By the way “restless” I was born in Cuba, so officially i am Cuban not American, but since I live in America, I dont go carrying a Cuban flag, Im an American Citizen and I am F’ing proud of it. Unless you are from a communistic country were you see people get beat and killed for no reason at all. You see little girls made into hookers by the government and you live in poverty, were being rationed a loaf of bread for a family of five needs to feed you for a week, i guess you wouldnt really understand why America did what it did. No other country in the world is as generous and giving as America, yet we get slapped in the face because of it. To me the only thing America has done wrong is be tooo forgiving to the countrys that oppose us. If you can name me one other country that if they had the power we had, would not just take over anything they wanted. YEA, i thought so, and canada doesnt count. So if you dont like America or what it does move… get the F out. If you live here be proud of your country and the men and women that protect the freedom that we have, including the freedom to be a bitch and talk shit about your own country. Try doing that in Iraq or Cuba and they would have shot your ass.
Z-Man, the question was not if Japan would surrender. Hell, after the Battle of Midway their fate was already sealed. But for three years they fought on, for every single strip of island dotting the Pacific. The original casualty projections suggested close to 1 million lives, about half of them civilians, to take the home islands. No-one “knew” in 1945 that the Japanese would surrender. What we knew was what we had seen in the Battan Death March and the Rape of Nanjing. Why drop two bombs? Because the Japanese refused to surrender after the first. A translation error in their response after the first gave the impression that they were rejecting our demands for surrender, so we dropped the second. The really fun part is the way that revisionist “historians” paint this. “Oh, poor Japan, the peace-loving people who were bullied by the U.S. into starting the 2nd World War, they were forced to endure the horrors of atomic warfare.” Yet they conveniently forget the Japanese atrocities commited in China and Korea, and Singapore, and the Phillippines.
Yes, I do have relatives overseas, but guess what? I’m not too concerned about their safety. And the reason is simple. Unless there is a demonstrable threat to the U.S. interests, more than likely, America will take no action. Iraq was a threat to U.S. interests and we intervened. Hitler was athreat to U.S. interests and we sat on our hands because “It was none of our business”. Yeah, that one worked out really well. Had someone acted in the 30s, how many lives would have been saved? But instead, we waited until directly challenged to act.
I loved the little quote form Amnesty. Guess what Z-Man? If you buy diamonds, you share the blame for the attrocities cited by Amnesty. If you buy gasoline, you are in the same boat you claim America is. Every time you buy goods produced in Central America or China, you’re benefiting from slave labor. Get off your high horse, you don’t post on this forum to debate ideas. You come here to feel morally superior and congratulate yourself that you aren’t “like those Americans”. And understand this: While America may have gone into Iraq, not all Americans supported the idea. There are still questions being asked about why. The same questions that you and Restless have been raising, as a matter of fact. And you know what? These people are free to ask those questions. They are not whisked off the street, they aren’t tortured. They aren’t “re-educated”. That’s why my father came here, that’s why I stay here. And that’s why people every day risk their lives to come here. Are we perfect? No, but we realize it, and we argue about it, and we work to be better.
“No other country in the world is as generous and giving as America, yet we get slapped in the face because of it. To me the only thing America has done wrong is be tooo forgiving to the countrys that oppose us.”
So you’re saying that the millions of civilian victims in Laos, Vietnam, Cambodja, Iraq and other countries are just a sign of your generosity? Nazi Germany was also very, very generous, even more than your country.
Z-man –
The point wasn’t that Iraq had anything to do with the events of September 11. The point was that the events of September 11 provided the impetus for international action necessary to fight terror (hence the mention of Afghanistan) and also to take care of other perceived imminent threats to national interest.
BTW, to the extent you think Korea is a greater problem, so do many here. Iran could also be problematic. Both Korea and Iran have either fully or partially developed nuclear capabilities. The geopolitical considerations are quite different with Korea, especially with China in the mix, but we’ll see what happens now that Iraq is not forefront among the worries.
Restless:
We do learn in school about the consequences of our military actions. Unfortnately (from your perspective), we learn about the positive and negative consequences of our actions, as well as the motivations for our actions. At least the careful students do – those who think critically and explore the issues for themselves.
