New York Times, Economist Ed Glaeser and Detroit's Strategy

[Detroitnerd]

Exactly what assignments was MacArthur "passed over" for during his 50-plus years in service. In the end he was fired by Harry Truman, but that was the only assignment he was ever relieved from during his career.

Read "American Shogun". Came out just a few years ago. He was consigned to the Philippines, like his father, and it seemed he'd never get any duty in the Second World War. Until ...

[BShea]

Oh, wait. MacArthur?

He wasn't passed over for anything. He was fired by Truman.

What makes you think the big, bad, old Department of War is so different from our friendly, people-saving, humanitarian Department of Defense? Why is the fact that the United States military has been used as the bludgeon of the bankers and multinationals a "meme" and the idea that the U.S. military are good guys saving the world a "hard fact"? Surely it could be your own ideological leanings, yes?

Just as your ideological leanings, based on your comments, are the sort that John Stuart Mill was talking about. "Peace at any price" ... that price turned out to be about 100 million+ dead. If you believe, like Pax Christi and Edith Rankin, that such bloodshed is worth it to keep us out of war no matter what, so be it. And I did acknowledge that the military has been used for unfortunate corporate interests at times -- just not to the degree the "no war, ever" crowd would have us believe.

Ah, yes. In a haystack of blood and suffering and torture and slaughter, you pull out one needle of hope. But when the suffering of war ends, must we thank war for ending the suffering it has caused? To my mind, that's like praising death for leaving a few people alive.

Who is praising war? I merely stated this it's a necessary function, and opposition to war at all costs is dangerously idealistic. And yes, sometimes war is a necessary economic function. Real life isn't rainbows and unicorns and copies of hopeful editorials in The Nation.

The most dangerous thing about a victorious nation is that it believes that it can solve its problems through war. Perhaps if the United States had been damaged as badly as the UK and Germany and Japan, we would see the wisdom in peace, the dividend of not paying for standing armies, the way a martial mentality degrades our views of justice.

Ah, a variation of the noxious and repulsive "I wish more U.S. troops would die so people would demand an end to the war!" Tell me, why were Germany and Japan so damaged, and by whom? And if we didn't see the wisdom of peace, we wouldn't have tried to keep it for the past 60+ years. No one else was going to keep the Soviet Bear out of Western Europe. To even remotely suggest standing down the military in the face of the evils of the world, and all the record history of mankind, borders on criminal stupidity.

You speak of the one war of liberation we fought as if it were all over taxes. How interesting! Is that a widely held libertarian revisionsim?

Taxes, and Whitehall's clumsy long-distance enforcement of them, is exactly the root-cause of our Revolution. I'm afraid that's stone-cold fact. Remove taxes from the equation, and our history would have matched the slow [[and incomplete) divorce from Great Britain that Canada experienced. It was an economic war.

Just as slavery is the root-cause of our Civil War. Revisionists -- oddly, usually a mixture of latent racists and moonbat libertarians -- often take immense pains to suggest it was a war driven by Northern bank policies, tariffs and other economic issues. To which I saw: Remove slavery entirely from the equation, does armed conflict erupt? No.

Again, no one disputes wars in our history often have been for empire and gain -- the Mexican-American War is a far more grotesque example, if a forgotten one, and its contemporary history makes the debate over Iraq/Aghanistan look tame.

Returning to my original point: War is utilitarian, and wishing it would forver be banished is a noble and foolish goal. And believe me when I say there are no bigger pacifists than those of us that have experienced it. But I also understand that it's a valuable tool, even if a sad and traumatic one. Again, there are myriad examples of the not-for-profit wars you appear to refuse to acknowledge. Somalia, for example, had no economic benefit for the United States. And believe me when I say I unfortunately know just about all you can about that one. Certainly, it was a debacle and failure in the long run, but the immediate goal of averting widespread famine WAS averted. That I can tell you first hand.

As long as the world is a dangerous place, where third-rate dictators and other assorted thugs run loose, there is a need for a powerful civilian-led U.S. military, and for war. I don't think anyone disagrees that it would be wonderful if mankind lost all capacity for doing physical harm, but that will never come to pass -- no matter how many rallies, poetry slams, manifestos, marches and protests were unleash.

@Eastside Al:

One of the very few [[the only?) international conflicts in history that was, arguably, fought in some significant measure for moral reasons. It's almost as if the rest of the history of warfare for nationalism, religion, aristocratic aggrandizement, and profit ceases to exist in the light of that one conflict.

WWII is the biggest and most common example became is was "the big one" [[and hopefully last one). We've not had another such conflict because the United States chose to stay armed and prevent it.

You are right in your characterization of almost all other war. I'd argue, however, that our Civil War, participation in both wars and Korea were for moral reasons. And even Vietnam was for moral reasons -- to halt the spread of communism, an ideology that has proven as bloody and tyranical as any of the horrific religious wars of history. Even thought our collective will failed and we abandoned our [[flawed) ally in South Vietnam, the war did at least illustrate to the communist bloc that the West was willing to engage it militarily rather than just allow that perverse ideology to run rampant.

I'll reiterate: No one is advocating for war, or singing its praises. It's ugly, nasty, brutish and the most terrible thing mankind can do. I tremble at the thought of my children marching off to war. But my larger point was that was IS sometimes the last resort -- should we not have ejected the British in 1812-15, or crushed the treasonous Confederacy? Man is a flawed creature, and always will remain so. Let us not delude ourselves into thinking we can forever wish away war through prayer, debate or other means. To keep peace, prepare for war.

[Hermod]

Read "American Shogun". Came out just a few years ago. He was consigned to the Philippines, like his father, and it seemed he'd never get any duty in the Second World War. Until ...

MacArthur was Chief of Staff of the Army when Roosevelt was elected. Since MacArthur was a staunch Republican, all of the congress critters who had crossed swords with MacArthur thought that FDR would can him immediately. Since the normal term for a CofS was four years, FDR let MacArthur stay on till the end date [[Nov 1934). When that date arrived, FDR did not appoint a new CofS, so macArthur stayed on until the spring of 1935. Normally, an outgoing Cof S retired or spent a few years in a "retirement job" before retirement. CofS was a temporary four star position. When you stepped down, you reverted to two star permanent grade.

Quezon made an offer that would pay MacArthur [[as Field Marshall of the Commonwealth) $18,000 per year versus the $7,500 he was making as CofS. FDR told MacArthur to take it. MacArthur then retired from the Army and took the job.

When WWII was close to breaking out, FDR and Gen Marshall could have left MacArthur in retirement, but chose to reinstate him to active service and give him the command in the Phillipines [[and later over all of SW Pacific).

[BShea]

Read "American Shogun". Came out just a few years ago. He was consigned to the Philippines, like his father, and it seemed he'd never get any duty in the Second World War. Until ...

You are kidding, right?

Mac was close pals with FDR and a New Deal Kool-Aid drinker. Quezon asked Mac to reform and modernize the Filipino military, and FDR approved the deal that made him a field marshal in their army. MacArthur had served four previous stints in the Philippines for the Army and was in love with the place. He retired from the U.S. Army in 1937, or so. Those islands were the only place anything of interest was happening with the U.S. military before the war, too. Eisenhower was his aide there for 11 years.

FDR himself ordered Mac recalled to duty months BEFORE the Pearl Harbor attack. He was never "consigned" at all ... that's a total misread of history.

[LeannaM]

Who decides if a building's "architectural interest" outweighs the cost of maintaining or restoring the building? Is there some kind of board of "excessively smart" people or whoever can get a building placed on the register first?

Most cities have some kind of Landmarks Commission or Preservation Board that is part of city government. They can then approve/deny demolition, construction, and other types of permits on buildings that are in historic, buildings in historic districts, or buildings that qualify in other ways. Does Detroit have this?

