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War Without End

nytimes.com

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Re: War Without End

#81

Post by vesak »

selestify wrote: post #32
vesak wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The domino thing wasn't that crazy. I wonder if that implies that the world should've gone full communist. That the attempts to stop that was just delaying the inevitable, even though the delay seems very successful right now. I wonder if socialism would've ended up as authoritarian as it did if it hadn't been fought like it was.

The less authoritarian states, such as Allende's Chile, did not end up surviving for long. Can't help but wonder if there is a survivorship bias, wherein only the most vicious and brutal communist states could survive external interference.

>The less authoritarian states, such as Allende's Chile, did not end up surviving for long.

Wasn't Allende's Chile pretty much brought down by external forces, i.e. CIA? Calling it survivorship bias is a bit premature if the said countries are antagonised by the most powerful nation on the planet :)

Re: War Without End

#82

Post by arethuza »

roenxi wrote: post #38
NegativeLatency wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it though? At the end of the day he’s just another bad guy. Think about all the people there who view the US poorly because of our actions there. Not sure killing one person really makes up for that.

Ignoring even that, in the end when he was caught/executed, it was in Pakistan by a small team of operatives. So in hindsight, why was there an army in Afghanistan? 15/19 of the terrorists involved were former Saudi nationals, so it isn't like the Afghans were obviously churning out radicals. Whole thing was bizarre.

Even more bizarre when you consider the reports that Pakistan was taking money from the US, giving some of it to the Taliban who then used it to fight the US.

Why the US public isn't angry at Saudi Arabia and Pakistan is a mystery to me.

Re: War Without End

#83

Post by baud147258 »

vesak wrote: post #79
aalleavitch wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As evidenced by the fact that the most successful modern socialist states are in Europe, I believe this is the case. Those who could make their social welfare programs coexist with aggressive Western attitudes have thrived.

Which states in Europe do you think are socialist?

I think if you use a broad enough definition of socialist, you'd have most of Europe. In France the socialist party was in power until last year, for example.

Re: War Without End

#84

Post by baud147258 »

mnm1 wrote: post #50

What would "winning" these wars even look like? There is no answer to that because these are not wars that are meant to be won. How can you win something when you don't even know what winning means? These are simulacra wars unlike a war like WW2. Every war America has fought after WW2 has been a simulacra war, not intended to be won but intended to advance random political goals at the expense of our soldiers lives.…

Wars are always fought to advance political goals. I agree that in that case, the goals are shitty.

Re: War Without End

#85

Post by ThinkBeat »

The endless (and pointless) wars that our soldier are being spent on has a relatively easy solution

Reinstate the draft.

That might seem counterintuitive since that would give us a lot more soldiers to use, but it would give a lot of families, a lot of Americans real skin in the game.

Wasting soldiers is easy as long as most people dont care and dont notice. But when it is your daughter/cousin/ uncle/parent someone you know for a majority of the population it becomes a very serious matter.

I say this as an ex-army soldier. I will be honest and say that I didnt enjoy my time in the military very much, and forcing thousands and thousands of youth to go through it means a lot of pain and uncomfortable situation, I think the benefits would outweigh the sacrifices made to make this happen.

An alternate plan would it to be mandatory that family members of elected officials to serve in the military and in wars, personally. (Not just sit at a desk in DC pushing buttons) But there is so much corruption in those systems that the children would probably be protected one way or another.

Re: War Without End

#86

Post by afsina »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #85

The endless (and pointless) wars that our soldier are being spent on has a relatively easy solution Reinstate the draft. That might seem counterintuitive since that would give us a lot more soldiers to use, but it would give a lot of families, a lot of Americans real skin in the game. Wasting soldiers is easy as long as most people dont care and dont notice. But when it is your daughter/cousin/ uncle/parent someone y…

What an unbelievably bad idea. Mandatory drafting is involuntary servitude, slavery. How about taking a non interventionist policy?

Re: War Without End

#87

Post by mnm1 »

baud147258 wrote: post #84
mnm1 wrote: post #50

What would "winning" these wars even look like? There is no answer to that because these are not wars that are meant to be won. How can you win something when you don't even know what winning means? These are simulacra wars unlike a war like WW2. Every war America has fought after WW2 has been a simulacra war, not intended to be won but intended to advance random political goals at the expense of our soldiers lives.…

Wars are always fought to advance political goals. I agree that in that case, the goals are shitty.

Yes, I should have specified shitty, niche political goals not in the interest of the country or its people.

Re: War Without End

#88

Post by guessthejuice »

skrebbel wrote: post #66

Typical NYTimes to underline all the poor dead & wounded American soldiers and not a single word about innocent Iraqi and Afghani citizens, let alone the insane wave of refugees across the globe that America's aggression has helped cause.

I always thought it odd how our media so heavily focused on the few hundred/thousand soldiers who died in an illegal invasion of iraq but not the hundreds of thousands of iraqi children who died. Is it bias or something else?

Also, the NYTimes is eerily quiet about the role it and the rest of the media played in pushing for the war in iraq. No censure, no penalties, no nothing when they lied to the american people.

Re: War Without End

#89

Post by krylon »

Joakal wrote: post #76
mmjaa wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans are simply not interested in the victims of their wars. It runs counter to every iota of American culture, to acknowledge the failures of their warrior-classes, alas. But, you should know, the article did mention the casualties, at least glibly. "Many more Afghani's have died than were lost in the 9/11 attacks", is the only context the author can find, to appeal to his readers. Its a sad state of affairs wh…

Why did USA get so up in arms with Korea, Vietnam War, etc but not USA's ongoing Afghanistan/(Iraq?) war?

Presumably because of the military draft, which was abolished in the aftermath of the Vietnam war, IIRC.

Re: War Without End

#90

Post by boomboomsubban »

grey-area wrote: post #18
fjsolwmv wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fascinating to see this in the NYT, the paper that served as GW Bush's propaganda wing for selling the lies that persuaded the US public to support the second Iraq war.

Although the nytimes has always served as a mouthpiece for the current administration (this is how they get such good access, this is why they have remained on friendly terms with the Trump admin despite their mainly liberal readership), they have always run the occasional piece of real interest contrary to the official narrative (i.e. real journalism). For example during the Obama administration (which increased the…

>For example during the Obama administration (which increased the use of drone & missile attacks globally) they posted this inditement of the assassination without trial of a teenage American citizen:

Though notably, they called the act a "targeted killing," as calling it an assassination would be accusing them of war crimes. Even the conclusion only condemns the killing of American's without trial, not bombing suspected terrorists without worrying about nearby people.

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