Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: slimm50 on February 27, 2003, 03:28:44 PM
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OK, here goes:
Think about this:
As of today, the United States is the only true superpower in the world. No other nation has a GNP or GDP to match ours. No other major country has a per capita income as high as ours. No other country can project military might in multiple locations around the world. No other country has ever been as beneficent, in the history of the world, as the United States has been, even, or especially, in victory. After WWI and WWII when we could’ve punished Germany and Japan for generations to come, what did we do, instead? We played a major role in rebuilding those, and other, war-torn countries. Never in recent history have we as a nation shown any inclination to dominate, politically or militarily, any nation less fortunate than us. And that covers most of the countries in the world. Our country has lead the world in the struggles for human rights in nations where those rights have been abused most. In times of peace our country has shared its bounty around the world as no other nation before it could’ve even imagined. Americans, for all our differences and faults, are arguably the most benevolent people on Earth.
Considering the above that is why I find it difficult to understand how people can believe those who say the current administration is going to war in Iraq for oil, only. Or because President Bush is only thinking about the next presidential election. Or that we want to rule the world. Or because….(fill-in-the-blank selfish reason). History simply does not support selfish motives on our part. Pacifism and isolationist views do not prevent rogue nations and leaders from abusing their neighbors, it encourages them. We have it within our grasp to significantly harm the terrorist movement that has sprung up in the world in the last 20 - 30 years. No one else can do it. Only we can, with the help of other freedom-loving countries. This situation was thrust upon us, and it is our duty, our responsibility as the richest, most powerful nation in the history of the world, to stand up to the bully(ies) and say “enough”.
And to hell with the United Nations.
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as empty as it is patriotic.
seeing alot of that these days.
at least what my grandad and other ancestoral war vets did in defence of this country shall not be applied to the account of our presently unpopulaly elected deserter in chief.
we have a loose cannon who is attacking a counry without a declaration of war or mandate from the un. the guy has publicly stated public oppinion dosent matter to him.suddenly france becomes evil because they dissagree with us? all this makes him hitler like in their (europeans) eyes and mine. somthings up when that crap flys and you fine patriots believe it. you dont get to bend the rules of internationa law cause your wavin a flag thank you very much.
back to your regularly scedualed rush limbau zombie tirade.
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Originally posted by lord dolf vader
as empty as it is patriotic.
seeing alot of that these days.
at least what my grandad and other ancestoral war vets did in defence of this country shall not be applied to the account of our presently unpopulaly elected deserter in chief.
we have a loose cannon who is attacking a counry without a declaration of war or mandate from the un. the guy has publicly stated public oppinion dosent matter to him.suddenly france becomes evil because they dissagree with us? all this makes him hitler like in their (europeans) eyes and mine. somthings up when that crap flys and you fine patriots believe it. you dont get to bend the rules of internationa law cause your wavin a flag thank you very much.
back to your regularly scedualed rush limbau zombie tirade.
Spoken like a true starry-eyed liberal.
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Towd ain't no liberal.
Liberals don't fly like that.
;)
BTW, France has always been evil.
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i consider myself a realistic libertairian i.e. i vote democrat as every facist i ever met was a republican and without the libertairian and intipendent vote we would not be having this psudo fascist simian for a president.I i cannot describe to you how much i dislike supposed democratic fascists we get here in america. always willing to sacrifice somone or somone elses freedom or property for their ideas while spouting lower taxes and less government while they do the exact opposite.
when 4 republican presidents in a row say they will lower taxes and raise them. say they will fix the economy but diddly it up. say less government but expand it like gangbusters. say more freedom and want to change the constitution to lower personal freedoms. say peace and then attack everyone in sight.
please please god realize what they are doing. dems suck but they are not and organized army of evil.
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I guess the clue was "realistic libertarian"... If you were a libertarian you would run screaming from every democrat that is in office or runs for office... that, or drive a stake through his heart. The only thing "libertarian" about democrats is that they will let you smoke pot and have same sex marriages. Not enough to offset their "never met a tax i didn't like" attitude.
republicans give me more choice and leave me alone more than democrats with their.... "you can't do that... u will put out your eye", and sobbing rendition of "do it for the children" while letting child molesters out of jail.
lazs
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Well said Laz!