[BShea]

I've got it: Detroit needs Douglas MacArthur.

Where can we find some DNA?

[Detroitnerd]

Oh, wait. MacArthur?
He wasn't passed over for anything. He was fired by Truman.

Read "American Shogun". He was marooned in the Philippines, his father's sinecure, before he was called to head up the Pacific War.

What makes you think the big, bad, old Department of War is so different from our friendly, people-saving, humanitarian Department of Defense? Surely it could be your own ideological leanings, yes?

Just as your ideological leanings, based on your comments, are the sort that John Stuart Mill was talking about. "Peace at any price" ... that price turned out to be about 100 million+ dead. If you believe, like Pax Christi and Edith Rankin, that such bloodshed is worth it to keep us out of war no matter what, so be it. And I did acknowledge that the military has been used for unfortunate corporate interests at times -- just not to the degree the "no war, ever" crowd would have us believe.

It's usually a sloppy tactic to try to pin a quote on somebody like that. Sort of a straw man thing. So, to clarify my own opinion from that of your entertaining scarecrow, there is a difference between defending yourself and invading another country. And I'm sympathetic to uprisings and resistance movements, but seldom to professional warmakers.

Ah, yes. In a haystack of blood and suffering and torture and slaughter, you pull out one needle of hope. But when the suffering of war ends, must we thank war for ending the suffering it has caused? To my mind, that's like praising death for leaving a few people alive.

Who is praising war? I merely stated this it's a necessary function, and opposition to war at all costs is dangerously idealistic. And yes, sometimes war is a necessary economic function. Real life isn't rainbows and unicorns and copies of hopeful editorials in The Nation.

Sometimes war is a necessary economic function? Do you mean that it is OK to snuff out innocent lives to promote economic activity? [[I will ignore your ungainly baiting.)

The most dangerous thing about a victorious nation is that it believes that it can solve its problems through war. Perhaps if the United States had been damaged as badly as the UK and Germany and Japan, we would see the wisdom in peace, the dividend of not paying for standing armies, the way a martial mentality degrades our views of justice.

Ah, a variation of the noxious and repulsive "I wish more U.S. troops would die so people would demand an end to the war!" Tell me, why were Germany and Japan so damaged, and by whom? And if we didn't see the wisdom of peace, we wouldn't have tried to keep it for the past 60+ years. No one else was going to keep the Soviet Bear out of Western Europe. To even remotely suggest standing down the military in the face of the evils of the world, and all the record history of mankind, borders on criminal stupidity.

You sure build a convincing scarecrow. Very amusing, BShea.

The thing is, you hew very carefully to this narrative that Uncle Sam is the great peacemaker, carrying his big stick and fighting against dictators all over the world, using the power of its military to make it a better place.

Unfortunately for your argument, the evidence suggests otherwise. It suggests that the United States has been careful to put strongmen in power around the world, cares little for human rights, gives lip service to liberty while going to bat for extractive, exploitative industries, and is actually, as MLK put it, the greatest exporter of terror in the world. To take one instance of liberating a concentration camp and use it as a standard to conceal the very real crimes against humanity of the United States government is a shameful thing to do.

You speak of the one war of liberation we fought as if it were all over taxes. How interesting! Is that a widely held libertarian revisionsim?

Taxes, and Whitehall's clumsy long-distance enforcement of them, is exactly the root-cause of our Revolution. I'm afraid that's stone-cold fact. Remove taxes from the equation, and our history would have matched the slow [[and incomplete) divorce from Great Britain that Canada experienced. It was an economic war.

If that is true, then none of the Founding Fathers deserves our respect. They were simply self-interested tax-evaders cloaking their greed in a bunch of Rousseau-ian nonsense.

Certainly, if you hold liberty dear, and believe in the ideals of the Enlightenment, you don't believe that.

Again, no one disputes wars in our history often have been for empire and gain -- the Mexican-American War is a far more grotesque example, if a forgotten one, and its contemporary history makes the debate over Iraq/Aghanistan look tame.

I agree that it is easier to see the unjust, acquisitive, horrifying aspects of war when they are safely in the remote past. But what about showering a country with radioactive dust? Burning people alive with Willy Pete? Forcing prisoners who may be innocent into disgusting, emasculating situations and laughing at them? Certainly 10 days of the War on Terror has done more ill that the Mexican-American war in toto.

Returning to my original point: War is utilitarian, and wishing it would forever be banished is a noble and foolish goal. And believe me when I say there are no bigger pacifists than those of us that have experienced it. But I also understand that it's a valuable tool, even if a sad and traumatic one. Again, there are myriad examples of the not-for-profit wars you appear to refuse to acknowledge. Somalia, for example, had no economic benefit for the United States. And believe me when I say I unfortunately know just about all you can about that one. Certainly, it was a debacle and failure in the long run, but the immediate goal of averting widespread famine WAS averted. That I can tell you first hand.

Begging, of course, the question that that was at all the goal in the first place. Who can say for sure amid the chicanerie of our leaders and diplomats?

As long as the world is a dangerous place, where third-rate dictators and other assorted thugs run loose, there is a need for a powerful civilian-led U.S. military, and for war. I don't think anyone disagrees that it would be wonderful if mankind lost all capacity for doing physical harm, but that will never come to pass -- no matter how many rallies, poetry slams, manifestos, marches and protests were unleash.

Ah, yes. G. Gordon Liddy couldn't have said it better. How interesting that many of those dictators are kept in power by us. How interesting how many thugs are on the government payroll. How interesting, indeed, that the justification for the U.S. military is the very thing the U.S. military helps perpetuate, hand in hand with the State Department and the U.S. elite.

Again, no war is said to make the world worse. And no warrior who values his sanity believes he does more harm than good. And I guess that's why you believe as you do, and can scarcely conceal your contempt for people who would rather struggle for peace.

[Detroitnerd]

Read "American Shogun". Came out just a few years ago. He was consigned to the Philippines, like his father, and it seemed he'd never get any duty in the Second World War. Until ...

You are kidding, right?

Mac was close pals with FDR and a New Deal Kool-Aid drinker. Quezon asked Mac to reform and modernize the Filipino military, and FDR approved the deal that made him a field marshal in their army. MacArthur had served four previous stints in the Philippines for the Army and was in love with the place. He retired from the U.S. Army in 1937, or so. Those islands were the only place anything of interest was happening with the U.S. military before the war, too. Eisenhower was his aide there for 11 years.

FDR himself ordered Mac recalled to duty months BEFORE the Pearl Harbor attack. He was never "consigned" at all ... that's a total misread of history.

Ah, you know some of the history, but, again, BShea, read the book. If you have any quarrel with its veracity, the author will be eager to hear from you.

[Detroitnerd]

MacArthur was Chief of Staff of the Army when Roosevelt was elected. Since MacArthur was a staunch Republican, all of the congress critters who had crossed swords with MacArthur thought that FDR would can him immediately. Since the normal term for a CofS was four years, FDR let MacArthur stay on till the end date [[Nov 1934). When that date arrived, FDR did not appoint a new CofS, so macArthur stayed on until the spring of 1935. Normally, an outgoing Cof S retired or spent a few years in a "retirement job" before retirement. CofS was a temporary four star position. When you stepped down, you reverted to two star permanent grade.

Quezon made an offer that would pay MacArthur [[as Field Marshall of the Commonwealth) $18,000 per year versus the $7,500 he was making as CofS. FDR told MacArthur to take it. MacArthur then retired from the Army and took the job.

