The price of peace...

[Necrometer]

but great job making DW's point.

How so? You think I'm "happy to ignore incredible evil"? Everyone happily, calmly living in the USA is a master of complicity; we commit incredible evil, too: less blatantly yet on a larger scale. How many innocents have we killed compared to Saddam during similar time periods? And in our case, THEY'RE MOSTLY IN OTHER NATIONS. Give me a fucking break. I'm not happy that people are suffering ANYWHERE but the only rational way to draw lines - as I see it - is intranational vs. international atrocities. USA commits warcrimes, too, but I guess it's OK and we don't need invaded because ________ !?!?!?!? You're so fucking full of shit, Johnlapse, you think all your hard-earned "international awareness" has enlightened you, but you're just brainwashed and near-sighted. You can't see how incredibly arrogant is the stance that we're liberating any of these people? OF COURSE YOU CAN'T. As if the net misery in Iraq is DOWN since Saddam was removed. It's fucking retarded, transparently so, and fuck you guys for mocking those who are just trying to apply some reason to the batshit insanity of the whole affair.

[Broken Into Pieces]

especially since we, too, are still technically at war with them. we've merely signed an armistice and entered into a cessation of hostilities, not a formal declaration of the end of the war.

is America officially at war with North Korea? I thought any non-Korean participants were merely "assisting their Korean allies" rather than official participants...

[John Jr.]

nope, just signed an armistice. still, technically, at war. why do you think N. Korea keeps 1 million troops on the border? it's the east/west germany of the cold war we've had with the chinese since the 50's....

[John Jr.]

but great job making DW's point.

How so? You think I'm "happy to ignore incredible evil"? Everyone happily, calmly living in the USA is a master of complicity; we commit incredible evil, too: less blatantly yet on a larger scale. How many innocents have we killed compared to Saddam during similar time periods? And in our case, THEY'RE MOSTLY IN OTHER NATIONS. Give me a fucking break. I'm not happy that people are suffering ANYWHERE but the only rational way to draw lines - as I see it - is intranational vs. international atrocities. USA commits warcrimes, too, but I guess it's OK and we don't need invaded because ________ !?!?!?!? You're so fucking full of shit, Johnlapse, you think all your hard-earned "international awareness" has enlightened you, but you're just brainwashed and near-sighted. You can't see how incredibly arrogant is the stance that we're liberating any of these people? OF COURSE YOU CAN'T. As if the net misery in Iraq is DOWN since Saddam was removed. It's fucking retarded, transparently so, and fuck you guys for mocking those who are just trying to apply some reason to the batshit insanity of the whole affair.

dammit ross, everytime i dont want to like you.....there you are.

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

[caldwell.the.great]

I'm sure not reading this whole thread, but in response to the first post:

It's true that generally, a fewer percentage of humans today die violent deaths than they did, say, before the industrial revolution. Most people also live longer, healthier lives. These statistics are the result of the fetishization of population science, and metrics that measure human well-being as a whole and in the abstract. This has led several people, most prominently Steven Pinker, to claim that the modern world is a less violent place.

While this is generally true, I think you're totally right to question that that has shit all to do with American hegemony, or the extraordinary violence that we directly commit or indirectly support. If you think that the US supports states with robust public health, economies that care for the majority of the population, or even "democracy" and "human rights," check out Pinochet (or one could even point to apartheid South Africa and Saddam Hussein before we pulled a 180 on them).

Also, while this is generally true of the world's population as a whole, certain parts of the world have had their life expectancy radically decreased, especially in the last several decades. While perhaps most of the deaths in impoverished nations are not from axe blows or whatever, I think that death from lack of health infrastructure, treatable diseases, and the destruction of subsistence economy unambiguously represents "violence," especially when the structural conditions that lead to this degradation of living conditions is often the direct culmination of a 100+ years of state and corporate imperialism. I really can't convince myself that a world with these exaggerated forms of structural inequality is "less violent" than some arbitrary account of what the human past was like.

I'm glad you post here.

[Necrometer]

Oh, and thanks for the post EEEOOO. I think chalking up nowadays "preventable disease" deaths is sort of dangerous ground, because if everyone had millions of dollars of medical care, nutritionists, and personal trainers hurled at them every year, we'd probably increase our average age by 5+ years. And anyone who dies "too soon" is a casualty? Seems too nebulous to hit home for me. But it's an interesting idea worth considering.