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Originally posted by lord dolf vader
i
... i vote democrat as every facist i ever met was a republican
... having this psudo fascist simian for a president.
.... democratic fascists we get here in america. a
..... when 4 republican presidents in a row say they will lower taxes and raise them.
You realize how you sound here, don't you? No, I guess not.
Also, please check and remind yourself which party controlled Congress when those taxes were raised. Last time I checked, it's Congress that passes tax law.
Towd, sounds to me like you're going back to where you were before. Good luck to ya; irrational hate will give ya ulcers.
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Slimm,
Unfortunately not much factual data on which you base your post is correct. Otherwise it's very inspired.
No other nation has a GNP or GDP to match ours.
Our total GDP is the greatest but it would mean much more if the country was not so split and divided. Have you checked the latest elections? 50-50 is not much unity.
GDP per person would be a better indicator of quality of life and productivity if the GDP number had much meaning and was not so easily manipulated. Unfortunately it does not as most economists would tell you.
For example, in 1950 a household of a guy working at a, say, dildo factory for $30,000 with his wife home raising four kids was contributing $30,000 to the GNP - the wife's labor was not counted.
Now his wife may be working for another $30,000 at the same factory while they have only two children. Also, a law was enacted that declared a lot of people criminals and another guy is working for $30,000 to guard the new "criminals". The tax law was complicated and government regulations more complicated, so a lawyer and an accountant are working for $100,000 each to deal with those just to enable the same production. Throw in a welfare caseworker for $30,000 and a new government bureaucrat to watch over all the new regulations for $100,000 and you've got total "GNP" $420,000 while the amount of dildoes produced only doubled and half as many chldren were produced!
No other country can project military might in multiple locations around the world.
There were plenty of countries that could project military might in multiple locations around the world - macedonian empire, romans, mongols, russians, spanish, british. None of those ended up particularly well.
After WWI and WWII when we After WWI and WWII when we could’ve punished Germany and Japan for generations to come
First, punishing innocent people for something their ancestors had done makes as much sense as punishing us for our ancestors enforcing slavery a while ago.
Second, if you do not think that Germany was punished after WWI - with pillage, starvation and death in the midst of the world of plenty, then your historical education is severely lacking. Germany was punished - that is why we've got WWII with Germany in the first place.
Anyway, how can you be sure that we "could’ve punished Germany and Japan for generations to come"? We could not "punish" Vietnam - a third world country nobody cared much about. If we treated Germany and Japan as enemies, wouldn't they have supported soviets against US rather than US against Soviets.
We played a major role in rebuilding those, and other, war-torn countries.
They worked, we sold them things and kept them as a buffer against Soviets. Once their economies recovered, US was able to extract yearly tribute from them the same way as other countries in the US-dominated western world.
Of course we do not do it as openly as romans did, but we do not have to - we came up with a better way - fiat money.
First, dollar was declared the official currency of the world. Second, Johnson unilaterally stopped backing dollar with gold, effectively turning it into paper.
USA has 500 billion a year trade deficit with the world - buying cheap things and not selling equal amount. We pay for that stuff with dollars that we print and they must accept. Since they cannot buy anything good for those dollars - otherwise there would not have been a trade deficit - they loan them back to us in exchange for US treasury bonds (6 trillion debt) or store in their banks as "currency reserves" - trillions more. All those trillions of paper dollars would become worthless if they decided to cash them in, so we, americans effectively got trillions worth of free stuff that we did not produce and that we have no chance to repay. The world is subcidising us $500 billion a year. No wonder our level of life seems so good, despite all the waste.
Of course the emergence of Euro as a possible world currency seriously threatens that nice racket.
Never in recent history have we as a nation shown any inclination to dominate, politically or militarily, any nation less fortunate than us
You must be joking. What do you count as "recent history"? Does 1898 annexation of Phillipines count? Destroying the only republic in the eastern hemisphere and the only christian state there and killing about a million civilians was quite a feat - after all US army did not have bombs, aeroplanes and toxic chemicals to use on the natives and could not cause massive famine and death by destroying power stations, infrastructire and pharmaceutical factories - the phillipinos did not have much iin that respect. So all the killing was done in the old-fasioned way, with bullets and bayonets.