When WWII was close to breaking out, FDR and Gen Marshall could have left MacArthur in retirement, but chose to reinstate him to active service and give him the command in the Phillipines [[and later over all of SW Pacific).

Thanks for the clarification, Hermod. Perhaps Robert Harvey's book took some historical liberties, but he did have access to MacArthur's personal papers and may have uncovered some things that aren't common knowledge. Then again, you know how some writers won't let the facts get in the way of a stimulating story. ...

[Detroitnerd]

"Justice is rather the activity of truth than a virtue in itself. Truth tells us what is due to others, and justice renders that due. Injustice is acting a lie. " --Horace Walpole

[Hermod]

Thanks for the clarification, Hermod. Perhaps Robert Harvey's book took some historical liberties, but he did have access to MacArthur's personal papers and may have uncovered some things that aren't common knowledge. Then again, you know how some writers won't let the facts get in the way of a stimulating story. ...

Read the following biographies of MacArthur:

"Old Soldiers Never Die" by Geoffrey Perrett

Perrett explodes a lot of those old tired myths about MacArthur such as:

His mother moved to West Point to baby-sit him.
He led the charge against the bonus marchers in dress uniform while mounted on a horse.
FDR fired him and sent him to the Phillipines.
Dugout Doug was afraid of combat.


"American Caesar" by William Manchester

The following books, while not full biographies, are campaign histories written around MacArthur and speak to a lot of his virtues and foibles.

"MacArthur's Victory: The War in New Guinea" by Harry Gailey
"MacArthur's New Guinea Campaign" by Nathan Prefer
"MacArthur's Jungle War: The 1944 new Guinea Campaign" by Stephen Taafe

[Detroitnerd]

Read the following biographies of MacArthur:

"Old Soldiers Never Die" by Geoffrey Perrett

Perrett explodes a lot of those old tired myths about MacArthur such as:

His mother moved to West Point to baby-sit him.
He led the charge against the bonus marchers in dress uniform while mounted on a horse.
FDR fired him and sent him to the Phillipines.
Dugout Doug was afraid of combat.


"American Caesar" by William Manchester

The following books, while not full biographies, are campaign histories written around MacArthur and speak to a lot of his virtues and foibles.

"MacArthur's Victory: The War in New Guinea" by Harry Gailey
"MacArthur's New Guinea Campaign" by Nathan Prefer
"MacArthur's Jungle War: The 1944 new Guinea Campaign" by Stephen Taafe

Thanks for the impressive syllabus, Hermod. I sure as heck hope there ain't an intensive pop quiz anytime soon. I usually read fiction when the weather warms up.

[Hermod]

Thanks for the impressive syllabus, Hermod. I sure as heck hope there ain't an intensive pop quiz anytime soon. I usually read fiction when the weather warms up.

Just some books I pulled off the shelf for info in the discussion.

[BShea]

Ah, you know some of the history, but, again, BShea, read the book. If you have any quarrel with its veracity, the author will be eager to hear from you.

Did you read Manchester's "American Caesar" which is widely considered one of the definitive works on him? Almost everything I've read on Mac, and discussed with academics, contradicts the notion that he was exiled to some backwater. Simple facts prove otherwise: Before the war came, FDR and others turned to him to run the entire Pacific War. I can't recall any other names that were considered ahead of him. And the Philippines were not a place of exile -- it was just about the only significant active command overseas that we had, and was on the front lines of the action unfolding in Asia since 1932. And as Hermod noted, there was nothing more for Mac to do after being chief of staff in peacetime.

So, to clarify my own opinion from that of your entertaining scarecrow, there is a difference between defending yourself and invading another country.

Would that include invading the Confederate States of America? North Korea in 1950? Other than Canada in 1813-14, Mexico in 1846, Cuba in 1898, we didn't do a whole lot of invading -- especially when put in the context of nations such as China, Germany, the USSR, France, etc. I'm not justifying the banana republic wars, but there is a helluva difference between Marines in the Dominican Republic and Operation Barbarossa.

And I'm sympathetic to uprisings and resistance movements, but seldom to professional warmakers.

The fellows Orwell mentioned? Few on the Left ever are.

And history shows that most [[not all) uprisings and resistance movements quickly turn into the bloodthirsty totalitarian disasters we've witnessed the world over -- starting with the French Revolution in 1789. Our own Revolution was one of the precious few that didn't degenerate into a dictatorial bloodbath -- the sort that Oliver Stone cinematically champions whilst making the U.S. into an evil ogre. So what if Che executed men, women and children? Rarely is the ancien regime replaced with something better. Sometimes, but not like the Left would have us believe. Better for whomever is holding the guns whenever the uprising or resistance movement is over is more like it.

Sometimes war is a necessary economic function? Do you mean that it is OK to snuff out innocent lives to promote economic activity? [[I will ignore your ungainly baiting.)

When is it "OK" to "snuff out" innocent lives? When you deal in the "When did you stop beating your wife" variety of questions, you're setting up any answer to look loathsome. The goal -- which the United States adheres to more stridently than any nation in history -- is to ensure as few people are killed no matter what. And that has robbed us of tools that would end conflicts far sooner than they end today.

Do you believe we could wage the massive terror bombing campaigns today that helped win World War II? How would the NY Times today react to Dresden? Five-alarm freakout.

The thing is, you hew very carefully to this narrative that Uncle Sam is the great peacemaker, carrying his big stick and fighting against dictators all over the world, using the power of its military to make it a better place.

And I acknowledged that we have not always met those noble goals. Easier to make your point if you ignore what I say, I suppose.

Unfortunately for your argument, the evidence suggests otherwise. It suggests that the United States has been careful to put strongmen in power around the world, cares little for human rights, gives lip service to liberty while going to bat for extractive, exploitative industries, and is actually, as MLK put it, the greatest exporter of terror in the world. To take one instance of liberating a concentration camp and use it as a standard to conceal the very real crimes against humanity of the United States government is a shameful thing to do.

It's realpolitik. It's how the world works. I can't speak for others, but I don't deny that we do unsavory things -- but compared to the rest of the world, we're saints. I happen to think that, despite the deals you sometimes have to make, we're still the beacon of light in an otherwise shit world. Obviously, some people get off on the self-loathing anti-American stuff by minimalizing the good we've done and instead ranting about us proping up Papa Doc and the Shah -- as if the alternative has been any better. But, to Chomsky-ites, that's America's fault, too.

Biggest exporter of terror? Pffft. It wasn't an M-16 that shot me. The world's shitbox nations and every insurgency is equipped with Warsaw Pact equipment or licensed exports. The AK-47 is the symbol of revolution.

If that is true, then none of the Founding Fathers deserves our respect. They were simply self-interested tax-evaders cloaking their greed in a bunch of Rousseau-ian nonsense.
Certainly, if you hold liberty dear, and believe in the ideals of the Enlightenment, you don't believe that.

The ideals of the Enlightenment happened to get draped over a middle-class economic squabble. If you life in the colonies had been some oppressive British gulag, then you've utterly misunderstood our history. Again, it was tax issues and the bumbling handling of American resentment to it by London that sparked the armed conflict. I would wager than 99% of colonists had never even seen a British soldier in 1775, much less suffered any so-called tryanny. And the truth is, the British desire to tax the colonies to pay for their own protection in the wake of the Seven Year's War wasn't unreasonable. The merchant class got pissed that London actually started enforcing taxes already on the books -- molassas in particular. It went downhill from there. And we were not a benighted, nearly-feudal aggrarian peasant society on the brink of starvation -- unlike the French in 1789.

I agree that it is easier to see the unjust, acquisitive, horrifying aspects of war when they are safely in the remote past. But what about showering a country with radioactive dust? Burning people alive with Willy Pete? Forcing prisoners who may be innocent into disgusting, emasculating situations and laughing at them? Certainly 10 days of the War on Terror has done more ill that the Mexican-American war in toto

This is because of two reasons:
1. We've lost our historic perspective.
2. The age of instant communications.