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

How so? You think I'm "happy to ignore incredible evil"? Everyone happily, calmly living in the USA is a master of complicity; we commit incredible evil, too: less blatantly yet on a larger scale. How many innocents have we killed compared to Saddam during similar time periods? And in our case, THEY'RE MOSTLY IN OTHER NATIONS. Give me a fucking break. I'm not happy that people are suffering ANYWHERE but the only rational way to draw lines - as I see it - is intranational vs. international atrocities. USA commits warcrimes, too, but I guess it's OK and we don't need invaded because ________ !?!?!?!? You're so fucking full of shit, Johnlapse, you think all your hard-earned "international awareness" has enlightened you, but you're just brainwashed and near-sighted. You can't see how incredibly arrogant is the stance that we're liberating any of these people? OF COURSE YOU CAN'T. As if the net misery in Iraq is DOWN since Saddam was removed. It's fucking retarded, transparently so, and fuck you guys for mocking those who are just trying to apply some reason to the batshit insanity of the whole affair.

I guess it was dumb thinking I could shame you with just an emoticon. I consider myself a moral relativist, but this complete lack of compassion, or rather piss-poor excuse for a lack of compassion is what makes such relativism equivalent to Satanism in the eyes of ignorant people.

"Well, that dude is raping an eight year old, but I'm not going to step in because maybe that's his eight year old raping culture, and there is no reason for me to expend any energy on someone else's problem because like, I have problems too and there are eight year olds being raped all over the world right now so why is this raped eight year old special, and besides who am I, I stole gum from the convenience store once"

You note I didn't count Iraq among my 'yes' answers to your previous question of 'is it worth it', but there is no doubt that the removal of Hussein was a positive thing, even if it occurred for 'the wrong reasons' or in the context of numerous negative things. No the "net" is not down (yet) but that is not because an element of our invasion of Iraq was the removal of Hussein, it is because of numerous other elements of that invasion.

In WWII, we killed tons of innocents leaving scorched earth in our wake on the way of liberating Europe from the Nazis. The military industrial complex profited greatly, corrupt and even evil world leaders got to play the role of heroes (Stalin). Please explain to me why it would have been better to allow the Nazis to take over Europe, since obviously this was not our problem and such action as we did take can be wholly characterized as an egotistical exercise in imperial arrogance since really things are that simple.

Please explain how the world would be better off today if the entirety of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and South America was under the sphere of influence of Soviet or Chinese communism (now Im really playing Devil's advocate)

Or grow up and realize that nothing in national or international affairs is so simple that it can be boiled down to such simple platitudes as you wish to view them as. It is neither "liberty or tyranny", nor is neutrality anything less than complicity and consent (see the Swiss Banks flush with the golden teeth of tortured Jews, or again, the petroleum in your car). Nor are past failures a justification for not seeking future successes. Nor does the good the US does in a given situation, or the good the US does in general mutually exclusive from the bad.

[Broken Into Pieces]

nope, just signed an armistice. still, technically, at war. why do you think N. Korea keeps 1 million troops on the border? it's the east/west germany of the cold war we've had with the chinese since the 50's....

Yes, I'm aware of this, I even said it myself. I asked if America was an official participant in the war.

According to that bastion of fact, Wikipedia, the war was officially between South Korea and the UN on one side, and North Korea, China and the Soviet Union on the other side. America signed the armistice as the UN's representative. North Korea and China also had signees on the armistice. South Korea never signed it. So, unless there have been further treaties/armistices/bits of paper clarifying the participants, America as a country is technically NOT at war here, they are merely representatives of the UN.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

nope, just signed an armistice. still, technically, at war. why do you think N. Korea keeps 1 million troops on the border? it's the east/west germany of the cold war we've had with the chinese since the 50's....

Yes, I'm aware of this, I even said it myself. I asked if America was an official participant in the war.

According to that bastion of fact, Wikipedia, the war was officially between South Korea and the UN on one side, and North Korea, China and the Soviet Union on the other side. America signed the armistice as the UN's representative. North Korea and China also had signees on the armistice. South Korea never signed it. So, unless there have been further treaties/armistices/bits of paper clarifying the participants, America as a country is technically NOT at war here, they are merely representatives of the UN.

As you said though the US signed the armistice on behalf of the UN, South Korea did not, so I do not believe the US's current presence has anything to do with the UN, rather we are backing up SK's decision not to sign for our own national interest reasons. I am not well versed on this conflict though, so I could be wrong.

[caldwell.the.great]

Oh, and thanks for the post EEEOOO. I think chalking up nowadays "preventable disease" deaths is sort of dangerous ground, because if everyone had millions of dollars of medical care, nutritionists, and personal trainers hurled at them every year, we'd probably increase our average age by 5+ years. And anyone who dies "too soon" is a casualty? Seems too nebulous to hit home for me. But it's an interesting idea worth considering.

