No, we targeted the factories. Civilian deaths were an (unfortunate) collateral damage. Its a (very) subtle distinction, I know, but an important one. Yes, civilian casualties are unfortunate and should be avoided. In that type of conflict, they almost (never) were. Nowadays... civilian deaths are much rarer, thankfully, except for those lost to terrorists, who actively seek out civilian deaths.

Thankfully, they're too stupid to do it right and insist on stuff like bombs and WMDs trying to make a bigger "splash" with each attack.

but we also need to be careful, if we tip them into totalitarianism then we've gone all the way around the circle and accomplished nothing.

Your kidding me, right? We target everything, hospitals, stores, bussiness complexes.

Everything was done to bring Germany to its knees.

No, thats what I thought had happened. I know incendiaries were used to make for maximum damage, collateral and otherwise, but that was about it.

No we targeted the civilians.


We carpet bombed whole cities... the factories weren't all over the cities but we carpet bombed the WHOLE city.


In addition we firebombed Tokyo and then set off nuclear bombs over two japanese cities.


I'm not criticizing the tactic... it was total war. The enemy would have done the same to us if they had the chance. Hitler's V1 and V2 rockets... and night bombing runs targeted cities. Why do you think during WW2 people blacked out their windows in CITIES?


not the factories besides the cities but within the cities themselves.


Both the Axis and the Allies targeted civilians.


So as I said, it's more complicated then simply attacking civilians. We attack their civilians and they attacked our because both were involved in the war effort. Even if you weren't working in the factory your labor directly contributed to the industrial warfare practiced in WW2. It was about tanks, guns, trucks, ships, and planes... Endless supplies... food, rubber, ball barrings, cotton... etc. Whoever could produce more had better equip forces. A 10,000 men without tanks versus 1000 men with tanks generally went to the men with tanks. A city without air cover generally was open to air attack... no matter how many people it had in it.


So we bombed them to destroy their industrial societies... just as they bombed us.


It was a war they could not win largely because our primary engine of industrial production was in the United States. Safe by geography from counter attack without a beach head. The US had two beachheads into Hitler's fortress Europe.

1. England... England never fell and was the perfect supply depot for US forces to drop off supplies to feed England and US forces.

2. Stalin's Russia... Most of stalin's planes and tanks came from the US. The planes where flown by Russian pilots from Alaska to Siberia and from there to the eastern front.

The Japanese offered the US little foothold however the japanese were so much smaller then the US that htey couldn't help but be overwhelmed. We could out produce them and so pushed them back one island at a time until we were parked right off their coast with an invasion force they had no hope of stopping.

The axis never had a chance of winning... it's only chance was to get the allies to give up... a draw.

Happily we were made of sterner stuff in those days and so were not prepared to accept anything short of victory.

It started with the korean war... ever since then we've become increasingly unwilling to follow through. That behavior might in time kill us.


The hard brutal truth of humanity on planet earth is that sometimes you need kill a lot of people. It's ugly but real. if you're not prepared to deal with then either accept conquest or annihilation.


In total war you kill civilians. It's one of the things that defines it as "total war"...

Alexander the Great didn't kill people with bombs... he killed people with swords, spears, and arrows... collateral damage was unusual unless one of your archers hit one of your soldiers... Yet he killed tens of thousands of civilians.


Alexander faced similar insurgency problems that we've seen of late. His response however was to make hiding amongst civilians counter productive... by killing them when soldiers or resistance leaders hid amongst them. The Romans likewise did this sort of thing... Genghis Khan did it as well. One city that refused to surrender forced him to siege the city for 2 months. After two months the people inside were starving to death... He shot fire arrows into the city eventually the people inside were so weak that he crashed the gates without much trouble... most of hte city either being close to death because of mal nutrition or burning... He then killed everyone in the city still alive, looted the city, and then burned it to the ground. Those that came by the city later said the stones were slick from the melted fat of cooked humans.


THAT is total war.


Think what you like of it that is the kind of warfare practiced between people's that do not respect each other. When related tribes fight each other they typically have elaborate rules that minimize harm to their respective societies. And there are clear points where one side or another must stop. For example a pause for the enemy to collect it's dead. Avoiding civilian targets... forbidding rape and pillage... That is what happens when war is "not" total.


Conquest historically is much more successful when waged via total war... especially when followed by colonization. Call it genocide but it works.


And as a Roman senator once said... Victory excuses all and defeat has no excuse.


