Posted on 04/04/2005 6:20:06 AM PDT by Jim Powell
Edited on 04/04/2005 6:25:39 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
To those who say we should use our military in an effort to overthrow tyrants and promote justice around the world, I would ask: which, if any, wars would you avoid?
There are always a lot of tyrants and much injustice in the world, so we're talking about a policy of perpetual war.
Are we to invade Iran? Try taking over Saudi Arabia from their incompetent, unjust rulers who have given us so many terrorists? Perhaps we ought to permanently station hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, or even a million American soldiers, in Africa, since during the past 40 years that bedeviled continent has had more dictatorships than any other. Presumably we should invade China with its laogai, as they call their gulag with millions of slave laborers. Surely, the United States has an "interest" in China that would justify an invasion. Don't forget all the corruption in South America -- surely we should invade some of those countries to set things right.
If this is going too far, then where do you draw the line to distinguish between countries we should invade and countries we shouldn't invade, wars we should pursue and wars we should stay out of?
How do you determine which wars we can win and which wars are likely to backfire on us?
Foreign policy experts haven't been able to answer these questions, or we wouldn't have gotten into the Korean anda Vietnam wars that squandered tens of thousands of American lives without enhancing our national security.
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We shouldn't be surprised that wars often backfire and have consequences very different than what was intended, because wars are the most volatile, dangerous and unpredictable human events. That's the nature of wars and why they should be avoided. If we're threatened or attacked, we must do what we have to do, but it's essential to conserve our defense resources and stay out of as many conflicts as possible.
Jim Powell
25 years ago, I stayed away from a friend's younger brother who wanted to play PanzerBlitz because I was afraid the little stinker would beat me and My friend would never let me live it down.
I avoided that war.
That mars/ saturn thing seems a little beyond our capabilities. I say let them hammer it out on their own.
A side-benefit of going to war with China would be that we could cancel the hundreds of billions that we owe them (so long as we win). We'd be afflicted with their whining about that for centuries though....
I'd avoid the kids neighborhood bottle rocket wars if you don't own a good pair of protective goggles. Other than that, can't think of any...
What if we cancelled the debt, and then everyone else decided to go to war against us so they wouldn't have to repay their debts? Or if no one loaned us anymore money?
We have some lovely parting gifts for you; thank you for playing "ZOT!"
They can't stop loaning us money because that's ultimately how we buy their exports, and they have no one else to export to if we have no money. When the house of cards finally implodes we're all going down together...
I think the answers would be more telling if they were honest.
I would venture to say the only war in the history of the US not worth fighting was the Spanish-American War. A lot of people might put Vietnam in that catergory, however, Vietnam was not a fight against even North Vietnam. It was one of the battlefields in the Cold War.
To ask which war we would stay out of, none of those countries listed had every last diplomatic angle tried, like Iraq had.
"I would venture to say the only war in the history of the US not worth fighting was the Spanish-American War..."
Not many people are aware of this, but we are still paying today a Telephone Luxury Tax that was instituted in 1898 to help fund that war.
Over the years there's been many efforts to repeal it, but it always keeps getting 'renewed'. So here we are in 2005, still PAYING a tax to fund a war from 1898.
Yeah, I'd heard we were still paying some tax meant to pay for the Spanish- American War.
The Spanish-American War Telephone Tax.
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