'Ground Zero mosque'

Tools    





Keep on Rockin in the Free World
Do YOU think you ask a lot of questions? Why leave angry post comments? Is it not okay that I think it's funny? What if I was a terrorist?
__________________
"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo.



Wow.

You live in a Country whose Government has invaded how many countries since 1953?

The Arrogance is mind-blowing.
I give up--how many? I don't keep up with these little skirmishes with African warlords and pirates or sacking up "Pineapple-face" Noreiga down in Panama, or the shoot-outs Clinton mounted whenever Monica made the news.

But even "walk softly and don't offend anyone" Canadians fought and died in the World War II battlefields in Europe and the Pacific and in Korea and with the UN in Bosnia and other places. (Did any Canadians "invade" the Falklands? There weren't any US troops in that fight.) And then like the US after every war, we went home and left the natives to govern themselves.

So if you really don't see a stark difference between the imperialism of Japan and Nazi Germany and the blatant invasion of South Korea by North Korea vs. US actions, then there's no use even discussing it.

So I'll just wallow in my US arrogance. We're the surviving international military power, so why not act the part. Besides, we're going to look like angels compared to the next superpower that supplants us.



will.15's Avatar
Semper Fooey
That's right.
__________________
It reminds me of a toilet paper on the trees
- Paula



will.15's Avatar
Semper Fooey
The only possible replacement for us is China and they are already showing signs of being major ********.



Americans chose their government like japan or germany or Canada or any other democracy.
Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany were not democracies in 1939-1945. Moderate leaders were murdered by the military hawks in Japan and the Nazis in Germany. Anyone who opposed them in their own countries were ground under. Yet most of the population in both countries at first applauded the gangsters who took over their governments. And what Japan did in China and Korea and Germany in Poland and France were not against the will of the Japanese and Germans who accepted the idea they were superior to other people on the globe. As a result, it's hard to find any true innocents in those countries during the war years.

The civilians that got annihilated by the second atomic bomb dropped, had as much influence on their Countries military decisions as the rank and file joe and jane six-pack.
Actually they had less influence, being ruled by the military and an emperor than did the average citizens in the democracies of the US and Canada.

But the atom bombs were not dropped on the two Japanese cities because of the influence the citizens had or didn't have. It was done to break Japan's will to resist, and by that I mean the will of both the Japanese people and the Japanese government. That's a principle that goes back to Sherman and his march through Georgia. Sherman wasn't aiming at the Confederate armies in that campaign; he set out to destroy anything that in any way supported those armies, including crops, farm implements, livestock, horses, wagons, railroads, rolling stock, factories that made anything that a Confederate soldier might find useful or that would sustain him in the field. They even shot dogs because Southerners used dogs to track runaway slaves and escaped POWs.

When it came to the bombing campaigns of World War II, there were slave laborers from countries occupied by Germany in those factories that the US Air Force targeted for precision bombing. Japan used Allied POWs in their mines and factories and they too died under Allied bombs. There were captured US air crews vaporized by the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. But both cities had military manufacturing going on in their limits, and those factories and other facilities to support the war also were staffed by Japanese civilians who lived in houses near the factories. So those houses and those people were legitimate targets, just like all of Houston would be if we get into a war with some country with intercontinental missiles. It's hard, but that's what war is all about. There are no neat little boundaries separating soldiers from civilians--it's all one big target. That's just the cold, hard truth.

America is not sacred ground.
Personally, I consider America to extend from the Straits of Magellan through Canada and Alaska. I'm an American who happens to live in the US--the best part of it, in fact, Texas. No, it's not sacred, and I don't say that simply because I'm not religious. We've been invaded before--by British and Canadian troops from Canada. The Royal Marines and the Black Watch burned our capitol almost to the ground until a huge storm (a large tornado, some say) put out the fires and badly injured the British forces -- our own "divine wind," you might say. So we have taken our lumps before and may again. But before you get too tickled about that prospect, make sure you're not downwind from the fallout, cause if we catch cold, you're likely to develop pneumonia.

oh and Iraq was about oil lets not be naive.
Then ain't it interesting that Iraq was producing more oil before the invasion that it is today, although the UN was supposedly limiting its sale under the international sanctions with the oil income supposedly to be used only to buy food and medicine for the Iraqi population. Iraq still hasn't brought its production up to its previous levels and little if any of it comes to the US. Most goes to Japan who didn't participate in the war. The biggest US sources of imported oil are Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico. The Saudis have part interest in some major US refineries, so they make sure their investment maintains a good supply of crude. Venezuela used to be a major source, but President Hugo Chavez's regime has lost production and investors through its actions. Iraq has not been a substantial source of crude for the US since well before Iraq invaded Kuwait. At that time, the US got oil from Iraq while Japan got oil from Kuwait, yet we and our allies (including England, maybe even Canada for all I know) went in to kick out Saddam and liberate Kuwait. Goes to show how "concerned" we were about Iraq's oil.