Well, terrorism only works if you keep people scared. The problem AQ is having is that the Iraqis are starting to get pissed off. People that are pissed off are not scared. It's a completely different state of mind. You'll note a lot of people are turning on AQ in Iraq right now... this is largely because AQ has killed too many civilians. For that reason they're trying to target US forces more because that doesn't piss the Iraqis off... we're not their family so when our people die it doesn't make their people cry or suffer really.


It's tactics. It "might" actually be in the US's interest if AQ attacks more civilians as the Iraqis seem to be getting more angry because of it instead of afraid. I'm not sure about that... it's hard to gage these things from press releases and news casts.

This is going to sound really cold blooded, but in war there are no innocent civilans (besides perhaps children). A nation or an insurgency cannot fight a war if the people of that nation do not support them. Thus the civilians in a nation that a country is at war with are a part of the war effort and thus fair game. An instance of how the people can end a war by ending support for it can be seen with WWI and tsarist Russia. When the people finally got sick of war, got sick of starving, and got sick of the tsars they revolted in the Russian Revolution and the new government quickly ended the war (with very favorable terms for Germany). The age of smart bombs have made people think that war can be sanitary, that war doesn't have to mean civilian casualties. This mentality that we can kill only the bad guys makes war more likely. As William Tecumseh Sherman said "War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it." Harsher wars tend to mean shorter wars and for democracies, tend to mean less wars (a monarch or a dictator doesn't give a damn if his/her people suffer...unless they revolt). Yes TGE, the Allies did everything they could to bring Germany down (as did Germany towards the allies, and by allies I include Russia as well as the US and UK). The US did the same thing to Japan. Look at Germany and Japan today...neither is going to go to war with the US (or the rest of Europe probably) anytime in the forseeable future. The reason is not econmic or material, Germany and Japan might even be econmically stronger than what they were at the start of WW2. Germany and Japan have learned the true horrors of war first hand, with their own people. Since they are both democracies they don't have a king or dictator who doesn't care about the horrors. The people of Germany and Japan have learned their lesson. Unfortunately the US has not. We have not experienced war in the lower 48 states (where 99% of the US population resides) since the days of the Indian Wars, and even then the majority of America did not face the horrors of war directly. The last time the most populated areas of the US faced war was the Civil War. Even then, the North was spared to a much greater degree than the South. America has not only forgotten how to fight a war, total war which attacks the means of fighting a war (aka the industrial complexs and yes the people), we have forgotten the true horrors of war. Thus war seems to the average American as at most a regretable but sanitized punishment for wayward nations. War is not sanitary, should not BE sanitary. Even sanitary war kills civilians. Sanitary war does not crush the will to go to war again, thereby assuring the hatred of the defeated nation, but not the fear required to prevent future wars. Vandenburg, if you think the US is being over cruel in Iraq and killing to many civilians directly...It's nothing compared to truely effective counter insurgency techniques practiced by the Germans in the modern Czechs Republic. They would destory entire towns and kill all the people in them to root out the Czechs resistance. They were effective. The Czechs resistance was destroyed early in the war. The only thing that spared the French resistance the same fate was that Reinhard Heydrich, the architect of the destruction of the Czech resistance, was assinated before he could be transfered to France. Now a nation probably doesn't have to go as far as Heydrich did in order to defeat many insurgencies (if the people do not support an insurgency then it won't take too much effort, comparatively, to defeat that insurgency). Furthermore, if you have to resort to Heydrich's tactics to end an insurgency...then I would suggest that the occupation ought to end.

Now with regards to the specific case of Iraq. I am against the war, we went in on false pretences (there were no WMDs, Sadaam wasn't harboring terrorists, and to take remove evil evil dictator would require our armed forces invade tons of nations...including China). Furthermore, Iraq will not become a nation that supports Al Queda no matter who wins (with the highest probability of victory going to the Shiites). The Iraqi sunnis aren't big fans of Al Queda, the US is using sunni insurgents to help fight Al Queda, and Al Queda is a sunni organization so automatically the shiites are going to reject them. The Iraqi people do not want us in their country so I say we respect their wishes. I reject any notion of a "white man's burden" to "civilize" a third world country's culture and government. If we truely support democracy then we should respect the wishes of the Iraqi people and leave. It may or may not be the best choice for the Iraqi people but I believe it ought to be THEIR choice not ours (unless we actually plan on taking over and colonizing Iraq like in the old imperialist days).

Good point, bad example.

The russian revolution yielded a would be democratic government that was actually committed to continuing the war.