After the Fhillipines, there was quite a list of invasions whenever an american company saw something it liked - mostly in south america.
Our country has lead the world in the struggles for human rights in nations where those rights have been abused most.
Didn't we support the world's most atrocious dictators? Hussein was our ally, so was Ossama Bin Laden, Idi Amin, Duvalier, Batista, etc.
Didn't US topple domocratic government of Mossadeh in Iran in 53 and installed a monarchy there?
I find it difficult to understand how people can believe those who say the current administration is going to war in Iraq for oil, only.
Not only oil. Glory is another thing. Control is another. It looks we may not be able to control the world money much longer because of Euro (see above) - so a control over the world oil supply would help us to keep everyone in line.
If US is occupying Iraq, what currency would Iraq and the neighbouring countries accept for their oil - dollar or euro?
History simply does not support selfish motives on our part.
Only if studied selectively. :)
And to hell with the United Nations.
At least here we can agree... :)
There may be plenty of good reasons for us to invade Iraq. That does not matter all our reasons are good.
miko
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Miko2d,
You've done a very good job of dissecting my post and addressing specific points. I'm impressed. You apparently saw this as a personal challenge, and I must say you rose to it. Rather than debate the issues with you that I disagree on, let me say that my point, originally, was to say that as the most powerful nation on earth we have a moral obligation to use our might and resources for good around the world. Past events notwithstanding, now is the prime time to strike a devastating blow (we hope) to terrorism and the like. We could argue all day over the current administration's motives and worthiness to be in power. But interesting points you brought up. Perhaps we could discuss in another post.:)
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! I am surprised myself at your civil reaction! It is not very common on this board. :)
as the most powerful nation on earth we have a moral obligation to use our might and resources for good around the world.
That is fine in theory but who know what specific act would cause good rather than a whole lot of evil?
I believe that freedom and democracy and free market are great traits that make society develop, proress and grow in wealth.
At the same time totalitarianism and collectivism prevent society from developing, make it corrupt and eventually crumble and sooner or later be relaced with a democracy - that is in the absense of an external threat. With external threat - real or perceived - even the population of despotic regimes tends to unite around them rather than question them.
So if we are so great, maybe we should stop trying to provide that unifying threat to all the evil regimes and import the democracy on the bayonets of our military, discrediting it in the process.
Why dont we rather sit tight and mind our own business and serve as an example of how great freedom and democracy really are to speed the corruption of the evil regimes?
Oh, yeah - stopping support for such regimes would not hurt either.
One can make a huge difference growing a garden - but one does not try to grow a tree by pulling on it. That would be counterproductive and even dangerous.
Rise of democracy and free marked is a historical inevitability in some sense, so why don't we let the nature take its course in the other countries that lagged a bit behind us?
For impatient, there are also plenty of ways to help democracy without using military might. You heart bleeds for a poor guy? Let him in here. Once he gets established here and sends letters to his relatives at home about life in the US and how he prospers rather than get exploited and starves, the government propaganda will be nullified for those people. It worked pretty good corrupting Soviet Union.
Trade and tourism works good too. The people see americans and tehir products and think "what is the whole thing all about, theya re not evil...", etc. or "this guy is just a carpenter and he can travel the world on vacation and has a nice house - why can't I? Hmm, I there may be something to that capitalism stuff..."
It worked for me. You wouldn't have wanted to wander into the sights of my AK while I was serving in the Soviet Army but here I am - in USA, it warts and imperfections nonwithstanding. :)
miko
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That is fine in theory but who know what specific act would cause good rather than a whole lot of evil?
It's nice to be able to sit on yer wide flat bellybutton and debate. is the question WHAT we do.. or WHO does it?
Deal is, we're doing SOMETHING. what specificly are you doing to help?
I believe that freedom and democracy and free market are great traits that make society develop, proress and grow in wealth.
Yes, we're all aware yer an outta the closet libertarian with a case of the bellybutton at anything that affects your bottom line.. like a just war.
