Everyones Needs To See This

[Celvantes]

Sure.

Christianity, along with all other theistic belief systems [...] empowers those who know the truth, but use the myth to manipulate and control societies. [...] It reduces human responsibility to the effect that "God" controls everything, and in turn awful crimes can be justified in the name of Divine Pursuit. [...] The religious myth is the most powerful device ever created, and serves as the psychological soil upon which other myths can flourish.

From Wiki's quote from the movie, because I don't have a copy here.

The movie delves into the point that modern religion is not original, and rather, it copies precursors found during pagan times. Real students of history would dismiss this as a non-issue because they would know that Christianity intentionally copied many pagan rites and transformed existing myths into its own so that it could better convert the masses.

Furthermore a good theologian could tell you that the modern translation of the Bible isn't even close to what could be considered the "original material." The Old Testament was passed down through oral repetition for centuries before finally being written down... in a language that is now dead. Since that time, it has been re-written, translated, edited and changed many many times (the addition of the New Testament being the most notable).

That it should include numerological similarities to ancient astrology (on which many pagan religions were based), should not be a surprise.

Finally, the origin of modern religion doesn't really matter in the end. No matter the specific dogma, all religions exist (in their purest form) to teach a value system. So long as a practitioner lives a good life because of embracing that value system, why should it matter where the religious precepts came from?

I can point to the LDS Church as an excellent example. When I read their dogma, I do my best to suppress a chuckle, but by the same token, I've never met an unhappy Mormon. Regardless of what they actually believe, as a whole, I see a group of people who espouse a value system and live by it. *That* is the point of religion.


As for the 9/11 stuff, I'll say this:

I'm in the military, I've been so for a very long time. I can tell you for a fact that there is no way the US Government could have orchestrated this and *not* been found out. While we're good at keeping secrets, there is a level at which no secret can be kept and the amount of people required to pull this off is simply too great to keep quiet.

Even *if* we were able to pull off the attack without anyone knowing, there is no way the entire conspiracy could have stayed silent for seven years after. Something would have leaked out. I've seen the so called 'evidence' of a coverup, and through either personal knowledge of how the government works or a simple application of Occam's Razor, I've yet to see anything that could change my mind.


For the final part of the movie, I'll say this:

The sinking of the Lusitania was not staged. Germany openly warned that they might target it. The German attack is very well documented.

As for Pearl Harbor: While there is no way I could believe that it was staged, I do believe the US Government intentionally ignored our strategic weakness there and left a hanging target for the Japanese to strike. Billy Mitchell outlined an estimate for how he might destroy Pear Harbor with airpower months before the actual attack in a paper that was very similar to what eventually happened. Nothing was done.

However, I think this was the right decision for the administration at the time. Isolationism would lead to the downfall of freedom and democracy in the western world at the time. The only way to shake the US out of it's isolationist attitude would be something on the order of Pearl Harbor. I don't think FDR planned for things to happen as they did, but I daresay he was glad they did. Otherwise, our entry into the war would have either been vastly delayed or it would have never come at all.

For those who thing we shouldn't have entered WWII: 1) I wouldn't be here. 2) read an alternate-history book entitled Fatherland.

The Gulf of Tonkin was not faked. The US Government was trying to avoid provoking greater hostilities at the time and had nothing to gain from it.

As for the final point about the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America... I actually believe it. It's the one part of the movie I don't laugh at.

 

[Lukas]

Actually, declassified NSA documents have already revealed that the two incidents in Tonkin, were largely false. It was a misinterpretation of intelligence which resulted in some distortion of documents to cover it up. The first incident was instigated by the Americans, despite initial reports. The second didn't even occur.

There's no ambiguity there.

 

[Grandphoenix]

The plot thickens

 

[Spalko]

so when he talked about those gods and their birth and date of birth and stuff, they all real?

cause it does seem to make Christianity look fake, fake as in whole Christianity are just bullshit, and that bullshit been kept around for 2 thousand years

 

[Tymon]

so when he talked about those gods and their birth and date of birth and stuff, they all real?

cause it does seem to make Christianity look fake, fake as in whole Christianity are just bullshit, and that bullshit been kept around for 2 thousand years

Well, that's a question that should probably be asked, but it's not a good idea to ask it on a forum that's largely biased against religion in the first place.

That's not really a bad thing, but I'm just saying, you can ask something like this, you'll probably already know your answer.

Doing your own research brings better results.

 

[Celvantes]

Actually, declassified NSA documents have already revealed that the two incidents in Tonkin, were largely false. It was a misinterpretation of intelligence which resulted in some distortion of documents to cover it up. The first incident was instigated by the Americans, despite initial reports. The second didn't even occur.

There's no ambiguity there.

Post links please, I would like to see them for myself.

 

[smalls]

Actually, declassified NSA documents have already revealed that the two incidents in Tonkin, were largely false. It was a misinterpretation of intelligence which resulted in some distortion of documents to cover it up. The first incident was instigated by the Americans, despite initial reports. The second didn't even occur.

There's no ambiguity there.

actually it revealed the second incident was largely false although never really proves that it was totally false. despite some discrepancy of details with the first attack it was largely true.

the first incident was not instigated by Americans. 3 torpedo boats were chasing a u.s. destroyer in international waters. after three warning shots were fired they continued to follow. not until a few mins. after the warning shots did the destroyer open fire. not only that but transmissions were intercepted that told the vietnamese to attack.