Okay, for the sake or argument I will take you up on this point. You started the thread with a daydream: what if all the money we spent on the military went towards something positive. Now, EEEOOO gives us all a good idea where some of that money could go and you deem the concept "too nebulous." What precisely is nebulous about this sort of thinking? Medical care and nutrition are two factors that have helped increase lifespans and the quality of living across the globe, so why not concentrate efforts there and challenge ourselves to a greater degree?

[Broken Into Pieces]

blah blah blah blah

blah blah blah blah

In WWII, we killed tons of innocents leaving scorched earth in our wake on the way of liberating Europe from the Nazis. The military industrial complex profited greatly, corrupt and even evil world leaders got to play the role of heroes (Stalin). Please explain to me why it would have been better to allow the Nazis to take over Europe, since obviously this was not our problem and such action as we did take can be wholly characterized as an egotistical exercise in imperial arrogance since really things are that simple.

blah blah blah blah

I have no interest in getting involved in the main discussion of this thread because fuck poltical discussion... but I would just like to point out that Hitler declared war on America first, not the other way around.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

blah blah blah blah

I have no interest in getting involved in the main discussion of this thread because fuck poltical discussion... but I would just like to point out that Hitler declared war on America first, not the other way around.[/quote]

However the US was not very secretly involved in the support of the Allies prior to that with both weapons and other kinds of aid and Hitler's declaration followed the bombing of Pearl Harbor, while the US stood back during the early portions of the Axis ascendancy, by the time we engaged it had already been a not if, but when question for some time. The US certainly had the option to be more or less involved and made a choice.

My point being that generally you can't simply categorize such events or longstanding conditions on a macro level as good or bad, rather you look at the goods and bads on a micro level and then determine the productivity of certain events or conditions

[Broken Into Pieces]

I have no interest in getting involved in the main discussion of this thread because fuck poltical discussion... but I would just like to point out that Hitler declared war on America first, not the other way around.

However the US was not very secretly involved in the support of the Allies prior to that with both weapons and other kinds of aid and Hitler's declaration followed the bombing of Pearl Harbor, while the US stood back during the early portions of the Axis ascendancy, by the time we engaged it had already been a not if, but when question for some time.

This only reinforces the point that parallels cannot be drawn... if entering into a conflict is unavoidable, then why debate its morality? Whereas US intervention in Iraq was not unavoidable.

[Necrometer]

Thanks for the rhetoric, John, but I'm barely interested in replying in light of your pathetic "yet" applied to Iraq, and your bringing up World War II as if USA was anything but inept in that situation with regard to motivations. The biggest no-brainer for military retaliation in recent history, and we sit on our hands until something worthy of a Michael Bay movie comes along. Where was the great American compassion then? Do you actually believe any of these wars have fucking ANYTHING to do with compassion?

Please explain how the world would be better off today if the entirety of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and South America was under the sphere of influence of Soviet or Chinese communism (now Im really playing Devil's advocate)

Under the sphere of influence via Soviet/Chinese invasion? These are things I consider WORTHY of intervention.

If "growing up" equates to "accepting my role in funding perpetual invasions done for profitable reason X but marketed to NPR listeners as a solution for scary problem Y", then I hope to never grow up.

I can't believe you frame USA as the morally superior force on the planet because they apparently have the balls to make the tough calls... You seriously jumped straight to child rape as if we have not nuked cities full of innocent families. It's not like we haven't been involved in international imperialist child rape, either.

Oh, and thanks for the post EEEOOO. I think chalking up nowadays "preventable disease" deaths is sort of dangerous ground, because if everyone had millions of dollars of medical care, nutritionists, and personal trainers hurled at them every year, we'd probably increase our average age by 5+ years. And anyone who dies "too soon" is a casualty? Seems too nebulous to hit home for me. But it's an interesting idea worth considering.

Okay, for the sake or argument I will take you up on this point. You started the thread with a daydream: what if all the money we spent on the military went towards something positive. Now, EEEOOO gives us all a good idea where some of that money could go and you deem the concept "too nebulous." What precisely is nebulous about this sort of thinking? Medical care and nutrition are two factors that have helped increase lifespans and the quality of living across the globe, so why not concentrate efforts there and challenge ourselves to a greater degree?

Oh, that stuff's definitely a better use of the money! I just think discounting the decreased total violent deaths because there are still non-violent deaths is not a strong argument. Certainly, I feel that the majority of the defense budget would be more appropriately applied to healthcare and other social works.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Thanks for the rhetoric, John, but I'm barely interested in replying in light of your pathetic "yet" applied to Iraq, and your bringing up World War II as if USA was anything but inept in that situation with regard to motivations. The biggest no-brainer for military retaliation in recent history, and we sit on our hands until something worthy of a Michael Bay movie comes along. Where was the great American compassion then? Do you actually believe any of these wars have fucking ANYTHING to do with compassion?