What knocked them out of the war was the German funded communists that with German aid killed off the fledgling republic... literally. They basically kicked the doors in and machine gunned everyone to death.


Hmm... I agree but there are also additional reasons war won't happen.


We are economically, culturally, and politically bound to each other.

Both Germany and Japan belong to a US dominated super civilization. In which independent states exist in a firm alliance where the boarders between one state and another have been blurred by globalization and free travel.


The US is often referred to by it's enemies as an Empire, and there is some merit to the point. However we are an empire unlike any in history. We don't bring governments under our direct domination but instead carefully mold the interests of societies so they do not conflict with our own or other alliance members... while at the same time making war so horrible that becomes an impossible option.


This system allows states to be free and more importantly "feel" free while in fact conforming more then a billion people to single civilization. What we have now is like a more harmonious version of the greek city states where instead of many similar cities we have many fundamentally similar countries. This is not to say that the cultures have been conformed but that the political and economic culture have been conformed. What is wrong in one country in our super civilization is almost always wrong in any other. The ways and means are also very very similar. This allows for safe travel, business, and social exchange between the countries. Something that does not as easily happen between countries that are not thus conformed.


Hmmm... I think we did an ok job of that in WW2 actually... we burned the enemy fairly intensely.

A good point, and this is exactly what Saddam did whenever insurgents started bothering him. He bulldozed whole towns... literally used construction equipment to knock down every building... anyone that messed with him went into one big hole in the grounds... where they pushed the detritus from the building on top of them to bury them.


This is not quite true. They do want us gone 'eventually' but most want us to stay until the insurgents are under control.


As to false pretenses, they aren't false if we believed them when we went in... which I think we did.

As to staying there, there remains many reasons to hold the line in Iraq. Both strategic and humanitarian.

An enslaved people have no will by default. If you give up or do not have freedom then you do not have the right to choose.


Ergo an enslaved people cannot choose to remain enslaved. They remain enslaved because the chains upon their bodies or minds are thicker then the force trying to break them.


There are no old days... there is merely tomorrow.


In any event I do not think colonizing Iraq is a good idea. Much of our alliance is based upon an ideology that rejects the notion so it would be counter productive.


What is important however is seeing that Iraq is strong enough to resist collapse from internal or external pressure for the foreseeable future.


Doing this will weaken Iran, Syria, and other assorted scumbag countries in the area. While also taking heat off of Israel. It's a good thing.

You missed my point. Big bombs and the like just tick us off. Scaring us is a different matter altogether, and requires a completely different approach which (thank goodness) they don't get. Probably a cultural gap of some kind.

The Washington sniper provoked more raw fear than 9/11 did. Sure, 9/11 scared us, but other emotions -- horror, sorrow, and pure, unadulterated rage -- diluted that. "Kill one person and its murder, kill a million and its a statistic." Sad, but true, thats how the American mindset / our media tends to work. They would have made a much bigger splash renting a dozen or so vans and running around sniping people (if they did it smart, the details of which I'm sure you can work out). Heck, instead of targeting the towers they should have just taken car bombs into every single route onto or off of the Manhatten island. The tunnels would go fast and easy (being underground and underwater) though the bridges and ferry system would probably have survived.

no the cultural difference is the US is an empowered nation. We perceive ourselves as able to change the world. So does Britain and so does Israel... for that matter so does Iran.


the point is that a society that is not so empowered is more vulnerable to terrorism as it will feel powerless to do anything about it.


Whether you are empowered or not is largely a state of mind. you can be just stupid and have it or be ridiculously powerful and not have it.

Karma, we are seriously not communicating for some reason. Its like you see something of my text, and slide off at some really weird angle, ignoring what I was trying to say to latch onto some subject completely outside my text.

Pretty much Lugge, although I have to say its not merely the act of being a "statistic". its also that while 9/11 was scary, it was indirectly so. I have never really been in a building over 15 stories high, so planes flying into me isnt one of my top concerns, as I assume is generally the same for most people.

in other words:
Europe (and a few far eastern countries): PWNED!

colonialism 2.0

I'm sorry... I'm not trying to do that... please restate your point in different words and hopefully I'll see where I went wrong.
=================================================
Schem, that is not what I meant at all. It is more a mutual partnership then anything else from which we all benefit. Like any organization we each have different roles to play... functions... like kidneys or incisors... each part of the beast has it's job.

