who will be the next Iraq?

[escobert]

And sold them weapons. SAme with France and Russia.

[TheAbominatrix]

Yeah, they didnt support the Iraq war because they had oil contracts with Saddam.

Yep. And now they arent mired in a go-nowhere war with a split nation at home.

And sold them weapons. SAme with France and Russia

Yeah that certainly gives them the moral high ground over the US, who gave Mr. Hussein weapons.

[aeris2001x2]

i dont think it would have been easy, but i still believe the USA could have beaten Nazi-Germany. whatever the case, without US help,Hitler would have kicked our ass.

though UK did have a choice. Germany only bombed them because they declared War on the germans after invading Poland. Hitler respected the UK and was shocked when UK declared War.


"You should see what they do to captured U.S. operatives. They behead them? And you think undressing them and humilating them as just as bad as killing them."

ermm...i covered this sort of...

"i get what u say Big D, but they STILL claim they are "liberating" Iraq and i dont like the notion of "we are not as bad as Saddam because our War Crimes are not as bad". maybe it was not Mass Genocide, but murdering and tortue are still absolutly discusting. who is the USA to Preach to Saddam and other *Rogue* states and terroists when they do that sort of abhorent stuff themselves?"

same principle.

"Psh, that like saying all Muslims are bad. Just because a small group of people committed these acts, doesnt mean the entire U.S. military is like that. And the Bush Adminstration isnt a regime."

of course not everyone is like that but the corruption still goes 2 to the top. and look at Guntamano(sp) Bay? that is disgusting .
oh the Bush Administration is a Regime in many ways. *Do what we say, or die!*. just as there is no such thing as a true Democracy.

[Big D]

[q=noname]You should see what they do to captured U.S. operatives. They behead them? And you think undressing them and humilating them as just as bad as killing them.
[/q]You ought to pay a little more attention to the news...
Numerous Iraqi prisoners were murdered by their captors; mainly beaten to death during "interrogations". Others were drowned after being forced to jump into rivers. They were murdered, just as US captives have been murdered. Also, the Iraqi prisoners are in prison; they cannot personally have been responsible for what happened to others while they were incarcerated.

though UK did have a choice. Germany only bombed them because they declared War on the germans after invading Poland. Hitler respected the UK and was shocked when UK declared War.

He was badly deluded, believing no-one would challenge such a blatant show of strength. The League of Nations had been launching legal challenges to Germany's growing might in the years leading up to the Second World War. The Nazi regimes' acts were too horrific to go unchallenged; the world had to fight back, for the sake of survival and basic justice.

Oh, and decades-old history has little bearing on what nations are like now. Just because some Japanese and German people did bad things in the past, or some American and British people once did good things, has no impact on whether the nation is "good" or "evil" now. It's a different matter when the current government is directly continuing the acts of a previous one, though; or when a government refuses to accept responsibility for correcting mistakes its predecessors made, and indeed wants to go down the same path again.

[aeris2001x2]

I worry though that US and UK *self righteousness* will lead to disaster, just as it led to the rise of hitler via the treaty of Versailles. i see history repeating itself in that respect...

[escobert]

Well history repeats itself

[Mei]

i do know that UK should not have got involved in WWII. the US would still have kicked German/Japanese ass without us. it scares me 2 think how different the outcome could have been if Japan had not attacked Pearl Harbour. the USA would have just let Hitler take over the whole of Europe.

Actually, even if the attack on Pearl Harbor had not happened, the US would have entered the war eventually. Ever hear of Lend- Lease? The Atlantic Charter? Both were pre- Pearl Harbor. Also, the British Empire was strong. We only needed the US materials (tanks, ships etc.) and until December 1941, that's all we got.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand- I have recovered the Bush strategy for dealing with terrorists here.


=P

[aeris2001x2]

i thought the US isolationism and hatred of all of Europes *pety* wars, would have kept them out of the war. no i havent heard of Lend- Lease? The Atlantic Charter? please enlighten me .

the British Empire was strong, but still Hitler was stronger and would have trashed us without US support. correct me if i,m wrong, but was a major reason the Empire broke up that WWII had put so much financial,economic stress on us, as well as the state of the armed forces after, that we just could not hold it together?

[TheAbominatrix]

The US was not hating Europe at the time... they just wanted to be Isolated. They didnt want to be like the US is now... getting into everyone else's business all the time, having people in theirs, and having to go fight wars they have absolutely nothing to deal with. They broke the policy in WWI, but returned to their Isolationalism. After WWII, they realized that, as such a large and prosperous nation, they had a moral duty to be involved with the rest of the world. And that turned it to what it is now, take it as you will.

The US and England were strong allies, even during the Isolationist point. Mei mentioned Lend-Lease, and he's got a good point. The US was 'lending' (read: giving) Britian a lot of weapons and equipment when Britian was having problems, but staying out of actually fighting the war and assuming the middle-ground about all this crap. Then Pearl Harbor happened and everything changed.

Would England have defeated Germany without US troops? That I dont know. Germany was making a lot of screw ups towards the end there. But regardless, the US did help, and blah blah blah I'm done with my WWII rant.