We used to simply kill prisoners on sight, in past wars. Summary execution was not uncommon. Willy pete has been around a long time. Is burning them with white phosphorus somehow worse than killing them with napalm, high-explosives or some other weapon? Torture and unsavory acts were far, far more common in older wars than now.

A relative once told me how he witnessed an American military ambulance pull up to a group of German prisoners. The rear door was opened and inside was a machine gun. The prisoners were gunned down. And that was in the "good war."

That's the ugliest side of war -- to your point. But the examples I list are to illustate that the examples you list seem bad today because we've lost our historic context and as a people no longer understand what war means. We used to lose battles -- big ones. Could you imagine an infantry division being completely destoryed in less than 24 hours, like one was at the start of the Battle of the Bulge? It was just a cost of was in 1944, but today would be the stuff of existential crisis. Hell, I can imagine that tody and people would be demanding that we quit fighting the Nazis.

The fact is that most people didn't know that things occured in the past because the communications age didn't exist -- no Internet, Skype, Twitter, cells phones, CNN, etc. And yes, the history of war would have a different look to if it people got the information then that they do today ... but I don't know if that's a good thing. We nearly lost the Civil War, but would it have been better if such images were brought home to people in the North, who were already tettering on war-weariness? Would stopping the war and dragging out slavery another couple of generations have been the better choice? Would having public opinion turn against our campaign against German Nazism and Japanese Imperialism been helpful?

Allow me to return to my original point: War is sometimes necessary. That's not glorifying it, but an acknowledgement that other things sometimes fail -- "Peace in our time" failures, for example. In the real world, appeasement never works, and negotiation without force behind it is a meaningless exercise that delights dictators and prolongs the suffering of others. And no, that's not advocacy of war as a primary tool of diplomacy. Force must be the final option.

When Christ healed the Roman Centurion's son at Capernaum, he didn't tell the soldier not to be a soldier -- if you believe in that sort of thing. Maybe it slipped his mind.

[BShea]

Note: Didn't see the most recent exchange with Hermod before posting.

[Detroitnerd]

So, to clarify my own opinion from that of your entertaining scarecrow, there is a difference between defending yourself and invading another country.

Would that include invading the Confederate States of America? North Korea in 1950? Other than Canada in 1813-14, Mexico in 1846, Cuba in 1898, we didn't do a whole lot of invading -- especially when put in the context of nations such as China, Germany, the USSR, France, etc. I'm not justifying the banana republic wars, but there is a helluva difference between Marines in the Dominican Republic and Operation Barbarossa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timelin...ary_operations

And history shows that most [[not all) uprisings and resistance movements quickly turn into the bloodthirsty totalitarian disasters we've witnessed the world over -- starting with the French Revolution in 1789. Our own Revolution was one of the precious few that didn't degenerate into a dictatorial bloodbath -- the sort that Oliver Stone cinematically champions whilst making the U.S. into an evil ogre. So what if Che executed men, women and children? Rarely is the ancien regime replaced with something better. Sometimes, but not like the Left would have us believe. Better for whomever is holding the guns whenever the uprising or resistance movement is over is more like it.

Better throw out all your Mark Twain books then:

There were two ‘Reigns of Terror’, if we could but remember and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passions, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon a thousand persons, the other upon a hundred million; but our shudders are all for the “horrors of the… momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief terror that we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror – that unspeakable bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

The goal -- which the United States adheres to more stridently than any nation in history -- is to ensure as few people are killed no matter what. And that has robbed us of tools that would end conflicts far sooner than they end today.

Do you believe we could wage the massive terror bombing campaigns today that helped win World War II? How would the NY Times today react to Dresden? Five-alarm freakout.

Not true. At the beginning of the Iraq war, the generals said that they would be carpet bombing parts of Iraq. But they carefully explained to the press that "carpet bombing" really isn't the right phrase for it, because everything is so much more sophisticated these days. The press stayed calm, and the bombers dropped tons and tons of dumb bombs, daisy cutters and killed tens of thousands of innocent people.

The truth is, the press is much more timid, more likely to internalize the values of the Pentagon, and much more likely to be put in these sorts of "embedded" situations, where the martial equivalent of the Stockholm Syndrome ensures their favorable coverage.

The thing is, you hew very carefully to this narrative that Uncle Sam is the great peacemaker, carrying his big stick and fighting against dictators all over the world, using the power of its military to make it a better place.

And I acknowledged that we have not always met those noble goals. Easier to make your point if you ignore what I say, I suppose.

The easier to believe the narrative if you think that the failures of war [[genocide, destroying economies, killing off civilians, destroying dams, hitting civilian installations such as power plants) were "mistakes" and not the intended actions in the first place. I think they do quite a bit of that. They kill whom they want to kill, then say, "Oops."

Unfortunately for your argument, the evidence suggests otherwise. It suggests that the United States has been careful to put strongmen in power around the world, cares little for human rights, gives lip service to liberty while going to bat for extractive, exploitative industries, and is actually, as MLK put it, the greatest exporter of terror in the world. To take one instance of liberating a concentration camp and use it as a standard to conceal the very real crimes against humanity of the United States government is a shameful thing to do.

It's realpolitik. It's how the world works. I can't speak for others, but I don't deny that we do unsavory things -- but compared to the rest of the world, we're saints. I happen to think that, despite the deals you sometimes have to make, we're still the beacon of light in an otherwise shit world. Obviously, some people get off on the self-loathing anti-American stuff by minimalizing the good we've done and instead ranting about us proping up Papa Doc and the Shah -- as if the alternative has been any better. But, to Chomsky-ites, that's America's fault, too.

Biggest exporter of terror? Pffft. It wasn't an M-16 that shot me. The world's shitbox nations and every insurgency is equipped with Warsaw Pact equipment or licensed exports. The AK-47 is the symbol of revolution.

Even if it were true that our government wasn't responsible for as much suffering as other nations were, it is not enough to say that we aren't as bad as other people.

As for dealing with, supporting or propping up the Shah and Papa Doc [[and Gen. Sani Abacha, Idi Amin, Col. Hugo Banzer, Fulgencio Batista, Sr Hassanal Bolkiah, P.B. Botha, Gen. Humberto Branco, Raoul Cedras, Vinicio Cerezo, Chiang Kai-Chek, Roberto Suazo Cordova, Alfredo Chirtiani, Ngo Dihn Diem, Gen. Samuel Doe, King Fahd bin'Abdul-'Aziz, Gen. Francisco Franco, Hassan II, Ferdinand Marcos, Gen. Maximiliano Martinez, Mobutu Sese Seko, Gen. Manuel Noriega, Turgut Ozal, Park Chung Hee, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, Gen. Sitiveni Rabuka, Gen. Efrain Riot Montt, Anastasio Somoza [Sr. and Jr.], Gen. Suharto, Rafael Trujillo, Ge. Jorge Videla, etc., etc., etc.), I do think that the alternative -- allowing sovereign countries to determine how they run their affairs -- is preferable. In fact, isn't that what we say we want other countries to be able to do? But, no, only when "their bastard" isn't "our bastard." This is disgusting and anti-Democratic.

[Detroitnerd]

If that is true, then none of the Founding Fathers deserves our respect. They were simply self-interested tax-evaders cloaking their greed in a bunch of Rousseau-ian nonsense.
Certainly, if you hold liberty dear, and believe in the ideals of the Enlightenment, you don't believe that.