Under the sphere of influence via Soviet/Chinese invasion? These are things I consider WORTHY of intervention.

If "growing up" equates to "accepting my role in funding perpetual invasions done for profitable reason X but marketed to NPR listeners as a solution for scary problem Y", then I hope to never grow up.

I can't believe you frame USA as the morally superior force on the planet because they apparently have the balls to make the tough calls... You seriously jumped straight to child rape as if we have not nuked cities full of innocent families. It's not like we haven't been involved in international imperialist child rape, either.

No wonder you are agreeing with dummfuc in this thread, which should be reason enough for suspicion on your part, you seem to have convinced yourself that bad and good are things that happen in isolation and have nothing but strawman accusations against arguments I am not making to back them up. It's ignorant to an extreme I wouldn't have expected of you, a need for some sort of supernatural moral clarity that simply does not exist. There are multiple good and bad reasons why, when and how we got involved in WWII and Iraq, there are multiple valiant and disgraceful things that happened during each conflict, there are multiple positive and negative effects of our involvement. Taken as a whole, a hypothetical 'you' might say WWII was justified and the Iraq war was unjustified, but you don't get to pick and choose history or its participants. If you are going to talk about WWII being justified then that includes, any questionable motivations, the firebombing of Dresden, the nuking of Japan*, the leadership of Stalin, and the founding of Israel. If these things make WWII unjustified than please explain why fascist domination of Europe was a preferable result.

Similarly with Iraq, you can claim the war as a whole is unjustified but again you have to tell me why leaving a bellicose ambitious tyrant in place was a better result.

The same holds true talking about any other country or alliance of countries making 'tough' decisions. Maybe guy one was beating down Rodney King because he was spazzing on drugs and a threat and maybe guy two was beating him down because he hates niggers.

Sure we did a lot of rotten shit to prevent a Domino effect in the Cold War, but again tell me those people or we would be better off if we ignored them and let the merciful, compassion of communist China or Russia hold sway as the dominant world powers. Yeah, a lot of people hate us for our actions during that war, but ask citizens of the former Soviet bloc countries how they feel about such terrible war criminals as Kennedy and Reagan.

Whether you 'grow up' or not, in the sense of being able to discuss such issues with an actual mature awareness of the way the world works, you are still always going to accept your role as a consumer, citizen, participant etc...

*Interestingly enough on Japan, since we are using the collective "we" a lot, if "we" are guilty of their deaths, then are "they" really innocent?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes

[Necrometer]

I'm interested in neither an arms race of condescension, nor a world history of international affairs. I shouldn't have increased the proportion of my intended discussion. I don't think I'll ever be persuaded that our case to forcibly depose Saddam is any stronger than the case that some other person (with another POV) could make to forcibly depose a USA president. Pre-emptive wars and moral-superiority wars will never make sense to me, hence this thread. Maybe it does make the world a better place... but this is an "ends justifies means" legitimizing, isn't it? Isn't that typically applied to things that are unjust? But I guess enough rhetoric and retroactive "trust me, this way's better" and the concept of justice is redfined and retrofit to whatever we did.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I'm interested in neither an arms race of condescension, nor a world history of international affairs. I shouldn't have increased the proportion of my intended discussion. I don't think I'll ever be persuaded that our case to forcibly depose Saddam is any stronger than the case that some other person (with another POV) could make to forcibly depose a USA president. Pre-emptive wars and moral-superiority wars will never make sense to me, hence this thread. Maybe it does make the world a better place... but this is an "ends justifies means" legitimizing, isn't it? Isn't that typically applied to things that are unjust? But I guess enough rhetoric and retroactive "trust me, this way's better" and the concept of justice is redfined and retrofit to whatever we did.

Your question at the start of the thread was "Is this (war, militarism, an interventionist role in the world) worth the trade off (casualties, lack of money for other priorities, involvement in sticky conflicts) and my response was basically that the ends justify the means, in terms of whether there are 'good' wars or 'bad' wars in terms of reasoning behind fighting them or if war itself is bad, whether it can have 'good' or 'bad' results. I am equally pointing out that the decision to do little, less or nothing is not a morally neutral decision, either.