At the same time totalitarianism and collectivism prevent society from developing, make it corrupt and eventually crumble and sooner or later be relaced with a democracy - that is in the absense of an external threat. With external threat - real or perceived - even the population of despotic regimes tends to unite around them rather than question them.
Horseshit. What popped up in Japan and Germany after we kicked out THEIR despots? Make a case miko.. don't emulate Chamberlain.
*sigh*
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Much anger I sense in this one.
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Originally posted by miko2d
! I am surprised myself at your civil reaction! It is not very common on this board. :)
as the most powerful nation on earth we have a moral obligation to use our might and resources for good around the world.
That is fine in theory but who know what specific act would cause good rather than a whole lot of evil?
I believe that freedom and democracy and free market are great traits that make society develop, proress and grow in wealth.
At the same time totalitarianism and collectivism prevent society from developing, make it corrupt and eventually crumble and sooner or later be relaced with a democracy - that is in the absense of an external threat. With external threat - real or perceived - even the population of despotic regimes tends to unite around them rather than question them.
So if we are so great, maybe we should stop trying to provide that unifying threat to all the evil regimes and import the democracy on the bayonets of our military, discrediting it in the process.
Why dont we rather sit tight and mind our own business and serve as an example of how great freedom and democracy really are to speed the corruption of the evil regimes?
Oh, yeah - stopping support for such regimes would not hurt either.
One can make a huge difference growing a garden - but one does not try to grow a tree by pulling on it. That would be counterproductive and even dangerous.
Rise of democracy and free marked is a historical inevitability in some sense, so why don't we let the nature take its course in the other countries that lagged a bit behind us?
For impatient, there are also plenty of ways to help democracy without using military might. You heart bleeds for a poor guy? Let him in here. Once he gets established here and sends letters to his relatives at home about life in the US and how he prospers rather than get exploited and starves, the government propaganda will be nullified for those people. It worked pretty good corrupting Soviet Union.
Trade and tourism works good too. The people see americans and tehir products and think "what is the whole thing all about, theya re not evil...", etc. or "this guy is just a carpenter and he can travel the world on vacation and has a nice house - why can't I? Hmm, I there may be something to that capitalism stuff..."
It worked for me. You wouldn't have wanted to wander into the sights of my AK while I was serving in the Soviet Army but here I am - in USA, it warts and imperfections nonwithstanding. :)
miko
Great posts
Regards Blitz
America is threathened by Iraq in no way, it's just plain rediculous
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thinks for a moment and comes up with a conclusion that it sounded like something you'd expect as a product of propaganda
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Originally posted by miko2d
Why dont we rather sit tight and mind our own business and serve as an example of how great freedom and democracy really are to speed the corruption of the evil regimes?
Oh, yeah - stopping support for such regimes would not hurt either.
But it doesnt really work that way now does it?
Even if you would just retire to conus and sit there (which you cant btw, it would kill your economy), you would still pose a threat and would still be the great evil empire.
For the moslem fundamentalists, the mere existence of the free west is a threat, simply because the young kids growing up in whatever miserable sandhole will want to live the way we do. They want Britney Spears and Coca Cola, Playstation and fast cars....beer and sex...you name it.
Our way of life is the greatest threat to the fundamentalists, THAT is why we are their enemy. Not our policy towards Israel, or our embargo on Iraq or whatever.
The only reason the US is held up as the big enemy is because the US shines brightest (dont missunderstand that) What I mean is Coca Cola comes from the US, so does Britney Spears...Hollywood and you name it. But we in Europe are just as bad, just as big a threat...we have the same dangerous lifestyle..we pose the same threat, the same lure. But the US is a more thankful target because there are so many people that hate the US for various reasons.
But dont kid yourself. No matter what you do, no matter what you say or how you act, you will be the main enemy of these people. Because as you say, they need an enemy to rally themselves against.
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Miko, great posts. Very informative and good points made w/o getting mad and feeling intellectually inferior. Well done.
And slimm too, it was civil for awhile anyway.
A friend mentioned that empire theory. We learn history for a reason.
BTW, for those who say"bush is sending us to war", we haven't gone to war, and haven't said we will. He could be bluffing. And my $$ says he is. He may not be as dumb as some may believe.
Yeah, create a jewish state in the middle of the arabs:confused: