Is America really at war?
Posted on: January 20, 2011 - 6:32am
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Is America really at war?
I remember reading in my history book about the big wars the United States has won. Back then, whole countries went to war.
Today, most citizens can't name 5 people in the war, let alone anyone significant. Back in the day, people stopped using silk and other vital war products. Now all I see on the news is tax breaks. I didn't realize tax cuts won wars.
So I ask, is this country at war, or just the politicians and those who sold their soul to the government?
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I can name dozens people who have gone to the wars four of which are in my immediate family circle. Of course, I hang out in military circles. But yeah, we are at war. The reason you don't have the large economic build up that you saw in WWII for example is that we are a much wealthier country and war is fought very differently. We don't charge machine guns with thousands of troops anymore.
The price of gunpowder has increased dramatically because of the war effort but we simply don't have the supply problems where everything we produce needs to go to the war. The good news is that we are wealthy, the bad news is that many Americans are completely clueless about the good soldiers that are dieing because are politicians don't have the balls to either free the military to completely crush the enemy or say screw it and pull out. It is fucking ridiculous how long the Afghanistan war has ran, they are a backwater country using 1980's technology. There is no reason the war should have lasted longer than a year or two.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
It's the terrain. It always has been. Read Flashman by George McDonald Fraser for a very interesting account of the British retreat in the mid-1800s. He gives an intense description of the landscape. It is very difficult to defend yourself when you have to move on the roads and the roads are at the bottom of canyons.
There are no roads to the top of those ridges. And yes, you could do helicopters - if the weather conditions are right. The land is formed from being to one side of the main push of the Indian subcontinent.
Technology does not win wars - people win wars. If the Afghanis don't want an invader, they will resist - they know the terrain, are used to the weather, and they don't want the US there. We won't win - it was never a possibility.
I was married to a Marine for 11 years - professional soldiers are taught to never say "lose" or "retreat", but you know, not every war is winnable. It is not defeatist or negative thinking to say - that is beyond my capabilities and why waste money and resources on something I'm going to lose. We should get out. We should never have gone in.
Yeah, most of you are young enough you haven't failed big time yet. You will at some point. It is your choice to get up and try again or to get up and find a more reasonable goal or to quit. Choices we have. A more reasonable goal in Afghanistan would be to support real societal changes - starting with education.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
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Perhaps you could clarify how you are deciding when a war is a war? From your OP, I do not see the definition that you are using as all that clear.
On the one hand, it seems that you are drawing a comparison between a couple of really huge wars to all others and then saying that wars that fail to pass some unclear boundary can not be wars as such.
On the other hand, it seems that you want to see some major economic movement as the barrier. If that is not there, then no war. Yet, at the same time, you are only seeing economic movement and therefore no war.
So I am really not clear on what you are calling a war.
For the record, let me throw out some other definitions of war and see what comes up.
Soldiers fighting and coming home maimed/dead? Yah, by that standard, we are at war.
A technical state of war with no shooting? That requires a bit more detail to discuss. What was the cold war under this standard? Both sides were fighting proxy wars in different places around the world during this time, so someone was fighting and dying. In places like Viet Nam and Afghanistan, some of the people doing this were nationals of the two major belligerents. Yah, again we have war.
How about Korea? The north never surrendered. The only signed a cease-fire. So there is a sense in which the war never ended. Since the north has in two different incidents gone aggressive in the past few months, one could make an argument that the war is back on. Again, this would be war.
The same would apply with Iraq. Hussein only ever agreed to a cease-fire. And wow, that lasted for what? 6 or 8 years before he started acting like a fool again. I am happy that he turned out not to have credible WMD. Still, Iraq went aggressive under a cease fire and the whole of the civilized world thought that Iraq had at the very least, chemical weapons. France, Germany and Russia all had intel from their own sources that made it seem like a credible threat at the time. How is violating a cease-fire not a resumption of hostilities?
What of other states of technical war?
The south secceded from the Union four months before that war went hot. Was the north at war with the south during the time that fort Sumpter was under siege and all of the other southern forts were under CSA control? Again, sounds like war to me even if actual hostilities had yet to occur.
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Thats the problem that we are trying to impose a modern government on people that are decidedly un-modern. I don't think it is a realistic goal. I think we should just kill the people we went there to kill and get out. With our spy sats we can take out terrorist training camps that pop up like we are playing whack-a-mole. I don't think it is our role to try to "save" the rest of the world an install democracies everywhere. Or we could always turn imperialist and simply conquer the country and take it.... but there isn't much support for that in modern times. But fundamentally I agree with you, we are simply wasting the lives of our troops and it pisses me off.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
The problem is we can't take out the religious leaders that indoctrinate young men with Jihad and subjugate the women. The military can only attack someone after they commit a violent act. So we're in a no win situation.
We could win our wars just with spies and drones with smart bombs. But politically, we can't attack Islamic religious leaders for what they preach. The military should take someone out for training people to wage war with propaganda. but if they hide behind religion, they are safe. So we'll be in an unending war.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
It's not just the terrain that is the issue. The problem is that we care about precision and reducing collateral damage. Sure we could carpet bomb Afghanistan, but we don't want to.
The only reason we aren't 'winning', is because our goal isn't to kill the enemy, our goal is to turn the enemy into our friend. The problem with the enemy, is that they don't want to be our friends, they want to be Allah's friend. IMHO, all the problems in the middle east stem from being too religious.
Yeah, in part.
There's no division of church and state and individual rights are not enshrined in constitutions. Of course, there are still plenty of arseholes in MENA countries who are happy to exploit the possibilities of a cowed population to screw the masses as hard as they can. We know about Tunisia but not much better are Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Jordan to a lesser extent. Look at Saudi Arabia. WTF is going on there?
Religion and the blame-the-west game allows domestic governments to wallow in private corruption while the people focus on the next life while negotiating a maze of cultural morals that on further investigation are nothing more than reified social habits.
I'm not sure what the answer will be to all this - democratic islamic governments? I think god has to be rooted out of it. One day MENA people will see that if you don't divide church and state you are always left with authoritarian regimes that fail to deliver the libertarian fundamentals we take for granted in the west. Not that we are perfect by any means but for the most part we bring out the better things in ourselves.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck