posted 05-31-2001 04:59         

{damn I really must learn to spell...}

posted 05-31-2001 09:21            

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...the ungrateful Europeans...

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posted 05-31-2001 13:55            

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Originally quoted by skeeter, who has never taken a history class in his life:
Also, to say that WW1 and WW2 was fought to keep America free is bullshit, as I understand history every battle in those two wars was fought on foreign soil.

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Wait... You honestly believe that just because (most) of the fighting in WWII was done on foreign soil that it wasn't in America's best interest?

You think that if the Japanese hadn't bombed pearl harbor that the Germans would have settled for taking control of Europe and Africa and left the rest of the world alone?

Who said that Europe was ungrateful? Most of the "ungrateful" europeans weren't even alive during WWII, just as we werent. Why should they continue to rever people whose grandfathers may or may not have freed their grandfathers? Its like saying that I'm a racist bastard who owes minorities everything just because some bastards kept slaves before my family even moved to the States.

Another reason that the europeans may be "ungrateful" as you see them, could be that the US has taken a hand in almost every developed countries governing and military affairs since the end of WWII. With promises of funding or threats of cut-offs or military action, the US can control most other countries already. The ones we cant influence greatly that way are the ones that make the news.

Both wars also brought us out of depressions, which, while I dont consider that a good reason for war myself sure didnt' hurt things for those that returned from the war.

The annoying thing is that most of WWII could have been prevented. If the originaly treaty of versailles hadn't basically killed the german economy and made them ripe for revolution, then perhaps Hitler couldnt' have taken power. If the League of Nations (with Wilson's 14 points) had passed congress, then perhaps the Germans would have been stopped earlier. We may have still had the pacific theater... but I think that a lot less people would have had to die in a war on those terms. The United States (not the same as america) policies of non-intervention (it was actually policy to ignore other countries until the point we were attacked ) may have actually prolonged the war.

Dont get me wrong, I'm not saying that the US should have jumped in as the worlds policeman (our current foreign policy, btw) even then. I'm also not blaming the US for WWII. I'm saying that its a damn good thing we eventually did jump in or else we may have had some trouble when Hitler took over all of europe.

Korea and Vietnam may have been communist fear, (and we pulled out of Korea just when we were finally making ground) but for christs sake, dont say that WWII was not in America's best interest.

-Chris

Hey! Lets go to Africa and attack spear weilding natives with machines and rifles. It worked for mussolini, it can work for us!

posted 05-31-2001 17:46            

Hmm. Africa in the modern era. Genocide of poor black people we don't care about. Sorry chaps, but we Americans are a bit busy back home here, what with all the controversy over cell phones, and SUV's and whatnot. Best of luck to you, and let us know how it turns out. Call back when you'd like to buy a Pepsi.

["You're not human tonight, Marlowe" -The Little Sister]

posted 05-31-2001 19:03         

Fen's right, but ouch! heh. I don't think of it in so clear-cut of manner. I prefer thinking of history in varying shades of gray. When you paint with a broad brush, you lose a lot of the detail...

posted 05-31-2001 21:23            

I had a point there...but... I lost it. Damn. Oh yeah...

We were not involved in WWII because of the genocide of the Jews. For the most part people really didn't care about that during the war itself. For the most part, people didn't believe the vast scale of the death camps until after the war. You can still find factions of people that insist that the holocaust never happened.

You notice I said "developed nations". Politically (and militarily) we only seem to care about the 1st and 2nd class countries. The developing nations really dont matter when it comes to foreign policy until they start blowing up their neighbors.

My point you ask? We only care about things that threaten our own comfort. The most we'll do to a country killing its own citizens is trade blockades... and in most cases we'll just send some nice letters politely asking them to stop.

Africa? Thats a country somewhere hot right?

posted 05-31-2001 23:44            

No States Rights. All about the slaves.

No trade disputes. All about the slaves.

None of that now. You know it was all about the slaves.