The ideals of the Enlightenment happened to get draped over a middle-class economic squabble. If you life in the colonies had been some oppressive British gulag, then you've utterly misunderstood our history. Again, it was tax issues and the bumbling handling of American resentment to it by London that sparked the armed conflict. I would wager than 99% of colonists had never even seen a British soldier in 1775, much less suffered any so-called tryanny. And the truth is, the British desire to tax the colonies to pay for their own protection in the wake of the Seven Year's War wasn't unreasonable. The merchant class got pissed that London actually started enforcing taxes already on the books -- molassas in particular. It went downhill from there. And we were not a benighted, nearly-feudal aggrarian peasant society on the brink of starvation -- unlike the French in 1789.

Hrm ... my ancestors got kicked out of the colonies as Tories. Used to own 300 acres of land near Sarasota Springs. One ancestor went mad and was compensated by the crown with a little bit of money. Maybe it's only natural that I'd rather see it as a war for liberty. The idea that my family was kicked out over money makes their suffering less noble.

I agree that it is easier to see the unjust, acquisitive, horrifying aspects of war when they are safely in the remote past. But what about showering a country with radioactive dust? Burning people alive with Willy Pete? Forcing prisoners who may be innocent into disgusting, emasculating situations and laughing at them? Certainly 10 days of the War on Terror has done more ill that the Mexican-American war in toto

This is because of two reasons:
1. We've lost our historic perspective.
2. The age of instant communications.

We used to simply kill prisoners on sight, in past wars. Summary execution was not uncommon. Willy pete has been around a long time. Is burning them with white phosphorus somehow worse than killing them with napalm, high-explosives or some other weapon? Torture and unsavory acts were far, far more common in older wars than now.

A relative once told me how he witnessed an American military ambulance pull up to a group of German prisoners. The rear door was opened and inside was a machine gun. The prisoners were gunned down. And that was in the "good war."

That's the ugliest side of war -- to your point. But the examples I list are to illustate that the examples you list seem bad today because we've lost our historic context and as a people no longer understand what war means. We used to lose battles -- big ones. Could you imagine an infantry division being completely destoryed in less than 24 hours, like one was at the start of the Battle of the Bulge? It was just a cost of was in 1944, but today would be the stuff of existential crisis. Hell, I can imagine that tody and people would be demanding that we quit fighting the Nazis.

The fact is that most people didn't know that things occured in the past because the communications age didn't exist -- no Internet, Skype, Twitter, cells phones, CNN, etc. And yes, the history of war would have a different look to if it people got the information then that they do today ... but I don't know if that's a good thing. We nearly lost the Civil War, but would it have been better if such images were brought home to people in the North, who were already tettering on war-weariness? Would stopping the war and dragging out slavery another couple of generations have been the better choice? Would having public opinion turn against our campaign against German Nazism and Japanese Imperialism been helpful?

Allow me to return to my original point: War is sometimes necessary.

Oh, yes. War is sometimes necessary. Revolution is sometimes necessary. Rebellion is sometimes necessary. Strikes are sometimes necessary. And civil disobedience is sometimes necessary. Lots of things are necessary, at some points in time. But the mantra of "War is sometimes necessary" is the rhythm of the drum. Drum it long enough, and people begin to sneer at all peace as "appeasement" and glorify all war as "glorious." Soon young people start chanting "Dulce et decorum es pro patria mori."

I'm not saying you're totally wrong. War is wrong, but sometimes you have to defend yourself, or your nation. But we must be wary of the military mind-set. What begins as simple protection of our borders by degrees becomes a distortion of what liberty really is. We who use our freedoms are their ultimate preservers, not "those who died so we may be free to express ourselves." [[Tell that to a few people at Kent State ... oh, wait ...) Carry it far enough and soon you find that the people who are supposed to be our great protectors have become our masters.

And that is why those voices against war, which I see you are given to condemning as the murmurs of people somehow brainwashed by Chomsky and Zinn, are one of our great cultural assets. People like, you know, Sam Clemens.

But, on the theory that if everybody thinks the same, somebody's not thinking, I accept your disagreements. But I urge you to investigate the very things you dismiss. Go ahead and read a little Zinn or Chomsky. Or some history that isn't approved by, you know, the Texas Department of Education. Those books won't bite, BShea.

[BShea]

This all comes back to my original point, that the line "War benefits no one but the rich" is untrue. History is filled with examples of benefits other than riches.

Traditional war, revolution, rebellion ... call it what you wish ... humans killing humans, for whatever end. It's war, it's ugly and terrible in every way imaginable, and should always be the final resort. I've seen it, felt it and barely survived it -- for what was nothing more than humanitarian efforts.

I'm a pragmatist who believes in realpolitik, and accept the unsavory things that we've had to do in the past. Doesn't mean I like it or advocate it, but I understand why people at the time may have thought some of these deals were the best choice of many bad ones. The choices are not always right/wrong in a black/white sense. Yes, some decisions were outright stupid and wrong, but I believe that's the exception, not the rule, and these are things we learn from to evolve as a nation -- and we're far more evolved than anyone else. Feel free to deliver the Zola-like j'accuse of nationalism on my part, that's fine.

For all its warts, no other nation stacks up to America. And the mistakes of the past don't rile me up to what amounts to the self-loathing of a Choamsky.

But the mantra of "War is sometimes necessary" is the rhythm of the drum. Drum it long enough, and people begin to sneer at all peace as "appeasement" and glorify all war as "glorious." Soon young people start chanting "Dulce et decorum es pro patria mori."

I sense no danger of any of that. I advocate being on guard, and love the fact our military is "unprofessional" in the sense of being completely subservient to civilians and is no role player in politics [[in minimal). That said, there's no Bismarck, Hitler, Mussolini, Caesar, Stalin or anyone else banging that drum for the state-as-religion facism/militarism. Shit, much of our banana republic adventurism in the last two centuries finds Wilsonian liberals at the heart of it.

[Detroitnerd]

This all comes back to my original point, that the line "War benefits no one but the rich" is untrue. History is filled with examples of benefits other than riches.

We have perfected the art of war to the point where it does benefit mostly the rich. A generation or two ago there was no uglier slur than "war profiteer." Look at the glee of our defense contractors over the all-war-all-the-time trend we're on. It's disgusting. And it's perfectly OK to be disgusted with them.

And it's perfectly OK to oppose unjust, unnecessary wars such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan that are enabling the government to transfer massive amounts of wealth from us [[and our children, and our children's children) to the wealthy makers of armaments. Add to that the fact that well-meaning young people are thrown in the meat grinder for this to happen and ... it's utterly disgusting.

Wars I'd support? I think over the last 100 years, the United States simply has not had the high moral ground at all. The resistance movements against American-supported strongmen, in my opinion, have more justification than the Adventures of Uncle Sam.

If you think that makes me a "self-hating American" [[just as Israeli peaceniks are labeled "self-hating Jews") so be it. I agree with the U.S. Army, which decided after World War II that the dangers to our democracy will appear wrapped in the flag and holding the cross, not as some insideous outsiders.

Traditional war, revolution, rebellion ... call it what you wish ... humans killing humans, for whatever end. It's war, it's ugly and terrible in every way imaginable, and should always be the final resort. I've seen it, felt it and barely survived it -- for what was nothing more than humanitarian efforts.

It's a convoluted thing to call war a humanitarian effort. It seems fairly obvious that you cannot heal, nurture or comfort anybody with a weapon. To think that you can is a distortion of what war is. Can you fight an invading enemy and win a just peace? Yes. But can you intervene with an army for humanitarian reasons? I doubt it.