 

[Lukas]

2nd of August:

At 1500G, Captain Herrick (commander of the Maddox) ordered Ogier's gun crews to open fire if the boats approached within ten thousand yards. At about 1505G, the Maddox fired three rounds to warn off the communist boats. This initial action was never reported by the Johnson administration, which insisted that the Vietnamese boats fired first.

http://www.nsa.gov/vietnam/releases/relea00012.pdf

4th of august:

Two Startling findings emerged from the new research. First, it is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened; it is that no attack happened that night. From a compound of analytic errors and an unwillingness to consider contrary evidence, American SIGINT elements in the region and at NSA HQs reported Hanoi's plans to attack the two ships of the Desoto Patrol. Further analytic errors and an obscuring of other information led to publication of more "evidence". In truth, Hanoi's navy was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on 2 August.

http://www.fas.org/irp/nsa/spartans/chapter5.pdf

Rather than being on a routine patrol Aug. 2, the U.S. destroyer Maddox was actually engaged in aggressive intelligence-gathering maneuvers — in sync with coordinated attacks on North Vietnam by the South Vietnamese navy and the Laotian air force.

"The day before, two attacks on North Vietnam...had taken place," writes scholar Daniel C. Hallin. Those assaults were "part of a campaign of increasing military pressure on the North that the United States had been pursuing since early 1964."

On the night of Aug. 4, the Pentagon proclaimed that a second attack by North Vietnamese PT boats had occurred earlier that day in the Tonkin Gulf — a report cited by President Johnson as he went on national TV that evening to announce a momentous escalation in the war: air strikes against North Vietnam.

[...]

One of the Navy pilots flying overhead that night was squadron commander James Stockdale, who gained fame later as a POW and then Ross Perot's vice presidential candidate. "I had the best seat in the house to watch that event," recalled Stockdale a few years ago, "and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets — there were no PT boats there.... There was nothing there but black water and American fire power."

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2261

The NSA report: http://www.fas.org/irp/nsa/spartans/index.html

 

[Celvantes]

Well, warning shots are pretty much standard procedure, but it looks like you're right.

All I'll say is, "Remember the Maine."

This certainly wouldn't be the first time the US instigated a war, and I can chalk another mistake up to the massive amounts made by the Johnson Administration (who, along with Nixon, was pretty much responsible for us losing that war).

I would, however, point to our intent. US policy at the time was that of containment. Stopping totalitarian communism at all costs was the order of the day. The North Vietnamese were smart, they infiltrated the south in such a way as would not mark a clear invasion (something that could be responded to with conventional force), so it appears the US had to provoke something in order to be justified in going in.

The ends do not justify the means, especially when you don't reach those ends (is Vietnam a prosperous and free country today?), but I can at least understand why they did it.

Was it worth it? If we had won, it would be. Compare and contrast North and South Korea. But Vietnam was a bungle of epic proportions, and a clear illustration as to why politicians should NOT run a war.

 

[Dejavu]

This certainly wouldn't be the first time the US instigated a war, and I can chalk another mistake up to the massive amounts made by the Johnson Administration (who, along with Nixon, was pretty much responsible for us losing that war).

So you are sad that we lost a war that you now admit we should not have been involved with in the first place?

I would, however, point to our intent. US policy at the time was that of containment. Stopping totalitarian communism at all costs was the order of the day. The North Vietnamese were smart, they infiltrated the south in such a way as would not mark a clear invasion (something that could be responded to with conventional force), so it appears the US had to provoke something in order to be justified in going in.

So... we lost roughly 60,000 people based on intentions? It is amazing to me how some of the worst things in history have been done under the best of intentions. The Spanish inquisition happened so that the world would be filled with better Christians. The events of 9/11 were alledgedly done so that Islamic law could rule the world (not our intentions but who says what is good or not). We invaded Iraq with good intentions thats working just fine... no complaints there. The FCC was created with good intentions and now its largely seen as useless.

Social security, minimum wage, Homeland Security, patriot act, the current subprime mess (convincing everyone to try and buy homes), Federal reserve, Affirmative action, Current mortgage bailouts (bad results are coming just wait...), Treaty of Versailles, Prohibition, war on drugs, Corn subsidies for ethanol, CIA funding of Mujahideen, supporting afganistan against soviets, DUI laws and their effect on the amount of people fleeing accidents, Rent control, bacterial resistance to antibiotics due to over perscribing, Eugenics, bay of pigs Do i need to go on? Ah yes i love people who do things with good intentions.

The ends do not justify the means, especially when you don't reach those ends (is Vietnam a prosperous and free country today?), but I can at least understand why they did it.

Was it worth it? If we had won, it would be. Compare and contrast North and South Korea. But Vietnam was a bungle of epic proportions, and a clear illustration as to why politicians should NOT run a war.

Was it worth it to run over my neighbors dog with my car... it would of been if that damn guy wouldn't have seen me do it and complained... Ah how nice would it be not to hear that damn thing barking at 3am.

Ok i'm sorry that was a little off topic but this comment... "Was it worth it? If we had won, it would be." really bothers me because it shows just how dumb the war was. If a war is just it should be worth fighting whether we win or lose.

This shows why we should not start wars unless we are attacked... and unless my information is incorrect we were not attacked by Afghanistan or Iraq... in fact the group closest to actually attacking us was the Saudi Arabians... but they are our friends... :medic:

 

[Celvantes]

So you are sad that we lost a war that you now admit we should not have been involved with in the first place?

I was fortunate to first learn about Vietnam (in a formal classroom, anyway) from a man who experienced it first hand. He was anything but your average teacher. On the first day of class, his point to us was this:

[Holding up our textbook] "This is your history book. I expect you to know everything in here and be able to understand it and I will test you on it thoroughly. But, you will have to do that in your own time, because in *this* classroom, we will discuss what's *not* in this textbook."

What followed was a year of the hardest but most rewarding class I ever had.