And what... Germany (did) in Poland and France were not against the will of the ... Germans who accepted the idea they were superior to other people on the globe. As a result, it's hard to find any true innocents in those countries during the war years.
Going along with something (or, at least, not openly voicing you dissatisfaction with something) after 6 years of surpression and intimidation isn't the same as believing that you're superior to other nations. Especially the French, who were Germanic, if not German. If you're telling me that a German sat in Berlin in 1940 isn't 'an innocent' because they're a German in Germany in 1940, then we're never going to agree.


But the atom bombs were not dropped on the two Japanese cities ... It was done to break Japan's will to resist, and by that I mean the will of both the Japanese people and the Japanese government.
No it wasn't. It was done because you had the bomb and Truman wanted to use it, announcing to the world that the US was the first nuclear power and as a warning shot to the Soviets who, unlike FDR, Truman could see were going to be trouble after the war ended.

Then ain't it interesting that Iraq was producing more oil before the invasion that it is today, although the UN was supposedly limiting its sale under the international sanctions with the oil income supposedly to be used only to buy food and medicine for the Iraqi population. Iraq still hasn't brought its production up to its previous levels and little if any of it comes to the US. Most goes to Japan who didn't participate in the war. The biggest US sources of imported oil are Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico. The Saudis have part interest in some major US refineries, so they make sure their investment maintains a good supply of crude. Venezuela used to be a major source, but President Hugo Chavez's regime has lost production and investors through its actions. Kuwait has not been a major source of crude for the US since well before Iraq invaded Kuwait. At that time, the US got oil from Iraq while Japan got oil from Kuwait, yet we and our allies (including England, maybe even Canada for all I know) went in to kick out Saddam and liberate Kuwait. Goes to show how "concerned" we were about Iraq's oil.
The war in Iraq was about what every war is about, power and money.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
I don't know ruffy. I also believe that there is a North and a South America and that it would be nice if they were sancrosanct from foreign intervention. My problem is that the Monroe Doctrine basically was violated by the U.S. whenever they went to war or bought something from a European country. I also think the U.S. has constantly interfered in the Americas because they "decided" that somebody else was trying to "free" a country from something the U.S. didn't want to happen.

I also have a basic problem with someone saying that America goes from the top to the bottom of two continents just because some explorer and cartographer from Florence said so (or was somehow credited enough for something to have it named after him) a half a millenia ago. But you're from the best part, Texas. How's W. doing?
__________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
I also don't want to sound flippant or pretend that I'm somehow not proud to be an American. I believe that we have done many great things for this so-called Western Hemisphere and the World-at-Large. I just don't think that we have always put the people of our hemisphere or the world first many times when we deal with international incidents. We somehow have always felt that we were right and that we should enforce that belief in ourselves whenever we can or it somehow protects and supports us. It's just that sometimes we look the other way or do things more for ideological reasons than we do for our neighbors' general welfare. This is not to say that we're some evil giant. It's just that we're like everybody else, and down through the years, whoever had the most power has always seemed to do what it wants to try to control what's happening in the world. I just want to make that clear. I'm not leaving the U.S. any time soon.



Going along with something (or, at least, not openly voicing you dissatisfaction with something) after 6 years of surpression and intimidation isn't the same as believing that you're superior to other nations. Especially the French, who were Germanic, if not German. If you're telling me that a German sat in Berlin in 1940 isn't 'an innocent' because they're a German in Germany in 1940, then we're never going to agree.
I really don't understand what you're trying to say here. But since the original article was about the innocence or lack thereof of the German people, if you go back and look at films of the Nazi gatherings and parades before the party took power, you see mobs of Germans not in Nazi uniforms shouting and heiling and throwing flowers, smiling and laughing, at the Nazi parades, festivals, and book-burnings. When the Nazis march into Austria, Hitler's homeland, you see more civilian mobs laughing and cheering and doing the Nazi salute. There were enough Germans (easily a majority by 1939) who bought into the Nazi superman myth to make the Nazis a major political power in Germany, enough for Hitler to seize power. There were a probable majority of Austrians who favored the Nazis, especially after Hitler demanded and go back parts of the country that were given to others after WWI. Contrast that to the crying civilians in Poland and France watching the Nazis march into their countries. Most of the German populace liked Hitler when he was talking about Germans as a master race and easily winning wars over small countries like Poland, The Netherlands, Brussels, and even France who was terribly unprepared. Most enjoyed bullying Jews and didn't object to to the incarceration of them and the gypsies and the homosexuals. Of course, it wasn't true of all Germans. The communists opposed Hitler and paid the penalty in imprisonment and death. Some religious leaders, both Protestant and Catholic, stood up against the Nazi thugs and suffered the same as the Jews. Some young Germans opposed the Nazis simply because Nazis outlawed the swing and jitterbug music they liked. There was a small German underground that opposed Germans through out the war as did the French. But the vast majority of Germans and Austrians embraced Nazism in the early days of the war and benefitted from the exploitation of other countries, and as far as I'm concerned the bombings in 1943-1945 by the Brits and US Air Force and the payback from the Russians when they invaded Germany was only what they deserved.