-Chris

posted 06-01-2001 06:35            

Dammit Clem, you almost got your ass shot there boy.

posted 06-01-2001 06:42            

As for all that crap in Africa, wtf are we supposed to do with it? The only thing we COULD do would be to ANNEX the unstable countries. Turns out you can't fix an unstable country with any combination of high-altitude bombardment and Marines; all you can do is make it MORE unstable - the more you bomb it and kick its ass, the less overall military might is required to take it over, meaning even MORE would-be warlords with even LESS commending their tactical (much less strategical or political) acumen can be considered as possessing enough power to make their own bids.

The only way to pacify a region full of genocidal hatemongering tactics is to OCCUPY the fucker and govern it - Roman Empire, hello?

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint), I don't think the rest of the First World countries are likely to sit still for the Pax Americana to be imposed on the Third World countries. So there you have it - like it or not, Nigeria and Niger and all the rest are pretty much condemned to stew in their own vile juice until some bright native boy manages to amass enough power and enough common sense to both take over and make it STICK.

posted 06-01-2001 10:29            

Bitchgoddess- I stand by what I said, and I don't think you're arguing against what I said in my post. I'm not saying soldiers should be judged by whether the war was popular or not, far from it. I am saying that there is nothing particularly heoric about getting shot at and spit on. If there was, I could get a statue erected in my name by going up to the Northeast side with a sign around my neck that says "I hate black people." What I am saying is that, if you want to judge the military, you have to judge it as a whole, including both your sainted Granddad who lost his leg fighting the Nazis *and* Lt. Calley the village-killer. Furthermore, I'm saying that heroes are people that are there for the right reasons. The "right" reasons are different according to who you ask, and I don't presume to tell anyone that they should or shouldn't go fight a particular fight, but I will say that "I need money for college" and "the government said I should" are not good reasons. You closed with, "[I] am appalled by people who would still criticize soldiers who fought and died when their country asked them to." Well, anyone who would do that has a far higher opinion of the moral caliber of our country's decision makers than I do.

Fenomas- you are absolutely right, bar none. I think the time I have been the most thoroughly disgusted with our country was the Rwandan genocide, in which the governing power (whom we had helped to establish and shore up) slaughtered the ethnic minority for about three months. They didn't last as long as Hitler's camps, but then, they didn't have as many people to kill - and they were much more efficient, killing about 10,000 people per day. And the US knew it, thoroughly, completely, and we did absolutely nothing. In fact, we pulled our "peacekeeping" troops out of Rwanda three weeks into the slaughter. The last group of soldiers to leave was guarding a church that contained more than a thousand of the minority. Every man, woman and child was slaughtered within ten minutes of the wihtdrawal of the troops. Months later, when most of the blood and corpses had been cleaned up, Clinton visited Rwanda to express his condolences. He presented the new president with a plaque, and left an hour after arriving. He never left the airport.

Go read http://mediafilter.org/caq/CAQ52Rwanda.html if you want more details.

Didnt mean to go off on a rant there, I know no one's arguing that our gov't is saintly. but it pisses me off, and I think it makes it abundantly clear why I don't want the gov't telling me what is and is not worth sacrificing my life for. I know that if I had been commanding those troops guarding that church, I would have stayed. And I would have fought to protect those people, and if I survived, I would have been court-martialed and jailed. I'm not saying that our military and our military graveyards don't contain some heroes, but go ask those soldiers that left those defenseless, cowering tutsis to be butchered, ask them if they feel like heroes, ask them if they'd like a parade or a holiday.

Finally, since this post isn't long enough yet, a word on third world countries. I disagree that they aren't important to our national policy, and I disagree with Jimbo that there's nothing we could do to stabilize them. If we wanted to stabilize third world countries, we could start by not raping them for their natural resources. Or did you think we all have cellphones and nice cars because of our fabulous work ethic? DeBeers, the company whose monopoly on diamonds makes Operating Systems look like a competitive market, has it down to a science - they fly in their own people, use their own equipment, and ship everything out when the mine is empty - and the only ones making any money are the corrupt governments that agreed to it in the first place. They've been mining diamonds in half the countries in Africa for the last hundred years, and you can travel the length and breadth of the continent without finding a native who owns the equipment to mine diamonds or knows how to use it. And of course, we're all familiar with how to rape a third world country Nike-style. At some point, all the Nigerias and Indonesias will kick all the first-worlders out, either because the natural resources have been depleted, or because they want to start raping the land for themselves, and the effect on our economy will make the dot-com debacle pale in comparison. But, we can probably just start another war.

posted 06-01-2001 10:57            

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Originally posted by skeeter:
I guess I'm just an isolationist, I don't think our military has any business anywhere,especially acting as the world's police force. Save our tax dollars and keep them all at home, we have enough problems here .

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Even if we stopped policing the other countries (and again, in principal I agree)... after all thats what the UN is for... guess who normally ends up being the military force of the UN?

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On another note, to have a war just to bring us out of a recession or depression is a piss poor reason.

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Both wars also brought us out of depressions, which, while I dont consider that a good reason for war myself sure didnt' hurt things for those that returned from the war.

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posted 06-01-2001 11:45            

However, war pulls us out of economic hardtimes, builds nationlism and when we win provides us with all kinds of benefits (ie: preventing other nations from posessing nukes etc, oil etc. etc.) so as a politican which do you choose?

posted 06-01-2001 13:26            

1. Wars run at a SEVERE loss, not a profit
2. The net anti-recession effect of war is actually caused by the transfer of value from the government to industry and thence to individual citizens - in other words, the simple inflationary effect of the government spending "money" to get industry to produce wartime materiel.
3. You should, therefore, be able to come out of a recession just as easily by massive government spending on interior public works - the public works in question just need to require a large amount of domestic material and labor so as to promote equitable redistribution of value beyond industry down to individual citizens.

posted 06-01-2001 15:04            

The losers, on the other hand, have a different story, but if they lost they shouldn't have been fighting in the first place.

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3. You should, therefore, be able to come out of a recession just as easily by massive government spending on interior public works - the public works in question just need to require a large amount of domestic material and labor so as to promote equitable redistribution of value beyond industry down to individual citizens.

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hrm. This seems extremely faulty to me, especially since that's never worked. There were numerous governmental programs set up to get the Great Depression over with, but it didn't happen. War fixed it.

And as for third-world countries, honestly, who cares? Governments can not be run in any successful manner if they care about every other country in the world for humanitarian reasons. We went after Hitler because he was attempting to take over Europe. Europe was and continues to be of vital interest to the US. Most of the third-world, however, is not. That's the fact, plain and simple.

posted 06-01-2001 17:16            

"the simple inflationary effect of the government spending "money" to get industry to produce wartime materiel"

I dont know that it would be considered an inflationary effect.. the government does not neccesarily have to produce more money.. they just have to start spending what they have... War creates jobs, soldiers make money, their wives begin working, daycares get paid, Boeing starts making planes... all of these people now have money to spend... pulling the economy out of a slump. Inflation, as I understand it is what causes recessions.. not what pulls us out...

Maybe I misunderstood you tho

[This message has been edited by Sara (edited 06-01-2001).]

posted 06-01-2001 17:36            

But back to how wars end recessions. Um, I dunno, it's really complicated, but I do know this. Wars do run at a tremendous loss for the government... which would be a big problem if the government were a corporation, incapable of setting interest rates and printing money. But it isn't, it's a government, so it plays by different rules. See, the US gov't (I'm not real familiar with other ones) literally creates money out of nothing via the Federal Reserve. Here's how it works. The US extends a line of credit (based on real goods - gold, land, etc) to the Federal Reserve for X dollars. The Line of Credit is just a piece of paper saying, "You can spend X dollars and we'll back you up." So the Fed prints up X dollars and spends it by lending it back to the US Government. Now, the US Gov't has X dollars in its hot little hands, and it owes the Fed X dollars plus interest. The US Gov't then goes out and spends the X dollars paying poor people to dig ditches or whatever, thus stimulating the economy. At some point in the future the US will theoretically pay the money back to the Fed, at which point the Fed now has X dollars (which belonged, remember, to the US the whole time) plus interest (which the Fed owns, even though they never did anything but push paper). So, all that's really happening is the Gov't is lending itself money, at interest, with the Gov't's future tax earnings as collateral. The idea is that some of the money the government distributes this way will find its way into the hands of someone who will use it to create real wealth (real wealth means buildings and inventions and food, not paper money), thus increasing the amount of real wealth in the country, thus increasing the US's future tax earnings.

