd say the region of Pakistan where Bin Ladin is believed to be hiding.

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?

The US gets suprisingly little of its oil from the middle east actually. We get most of it from Canada and Mexico. If we lost middle eastern oil, we could make up the difference by fuel rationing and banning cars that get less than 35 MPG.

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.

That's a pretty bad anology. If you wanted to make it more accurate, it'd be, the bully kills the families of the kids that drop the pot on him. If you want to make it even more accurate you could change the bully to a big kid who means well, but ends up hurting others because he doesn't think through to the consequences that his actions cause and is just so much bigger and has a short temper.

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.

It changes a lot actually. Right now if the US can't find a good pretext, they simply won't invade. In this case, they wouldn't care and invade anyway.

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.

It's a difference between the place getting bombed or not actually. They US hasn't bombed Iran for example, because it doesn't have a good pretext to go in. If they US no longer cares about that, what's to stop them?

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

I'm well aware of that. However, it does not in fact explain Bushy's invasion of Iraq by itself, nor many of the other actions he's taken as president. However, if you view his actions through the prism of him trying to succeed where his father in his mind failed, everything makes sense. The invasion of Iraq, the expansion of NATO, his support for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, it all comes into focus.

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".

So you're saying securing a vital resource that your economy depends on is not sensible? I did point out that it's if you ignore the human cost.

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.

The US and Britain could not have invaded in 1941 or 1942. They were both still building up their forces. 1943, maybe, as there was that invasion of Italy. Also, if you remove the threat of an allied invasion of France, that frees up 59 German divisions to deploy against the Russians. Considering the Russian advance was already stretching their logistics to the limit, the transfer of nearly 60 divisions to the eastern front would have changed the situation dramaticly. Let's not remove the threat though, just the invasion itself. Transfer even 20 of those divisions to the Eastern front, and the Russian advance is probably stopped. The Russians then either have to regroup and try again, or make a seperate peace, which Stalin did threaten to do. Germany most certainly couldn't "win", but without Normandy, the third reich may have been able to preserve itself. Normandy was the point where that became impossible.

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.

South Vietnam asked for US aid against North Vietnam. That the US installed the government was irrelevant. They were fighting a foreign invasion. Of course, had the US instead backed Ho Chi Min when he came to them seekig assistance and negoiated a deal to get France to withdraw there wouldn'thave been a North and South Vietnam to begin with, and Vietnam as a whole would have been a US ally.

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.

There's actually quite a big difference. For starters, the Government in South Vietnam had effective control of the country. The communist government in Afganstan didn't. Also, the South Vietnamese were fighting against North Vietnam. Though I'd be willing to condeed that the Soviets did not in fact invade, but were invited in.

Your Germany example though, the Germans were not invited in by any official government. They went in, then forced the government there to accept the annexation of the Sudetenland. It's completely different from either the US war in Vietnam, or the Soviet war in Afganistan, as neither nation claimed that territory as their own.

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,

You'll note that the US bombers did not drop incindary bombs in those raids, but high explosive, and concentraited their attacks on industrial targets in the city. For the US, there was nothing special about the operation.

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

Did I claim otherwise? I only take exception to you blaming the US for firebombing of Dresden, when it was not the US bombers who dropped the incindaries

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"

I'm not claiming there were no atrocities. I'm claiming that it was not a total war, as evidenced by the lack of consitant US attacks on the North. In a total war, that would not have been the case.

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.

You know, it almost sounds like you're saying it's in the interests of European countries to have such relations with the US, for now at least. I would point out that the trade partner thing does work both ways.

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.

If you're only talking about high end cars, yeah you'd have a case. I'm talking about low to mid-end cars, the kind most of the people who have a car actually own. Think ford focus, honda civic, those kinds. I'd agree that the US auto industry most certainly does have a lack of high end sports cars, but when it comes to more common cars, US offerings are much better than their reputation would suggest.

except that that number is also much higher today.

Only if you compare it to the numbers prior to WWII, back when the US didn't really see the need to have a large standing army at all, and the navy got varying levels of support depending on the ideals of the adminstration at the time.

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.

Of course, even with the reductions, we'd each have somewhere between 2 and 3 thousand warheads. It's still a big drop from numbers in the 10s of thousands both the US and Russia once had.

As for interepting Russian warheads, assume an 80% success rate for interception. Now assume 2000 as the number of russian warheads. We have what, 10 that will be stationed in Poland? That leaves 1992 warheads unintercepted, ignoring that a Russian strike on the US would not pass over europe. So let's say the US wanted to stop a Russian strike. At 80% success rate the US would need a minimum of 2500 ABMs. Now then, what happens if the Russians then decide that getting a few major US cities is good enough, so they concentrate on them since some will likely get through. Sure the US might have enough AMBs to intercept those Russian missiles, but not enough to do so at any one location. Thus the US now needs more ABMs to protect it's vital targets. All of a sudden that 2500 minimum isn't going to cut it, and you'll in fact need 10 times that. If the Russians then build more missiles, the US then needs to build even more ABMs. It's a losing game cost wise. No matter how good the system, you'll always need massive redundancy, and that's assuming an unrealisticly high success rate. Further it takes a much more advanced guidence package to hit another missile than it does for that first one to hit a city.

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, it does remain to be seen.

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

Which is all speculation.

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.

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

A base that can easily saturate the ABMs. There simply aren't enough. In a scenerio where a first strike is a possibility, both sides would have their missiles on standby. Most likely the Russians owuld be able to launch before their silos were hit, and vice-versa. Then there are ballistic missile subs. They'd be insufficient to cover a retalitory strike as well.

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...

One slight problem there. By the time they could cover the range, the Russian missile would be out of it's initial boost phase. The only way for it to work is if the ABMs were launched first. The thing you have to remember about the US ABMs, they don't work. They have about a 50% success rate, against targets of known trajectory. Against actual enemy missiles, they'd be lucky to have a 25% success rate.

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.

To anyone informed about the actual capabilities of the missiles, it's clear they'd be useless as a first strike backup. Oh I fully agree that part of their purpose is to apply political presure on Russia, however, I disagree that they're an effective means of doing so.

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.

The problem there, Americans don't want to see things that would make it look like they're supporting the wrong side. They'd change the channel to another media outlet who report on the "ebil ruskies", and thus lose ratings.

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.

That's because that's what gets them the ratings. The ratings then determine how much they can charge for ads. The US media companies only care about that ad money. Thus they'll show whatever gets them the higher ratings needed for higher ad revenue. It just so happens that's a US centric view of the world. That's what Americans want to see. Though I think we largely agree here, only differing on how much an influence one part of the equation is. I say getting the higher ratings is more important than the adgenda of the sponsers, you say the adgenda of the sponsers has the bigger impact. I think we can agree that both play a factor though.