You mentioned our actions in Viet Nam and Cambodia. Careful students would note that we should have done far more in Cambodia, given the results of the Khmer Rouge’s mass murder there. While our actions in Viet Nam were militarily inept, and the PR was grossly mishandled (how else does a U.S. military victory like the Tet Offensive get turned into a defeat in the popular mind?), the motivation for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson engaging and ramping up our involvement, respectively, was the fight against the spread of Communism.
Careful students will note that for all the deserved invective spewed against the Nazis, Communists were responsible for many, many more mass murder victims (think Stalin’s purges, Mao’s class-based executions, and the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge, not to mention Castro’s Cuba). The heart of the Communist doctrine, as espoused by the other superpower at the time, was global, violent revolution (Kruschev: “We will crush you!”) – the kind Lenin and Trotsky and Mao and Pol Pot and Castro had effected or were to effect in their own countries. The deployment of our military to stop this Communist expansion, which we did militarily in Europe via build-up at the Iron Curtain and were attempting to do by our actions in Viet Nam, was not mistaken policy. It was badly implemented, but the analysis behind it was not mistaken.
Restless, when one is doing an analysis of a situation, one must not only look at the actual outcome, i.e. the dead foreign citizens, but one must also look at the intended outcome and the perceived possible outcomes had the action not been taken. That is a complete analysis, and hopefully that is how good students everywhere examine history – and especially students here in the U.S. (I say “especially” in the U.S. only because I care about the education of U.S. voters).
“In a drive for global hegemony, America is crafting a new imperialism to rule the world.
The trendy notion of America as a “hyperpower” is largely an artifact of the aftermath of the Cold War. True, we enjoy unmatched military strength. Sure, we spend more on defense than do the next ten or so nations collectively. But that imbalance is not a reflection of a wish to dominate the globe, but mostly due to the abject collapse of an empire that failed to do precisely that ? and the cleanup of the resulting detritus of Soviet interventions and clients, from Serbia to Afghanistan to Iraq.”
The USA IS planning to take over the world. They intend to rule the world by force, which is the only dimension where they reign supreme. They’ve also expressed this very brazenly. You can find that in the National Security Strategy which is on the White House web page. & They would have attacked Afghanistan anyway. Afghanistan is the culmination of >10yrs of planning for establishing US hegemony in Central Asia.
“Japan was going to surrender, if the bomns had been dropped or not. Any objective WW2 historian knows this.”
Correct. It was just gratuitous bombing and they even bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki because Toyko had already been destroyed. But they wanted to send a message to everyone else, like the Russians/Soviets, about what the USA was capable of. According to Radabinod Pal, the only independent Asian justice and the Tokyo trial, an Indian, said that the only crime that happened in the Pacific which compares with the crimes of the Nazis was the dropping of the 2 atom bombs.
PS-good job Z-man! I tought you would have given up, these ‘good guys’ are so deeply indoctrinated that they’re pretty much in denial now. Did you get that PM about 9/11?
Paul: You come here to feel morally superior and congratulate yourself that you aren’t “like those Americans”.
Wow! Do you make a list too?
So the question now is, where the hell are the carefull students? Haven’t seen one yet.
BTW how’s the economy doing?
Ron101:
Stocks closed out the week higher, after investors cheered a surprisingly strong report on durable-goods orders and a spate of earnings news.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished 172.06, or 1.9% higher to 9284.57, while the Nasdaq Composite Index rose 29.28, or 1.7% to 1730.70. The S&P 500-stock index was up 17.08 to 998.68
The number of U.S. workers filing first-time applications for unemployment benefits fell to a five-month low last week.
Initial jobless claims dropped by a larger-than-expected 29,000 to 386,000 in the week that ended July 19, the Labor Department said. That marked the first time since the week of Feb. 8 that claims have been below 400,000. Economists regard any number above 400,000 as indicative of a deteriorating jobs market.