I say this to set the background. While this class may have taken place at a military school, it was anything but what one might expect from a military curriculum. We were taught to think critically, and question even what we might think of as 'good.'

While the Gulf of Tonkin may have been a manufactured incident, that does not mean we shouldn't have been in Vietnam.

The first concept to understand was that Vietnam should not have been called the Vietnam War. Rather, it should have been called the "Battle of Vietnam" within the Cold War.

The Cold War started before the guns of WWII even began to cool. It was a war of ideology between Capitalism fueled Democracy, and a Communist directed Command Economy.

To say that Capitalism is good and Communism is bad is an oversimplification to an absurd degree. A brutal industrialist with no restraints can abuse his workers while a peaceful commune of socialists can live in utopian harmony.

However, the *way* in which each system was applied after WWII brings each side into a much clearer moral light.

State-run socialism was nothing more than a way for a totalitarian government to control the masses. What made it even more insidious than fascism was that there existed an illusion of the government being on the side of the people when in fact the state was wringing its people for all they were worth. All this to allow the ruling party members to live in luxury.

Read "Animal Farm." There is no better analogy to the Soviet Union than what is found in that book.

So anyway, after WWII, the Soviet Union and China (the largest geographical country and the largest country by population) adopted a political structure that stood in stark contrast to the values of the United States. Furthermore, these countries made threatening overtures (overtly or by supporting local Communist insurgencies) towards those states who aligned themselves with the US. This began the Cold War.

US foreign policy was that of containment. We were not going to go to war with the Soviet aligned world, especially with the threat of nuclear war, but at the same time, we were not going to allow them to enslave even more people under the brutal illusion of the Communist State.

The first real battle of this war was Korea. The second was Vietnam.

With that background out of the way, let's look at the situation which faced our government:

We barely saved face in Korea, though in the end, we halted the spread of Communism. I've served with South Korean officers, and to this day, they're grateful for what we did. However, another situation was brewing that was almost identical to the Korean conflict, except instead of one side blatantly attacking the other, the North Vietnamese were supporting a revolutionary faction in the South. You couldn't simply say "this is an invasion of a sovereign nation" and ride in with the UN cavalry behind you like you did in Korea.

Furthermore, you have troop commitment responsibilities to NATO. Remember at this time, the biggest fear was that the Soviets were going to swarm across Eastern (and into Western) Europe and repeat 1939-1941 all over again. The US simply can't bring troops into Vietnam without a good reason, that jeopardizes the all-important NATO treaty.

But, at the same time, you can't just sit back and watch the south end of another peninsula go red. That sends an incredibly weak signal to Moscow and Beijing, and basically gives them carte blanche to do it again (Afghanistan, etc).

So, what do you do?

Long answer to a short question, but:

No, I'm not sad that we fought the Vietnam Battle, and I believe we should have been there. I am horribly saddened by the *way* we fought it, and I lay the death of every US troop on the heads of Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. Every lesson we've learned about what *not* to do in a war, we've learned from Vietnam. Every military officer studies these mistakes in detail, so we will not repeat them, even though ultimately it is the civilian leadership of the military that made them in the first place.

Had we fought Vietnam the way we did Desert Storm, it would have been over in a year.

So... we lost roughly 60,000 people based on intentions? It is amazing to me how some of the worst things in history have been done under the best of intentions. The Spanish inquisition happened so that the world would be filled with better Christians. The events of 9/11 were alledgedly done so that Islamic law could rule the world (not our intentions but who says what is good or not). We invaded Iraq with good intentions thats working just fine... no complaints there. The FCC was created with good intentions and now its largely seen as useless.

Not at all. While those 60,000 lives could certainly have been spent better, they still demonstrated the resolve of the US to fight Communism. Other countries could have potentially been targeted (Greece and Spain certainly were early on) had the Soviet-aligned world thought they could have gotten away with it.

I don't disagree that many horrible things have been done with the best intentions, however, I ask you to look at the results of our intentions vs those of our adversaries.

History will tell eventually the entire story about Iraq. However, at the end of the day, a brutal dictator and his two sons who tortured and killed their own people were eliminated. As a person over in the region, I can say that despite what you hear on the news, Iraq is far better now than it ever was under Saddam. Yes, there is tribal conflict, but the only reason it is there now is because it's not being brutally suppressed. For the first time in centuries, the Kurdish people have a chance to control their own destiny. For the first time in decades, the Shiia Muslims of Iraq have a chance to elect their own representatives.

You hear about bombs going off all the time in the news, but you *don't* hear about insurgent groups actually surrendering to US forces, then volunteering to fight alongside them the next day, because they found out that Al-Quada-in-Iraq was created and led by foreign influences.

The problems that exist here have been here for centuries. America did not create them, rather, America simply removed the big thumb that kept them down. And unlike any other foreign power who has ever controlled this area, America has actually given up its blood and money in an attempt to *fix* those problems rather than just exploit the region and leave.

So, regardless for the reason we went in (which I believe was just, but remains to be fully explored), the end result is something good. I challenge you or anyone else to show otherwise.

Social security, minimum wage, Homeland Security, patriot act, the current subprime mess (convincing everyone to try and buy homes), Federal reserve, Affirmative action, Current mortgage bailouts (bad results are coming just wait...), Treaty of Versailles, Prohibition, war on drugs, Corn subsidies for ethanol, CIA funding of Mujahideen, supporting afganistan against soviets, DUI laws and their effect on the amount of people fleeing accidents, Rent control, bacterial resistance to antibiotics due to over perscribing, Eugenics, bay of pigs Do i need to go on? Ah yes i love people who do things with good intentions.