Going back to the crime analogy. I am a prosecutor, and thanks to the testimony of a child porn dealer and a child porn consumer, I know who the child porn creator is and can convict him. I can either cut a deal with two bads in order to convict the worse, or I can prosecute the two bads and never get to the worse. Doing the former means I am accommodating two vile, disgusting criminals. But doing the latter means I have a chance of stopping an even viler, more disgusting criminal and I, by omission am making an active decision not to do so. So obviously, I get the 'big kahuna' but here's the problem, the cp viewer and distributor also have other videos made by people I don't know, videos with other people's children, people who don't necessarily get justice if I get this one guy and the dudes making profits and getting off on their children's suffering get a slap on the wrist. If I cut deals with those two now to get the big kahuna, how am I going to find out who the other creeps are, but if I don't I am not going to get the 'devil I do know'.

Stating that the ends justify the means doesn't mean that the ends sanctifies the means. It is also really a determination that can only be made after action and as such doesn't necessarily provide preliminary justification for any action. But at the end you can not parse out every individual mean that led to the end. You can obviously state that some means were criminal, disturbing, amoral whatever but you can't simply imagine a world where such discrepancies have vanished, it is a false choice, just as it is a false statement that non-participation somehow absolves one of the results of their negligence.

I am not trying to revise or retrofit history, nor make a rule everyone has to follow, I am simply saying when we make value judgments about events, particularly big complicated events these issues must always factor into the debate. As I said, Iraq, ultimately not worth it, despite certain positive results, I can defend that position, similarly WWII worth it despite some negative results and I can defend that position. Some might say both were worth it, some might say both were not worth it (or "Pre-emptive wars and moral-superiority wars will never make sense") but either side can not make the argument in isolation of the contradictions inherent in making any such call.

[neckbeard]

Just to clear something up for myself: Ross, are you working in here under the assumption that the decline in worldwide violence is due to all the American (and allied) military action?

[Necrometer]

OK John, thanks for the response. Regardless of if my stance on (or grasp of) any of this stuff has changed, I'm glad we're talking about it.

Just to clear something up for myself: Ross, are you working in here under the assumption that the decline in worldwide violence is due to all the American (and allied) military action?

That's the working hypothesis I proposed, with me being extremely skeptical of the scenario as proposed. I think it would be interesting if - even though none of these things make and sense to me when examined at face value and in a vacuum - they were actually the most effective way to minimize the number of violent casualties on the planet.

[neckbeard]

Yeah I'm more of a more peaceful in spite of US guy.

So, laters, thread

[John Jr.]

nope, just signed an armistice. still, technically, at war. why do you think N. Korea keeps 1 million troops on the border? it's the east/west germany of the cold war we've had with the chinese since the 50's....

Yes, I'm aware of this, I even said it myself. I asked if America was an official participant in the war.

According to that bastion of fact, Wikipedia, the war was officially between South Korea and the UN on one side, and North Korea, China and the Soviet Union on the other side. America signed the armistice as the UN's representative. North Korea and China also had signees on the armistice. South Korea never signed it. So, unless there have been further treaties/armistices/bits of paper clarifying the participants, America as a country is technically NOT at war here, they are merely representatives of the UN.

well, we are still members (and prime financiers) of the UN.....

[John Jr.]

Or grow up and realize that nothing in national or international affairs is so simple that it can be boiled down to such simple platitudes as you wish to view them as. It is neither "liberty or tyranny", nor is neutrality anything less than complicity and consent (see the Swiss Banks flush with the golden teeth of tortured Jews, or again, the petroleum in your car). my way or the hiway. Nor are past failures a justification for not seeking future successes. my way or the hiway. Nor does the good the US does in a given situation, or the good the US does in general mutually exclusive from the bad. my way or the hiway. my way or the hiway. my way or the hiway. my way or the hiway. my way or the hiway.

[The Wages of Ben]

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

[ThE GodDamN BattletweeteR]

hmm.. dont check back into a thread for a few days and things get weird.

[neckbeard]

Via: USA Today:


More than half of the panel members appointed to review the Pentagon’s latest four-year strategy blueprint have financial ties to defense contractors with a stake in the planning process, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

Congress created the 20-member panel in 2006 to analyze the Defense Department’s four-year plan, known as the Quadrennial Defense Review. Lawmakers called for the committee to provide an independent “alternate view” of the Pentagon’s plan, which shapes future military policy and spending on weapons and other needs.

A dozen of the unpaid panelists were appointed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and eight by the top Republican and Democrat members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees. Eleven work for defense contractors as employees, consultants or board directors, records show.

“The Pentagon often talks about its cooperation with industry, but this makes you wonder who’s wearing the pants in this relationship,” said Mandy Smithberger, national security investigator for the Project on Government Oversight.