I'm a pragmatist who believes in realpolitik, and accept the unsavory things that we've had to do in the past. Doesn't mean I like it or advocate it, but I understand why people at the time may have thought some of these deals were the best choice of many bad ones. The choices are not always right/wrong in a black/white sense. Yes, some decisions were outright stupid and wrong, but I believe that's the exception, not the rule, and these are things we learn from to evolve as a nation -- and we're far more evolved than anyone else. Feel free to deliver the Zola-like j'accuse of nationalism on my part, that's fine.

Well, isn't that what we call "American exceptionalism"? If you begin to investigate things from the point of view that we as a country are the best, how can you find the truth? How can you find America's weaknesses? How can you find the injustices that need to be addressed? How can you look at the lists that show America lags behind other countries in so many indicators and accept that and begin to work to change that? I'd rather look at things with open eyes, even if they hurt my national pride. That's what pragmatism means to me.

For all its warts, no other nation stacks up to America. And the mistakes of the past don't rile me up to what amounts to the self-loathing of a Choamsky.

Here we go with this whole "self-hating American" thing. No, looking at America's unjust actions [[mistakes or intentional) is how we come to new conclusions about what our "national interests" are. And that's called good, old-fashioned democratic debate, not self-flagellation.

But the mantra of "War is sometimes necessary" is the rhythm of the drum. Drum it long enough, and people begin to sneer at all peace as "appeasement" and glorify all war as "glorious." Soon young people start chanting "Dulce et decorum es pro patria mori."

I sense no danger of any of that. I advocate being on guard, and love the fact our military is "unprofessional" in the sense of being completely subservient to civilians and is no role player in politics [[in minimal). That said, there's no Bismarck, Hitler, Mussolini, Caesar, Stalin or anyone else banging that drum for the state-as-religion facism/militarism. Shit, much of our banana republic adventurism in the last two centuries finds Wilsonian liberals at the heart of it.

Oh, yes. Liberals and conservatives. Let's get upset about one party or another and miss the fact that both parties want to expand the empire. Sigh ...

As for martial creep, how about the idea, repeated over and over, that we couldn't be free without the military to protect us? That is only partly true. The military is there to protect us from foreign invaders.

So who will protect us from our military?

[BShea]

It's a convoluted thing to call war a humanitarian effort. It seems fairly obvious that you cannot heal, nurture or comfort anybody with a weapon. To think that you can is a distortion of what war is. Can you fight an invading enemy and win a just peace? Yes. But can you intervene with an army for humanitarian reasons? I doubt it.

I don't. Because I was part of humanitarian mission that averted immediate famine, and it could be accomplished only by force of arms. Negotiation, prayer and every other benign effort had failed prior. And after various failures of will by the Clinton administration, the military effort was gelded to the point it, too, failed.

And it's perfectly OK to oppose unjust, unnecessary wars ...

No one is disputing that here. This conversation originated on the notion that war ONLY benefits the rich.

Wars I'd support? I think over the last 100 years, the United States simply has not had the high moral ground at all.

So you don't believe the United States had the moral high ground in WWII?

The resistance movements against American-supported strongmen, in my opinion, have more justification than the Adventures of Uncle Sam.

Not every foreign leader can be George Washington, and I'd wager most of the leaders that replaced toppled Washington allies were equally loathsome scumbags, or worse. Ho Chi Minh, and those that took power when Saigon fell, were butchers -- executing something like 1 million South Vietnamese after unification. Castro? Che Guvera? Pol Pot? The criminal crypto-theocratic military junta in Tehran?

That's not a cast of characters to be proud of.

Well, isn't that what we call "American exceptionalism"? If you begin to investigate things from the point of view that we as a country are the best, how can you find the truth? How can you find America's weaknesses? How can you find the injustices that need to be addressed?

That doesn't take Maoist self-criticism sessions in the reeducation camps.

How can you look at the lists that show America lags behind other countries in so many indicators and accept that and begin to work to change that? I'd rather look at things with open eyes, even if they hurt my national pride. That's what pragmatism means to me.

We are working, all the time, to improve ourselves. The fact is, millions seek to emigrate here -- not to the little nations you point to and say "Look! They're so much better!" And I can love -- and be outwardly proud -- of my nation while not being blind to its faults.

As for martial creep, how about the idea, repeated over and over, that we couldn't be free without the military to protect us? That is only partly true. The military is there to protect us from foreign invaders.

Again, the military hasn't been a serious player in our politics since Washington's time. The military itself is ingrained with that -- that it is completely subservient to civilian authority. And America First-style sentiments that the military's lone function is to repel an invasion of our shores is something well beyond shortsighted. We project power to maintain the peace that 400,000+ Americans bought with their blood from 1941-45. Slinking back to our soil and leaving Stalin and others to have their way with the rest of the world would have been criminal.

[Detroitnerd]

It's a convoluted thing to call war a humanitarian effort. It seems fairly obvious that you cannot heal, nurture or comfort anybody with a weapon. To think that you can is a distortion of what war is. Can you fight an invading enemy and win a just peace? Yes. But can you intervene with an army for humanitarian reasons? I doubt it.

I don't. Because I was part of humanitarian mission that averted immediate famine, and it could be accomplished only by force of arms. Negotiation, prayer and every other benign effort had failed prior. And after various failures of will by the Clinton administration, the military effort was gelded to the point it, too, failed.

Perhaps you're right. But since the operation never succeeded, we can never quite understand what would have really happened if the United States' goals had been met. Quick and unsuccessful, we'll never be able to find out just how "humanitarian" it would have been. Maybe as humanitarian as in the Balkans, where we fired so much depleted uranium into the area that doctors predicted thousands of additional cancers in the general population. Or where we blew up power plants in violation of international law.

Sorry, BShea. I am afraid that if a country were to have a "humanitarian war" it would probably have to be some other country. Carpet bombing, depleted uranium, half-blind drone attacks, remote-control killing don't seem to have humanitarian applications to me.

And it's perfectly OK to oppose unjust, unnecessary wars ...

No one is disputing that here. This conversation originated on the notion that war ONLY benefits the rich.

War often benefits the rich? War, as fought by the United States, represents a theft from the people who hunger and are not clothed?

Wars I'd support? I think over the last 100 years, the United States simply has not had the high moral ground at all.

So you don't believe the United States had the moral high ground in WWII?

Yes, that statement should be qualified. The United States in the 1940s had the high moral ground fighting against fascism.

The resistance movements against American-supported strongmen, in my opinion, have more justification than the Adventures of Uncle Sam.

Not every foreign leader can be George Washington, and I'd wager most of the leaders that replaced toppled Washington allies were equally loathsome scumbags, or worse. Ho Chi Minh, and those that took power when Saigon fell, were butchers -- executing something like 1 million South Vietnamese after unification. Castro? Che Guvera? Pol Pot? The criminal crypto-theocratic military junta in Tehran?

Well, maybe it wasn't such a hot idea to support cranks like Diem, Batista and the Shah, yes? It's arguable that they'd never have had such hard-left or theocratic juntas if the U.S. State Department hadn't insisted upon these countries being ruled by "our bastards."

But you know what's funny? George Washington was Ho Chi Minh's hero.

Well, isn't that what we call "American exceptionalism"? If you begin to investigate things from the point of view that we as a country are the best, how can you find the truth? How can you find America's weaknesses? How can you find the injustices that need to be addressed?

MAOIST JIBE IGNORED.

How can you look at the lists that show America lags behind other countries in so many indicators and accept that and begin to work to change that? I'd rather look at things with open eyes, even if they hurt my national pride. That's what pragmatism means to me.

We are working, all the time, to improve ourselves. The fact is, millions seek to emigrate here -- not to the little nations you point to and say "Look! They're so much better!" And I can love -- and be outwardly proud -- of my nation while not being blind to its faults.