Social Security, Minimum Wage = I agree with you, and point out that it was a liberal initiative.

Homeland Security = Would you rather we have done nothing after 9/11?

Patriot Act = Even I, a dog of the military, question this, but if Lincoln could suspend certain civil liberties during the Civil War, I don't see why Bush can't now.

Federal Reserve = This gives the government *some* control over the economy. We've seen what happens with unrestrained capitalism and the Depression sucked. If you have a better idea, I'd like to hear it.

Affirmative Action = Agree with you, and again, liberal initiative.

Current Mortgage Bailouts = I agree as well. If you can't afford a loan, YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE TAKEN IT IN THE FIRST PLACE and should be allowed to crash and burn. The congressional encouragement of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to lower their mortgage backing standards directly contributed to the real estate crisis and in turn the current economic crisis. Now they want to spend 50% more in this year's budget to bail everyone out. It is a horribly bad move that's going to go ahead only because the public wants it. We brought this on ourselves.

Treaty of Versailles = We paid for the mistake, and it was called WWII. That said, could you have done any better when put into the position of the Allied Leaders?

Prohibition = is what happens when you give women the right to vote (kidding, kidding!)

War on drugs = I've already said it before - legalize everything then don't provide government health care for drug related conditions. Darwin then kills all the stupid people.

Corn subsidies for ethanol = Environmentalists in action. Thanks for the higher food prices, jerks.

Supporting Afganistan against Soviets = Watch Charlie Wilson's war. This was actually a brilliant move by the US, except for the part where we stopped helping Afghanistan when the Russians left. Had we built a country then, the Taliban wouldn't have had a home later.

DUI laws and their effect on the amount of people fleeing accidents = Eh, better than having lax laws and even more DUIs. As far as I've seen, research shows that tougher laws have cut down on the number of DUIs, except in my state >.>

Rent control = Another wonderful liberal initiative.

Bacterial resistance to antibiotics due to over prescribing = So, we should just let people die? I agree that drugs are overused, but this is a tough case to make.

Eugenics = Gene therapy has cured a lot of horrible diseases, or at least opens up treatment options that didn't exist before. What would you do instead?

Bay of pigs = Yeah, I'll agree with you here. My history teacher listed this under the 'comedy' section.

Ok i'm sorry that was a little off topic but this comment... "Was it worth it? If we had won, it would be." really bothers me because it shows just how dumb the war was. If a war is just it should be worth fighting whether we win or lose.

I was a little too simplistic there. As I stated above, it was worth it in the sense that we showed US resolve to fight communism. What I was really disappointed in was the horribly idiotic way in which our generals were forced to fight by Washington. That we lost just added insult to injury.

This shows why we should not start wars unless we are attacked... and unless my information is incorrect we were not attacked by Afghanistan or Iraq... in fact the group closest to actually attacking us was the Saudi Arabians... but they are our friends...

I do not mean this as a direct attack, deja. I respect you in that you're one of the few people here willing to debate with more than "this is what I believe and everyone else is wrong, lalala."

But, I have to say it: The idea that the only defensive wars are just wars is ill-informed.

This is not the nineteenth century where all of a nation's affairs took place within its borders and armies stood on those borders ready to keep invaders out.

When you think about it, a conventional physical attack on the US is well nigh impossible unless you mass a huge army in either Canada or Mexico.

However, in the twenty-first century, everything is interconnected. To hurt us, you don't have to do a single damn thing to an American or American property. All you have to do is go after our trading partners and allies.

Do you think we would have been badly affected by Saddam controlling the Kuwaiti oil fields? Not really. We might have paid more for our gas, but most of our supply comes from Canada, Mexico, and South America. However, our trading partners, namely the Asian countries who are almost exclusively dependant on Middle Eastern oil, would have been affected. Back in those days, we did over a third of our trade with Japan and the rest of Asia. Their economic problem would have soon become *our* economic problem.

At the end of WWII, much of the world became dependant on us for their defense. Because of this, any threat to them is a threat to us. Like it or not, it would take a VAST upheaval of the current political landscape to change that situation. Beyond our own problems, we have the problems of our allies to address as well.

To answer your specific points, the rogue government (the Taliban) of Afghanistan attacked us by allowing Al-Quada to reside and train within its borders. We retaliated by removing them from power and creating a coalition of the people they were ruling to rule themselves.

Iraq attacked us in '91 by attacking the direct economic interests of our trading partners and allies. Outside of our own individual interests, they invaded a sovereign state, an act to which we, as UN Security Council members, must respond.

Iraq II merely was a continuation of Iraq I. Saddam had been blatantly ignoring the sanctions imposed upon him after the first war. We had the legal justification under UN resolutions to attack him well before we actually did.

Finally, the Saudi Government is not acting as our direct antagonist. Rather, the Wahhabi sect of Islam, funded primarily by Saudis, is responsible for much of the preaching of Western hatred.

DISCLAIMER FOR DAYNER: Not *all* Wahhabis are like this, I know. I also realize that you more than likely attend a Wahhabi mosque. I'm just saying that there are some really bad Wahhabi out there who openly encourage the killing of the infidels (i.e. me).

 

[Dayner]

at lest the new generation of Wahhabis are more open minded but they are still weak due to fact that old Wahhabis muttawa still have power and authority

people here choose the older and the most famous imam and follow his "guides" and "fatawh"

and then we have the The Religious Polices ,thinks of them as the Strong arm of Wahhabis they enforce Wahhabis Law
even i had a history with them >_>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commit...rtue_and_the_Prevention_of_Vice_(Saudi_Arabia)

 

[Celvantes]

Fight the power, Dayner. The future, quite literally, lies in the hands of your generation of Saudi.