The US has a more central role then any other member but we also have more responsibilities. We are also as dominated by the alliance as we dominate it. We go to great lengths to protect it even though it's member nations rarely contribute anything to us directly. Much your fist can knock something away from your stomach... and your stomach won't even so much as thank it. Sadly we're not even really the brain of the beast... though I think a large part of the brain rests in our society. But it's distributed.

oh come now, even I the pro-capitalist am not this pretentious

yes, they benefit, but not nearly so much as we do. besides, they have to take spoonfuls of our culture while we get to remain blissfully ignorant.

wow, way to slide off at a hundred different angles here

yes we arent in total control of the alliance, as that would be colonialism 1.0, no we simply are the ones who generally steer the whole thing, and certainly the ones who benefit the most from it.
as for responsibilities: what responsibilities? last I checked it was as simple as invading the right countries...
as for us being "dominated" by the alliance... um... since when? give me a good example because I'm drawing blanks here.

My point was they chose an attack that was pretty inefficient at generating terror -- because all it really did was tick us off -- and that their choice of weapons was probably culturally influenced. It also failed to cause us any real military or economic pain (I'm not saying it wasn't expensive for us, but it wasn't expensive in a painful way).

Karma,



I hate to tell you this Karma...but that's the exact same justification used in 19th century imperialism. The white man was "civilizing and advancing" the world's "inferior" cultures. In return, the Europeans (and the US in the case of the Phillipines) got to conscript the natives in the "home country's" wars, dominate the colony's government, make the natives the next best thing to neo-serfs, and take all the resources out of that country. This is what encapsulated the idea of the "white man's burden." I don't deny that the nations subject to imperialism derive SOME "benefit" from their conquest (like more advanced technology...though not nearly as advanced as Western tech and often the technology they gain is something like the AK-47 which allows their tribal wars to be more deadly). However, putting forth the idea that this exchange of benefits is close to equal is streching that point until it breaks. I would say imperialism left the vast majority of the countries it occured in much worse conditions (with a few exceptions like India and maybe South Africa, post-apartheid that is). Technology is not something that necessarily furthers human happiness. It can, like it does in the West where Western European nations are the happiest on Earth, Denmark being the absolutely happiest, but it does not necessarily do so. For instance, Japan, though one of the most advanced nations on the planet, has very mediocre happiness scores (this is based a world-wide survey asking people about how satisfied they are with their lives). Perhaps if the colonies had gotten the full European industrial and technological package and been brought up to the level of Europe (or fairly close to it), then the imperialism might have given an equal benefit to both sides. This is not what happened. This is not what the Europeans (or the US) really WANTED to happen (oh I know the rhetoric about civilizing and "helping" the poor "savages," but it was just that...rhetoric). Why is a nation going to conquer another nation...only to bring that nation up to the conquering nation's level. That sounds like a recipe for revenge and disaster (no one likes to be conquered). Now I too am pro-capitalist (with a few logical restraints...like not allowing a corporation to, for instance, put rat poison in food or asbestos in houses). However, I am anti-imperialist as I see no moral justification for imperialism.

Schem... back any of that up... immediately... or I'm going to go back to ignoring under the assumption that you still haven't gotten off your lat napoleon kick.

I'm tired of you saying frankly INSANE crap and then refusing to back any of it up under the pretense that you're either a minor deity beyond our mortal comprehension or it's just so damn obvious to all but the chronically stupid such anyone but yourself.

*insert rolling eyes*

===============================================================

No, that's not what we're doing. The two concepts are completely different.

First, whether you belong or not to our alliance is a choice.


We make it very unattractive to leave but you can choose to do so such as Venezuela or Russia. These countries could belong to alliance at any time but have chosen not to.


What's more the old imperialism wasn't about binding already civilized nations together. Our system is almost ENTIRELY about that. We're not so much interested in privative societies as much as we are in combining many advanced ones into a giant super civilization.


The benefits to all are generally equal across the board because otherwise people wouldn't sign on. The difference between this empire and past ones is that it is based upon self interest and not force.


You sign on and stay on because it benefits you not because the imperial army will kill you if you don't.


So no... the two have literally nothing to with each other.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_European_Union

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_European_Union


not to mention McDonalds.

Ever heard of the Neo-nazi riots in west germany? attacked everything remotely foreign, oddly they rarely ever touching McDonalds

how does wiki linking the European union's economy prove that we benefit more from the global alliance then they do?


As to the neo nazi comment... what are you even talking about? I don't even know how to begin to respond to that statement.

