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War Without End

nytimes.com

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Re: War Without End

#111

Post by baud147258 »

arethuza wrote: post #57
baud147258 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who started the Vietnam war?

I don't think it does have a single simple cause. You could argue: - It was the French colonizing the country and imposing a nasty explotative regime - The French for refusing to decolonize the country post WW2 and fightning (and losing) a war to retain their colony - The US for refusing to help Ho Chi Minh when asked - The US for helping the French - The corrupt and brutal South Vietnamese regime propped up by the U…

Well, I realised that my question wasn't very precise, still thank you for taking the time to answer it.

Re: War Without End

#112

Post by HedgeSparrow »

krylon wrote: post #89
Joakal wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I also suspect fatigue. For a lot of US citizens, the war has taken place a for a majority of their (our) life.

Re: War Without End

#113

Post by jaredklewis »

afsina wrote: post #86
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?

> How about taking a non interventionist policy?

Well yea, that is what the parent comment explicitly advocates.

The problem is that US voters are insulated from the horrifying effects of war and thus are not inclined to avoid it.

Thus, the parent advocates achieving non-interventionist policy by giving Americans voters consequences through the draft.

So kind of roundabout, but such is often the only viable way in politics.

Re: War Without End

#114

Post by exegete »

Also "National Emergency" without end and without oversight. The National Emergencies Act [0] allows the President to declare emergency powers, but it must be renewed annually, and he must give a report to Congress on how much has spent on the emergency and the status.

Bush declared a national emergency after 9/11, and renewed it every year. Obama did the same. Trump the same. No reports to Congress. Congress has never asked for a report. Nothing but "the threat continues". [1]

More recently Trump used it as a way to force retired Air Force pilots back into active duty.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Emergencies_Act [1] https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2017/09/14/perm...

Re: War Without End

#115

Post by cryptonector »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #31
cryptonector wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As to Afghanistan? I don't know. It made sense to go in to fetch Bin Laden, but not to do any nation-building.

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.

Why have jail for any crimes then too, right? Criminals won't think well of the justice system if we have jail, so they'll commit more crimes to spite us. Right?

Be serious. Deterrence may or may not always work, but it works enough of the time. Even when it doesn't work, the alternative (leaving them alone) almost certainly wouldn't work either. People who do these awful things don't need new grievances -- all the old ones will suffice for them.

Re: War Without End

#116

Post by cryptonector »

arethuza wrote: post #82
roenxi wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The U.S. public was and is angry about all that. However, the U.S. government can't really do anything about them. Afghanistan did have bin Laden, so that was a reason to go there: to get him. Staying there for decades, however, was not necessary, and not really justifiable, especially given that the nation-building part of the project hasn't panned out.

Re: War Without End

#117

Post by cryptonector »

dragonwriter wrote: post #55
cryptonector wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As to Afghanistan? I don't know. It made sense to go in to fetch Bin Laden, but not to do any nation-building.

> It made sense to go in to fetch Bin Laden, but not to do any nation-building. Yeah, a US policy of destructive interference in Afghanistan without stabilization after the immediate aim is acheived has never had any serious adverse long-term consequences that would militate against that. (Neither, I suppose, in your world, has the same thing in Iraq caused problems with merely completely botched stabilization ignori…

The U.S. has no patience for nation-building. Like it or not, that's the truth. That leaves us with three options in cases like 9/11:

     - do nothing
     - go in, do what you can to get the bad guys and deter future attachs
     - go in and attempt nation-building for as long as the public will stand it, then skip town
The third option is the one we always try. It also always fails. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. Intervention in the Balkans did work in the 90s, but we didn't occupy, so that wasn't a long-term nation-building warfare effort. Somalia we abandoned early on in the 90s -- there was no reason to be there, much less stay, and President Clinton was smart enough to figure that out. The three biggies went badly. Vietnam and Iraq would have gone better with more patience, but I can't blame the American public for not having that much patience. In any case, the limited patience (regarding war) of the American public is a fact.

Re: War Without End

#118

Post by cryptonector »

vesak wrote: post #26
cryptonector wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The domino thing wasn't that crazy. China, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia. Then what? Philippines? Thailand? Of course, the right answer was that we couldn't take on all of those burdens, not even one, really, not for long. But in the aftermath of WWII, I think it's not surprising that this wasn't understood.

>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.

Consider Venezuela. There was no civil war there (unlike Russia immediately after the October revolution, and unlike China before and after WWII). There was no foreign power intervention (unlike Korea, Vietnam). Yet Venezuela is authoritarian.

(There's also Nazi Germany. The Nazis were socialists, really, and they also had no civil war and no foreign power intervention, and that ended pretty badly too.)

I think the answer to your question is: yes, yes, of course it would have.

Now, you might point to post-war Western European socialism, but there we have a number of stabilizing factors (e.g., NATO, U.S. troops on the ground) limiting the freedom of socialist politicians to be as extreme as they might want to. As a result, post-war Western European socialism mostly means just high taxes and large welfare states.

Generally, socialism outside post-war Western Europe ends badly. There have been left-wing presidents in Brazil and others where it didn't end badly, but they didn't impose socialism -- they ruled more like Western European social democrats, not like Chavez, Castro, or Maduro.

Re: War Without End

#119

Post by cryptonector »

vesak wrote: post #81
selestify wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

No. The U.S. was definitely for Pinochet's coup, but on the ground it was all Pinochet. (If anything, Pinochet was less bloody than others because of U.S. pressure.)

Re: War Without End

#120

Post by cryptonector »

baud147258 wrote: post #83
vesak wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

By such a definition then the U.S. is socialist too, just a bit less. Good news socialists!
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