EDIT: Go Spider-camel, go!

 

[Cerb]

damn I had posted a youtube vid on this. and some stupid mod that runs around deleting posts deleted it!!

 

[Dejavu]

Sorry it took so long to respond but I had school and this as a lot of information to respond to.

I was fortunate to first learn about Vietnam (in a formal classroom, anyway) from a man who experienced it first hand. He was anything but your average teacher. On the first day of class, his point to us was this:

[Holding up our textbook] "This is your history book. I expect you to know everything in here and be able to understand it and I will test you on it thoroughly. But, you will have to do that in your own time, because in *this* classroom, we will discuss what's *not* in this textbook."

What followed was a year of the hardest but most rewarding class I ever had.

I say this to set the background. While this class may have taken place at a military school, it was anything but what one might expect from a military curriculum. We were taught to think critically, and question even what we might think of as 'good.'

That sounds like a good teacher… and I do believe that I am thinking critically and you probably are as well I wouldn’t expect any less but the fact is that not everyone comes to the same conclusions and there are some rather large differences in our points of view on the subject.

While the Gulf of Tonkin may have been a manufactured incident, that does not mean we shouldn't have been in Vietnam.

Well I whole heartedly disagree with this statement but I would like to ask you a question in response. If we should have been there then why was the manufactured incident used as a justification? If we really should have been there why didn’t we just go? The truth is that some people who at the time were in the minority thought that we should be there and in order to convince the rest of the people to mobilize they needed a galvanizing force. What better way to get a country to come together than to give it a unifying event.

There is even a term for this it is called a false flag operation. The idea of using false flag operations is largely a Fascist ideal and many believe that they were heavily used to get Germany to start WW2 by the Nazi party which later elected Hitler to power. I do infact believe that the Republican Party in this country is starting to teeter dangerously close to Fascism. Of course the Democrats in this country are pushing for Communism it seems so at this point were fucked either way.

The first concept to understand was that Vietnam should not have been called the Vietnam War. Rather, it should have been called the "Battle of Vietnam" within the Cold War.

The Cold War started before the guns of WWII even began to cool. It was a war of ideology between Capitalism fueled Democracy, and a Communist directed Command Economy.

To say that Capitalism is good and Communism is bad is an oversimplification to an absurd degree. A brutal industrialist with no restraints can abuse his workers while a peaceful commune of socialists can live in utopian harmony.

However, the *way* in which each system was applied after WWII brings each side into a much clearer moral light.

State-run socialism was nothing more than a way for a totalitarian government to control the masses. What made it even more insidious than fascism was that there existed an illusion of the government being on the side of the people when in fact the state was wringing its people for all they were worth. All this to allow the ruling party members to live in luxury.

Ah once again we do agree I do think that Vietnam was a continuation of the cold war but at the same time I do ask the question why do we take the policy of containment. What makes it our responsibility to police the world. Who cares if Vietnam did become communist. How is that our responsibility. Was their any real threat of an invasion or physical confrontation on American soil? Or even if there was a threat would there have been any chance of it working. I say no.

Also if it was really a huge world problem that the Russian control was spreading why didn’t all of the countries of the world unite like in world war 2 to contain the Russians like they did to contain Hitler (showing a point not condoning US involvement in WW2 seeing as I believe our involvement was avoidable and unnecessary)

Read "Animal Farm." There is no better analogy to the Soviet Union than what is found in that book.

I have read it… several times it is a really good book. But to say that only the soviet union was acting in this way is also extremely Naïve… The cold war was a collaborative effort between the US and the USSR.

So anyway, after WWII, the Soviet Union and China (the largest geographical country and the largest country by population) adopted a political structure that stood in stark contrast to the values of the United States. Furthermore, these countries made threatening overtures (overtly or by supporting local Communist insurgencies) towards those states who aligned themselves with the US. This began the Cold War.

US foreign policy was that of containment. We were not going to go to war with the Soviet aligned world, especially with the threat of nuclear war, but at the same time, we were not going to allow them to enslave even more people under the brutal illusion of the Communist State.

Containment was the incorrect policy if peace was intended to be maintained. It is much along the lines of if you prepare for war you guarantee it. The constant ideological preparations for war make it so that peace is really an impossibility. There is a really old saying that I really disagree with and that is, “Si vis pacem, para bellum” from Flavius Vegetius Renatus it means “If you want peace, prepare for war.” While I agree with this from a personal perspective in that if you want something bad enough you need to work hard to get it I believe that it is slightly incorrect in government policy. We have what we want already so this quote doesn’t fit. In my opinion the quote would be more accurate in saying if you want peace be prepared to defend yourself to maintain it.

The first real battle of this war was Korea. The second was Vietnam.

With that background out of the way, let's look at the situation which faced our government:

We barely saved face in Korea, though in the end, we halted the spread of Communism. I've served with South Korean officers, and to this day, they're grateful for what we did. However, another situation was brewing that was almost identical to the Korean conflict, except instead of one side blatantly attacking the other, the North Vietnamese were supporting a revolutionary faction in the South. You couldn't simply say "this is an invasion of a sovereign nation" and ride in with the UN cavalry behind you like you did in Korea.

Once again we have a fundamental difference in opinion. I don’t believe that we should be a part of the UN because we should never go to war on someone else’s behalf. The UN is largely why we are seen as the police of the world. Why is it that in the Korean war there were not a lot more nations fighting along side the South Koreans fighting the spread of communism. What made it our responsibility.

Furthermore, you have troop commitment responsibilities to NATO. Remember at this time, the biggest fear was that the Soviets were going to swarm across Eastern (and into Western) Europe and repeat 1939-1941 all over again. The US simply can't bring troops into Vietnam without a good reason, that jeopardizes the all-important NATO treaty.