All of a sudden this scarecrow appeared next to me, and it may have seemed that I said, "Look! They're so much better!" That was weird.

What I said was the the United States lags behind other countries, and such things as American Exceptionalism ask us to blind ourselves to that. If we don't see it, we can't effectively work to change it. As you yourself say we ought to.

As for martial creep, how about the idea, repeated over and over, that we couldn't be free without the military to protect us? That is only partly true. The military is there to protect us from foreign invaders.

Again, the military hasn't been a serious player in our politics since Washington's time. The military itself is ingrained with that -- that it is completely subservient to civilian authority. And America First-style sentiments that the military's lone function is to repel an invasion of our shores is something well beyond shortsighted. We project power to maintain the peace that 400,000+ Americans bought with their blood from 1941-45. Slinking back to our soil and leaving Stalin and others to have their way with the rest of the world would have been criminal.

I guess that means what you define by politics. By some estimates, the U.S. military sucks up more than half our budget for wars past, present and planned, for military-type programs under civilian aegis, for pensions for military, for proxy military [[Plan Colombia, Plan Mexico, IDF subsidies). By that measure, the Pentagon is an intensely political creature. And every dollar spent on war, or peace, or whatever you'd like to call it, means less to spend on the common welfare of the nation.

But don't take it from me. Take it from the Man from Kansas.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children....This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from an iron cross."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8GFswburko

[BShea]

But you know what's funny? George Washington was Ho Chi Minh's hero.

It wouldn't have been a mutual admiration society. I don't recall Washington ordering the round-up and execution of millions after the Treaty of Paris, nor reeducation camps for Tories, etc.

If you're an authoritarian tyrant who believes people are chattel labor for the greater glory of "the state" and must have every aspect of their lives controlled by a dictatorial government ... and you create a cult of personality ... well, that's not someone I'm going to confuse with a noble leader on par with Washington. Just because you oppose French colonial occupation and American attempts to preserve South Vietnam as a free, if flawed, state, doesn't make you a leader worthy of admiration by those who value Western ideals.

Carpet bombing, depleted uranium, half-blind drone attacks, remote-control killing don't seem to have humanitarian applications to me.

The primary concern of weapons systems and armies is to preserve the lives of its own troops. Secondary is making sure civilian casualties are as few as possible.

Do you even know what "carpet bombing" is? Because we don't do it, especially in cities. Had we done that in Baghdad, the city would have been gone in little more than a few days. Most of the strikes were as point-point as they can be. We weren't using waves of B-52 strikes --- which would have been actual carpet bombing -- in civilian areas. If we had been carpet bombing, Iraq would have looked like Germany and Japan in 1945.

Warfare isn't sterile. Civilian die. You may refuse to believe so, but the U.S. military takes more pains than any military on Earth or in history to spare civilians as much as possible. Sometimes, it's not.

What I said was the the United States lags behind other countries, and such things as American Exceptionalism ask us to blind ourselves to that. If we don't see it, we can't effectively work to change it. As you yourself say we ought to.

We don't blind ourselves, in my opinion. The Left reminds us all the time that we should strive to be more like France, Sweden, Japan, etc. Most Americans choose to try to make America its own better place, and not look to the models of calcified relics like Europe, where the price of certain "nice" metrics is the loss of the sort of dynamic cultures and populations that make a nation great. And it's not as if we've never adopted the good ideas and ideals of the Old World, either.

And every dollar spent on war, or peace, or whatever you'd like to call it, means less to spend on the common welfare of the nation.

Or on the Welfare State.

[Detroitnerd]

But you know what's funny? George Washington was Ho Chi Minh's hero.

It wouldn't have been a mutual admiration society.

Again, maybe supporting brutal strongmen who took marching orders from Washington wasn't a hot idea. Want to talk Washintonianism? That would be a policy of benevolent neutrality without becoming sucked into international affairs.

Carpet bombing, depleted uranium, half-blind drone attacks, remote-control killing don't seem to have humanitarian applications to me.

The primary concern of weapons systems and armies is to preserve the lives of its own troops. Secondary is making sure civilian casualties are as few as possible.

Do you even know what "carpet bombing" is? Because we don't do it, especially in cities. Had we done that in Baghdad, the city would have been gone in little more than a few days. Most of the strikes were as point-point as they can be. We weren't using waves of B-52 strikes --- which would have been actual carpet bombing -- in civilian areas. If we had been carpet bombing, Iraq would have looked like Germany and Japan in 1945.

Warfare isn't sterile. Civilian die. You may refuse to believe so, but the U.S. military takes more pains than any military on Earth or in history to spare civilians as much as possible. Sometimes, it's not.

That talk about "preserving the life of troops" is a line I can handle, but I think those sorts of statements are there to soften up a public that all too often doesn't pay attention to the facts on the ground. Sure, they didn't carpet bomb Baghdad, but they struck power plants, water treatment plants, civilian infrastructure. Please, help me understand how that preserves the lives of our troops. When people can't drink clean water, when hospitals can't run lights or respirators, when children can't get medicine. How does this ensure the survival of our troops? When we dust the theater of war with depleted uranium, which increases the risks of cancers in everybody, including our troops, how does this help protect our troops? When we throw cluster bombs into populated areas, bright and shiny little things that look to children like toys, how does this protect our troops?

For that matter, how did the sanctions against Iraq, which resulted in the early deaths of an estimated half-million Iraqis, many of them children, protect our troops?

The only reasonable conclusion you can reach is that the people who plan and execute war do not care about the safety of the civilian population, their own troops, or anything that stands in the way of subjugating a sovereign nation.

What I said was the the United States lags behind other countries, and such things as American Exceptionalism ask us to blind ourselves to that. If we don't see it, we can't effectively work to change it. As you yourself say we ought to.

We don't blind ourselves, in my opinion. The Left reminds us all the time that we should strive to be more like France, Sweden, Japan, etc. Most Americans choose to try to make America its own better place, and not look to the models of calcified relics like Europe, where the price of certain "nice" metrics is the loss of the sort of dynamic cultures and populations that make a nation great. And it's not as if we've never adopted the good ideas and ideals of the Old World, either.

If the "calcified relics" of Europe look good to Americans, it's because they get beaucoup services from their government. I and many of my fellow Americans [[in fact, the majority, if they weren't hectored and scared and brainwashed every moment by a complicit media) value solid government services, which can mean life and death, over vague and positive-sounding virtues such as dynamism and greatness. We could have a heck of a civil society, I think, if we placed less emphasis on empire-building and more on building up America. I dare say Washington would agree.

And every dollar spent on war, or peace, or whatever you'd like to call it, means less to spend on the common welfare of the nation.

Or on the Welfare State.

What is wrong with spending money to build the common welfare? Good schools? Social programs? Public parks and pools? Vacation time? Time off after the birth of a child? Unemployment and employment programs? Social security? Stipends for students? Funding for arts programs? Subsidies for rail transit and mass transit? Funding for university education? National health care? These are things people want. They only want war when they're scared or suckered into it. And then, only briefly.

If the above constitutes a welfare state, please, bring it on. Quickly.

[BShea]

If the "calcified relics" of Europe look good to Americans, it's because they get beaucoup services from their government.

Europe was able to build its nanny states because of two things: The Marshall Plan, and reliance of the U.S. military to keep the Soviets at bay. Remove the U.S. military from Europe after 1946, and that region looks very, very different today. Europe gorged itself on social services because it basked in our shadow. Americans didn't have the servility of Europeans, either, who fall in love with every bloody -ism that comes along.

I and many of my fellow Americans [[in fact, the majority, if they weren't hectored and scared and brainwashed every moment by a complicit media) value solid government services, which can mean life and death, over vague and positive-sounding virtues such as dynamism and greatness.