Not even sure I had a point. xD

[aeris2001x2]

i understand. though i thought USA was Selling weapons to us, and we r still paying the debt off now.

it seems though USA has gone from one extreme to the other. imho i think they need 2 find a middle ground.

[Doomgaze]

World War II would have been won without the US, but France would have been a Warsaw Pact nation.

[The Captain]

For one thing, I think it is a VERY encouraging sign that there are young folk such as us that ARE interested in the world, in history and in what makes everything tick to a degree. Regardless of where we may stand on a war, a leader, an ideal, I think it's very clear that we can all agree on one thing: The world we are going to inherit in the coming years has changed very much from the world that was back, even 10 or 20 years before. History is that rarest of things that can somehow always change and yet have some sort of cycle. The principles in events and the events themselves almost always change, but the circumstances to which most of what makes the world turn in all directions, are somehow always similiar in one regard or another.

More than anything else, this world suffers from severe polarization, in that every issue can no longer be in shades of grey, but must be either one side or the other. In my modest opinion, in many cases, this is a very dangerous viewpoint to take as the answers to so many riddles and obstacles in our lives and in this world itself lie in the middle. Sometimes, we may even be so close to agreeing to one another, yet through pride, stubbornness or just lack of oversight we fail to see where we might be able to work together and overcome something much more easily.

I'd hope this goes without saying, but blind hatred and animosity toward others either as a whole or because of what we believe we know about them will only lead to ruin. To compare Bush or Kerry to Hitler or an evil tyrant is a bit sensationalisitc, even if sometimes the parallels can be vaguely justified. To say that all of one race, or type of people is inferior or to blame for everything, be it Iraqi, Afghan, Muslim, Palestinian, Israeli, American, Black, White, Christian, Jewish, etc, etc is to give into all that may well rot this world to the core. Somehow or another, we're slowly all slipping apart from one another. Rather than band together and put aside our differences, we attempt to pry them wide open and make ourselves feel superior. We claim to help then hurt, we claim to show mercy but only engage in more of the same tactics. Vengence has become the elixir to which we all cling to and use to justify causes that really cannot be justified. If the world engages in eye for an eye tendencies, eventually we'll all go utterly blind.

What will history say about us when all is said and done? It's almost impossible to be able to see, as it's unfolding before our eyes. For a LONG while, Stalin was revered as a hero in the USSR/Russia and only in the last 20 or so years has he been reviled for the horrible atrocities he committed. Could there possibly be some easier way to solve the problems before us, or are we already on a slippery slope downward and must salvage whatever we can whilst we still can? It may sound overly philosophical to wonder if perhaps we need to look only into ourselves to make true progress, but I do indeed wonder sometimes. Perhaps that IS the key to this whole problem. We've all become so hard wired to find blame and place it, our finger always looking for a new place to point when perhaps sometime, we must point it at ourselves. Yet, the idea of accountibility has all but vanished for us. Where has it gone? Perhaps if we once again took responsibility for our actions as individuals and not as the President, or the Senator, or the High School student, but as basic human beings, then we'd all be better off. Or maybe I'm just being foolishly optimistic toward the past, and the mere fact is that we've NEVER really existed like.

There is so much that can happen in the coming years, and maybe i'm just wishing against hope, but I firmly do hope that we are the generation that can lurch this planet and this history forward instead of the endless cycle of hate and violence. Why must man always have war? Are we really all savages, struggling to survive as Darwin once believed? Are we capable of overcoming our differences and banding together as people of this planet to overcome the evil and hatred that has swept the land? Can we rise up as one loud voice and say that we will not walk down the same path so many have taken, all expecting to overmatch their opponents, overwhelm other cultures and dominate the globe, when perhaps, by working together we can achieve so much more?

Surely, this probably has little to do with the topic at hand, to be frank, but after reading all the debate that had raged, all these sorts of thoughts flew through my head. Instead of pour all our problems and possible solutions at each other, perhaps if we meld them together and find some way to directly channel them into the world, then we can avoid so many battles, wars and deaths in the future.

Take care all.

[aeris2001x2]

Wow Captain, thats one hell of a post .

to a large extent i agree with what u say. however i,m much more pessimistic in one respect. i dont believe its possible to break the cycle. its in Human nature to be this self destructive. not only do i feel its impossible 2 break, i also feel humanity could not cope without such death anyway. its impossible for life to exist in any other way...

[nik0tine]

Wow Captain, thats one hell of a post .

to a large extent i agree with what u say. however i,m much more pessimistic in one respect. i dont believe its possible to break the cycle. its in Human nature to be this self destructive. not only do i feel its impossible 2 break, i also feel humanity could not cope without such death anyway. its impossible for life to exist in any other way...

At one point in time it was impossible for life to exist in any other way. However, with the techonlogy that we have now, we don't have to worry about that. There is an entire solar system of planets out there that someday we will be able to access. With that, one day we will no longer need to worry about over population. We are living in the age where it is truly possible for war to become extinct. At least, thats how i see it.

[War Angel]

We are living in the age where it is truly possible for war to become extinct.

You mean, humans will no longer be humans? War and conflict are essential and inseperable parts of human existence, and you can see it on all levels - it will never go away.