Yay… NATO is another organization that we should not be involved in and another organization that can go to war on our behalf. If we were in Europe and this was a legitimate fear then a temporary alliance could have been hashed but there is no reason to carry long term permanent alliances where there is no danger to Americans if we do not get involved.

But, at the same time, you can't just sit back and watch the south end of another peninsula go red. That sends an incredibly weak signal to Moscow and Beijing, and basically gives them carte blanche to do it again (Afghanistan, etc).

Doing nothing is hardly giving them the authority to do it. Doing nothing is conserving our resources until they can all be used at the time when we actually attacked. Perpetual war is unsustainable. Also staying within our borders and preparing to defend ourselves would not be a weak signal and imo is actually the strongest signal that we should or can send. It says yes, I see what you are doing there and I am prepared and ready to stop you.

So, what do you do?

Long answer to a short question, but:

No, I'm not sad that we fought the Vietnam Battle, and I believe we should have been there. I am horribly saddened by the *way* we fought it, and I lay the death of every US troop on the heads of Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. Every lesson we've learned about what *not* to do in a war, we've learned from Vietnam. Every military officer studies these mistakes in detail, so we will not repeat them, even though ultimately it is the civilian leadership of the military that made them in the first place.

Had we fought Vietnam the way we did Desert Storm, it would have been over in a year.

Kinda like Operation Enduring Freedom was only going to last 6 months and would be paid for with oil revenues. We can all make claims doesn’t make them true.

Not at all. While those 60,000 lives could certainly have been spent better, they still demonstrated the resolve of the US to fight Communism. Other countries could have potentially been targeted (Greece and Spain certainly were early on) had the Soviet-aligned world thought they could have gotten away with it.

So 60,000 lives as a demonstration.

I don't disagree that many horrible things have been done with the best intentions, however, I ask you to look at the results of our intentions vs those of our adversaries.

What you fail to see is that you are failing to look at the situation from both sides. If I was being faced with the US invading my homeland I would most likely team up with whoever was willing to fight with me terrorists or otherwise to try and protect my home. If I were Iraqi I would most likely fight right along side Al Qaeda because for the time being our goals would be aligned. Once the US left then I would work to get Al Qaeda back out of the country. Yes we intend to help normal Iraqi citizens but do they want to be helped by us or do they even understand that what we are doing is helping them. The thing is people can not really understand intentions they can only understand what they see or perceive to be results.

History will tell eventually the entire story about Iraq. However, at the end of the day, a brutal dictator and his two sons who tortured and killed their own people were eliminated. As a person over in the region, I can say that despite what you hear on the news, Iraq is far better now than it ever was under Saddam. Yes, there is tribal conflict, but the only reason it is there now is because it's not being brutally suppressed. For the first time in centuries, the Kurdish people have a chance to control their own destiny. For the first time in decades, the Shiia Muslims of Iraq have a chance to elect their own representatives.

Ok so a dictator was overthrown, what made it our responsibility or even our right to do so. You say that it is far better off and from our perspective that is probably true but what were the costs of making it better. Their country was bombarded, troops in their streets constantly, what little freedoms they had were suspended, not to mention the costs that America faced in people and money. Also it is not our place to get involved in civil wars… we may want to hope for a certain group to win but we shouldn’t actively help anyone because that will only make us more problems in the future.

You hear about bombs going off all the time in the news, but you *don't* hear about insurgent groups actually surrendering to US forces, then volunteering to fight alongside them the next day, because they found out that Al-Quada-in-Iraq was created and led by foreign influences.

What does this matter at this point truthfully it kinda goes back to what I was saying before to the fact that if I were an Iraqi I would fight along side of anyone to try and get both Al-Qaeda and the US out of my country. The reason that Iraqis tend to fight along side Al-Qaeda first is at least they look the same and speak a language they can understand. If the US leaves the region Al-Qaeda will get stronger in the short term and then the people will revolt against it and try and get it out of Iraq as well. It is really a factor of picking your battles knowing that if you try and fight both you will get fucked but at the same time being stuck in the middle they are getting fucked anyways.

The problems that exist here have been here for centuries. America did not create them, rather, America simply removed the big thumb that kept them down. And unlike any other foreign power who has ever controlled this area, America has actually given up its blood and money in an attempt to *fix* those problems rather than just exploit the region and leave.

America did their fair share in creating some of the problems from their support of Coup d'état in the area or their funding of certain sides in other conflicts. The problem is that we are trying to “fix” the problems the way that we want them to be fixed not the way that the people of that country may want them fixed. As far as not exploiting the region if that were true why was this war sold on the pretext that it would be paid for in oil revenues rather than by tax payers?

So, regardless for the reason we went in (which I believe was just, but remains to be fully explored), the end result is something good. I challenge you or anyone else to show otherwise.

Ok benefits – dictator overthrown, some repressed people happy

Costs – Lots of money and we don’t have it, lots of people (on both sides), instability (it may not have been good but it was solid), higher oil prices, less freedoms in America, and increased general hatred of everything American.

End result may be better than previously but still does not make it worth it.

Social Security, Minimum Wage = I agree with you, and point out that it was a liberal initiative.

Fair enough still just showing my point that it was done with good intentions.

Homeland Security = Would you rather we have done nothing after 9/11?

Than make Homeland Security yes… I would have rather done nothing. We took a lot of branches of government that were not functioning properly put them under an umbrella of red tape and expect for them to start functioning properly. LOL. Homeland Security only made the problems worse by adding more hurdles to the race.

