gc70
Member
Lest anyone think that the US is totally altruistic, Israel has been a major beta-test site for US military technology for decades.
Iraq War (for instance)
- Thread starter neoncowboy
- Start date
- Status
Art Eatman
Moderator In Memoriam
"I am pretty sure that the motive for this attack was not 'they hate our freedom and American way of life' as much as 'they hate us for screwing around in their conflicts and taking sides in their religious wars'."
Going back to 1980, the Iranis verbalized that we were the Great Satan because our women don't wear veils. They show their legs and arms in public. We make evil, badnasty movies. Our music is salacious and immoral. Note that many other Islamics hold this same view.
Now, we regard all these "evils" as part of our freedoms. We're as free to be hedonistic as we are to be thrifty churchy types. They publicly decry the American way of life as evil; we like to think it's not their business how we live and that we're free to live as we choose.
Long before the Iranian takeover of our embassy in Teheran, there was a general movement within the Islamic world to move more toward Sharia. That's part of the "why" of the very long-term problems in such places as Chad, for instance. The severity started in later in places like Indonesia and the southern Philippines, among other places. There is apparently a worldwide rebirth of Islamic expansionism among the more "fundamentalist" types.
The history of all this predates such things as Gulf War I or the WTC 1 event of 1993. You at the very least have to go back to the religious emotion buildup which led to the fall of the Shah of Iran, among other tidbits of history...
Art
Going back to 1980, the Iranis verbalized that we were the Great Satan because our women don't wear veils. They show their legs and arms in public. We make evil, badnasty movies. Our music is salacious and immoral. Note that many other Islamics hold this same view.
Now, we regard all these "evils" as part of our freedoms. We're as free to be hedonistic as we are to be thrifty churchy types. They publicly decry the American way of life as evil; we like to think it's not their business how we live and that we're free to live as we choose.
Long before the Iranian takeover of our embassy in Teheran, there was a general movement within the Islamic world to move more toward Sharia. That's part of the "why" of the very long-term problems in such places as Chad, for instance. The severity started in later in places like Indonesia and the southern Philippines, among other places. There is apparently a worldwide rebirth of Islamic expansionism among the more "fundamentalist" types.
The history of all this predates such things as Gulf War I or the WTC 1 event of 1993. You at the very least have to go back to the religious emotion buildup which led to the fall of the Shah of Iran, among other tidbits of history...
Art
neoncowboy
Member
Yes, yes...good point.
I even believe that in spite of their stated reasons for attacking us, it probably has a lot to do with cultural envy.
I'm pro defense (duh, I carry a pistol and train with it) obviously. I think our foreign policy has gone way, way farther than defense of ourselves and our allies though. We've become a global social engineer, using foreign aid and our military as the tools.
Hm, having sort of a hard time with this one having read the positions of others. I can see validity to both sides.
On the one hand, I bet we'd have fewer enemies and less national debt and fewer war widows if we were more isolationist...but at the same time, withdrawing too much could hinder our ability to defend ourselves.
It's a tough road I guess.
One thing I am very thankful for is that I'm not a cabinet member or the president or anything. It's way easier to sit here at my computer and ponder it all than it would be to have to take responsibility for the whole thing.
I even believe that in spite of their stated reasons for attacking us, it probably has a lot to do with cultural envy.
I'm pro defense (duh, I carry a pistol and train with it) obviously. I think our foreign policy has gone way, way farther than defense of ourselves and our allies though. We've become a global social engineer, using foreign aid and our military as the tools.
Hm, having sort of a hard time with this one having read the positions of others. I can see validity to both sides.
On the one hand, I bet we'd have fewer enemies and less national debt and fewer war widows if we were more isolationist...but at the same time, withdrawing too much could hinder our ability to defend ourselves.
It's a tough road I guess.
One thing I am very thankful for is that I'm not a cabinet member or the president or anything. It's way easier to sit here at my computer and ponder it all than it would be to have to take responsibility for the whole thing.
longeyes
member
The "meddling" started in the 7th century in Arabia.
cz75bdneos22
Member
JerryM said:
NO..NO..NO..por favor, :banghead:
RealGun
Member
neoncowboy said:
It makes more sense if you accept that dependence upon imports, more recently referred to as "free trade", requires stability in economically important areas or any segment of international commerce. We are indeed engineering the world and have many allies in that effort. We no longer freely support dictators merely for the sake of stability.
Our tradeoff in proposing isolationism would be massive inflation and severe shortages of commodities and natural resources. We have sourced many skill sets out of the country and may have a hard time making stuff for ourselves. In the end it is all about keeping the economic jugernaut rolling. It seems to be working, if using the stock market as a measure.
White Horseradish
Member
neoncowboy said:
Huh? And just what state did occupy the territory if the USSR between 1917 and 1940?