Alliance is different than imperialism you are correct. I have no problem with the US allying with, South Korea for instance. Imperialism is a totally different thing and yes it does happen today. Iraq is the best example, though one could make a case for Afghanistan as an instance of modern imperialism as well. Imperialism is rarer in the modern world and in the instances where it exists, it tends to be more subtle. For instance, read the book Confessions of an Ecnomic Hitman (or at least read a cliff notes/wikipedia summary). That goes into great detail of how modern imperialism normally works.

To Schem,

I don't understand what point you're trying to make with that link to the EU economy. Reading that article, their trade balance is a hell of a lot closer to even than the US, the EU's economy is actually larger than the US's (though currently with a lower per capita basis, which is rising). Their unemployment is falling, and anyone who thinks the US owns Europe in anything like an imperialist manner (or any manner for that matter) is clincally insane. So I don't get your point.

last I checked the US was one country... how many is the EU?
aha, right.

and our GDP is nearly double theres.

all of this is a system designed by america, for the benefit of america, we're an economy built on other economies

jeez, wasnt that obvious?

anyway development doesnt matter here, what matters is that the EU is more or less a series of specialized economies (look more carefuly at the page) while as the US is more or less the management for most types of industry.

that German Neo-Nazis would consider McDonalds enough of a domestic element that they would leave it alone while attacking "Joe of the East" and burning him on a stake, well...

hopefully HOPEFULLY you get my point.

First, this alliance building is almost unprecedented in history and the scale and depth of it really makes it more profound then a simple alliance.


The point is that we a super civilization. Not a single country but many countries with independent sovereignty and but generally unified interests and goals.

As to US imperialism you're arguing against yourself by supporting what we did with korea but arguing against Iraq or Afghanistan. Both are the same. Our goal is to turn Iraq and Afghanistan into something like South Korea.

Initially, Japan and South Korea were under complete US control. But it was never our intention or plan to keep them under that control forever. Imperial states however DO intend to keep control over them forever. Rome or the British empire exercised DIRECT control over subject colonies and peoples and had no intention of transitioning to a different state. That there was transition was entirely due to Rome and the BE not being able to keep control of those zones.


The US however has exercised control only so long as it takes to bring about a new and stable government based upon democracy. We typically set up strong trade ties at the same time... thus the state emerges from control with an independent government and solid trade relations that grant it both political and economic stability.


As to the economic hitman, that's baseless. I've read the book but at no point does he provide any information to prove anything he's saying is true.


I require proof before I believe that sort of thing. For all you know he's just some malcontent. Many of the things he said in the book didn't sound like a man that would come from such a culture. He sounded both unsophisticated and too steeped in a culture completely opposed to that sort of behavior.


In short, I call bullshit on that book and there's nothing you can provide that can prove it isn't bullshit.

as has been said, he's currently too mad to think straight... give him a few days and he'll calm down. Until then he's prone to make insane declarations.

I take pleasure in knowing I've quashed you so severly you cannot come up with a counter.

its "colonialism" and its "2.0"

that meaning there are big differences.

quite the opposite in fact... you've acted in such a deranged and irrational manner of late that its pointless to try and reason with you. I have however noted a pattern to it as you're not always insane. It seems to happen whenever you've been backed into a corner two or three times in a row. You lose it... so I'm trying to leave you be and disengage from you to see if you calm down. It's worked once before, hopefully it will prove to be a treatment that can be applied in the future... hopefully it won't be required... but of that I'm not so certain.


Love and peace, Karmashock.

funny, I've never really see you try and reason whatsoever, its mostly just flinging defensive insults.

ahaha!
like when? all I've ever seen you do is get backed into a corner, then you wont even acknowledge that we've had the debate!

again with the ad hominem

I'm far from irrational on this, you simply dont engage in any logical explanation. you seem to think "no, your a stupid diaper wearing monkey" is good enough to suffice as empirical.

schem, who do you think you're fooling here? Not only is this my opinion but it's the majority opinion of those that have suffered through the last few discussions with you.


Boasting and blustering are an ok smoke screen but when all is said and done that's all it is... You're a smart guy and I hope to have a meaningful discussion with you in the future. But you make mistakes. That's ok... you're human. You also don't know everything.

You've been getting in trouble lately by refusing to concede obvious errors and claiming to know things you cannot know or obviously do not know. When you get like that you're of no value to me or anyone else on this site except as an object of ridicule. As I have no intention of publicly shaming you, I'm doing my best to avoid you until such time as your ego or whatever else it is that makes you act this way has calmed down.


Regards, Karmashock.