Patriot Act = Even I, a dog of the military, question this, but if Lincoln could suspend certain civil liberties during the Civil War, I don't see why Bush can't now.

Just because it was done in the past doesn’t make it right… I would have been arguing against it when Lincoln did it if I were alive then. Just because something happened in no ways means it was the right decision at the time.

Federal Reserve = This gives the government *some* control over the economy. We've seen what happens with unrestrained capitalism and the Depression sucked. If you have a better idea, I'd like to hear it.

What exactly does the government have to do with the Federal Reserve… it is a private bank that is given the right to print money for the US. The government has no oversight or idea how much money is actually being put into circulation. On top of that they have the control to adjust interest rates to either stimulate or contract the economy rather than letting those interest rates be set by the market like they should be. The Federal Reserve was created under the pretext that it would bring stability to the market however shortly after its inception it created the events leading to the great depression and ultimately was given the power to cease all of the gold from all of the citizens of the United States.

For more information about the federal reserve and its history click this link… its an interesting read.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article2522.html

Affirmative Action = Agree with you, and again, liberal initiative.

True

Current Mortgage Bailouts = I agree as well. If you can't afford a loan, YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE TAKEN IT IN THE FIRST PLACE and should be allowed to crash and burn. The congressional encouragement of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to lower their mortgage backing standards directly contributed to the real estate crisis and in turn the current economic crisis. Now they want to spend 50% more in this year's budget to bail everyone out. It is a horribly bad move that's going to go ahead only because the public wants it. We brought this on ourselves.

Ah I agree with you in part. Yes the people who took the loans are dumb and deserve to get eaten by them; however, most of the people who took these loans in the first place did not deserve to get loans, or at least not as big of loans as they were given. On top of this the government at the time that the bubble was building was going out of their way to encourage everyone to get homes under the guise of building equity in the future. As far as the bailout is concerned it was beaten once in the house and that is the first time I have been excited about something I have heard coming out of congress in years. As far as we brought this on ourselves… we started the fire… the government and other institutions provided the gas and both are needed to blowup.

Treaty of Versailles = We paid for the mistake, and it was called WWII. That said, could you have done any better when put into the position of the Allied Leaders?

I wasn’t saying that I could do better I was just showing good intentions gone wrong.

Prohibition = is what happens when you give women the right to vote (kidding, kidding!)

LOL.

War on drugs = I've already said it before - legalize everything then don't provide government health care for drug related conditions. Darwin then kills all the stupid people.

We agree again

Corn subsidies for ethanol = Environmentalists in action. Thanks for the higher food prices, jerks.

I say we make Marijuana subsidies… since with some studies I have read it is actually one of the most economical sources of energy. I don’t feel like looking up any of the actual studies so heres the first website I came across and hopefully there is something intelligent on there.

http://www.hemp4fuel.com/

Supporting Afganistan against Soviets = Watch Charlie Wilson's war. This was actually a brilliant move by the US, except for the part where we stopped helping Afghanistan when the Russians left. Had we built a country then, the Taliban wouldn't have had a home later.

It once again was not our place to step in and we ended up giving guns to people who decided to fight us later on.

DUI laws and their effect on the amount of people fleeing accidents = Eh, better than having lax laws and even more DUIs. As far as I've seen, research shows that tougher laws have cut down on the number of DUIs, except in my state >.>

Eh I was stretching with this one I guess… but I still think that personal responsibility rather than laws is the answer to this one.

Rent control = Another wonderful liberal initiative.

yea

Bacterial resistance to antibiotics due to over prescribing = So, we should just let people die? I agree that drugs are overused, but this is a tough case to make.

That is not what I am saying what I am saying is that we should only prescribe antibiotics when they are necessary rather than giving them freely. All I am saying is that we should make an effort to cut back on their usage so that the evolution of diseases may not occur as fast.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1272/is_n2617_v125/ai_18750175
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2007/October/Pages/Antibioticsareoftenunnecessary.aspx

Eugenics = Gene therapy has cured a lot of horrible diseases, or at least opens up treatment options that didn't exist before. What would you do instead?

I was not really referring to gene therapy I was more referring to the ideas of eugenics that were prevalent in the United States and Nazi Germany which stated that there were certain characteristics or even whole races that were not preferable. Beyond this there were even laws passed in the US that stated that the government is allowed to determine if someone is unfit to breed and if they are not they can be forcibly sterilized. Germany took it that next step with Euthanasia. The miscegenation laws of the south also fell into the category of Eugenics.

Bay of pigs = Yeah, I'll agree with you here. My history teacher listed this under the 'comedy' section.

Nice

I was a little too simplistic there. As I stated above, it was worth it in the sense that we showed US resolve to fight communism. What I was really disappointed in was the horribly idiotic way in which our generals were forced to fight by Washington. That we lost just added insult to injury.

I disagree.

I do not mean this as a direct attack, deja. I respect you in that you're one of the few people here willing to debate with more than "this is what I believe and everyone else is wrong, lalala."

Its not a direct attack this is a discussion and ill take the second part as a compliment thank you.

But, I have to say it: The idea that the only defensive wars are just wars is ill-informed.

Why? What makes it our job to fight all of the wars so that the side that we like always wins? What makes it our decision who the leader of Iraq is or otherwise? How is it justifiable that we continue to throw money at every single problem in the world when we don’t take care of the ones that we have?

This is not the nineteenth century where all of a nation's affairs took place within its borders and armies stood on those borders ready to keep invaders out.

When you think about it, a conventional physical attack on the US is well nigh impossible unless you mass a huge army in either Canada or Mexico.

That’s kinda neat so you are saying that if we minded our own business we wouldn’t be in any wars any time soon… that could be nice.

However, in the twenty-first century, everything is interconnected. To hurt us, you don't have to do a single damn thing to an American or American property. All you have to do is go after our trading partners and allies.

Ah once again we agree, however I guess we disagree on the reasoning of why. I agree that everything is interconnected and that you don’t have to touch American soil to hurt us but at the same time if you can provoke us into endless confrontations we will weaken ourselves to the point were we wont even be able to defend ourselves. From this perspective I actually think that the terrorists are winning this war. We have managed to spend almost 1 trillion dollars now of money we don’t have fighting a cause that is questionable. Why do you think Russia is starting to get a little aggressive again… they smell blood.

Do you think we would have been badly affected by Saddam controlling the Kuwaiti oil fields? Not really. We might have paid more for our gas, but most of our supply comes from Canada, Mexico, and South America. However, our trading partners, namely the Asian countries who are almost exclusively dependant on Middle Eastern oil, would have been affected. Back in those days, we did over a third of our trade with Japan and the rest of Asia. Their economic problem would have soon become *our* economic problem.

And now our economic problem is the world’s economic problem… YAY sharing is fun.

At the end of WWII, much of the world became dependant on us for their defense. Because of this, any threat to them is a threat to us. Like it or not, it would take a VAST upheaval of the current political landscape to change that situation. Beyond our own problems, we have the problems of our allies to address as well.

Unless in time of war we should have no allies… only trading partners. Also did we get elected to the Captain Save-a-ho position or did we volunteer?

To answer your specific points, the rogue government (the Taliban) of Afghanistan attacked us by allowing Al-Quada to reside and train within its borders. We retaliated by removing them from power and creating a coalition of the people they were ruling to rule themselves.

Couldn’t we have just gone after the people responsible and called it a day? Why overthrow the government and give them a galvanizing force much as 9/11 did for us in getting us to support the war. I mean who in the US government was talking about going after Saddam before 9/11 except for Bush if you believe Paul O’neil.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/09/60minutes/main592330.shtml

Iraq attacked us in '91 by attacking the direct economic interests of our trading partners and allies. Outside of our own individual interests, they invaded a sovereign state, an act to which we, as UN Security Council members, must respond.

If that were true wouldn’t every non military embargo we put on other countries be considered an act of war as well? Also we should not be part of the UN.

Iraq II merely was a continuation of Iraq I. Saddam had been blatantly ignoring the sanctions imposed upon him after the first war. We had the legal justification under UN resolutions to attack him well before we actually did.

Bush just wanted to finish what his daddy couldn’t do. (still hasn’t tho even though he did kill Saddam)

Finally, the Saudi Government is not acting as our direct antagonist. Rather, the Wahhabi sect of Islam, funded primarily by Saudis, is responsible for much of the preaching of Western hatred.

So by this reasoning and the stuff u posted above wouldn’t the Saudi government allowing the Wahhabi’s to be in their country be a kind of blind support much like the Taliban support of Al-Qaeda by allowing them to reside in their country… you cant have this both ways. Also I think that funding is much more important than location I mean if you take away the money what can they really do. Oh wait… they are our friends and they have control of their oil even if it is a cartel that openly practices price-fixing.


wow.. over 11 pages in microsoft word lol..

 

[Cerb]

woops posted in wrong section >_>

 

[Grandphoenix]

I have a question about the Tax section it showed the IRS saying they've been researching for years and have yet found anything saying you have to pay taxes. So why is it considered tax evasion?

 

[Dayner]

So by this reasoning and the stuff u posted above wouldn’t the Saudi government allowing the Wahhabi’s to be in their country be a kind of blind support much like the Taliban support of Al-Qaeda by allowing them to reside in their country… you cant have this both ways. Also I think that funding is much more important than location I mean if you take away the money what can they really do. Oh wait… they are our friends and they have control of their oil even if it is a cartel that openly practices price-fixing.

same can be said about US with Israel , to the Saudi and Wahhabi’s , Israel is their Enemy ;p

also Wahhabi is the name of big major Islam branch, they just support Taliban for following the same branch , still i do give credit for our current King Abdullah for working hard for the county of Saudi Arabia

 

[Dejavu]

I agree i think that the US should cut ties with Israel. The pick most of the fights they get into anyways.

 

[Morcheeba]

Ive just looked at this and it really hit me hard.... Ive somewhat wondered how the world ended up like this and wondered where isn it going from here. This will gave me a good idea where its going and what we need todo as a society to stop/change this. I even cried watching this thie video has hit me harder than anyother video of this type ive ever seen. This is the root of the evil and the source of all the world problems. I know some might have seen this video but never really listened to this I urge ppl to watch this and really take it to heart and think about that there saying. Please watch this and inform all your family and friends to watch this.

http://zeitgeistmovie.com/

I saw this movie over a week ago. I mentioned it in the chatbox onry, but yeah.. everything should be taken with a grain of salt. Think about it, if the government is out to brainwash us, who's to say the creative developers of these movies (and there are MANY more than this one) aren't trying to accomplish the same?

Look up New World/One World. You need to do some digging. A co-worker of mine is RIGHT into the whole conspiracy theory thing, and I tell her the same thing, to be taken with a grain of salt. People in general are too naive, you need to really consider what you're seeing.

*** The whole argument it, the US (the elite few that are "In The Know") are planning to establish a solitary government along with other non-Figure Heads (as Figure-Heads are just that) in each country, or at least those with the most threat of defense.

The funniest part in Zeitgeist was a clip of a G.W. Bush saying they need to infiltrate Iraq, then only to correct himself as he was addressing the nation after 9/11, to say Afghanistan!

yeea