“It’s a reason for guarded optimism,” said Cary Leahey, an economist with Deutsche Bank in New York. Over the last two weeks initial claims have declined by 55,000. If the trend continues into next month, Mr. Leahey said, nonfarm payrolls could rise as much as 100,000 in August. So far this year, payrolls have declined for five consecutive months.
The National Bureau of Economic Research said the U.S. economic recession that began in March 2001 ended eight months later, not long after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Most economists concluded more than a year ago that the recession ended in late 2001.
– Source: The Wall Street Journal
Ron,
The stock market is up 20% since March.
Also:
Orders for big-ticket items in June rose by the largest amount all year amid a surge in orders for nondefense aircraft. Gains were broad-based, offering hope that the U.S. manufacturing sector is on the mend.
Separately, new-home sales hit another record last month and existing-home sales eased but remained at a high level.
Orders for durable goods, or items such as cars and appliances that are meant to last three years or more, jumped 2.1% to $172.5 billion last month, the Commerce Department reported Friday. May orders were flat as manufacturers struggled to regain their footing after a 2.4% drop in April.
Durable-goods inventories shrank 0.6%. Unfilled orders climbed 0.1%, while durable-goods shipments rose 1.3%.
Source – The Wall Street Journal
Z-Man, no I don’t make a list of bad guys. This is an issue on which you and I happen to disagree. It is nothing personal, I have no negative feelings toward you, I have simply observed a certain perspective in your posts that indicates to me your feelings of moral superiority. It is possible that I have either misjudged your intentions, or I have mixed up your posts with someone else. If that is the case, I apologize. But I must ask, do you have an argument against anything else that I wrote?
Restless, if you haven’t seen any careful students of history, don’t be suprised. Education in America is increasingly weighted towards science/technology, and careful scholarship across the board, not only in this country, seems to be in decline. The main problem is information. There is so much available, that to become an expert in a given field would take lifetimes of study. What you have now are specialists, who can tell you about a 10 year period, and nothing else. Of course, this site is dedicated to increased athletic and weight lifting ability, so you may find what you are looking for in professional journals.
Monsieur Quebec-Actually, Tokyo was not destroyed, it had been devastated by fire-bombing. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were selected as targets for a psychological reason. They were not militarily significant, nor industrially significant. WW2 was the first war in which you see large scale attacks on civilian population centers, by both sides, in an effort to take away the will to fight. Think Dresden, Coventry, and to a lesser extent, Seattle. As for Pal’s assertion that the dropping of the two atomic bombs were equal to the Nazi attrocities, he’s way off base. The Nazi’s were seeking to first stifle all opposition to their regime, and then later to promote “genetic purity.” Kind of interesting that he overlooked Japanese conduct in China. The three-day rape and pillage of Nanjing ranks pretty high on the list of war-time atrocities. Check out Tribo ความสุขบนเตียง. If the U.S. was interested in perpetrating the same sort of thing, we would not have helped rebuild the Japanese economy.
How bout that 9/11 report huh?
wonder why the 28 pages detailing Saudi Arabia’s involvement was blacked out due to “security reasons”…
wouldnt wanna piss off the oil heads now would we!
clusterfuck thru and thru
Lol, you guys have answers for everything.
Good to see at least some humour in this thread. Keep it up 
LOL- restless, you are just plain incompetent. Out of everything that i said and everything else everyone has said thats what you pick up. We freed iraq from a communistic ruler that killed, raped, and destroyed everyone and anything they wanted. Unfortunate a few people died, that is the price of war. We could have gone in and Nuked the whole place and never lost one of our soldiers and saved a whole lot of money. Yet we didnt, we carefully planned every attack trying to minimize casulties, but they are unavoidable. I garuantee you that the people from iraq could not be happier to be free, coming from a similar background (Cuba) i can speak from experience. You will never understand that, all you can see is what you think, not what you have experienced. If you live in the United States move the F-out.
Kuri-You’re right, the involvement of the KSA is something that needs to be investigated further. There was a report in a recent Newsweek that one of the hijackers of 9/11 may have been a Saudi security asset. There is also a scathing indictment of the FBI. One of the major failings in U.S. foreign policy has been dealing with Saudi Arabia. The ruling family owes their wealth and power base to the U.S. The people of Sudi Arabia, and the rest of the Islamic world, strongly resent this. In an effort to pacify them, the Saudis have long sponsored fundamentalist Islamic school which have turned out a number of terrorists. Even Osama bin Laden was more concerned about the state of affairs in Saudi Arabia than the U.S. The reason he sponsored terrorist attacks against us was an effort to destabilize what he saw as the “power behind the throne” so to speak. Our government needs to take a close look at our dealings with the Kingdom, and our unequivicol support of Israel. A number of things going on over there need to be addressed. When the U.N. set up the nation of Israel in 1948, they did so in a manner that made the worst of a bad situation. That being said, that region has been a nest of conflict since … well, since forever. Read Josephus and Herodotus, and replace the Romans with the U.S. Everyone else remains the same, and so does the conflict. Amazing. You’d think that they’d have sorted out something by now. I know that I’m rambling, but I believe that U.S. foreign policy for the next 50 years will be dominated by this region, and much of it will boil down to our support of these two nations. We really need to address that fact.
Paul, You are right, we should disagree without resorting to personal attacks. I don’t feel any sort of moral superiority, however, having been immersed in the history of this region since my visit to the KSA in 1986, I think I have perspective that many don’t.
I place the blame of the problems of the Middle east squarely on the populations and government’s of the countries in the region. The US merely takes advantage of the sheer stupidity of these nations. Any other country with the military might of the US would do the same thing. However, it does not make it right. I am personally ashamed of the state of countries like Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and several others. Rampant corruption, opression of the poor, and government incompetence have created nations that are an embarassment. These guys cannot agree on anything, and spend immense resources fighting and killing each other over minute ideological differences. That is the problem, not the US. The US taking advantage of these nations is simply a symptom of their own self inflicted disease.
As far as US=GG goes, he resorts to personal attacks and these ‘lists’ of his, so I actually enjoy getting under his skin.
“Monsieur Quebec-Actually, Tokyo was not destroyed, it had been devastated by fire-bombing. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were selected as targets for a psychological reason. They were not militarily significant, nor industrially significant. WW2 was the first war in which you see large scale attacks on civilian population centers, by both sides, in an effort to take away the will to fight. Think Dresden, Coventry, and to a lesser extent, Seattle. As for Pal’s assertion that the dropping of the two atomic bombs were equal to the Nazi attrocities, he’s way off base. The Nazi’s were seeking to first stifle all opposition to their regime, and then later to promote “genetic purity.” Kind of interesting that he overlooked Japanese conduct in China. The three-day rape and pillage of Nanjing ranks pretty high on the list of war-time atrocities. Check out Tribo ความสุขบนเตียง. If the U.S. was interested in perpetrating the same sort of thing, we would not have helped rebuild the Japanese economy.”
HAHAHA
- both sides did some firebombing, maybe that’s why Churchill wasn’t tried as a war criminal, because the Allies did just as much as the Axis.
- Like I said, Pal was the only independent Asian justice at the Tokyo tribunal; he was also the only person there with any experience in international law. He wrote a 700-page dissent on what a farce that Tokyo tribunal was. Look for it in the Harvard law library. (it was farcical because the Allies did far worse things than the Axis, but the Allies decided what a war crime was AFTER they had already was-that alone should raise some questions about the legitimacy of the trials)
- RE: Japanese in China. The USA didn’t care about the Japanese terror, etc in China either. What the USA did care about was the Japanese moving to close off the China market. FDR even invited the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbour to justify war against Japan (on purpose). That’s in the declassified record now & there has also been a BBC documentary on this subject. & all this time I thought you guys liked freedom & democracy, you should have liberated the Chinese once the Japanese occupied them.
“We freed iraq from a communistic ruler that killed, raped, and destroyed everyone and anything they wanted.”
Holy ignorance!! Saddam is now a communist. However is in charge of the US foreign afairs propaganda must have a very easy task because you people seem to do it yourselves. May I remind you ONCE AGAIN that you supported that brutal tyrant with the excuse of helping him fight the communist treath when this was of convinience to you?