You ideology -- reliance on Big Government to care for you -- is obviously very different than mine. And I'm not talking about schools and roads. It's unfortunate that people have lost sight of the fact that the foundation of our government -- the Constitution and Bill of Rights -- are a codification of LIMITS on government, not a blue print to expand them into every orifice of the body politic, and our lives. The framers would absolutely be horrified at the reliance of government today.

We could have a heck of a civil society, I think, if we placed less emphasis on empire-building and more on building up America. I dare say Washington would agree.

Empire building? Really? Christ, does the Left have anything else? If we wanted an empire, we'd have one. Ensuring that another world war doesn't end mankind allowed us to have the society that we do. America First pacifism resulted in our delayed and most costly entry into two catastrophic world wars.

The only reasonable conclusion you can reach is that the people who plan and execute war do not care about the safety of the civilian population, their own troops, or anything that stands in the way of subjugating a sovereign nation.

Um, no. If the goal was conquest, things would be very, very different. That's about an unreasonable conclusion as one could come up with. We have the ability to kills millions in minutes. I'm beginning to suspect more and more that your understanding of how the military works and national strategy is filtered purely through a completely skewed Leftist lens -- reduced to pathetic, two-dimensional caricatures of Dick Cheney saying "Off with their heads" or something like that.

I've known military planners, am familiar with the doctrine and have read the manuals and orders ... to suggest those in charge aren't acutely aware of the effect of casualties, ours and civilian, on everything is insane. Hearts and minds.

What is wrong with spending money to build the common welfare? Good schools? Social programs? Public parks and pools? Vacation time? Time off after the birth of a child? Unemployment and employment programs? Social security? Stipends for students? Funding for arts programs? Subsidies for rail transit and mass transit? Funding for university education? National health care? These are things people want. They only want war when they're scared or suckered into it. And then, only briefly.

It's easy to do "good" with other people's money, isn't it? Turning everyone into a client of the government, and central planning, is the death of individual liberty and a dynamic society. Destroying free markets and the private competition that creates efficiency and lowers prices ... that's truly the road to serfdom Hayek suggested.

People don't want to be sheep. Of course, the Left recognizes that if they can get people addicted to reliance on government, they've created for themselves a lifelong constituency. And a welfare state, as history has shown, leads directly to authoritarianism. After all, the sheep can't be trusted ... the self-appointed elites know better, and only they can decide what is good for us. As George Carlin said, when fascism arrives in this country, it will be with smiley faces instead of jackboots.

[Detroitnerd]

If the "calcified relics" of Europe look good to Americans, it's because they get beaucoup services from their government.

Europe was able to build its nanny states because of two things: The Marshall Plan, and reliance of the U.S. military to keep the Soviets at bay. Remove the U.S. military from Europe after 1946, and that region looks very, very different today. Europe gorged itself on social services because it basked in our shadow. Americans didn't have the servility of Europeans, either, who fall in love with every bloody -ism that comes along.

That's one theory. Another theory could well be that, through the hard work of the people in those countries, they demanded their government stay committed to keeping a strong middle class. I don't know if your contempt for Europeans exactly qualifies you to make any pronouncements on them.

I and many of my fellow Americans [[in fact, the majority, if they weren't hectored and scared and brainwashed every moment by a complicit media) value solid government services, which can mean life and death, over vague and positive-sounding virtues such as dynamism and greatness.

You ideology -- reliance on Big Government to care for you -- is obviously very different than mine. And I'm not talking about schools and roads. It's unfortunate that people have lost sight of the fact that the foundation of our government -- the Constitution and Bill of Rights -- are a codification of LIMITS on government, not a blue print to expand them into every orifice of the body politic, and our lives. The framers would absolutely be horrified at the reliance of government today.

That's just more straw-manning. The government, BShea, is supposed to be of the people, for the people and by the people. In other words, we are supposed to govern ourselves. If we demand that the government have a hefty tax on the wealthy, that's our right. And we can demand social programs. That's our right too. This whole Big, Bad Government thing is just a rhetorical wedge to confuse the issue that we have a right to run programs for people, not just for defense contractors and banksters.

We could have a heck of a civil society, I think, if we placed less emphasis on empire-building and more on building up America. I dare say Washington would agree.

Empire building? Really? Christ, does the Left have anything else? If we wanted an empire, we'd have one. Ensuring that another world war doesn't end mankind allowed us to have the society that we do. America First pacifism resulted in our delayed and most costly entry into two catastrophic world wars.

Well, you should look at the documents of the PNAC and others in the government business. Sure, only the lefties used to talk about empire. Now the people who run the government are openly using those words. Not just me.

The only reasonable conclusion you can reach is that the people who plan and execute war do not care about the safety of the civilian population, their own troops, or anything that stands in the way of subjugating a sovereign nation.

Um, no. If the goal was conquest, things would be very, very different. That's about an unreasonable conclusion as one could come up with. We have the ability to kills millions in minutes. I'm beginning to suspect more and more that your understanding of how the military works and national strategy is filtered purely through a completely skewed Leftist lens -- reduced to pathetic, two-dimensional caricatures of Dick Cheney saying "Off with their heads" or something like that.

Ahe, yes, if we wanted to DESTROY them we could. But the goal is to subjugate and exploit, and to control the natural resources, in which case only a fool would immolate the whole country.

And stop straw-manning. It's getting a bit silly, even if it entertains you.

I've known military planners, am familiar with the doctrine and have read the manuals and orders ... to suggest those in charge aren't acutely aware of the effect of casualties, ours and civilian, on everything is insane. Hearts and minds.

Yes, if "hearts and minds" means internal organs strewn across the landscape. That's mostly just a BS sales job for the American people. Sure, they'll use psychops, Human Terrain Systems, anything they can to get their way. But first comes the "Shock and Awe." And by some estimates 650,000 dead. That is unacceptable by any standard.

What is wrong with spending money to build the common welfare? Good schools? Social programs? Public parks and pools? Vacation time? Time off after the birth of a child? Unemployment and employment programs? Social security? Stipends for students? Funding for arts programs? Subsidies for rail transit and mass transit? Funding for university education? National health care? These are things people want. They only want war when they're scared or suckered into it. And then, only briefly.

It's easy to do "good" with other people's money, isn't it? Turning everyone into a client of the government, and central planning, is the death of individual liberty and a dynamic society. Destroying free markets and the private competition that creates efficiency and lowers prices ... that's truly the road to serfdom Hayek suggested.

Haha. Oh, yes. That wonderful private enterprise system that is raising all boats right now. Har-de-har-har.

People don't want to be sheep. Of course, the Left recognizes that if they can get people addicted to reliance on government, they've created for themselves a lifelong constituency. And a welfare state, as history has shown, leads directly to authoritarianism. After all, the sheep can't be trusted ... the self-appointed elites know better, and only they can decide what is good for us. As George Carlin said, when fascism arrives in this country, it will be with smiley faces instead of jackboots.

BShea, are you familiar with what a mixed economy is? It is the United States economy. We do not live in an environment of laissez faire capitalism. Because we have tried that in the past and it has led to horrific depressions and recessions and depredations environmental, labor and otherwise.

The reason we have a mixed economy, in theory, is to ameliorate the worst excesses of private enterprise, and to regulate them so they don't become corrupt. And that is something that the American people agree with. Only people far to the right of the spectrum attempt to scare the American people by saying that the elements of socialism in our economy are there to crush private industry. That's silly.

I kinda like your go-for-broke debating style, but shouldn't we at this point agree to disagree? I think you're not facing facts, and you think I'm a commie-pinko-liberal fag. Where in all this are we going to make any progress?