No it wasn't. It was done because you had the bomb and Truman wanted to use it, announcing to the world that the US was the first nuclear power and as a warning shot to the Soviets who, unlike FDR, Truman could see were going to be trouble after the war ended.
You should go back and read the real history of 1941-1945 instead of buying into the revisionary BS from the 1960s and later. Based on the bitter fighting and the Japanese refusal to surrender on Iwo Jima and Okinawa and the high US casualties from those battles, the military chiefs of staff were estimating millions of casualties on both sides if the Allies were forced to invade Japan. Japanese films and documents from that period indicated the Japanese military leaders were going to use civilians, women and children, to make suicide attacks against Allied soldiers. It would have been irresponsible for Truman to allow an invasion to proceed and have so many more Allied soldiers die instead of using the atomic bombs. As for the fairy tale about intimidating the Russians, Stalin likely knew about the atomic bomb before Truman did. The Russians were already working on an atomic bomb of their own and put captured German scientists on that project who had been working on an atomic bomb for Germany. One of the last military missions before Germany's surrender was to send by submarine heavy water to Japan for use in its effort to develop an atomic bomb. So the genie was out of the bottle and the race was on to build the bomb. Fortunately the US was first and rightfully used it. But its lead was brief, because only a short time later Russia and China also had the atomic bomb. Besides with Russia's huge population, large size, and large standing Army, anyone who thinks our dropping our only 2 A-bombs on Japan was going to intimidate Russia (especially under Stalin who had killed millions of his own people in his purges) doesn't know much about Russia's nature in that period.

Actually, Churchill was the only one of the Allied leaders who saw from the start what Stalin was really like. Both FDR and Truman subscribed to the US myth that they could win over Stalin with friendship and influence him through their personal connections.

But if as you say we never agree, that's OK, too.



My problem is that the Monroe Doctrine basically was violated by the U.S. whenever they went to war or bought something from a European country.
So what have we done to violate the Monroe Doctrine lately? We had a teriffic relationship with Venezuela before Chavez took over that government, but despite his claims we haven't tried to oust him--he'll eventually oust himself. Brazil's oil industry, the world's leader in deepwater drilling, buys a lot of oilfield equipment from the US and has drilled successfully in the US sector of the Gulf of Mexico as well as off its own shores. Mexico is part of NAFTA, we returned the canal to Panama, and we're a major market for several other South American nations, especially for winter vegetables, fruits, and flowers. A lot of fresh produce is flown into Houston. I think we also get some beef from Argentina, too.

Don't know to whose war you're referring, but Mexico was a member of the Allies and had an air force unit operating against the Japanese in the Pacific during World War II. And the US avoided any involvement in the Falklands war. France set up a puppet government in Mexico while the US was involved with its Civil War, but as soon as that war ended, the US applied the Monroe Doctrine to return Mexico's rule to the Mexicans. Have we been the perfect neighbor? No, but we have never taken over any of our smaller American neighbors either.

I also have a basic problem with someone saying that America goes from the top to the bottom of two continents just because some explorer and cartographer from Florence said so (or was somehow credited enough for something to have it named after him) a half a millenia ago. But you're from the best part, Texas. How's W. doing?
The Western Hemispere is comprised primarily of South America, Central America, and North America, from bottom to top if that's what you prefer instead of from top to bottom. That's the official continental designation, that makes us all Americans, and I really don't give a damn who originated the name. I haven't seen anyone trying to rename the place yet.

W. who? Oh, you must mean shrub! Never met the guy, although I've encountered his daddy and even his mama a few times.



I also don't want to sound flippant or pretend that I'm somehow not proud to be an American. I believe that we have done many great things for this so-called Western Hemisphere and the World-at-Large. I just don't think that we have always put the people of our hemisphere or the world first many times when we deal with international incidents. We somehow have always felt that we were right and that we should enforce that belief in ourselves whenever we can or it somehow protects and supports us. It's just that sometimes we look the other way or do things more for ideological reasons than we do for our neighbors' general welfare. This is not to say that we're some evil giant. It's just that we're like everybody else, and down through the years, whoever had the most power has always seemed to do what it wants to try to control what's happening in the world. I just want to make that clear. I'm not leaving the U.S. any time soon.
Well, I'm glad to hear that, Mark! Who would I have such interesting exchanges with if you were to go.