I find your grasp of history to be a bit tenuous.
neoncowboy
Member
I guess I assumed the free market laws of supply and demand would work these issues out for us.
Our energy really ought to come from home sources, but even if it doesn't it comes from enough diverse sources that if one of them tried to 'cut us off' or artificially inflate prices through tarriffs or whatever, that we could make up the difference through another source.
A policy of increased isolationism would necessitate more independence, encouraging more Americans to produce more of our own consumer goods. I am guessing that would have positive impact all over the place (more better jobs, higher quality, perhaps higher prices)
Anyway, we're pretty lousy social engineers. What we're doing abroad doesn't seem to be working, I'd be interested in the results of a different strategy...one that included not squandering our national treasure and blood all over the world for the benefit of others who make tentative allies.
neoncowboy
Member
Yeah, that's all right...I'm not a history scholar, but I'm always interested in learning more.
I was under the impression that Russia was an enemy of Germany since at least WW1. In WW2, we intervened to protect our allies from the Germans.
What did we accomplish? Poland, which had been invaded by Hitler, became a subject of the USSRs tyranny. Saving Poland was one of our reasons for intervening. How many Jews did we keep from being murdered by the Nazis? What did we gain from liberating France?
Wasn't it MacArthur who wanted to keep on rolling right through Russia and conquer them too? It looks like one of the problems is that we never really finish the job...we have a tendency to half-ass solutions and then leave things worse off than they were when we found them. (Europe in WW1 & 2, Vietnam, The Persian Gulf)
Lupinus
Member
And that was...how exactly?
White Horseradish
Member
Yes, Russia was an enemy of Germany. However, the USSR came into being in 1917 with the Socialist Revolution, not after WWII. Whether US had anything to do with that one is subject to some debate. There was some investment by private entities from US, that's for sure.neoncowboy said:
I kinda doubt that saving Poland was a major motive in the US entering WWII, seeing how it was long overrun by that time.
It was Patton that wanted to attack Russia. Good thing he didn't, because that would have ended extemely badly for the US. By 1945 USSR had most of its adult male population in the army which had learned to fight quite well, the industry was going full-tilt having recovered from the evacuation and the supply lines were functional and incomparably shorter than the American ones. Having a really nice rifle would not have been enough.
IMO, US going into WWII had a lot more to do with controlling the expansion of the Soviet Bloc than actual liberation of anyone.
gc70
Member
There was no Soviet Bloc until after WWII - only the USSR. The generally accepted rationale is that the US entered WWII to stop the rapid expansion of the Axis countries. When the US entered WWII, Germany had already gobbled up most of Europe, Japan was continuing devouring Southeast Asia, and even Italy was having some success in North Africa.
White Horseradish
Member
OK, replace "bloc" with "sphere of influence". It really would not have taken any clairvoyance to see what Russia intended.gc70 said:
Lupinus
Member
Sorry hought it had to do with saying that is when we (the west) began mucking with Arabia.
gc70
Member
Clairvoyance would have only been required if one could not have heard or read. Marx, Lenin, and their successors had been preaching communist world domination for decades. Given the dismal state of the Soviet economy in the inter-war years, that rhetoric was too-casually dismissed by most observers of the period. At the time, the clearer and more immediate danger was from the Axis powers.
MikeB
Member
I just have to correct this statement. The United States DID NOT arm Saddam. Europe and Russia did.
Here is the list of all arms transferred to Saddam beginning in 1970. The only items on that list from the US are a few helicopters, the only military ones being ASW. I would hardly call that Arming Saddam.
http://projects.sipri.se/armstrade/IRQ_IMPRTS_73-02.pdf
He also didn't invade Iraq, but I'll assume that's a typo for Kuwait.
neoncowboy
Member
MikeB said:
It was a typo for Kuwait.
I've read that US firms sent precursor chemicals for chemical weapons, as well as chem weapon production facility plans and drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment, biological warfare-related materials, missile fabrication equipment and missile system guidance equipment.
Weapons of mass destruction? Uh, yeah. We tried to help Saddam develop those when he was fighting with Iran.
That Iraq Weapons Report from Dec. 2002 even suggests that Iraqi nuclear scientists received training and non-fissile material from their American counterparts at Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore!
MikeB
Member
neoncowboy said:
Yes the US and the rest of the world sold Saddam materials that could have been used to make chemical/biological weapons. Problem is it's a little hard to tell if a test tube or beaker is going to be used to make a weapon or a vaccine. Iraq in the '80's had a quite well educated population of research scientists for both weapons and civilian uses. You also might recall it was quite a surprise to much of the world when the size of Saddams Chemical, Biological, and other weapons programs came out. Remember all the hoopla over Saddams giant gun in the late '80's. They shut that down when England realized what the tubes were being used for. That began the whole landslide of knowledge as to the extent of Saddams weapons programs.
Proof of this statement would be?
Got a link for the relevent sections of this report?
So far I've debated this on many websites and have never seen any proof that the US knowingly sold Saddam any weapons. Even the people who created that report I linked to earlier don't have any evidence of this and they are one of the groups that track such stuff and not a particular friend of the US.
RealGun
Member
neoncowboy said:
That would require some historical perspective to really judge. I think the usual argument is to present Europe and Japan recovering after WWII...Marshall plan and all that. The additional problem we have now is misplaced religious fervor, making it somewhat of a "crusade". Internally, the religious factions cannot even coexist, let alone accept the "infidels". An example is the post-election bickering in Iraq. It wasn't enough to make Islam the official State religion. They still want to kill each other over doctrine and tribal dominance.
Art Eatman
Moderator In Memoriam
to sorta stop bad-mouthing Administrations and the Congress: I imagine there is a certain amount of sentiment there to see that our population continues to have "The Good Life". Part of that good life has been cheap energy.
Whatever energy policy we ever have had has been involved in a constant, reliable supply. Doesn't matter if it's electricity or transportation: This nation owes its present material wealth to cheap energy.
Our negotiations on behalf of those who supply the oil have always had that in mind. Further, we can only negotiate with "duly consitituted governments", no matter how unwholesome those governments may be. Isolationism is doomed to failure. When you're in competition with the rest of the world for a vital resource, you can't stay home.
Hindsight can show us many errors in past policy, but at the time for many of those choices, there wasn't really a choice. One of the better examples, IMO, is that of Iran: The CIA helped overthrow Mossadegh in favor of the Shah. That did two things: It reduced the sway of the USSR in that area, given its desire for a warm-water port; and assured a friendly regime insofar as a military balance of power in the region as well as a secure source of oil.
And so it goes...
Art
Whatever energy policy we ever have had has been involved in a constant, reliable supply. Doesn't matter if it's electricity or transportation: This nation owes its present material wealth to cheap energy.
Our negotiations on behalf of those who supply the oil have always had that in mind. Further, we can only negotiate with "duly consitituted governments", no matter how unwholesome those governments may be. Isolationism is doomed to failure. When you're in competition with the rest of the world for a vital resource, you can't stay home.
Hindsight can show us many errors in past policy, but at the time for many of those choices, there wasn't really a choice. One of the better examples, IMO, is that of Iran: The CIA helped overthrow Mossadegh in favor of the Shah. That did two things: It reduced the sway of the USSR in that area, given its desire for a warm-water port; and assured a friendly regime insofar as a military balance of power in the region as well as a secure source of oil.
And so it goes...
Art
Art Eatman
Moderator In Memoriam
Re the earlier post about following Patton's desires: Lotsa what-if stuff. We could have gone on into Berlin ahead of the Russians. And, we could have gone on and kicked the Russians out of what became Iron Curtain countries. I doubt we could have succeeded in whipping Russia within its own borders--a lack of desire being part of the deal.
First off, we're back to oil. Part of our aid to Russia was shipments of transportation fuels to Murmansk. Russia's internal oil supplies probably couldn't have supported a lengthy resistance in the outer countries. Then you add in all the stuff about air superiority and all that.
The Iron Curtain stuff surprised a lot of folks, except for perceptive people like Churchill. Other western leaders and their populations were fed up with war. Only guys like Stalin were quite willing to see their own people get killed if need be in the territorial expansion that became the USSR. He had help from the local Communist establishment, of course. One notable facet of Communism is that the leaders care not how many people die in their move toward power.
Russia's post-WW II development depended greatly on stolen materiel and kidnapped/captive non-Russians. Trainloads of such items as lathes and milling machines were shipped into Russia from Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, etc. Thousands of scientists and engineers from the captive countries were forced into research and production/development in Russia.
Art
First off, we're back to oil. Part of our aid to Russia was shipments of transportation fuels to Murmansk. Russia's internal oil supplies probably couldn't have supported a lengthy resistance in the outer countries. Then you add in all the stuff about air superiority and all that.
The Iron Curtain stuff surprised a lot of folks, except for perceptive people like Churchill. Other western leaders and their populations were fed up with war. Only guys like Stalin were quite willing to see their own people get killed if need be in the territorial expansion that became the USSR. He had help from the local Communist establishment, of course. One notable facet of Communism is that the leaders care not how many people die in their move toward power.
Russia's post-WW II development depended greatly on stolen materiel and kidnapped/captive non-Russians. Trainloads of such items as lathes and milling machines were shipped into Russia from Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, etc. Thousands of scientists and engineers from the captive countries were forced into research and production/development in Russia.
Art
- Status