Of course, this is a vast simplification. This process goes on all the time, all that happens during wars is that it increases and the interest rate at which the Gov't lends itself money changes. Furthermore, the whole system would result in massive inflation in a very short amount of time if people stopped producing real wealth. And of course, most Americans (people and corporations) consume way more real wealth than they create, so the whole system has to be shored up with constant infusions of real wealth in the form of resources stolen from other countries. And you'll notice that the only party that really comes out on top in the whole deal is the Fed. Which is why I said (http://www.penismightier.com/main.php?start=864) that Woodrow Wilson ass-raped us collectively when he created the Fed (and I should have added, the ass-raping was really finished when FDR took us off the gold standard, which allowed the Fed to create an unlimited well of credit for investors to dip from).

I know I'm ranting randomly and so far off topic that I couldn't see Memorial Day with a telescope. Forget what I say, go read up on economics on the web. But what it boils down to is this: The Fed decides all monetary policy; decides how high inflation will be; decides how much money is in use; decides how much credit is available; and decides when recessions will start and end. To say that the Fed also decides when we go to war might be simplistic, but it would certainly be untrue to say they have no part in it. And incidentally, here's another fun fact: The Fed isn't a part of the US government in any way. Oh no, it's a private bank. The Fed has stock which you could theoretically buy, but I don't think any of it has been bought or sold since the forties. It's all owned by regional Feds (The Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a dozen or so others) which are, in turn, publicly traded and have been controlled by a few rich families since the forties as well: the Rothschilds, the Kuhns, the Morgans, etc, everyone Hitler use to complain about. Also, the Fed isn't accountable for the money they lend; they basically caused the S&L crisis by making so much credit available that the overall quality of loans in the S&L industry dropped so low that the whole industry folded; the Fed keeps all the interest that was paid in, and the US Government pays for all the money that was lost. I.e. the taxpayers. Also, none of the money that goes into the Fed goes towards reducing the debt (not since 1934, anyway), it's owned by the shareholders. And while we're on the subject, the Fed is also the only bank in the US not subject to regulation and audits; no one who doesn't work there has seen their books or accounts since the thing was founded. I don't think anyone really knows what they're worth now, but here's a hint. The last time they chose to make a statement, the Fed was worth $45 billion. That was in 1949.

I wouldn't wander off into useless tangents so much if I had more to do at work...

posted 06-01-2001 17:59            

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Originally posted by weis:
The Fed has stock which you could theoretically buy, but I don't think any of it has been bought or sold since the forties. It's all owned by regional Feds (The Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a dozen or so others) which are, in turn, publicly traded and have been controlled by a few rich families since the forties as well: the Rothschilds, the Kuhns, the Morgans, etc, everyone Hitler use to complain about...

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Hahaha, "Weishaupt" is definitely an appropriate alias for you, fucker.

Sara - when I said "wars are run at a loss", I meant that the US Gov - whether or not it actually needs to "create" new money to do it - spends VAST amounts of money on munitions, materiel, and manpower in order to fight the war - and it's money that it never gets back. We didn't exactly cart tons of bullion back from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, or Desert Storm you know... therefore, what's REALLY responsible for the relief of the recession is simply the government spending money, not anything inherent in war itself.

The thing is, we never SPEND as much on public works projects as we do on war. War is FANTASTICALLY expensive... and I just wish that when we needed to get the government to let loose of that much of its fucking capital to stimulate the economy, we could do so WITHOUT having to go kill people. All in all, it seems like we'd be better off spending the money on new roads, bridges, school buildings, wetlands reclamation, etc. Fuck, what's STOPPING us from spending as much as we do on war on all of the above? Dunno; we just DON'T.

As for whether or not inflation "leads to" a recession, well, it depends on how deeply you want to look at it - it's a cyclical thing, but unless I'm mistaken, basically inflation and depression are the opposite ends of the spectrum, and they both suck ass.