FluxCapacitor said:
Therumancer said:
Someone's just BEGGING for a Godwin call. Seriously, I know that referencing Nazism is an automatic loss, but there must be some exceptions - like when the speaker is holding out their own economic strength as a justification for why they could slaughter MILLIONS of people, and claiming that genocide has gotten a bad rap from the UN. I'm curious, Therumancer, are you expecting the world at large to thank the United States for every day you guys DON'T kill us all? Because it sounds like you are. You simply cannot make the claim that America has been the world's good guys and that all reasonable people will welcome dealings with you (implying that anyone who will not deal with you is clearly in the wrong) while simultaneously claiming legitimacy for black ops where you have inserted paramilitaries into other nations to foment chaos and install/support authoritarian regimes. Does not compute.
The neoconservative worldview that opposes any form of democracy that doesn't specifically suit the needs of your country is blinkered and retrograde, and responsible for the depth of anger you feel flowing your way from the international community. I for one am thoroughly thrilled that you live in a secular democracy, because hopefully it means that you and your ideas will never come to power - as with any culture, America is not a monoculture and your ideas are far too fringe to sway everyone to your cause. (See what I did there? I acknowledged that different people in a culture can have different ideas, and judged their culture accordingly. You should try it some time...)
EDIT: Therumancer, why don't you make your own thread for this junk instead of inhabiting the deep pages of an unrelated issue? Or does this sort of argument do better when it's not seen by all that many people? And can we get that h.264 guy back? He was relevant, informative and interesting.
Oh trust me, I've spoken my piece in a lot of places, and it's hardly low profile. As one of the only right wing militants on these forums, whenever I express my opinions I tend to wind up with people questioning me on it, then I have to explain myself, and soon we've derailed the thread.
In this paticular case it all started with me making a point about how we COULD go after something like Anonymous globally but we won't. This lead to people questioning that, me responding, and then people wanting to discuss wartime morality. I mean I could be a troll about it and not bother to answer at all, but I generally don't do that. Even if people disagree with me, I think it's not a bad thing for them to hear alternative points of view, and occasionally even if I disagree with them I get some insightful answers.
I'm not always that good a writer, so perhaps I wrote something badly, however I will say that I think you might be misunderstanding some things, given not having followed the entire discussion. That seems to be a frequent problem when people respond to one post that gets their attention without following the entire sequence of events.
Economics have not really entered into this discussion, military power has. The central discussion having beem more about whether we COULD do something, rather than me saying we should actually do it, or that it would be a good idea. People talking about the reactions of the rest of the world were off topic to the discussion, but I've generally responded by saying that I don't think people would react the way that they think. In part because belligerant nations like Russia have hardly seen the kind of reaction they are proposing, with only a fraction of the potential damage the US could inflict, and partially because I very much doubt that the world would wind up rallying behind a group of troublemakers and nations trying to protect them other than talking a lot of crap. This for a number of reasons, both because any kind of "united offensive against the US" would destroy the world and kill everyone involved including us and I doubt they would opt for suicide over something like Anonymous if we DID overreact in that fashion, and partially because they would benefit more from cooperating and then throwing our own actions back in our face next time we tried the whole "world police" thing. In the end though that's all hypothetical, and based over a ridiculous series of events that nobody including me thinks would ever happen. It's entirely an offshoot of me pointing out that there is a differance between "can't do something" and "won't do something because it's idiotic".
Now, as far as economics go, in OTHER threads which were more dedicated to the subject, I have spoken about military action for economic reasons. Typically pointing out that if the US economy collapses, causes rampant poverty, and reduces our importants in the world community that's just like someone doing it to us militarily. The bottom line is the USA as we know it is destroyed, and we fall... and yes like most dominant world powrs the rest of the world will be overjoyed (few outside of it were exactly sad to see the British empire fall for example). I have said that I personally believe MAD applies to such situations, if we're going to be destroyed we should take everyone else out with us. I'm sure if your on the receiving end of it you don't like that idea, nor are you especially fond of what this means of dreams of other countries who hope to one day see us go down and replace us, when the US could just fire off it's entire nuclear stockpile while waving goodbye. Trade wars being another form of war, and the military allmost always having played a key role in the economic fortunes of a country, leading to the old maxim "free trade means he with the biggest guns trades freely". I simply think that instead of being such nice guys we should be a bit more ruthless about things, and simply make it clear that if we go down, the rest of the world is coming with us. That's really unpleasant and "crazy" when your outside, but if it's you and you have the capability your liable to wind up thinking the same way, and if you claim otherwise your lying.
While widely disagreed with because it's a frightening thought to many, that isn't quite the same thing as saying that the world should be grateful every day that we don't conquer them.
Nor is it even close to that when I say in general that the US should be more assertive militarily in standing up for it's own interests. This does lead to discussions with people (especially from the international community) trying to say what the US *can't* do, which leads to me again explaining the differance between *can't* do and *won't* do. Typically leading to hypothetical discussions that end with me pointing out that even in the event of some unlikely consensus of all nations teaming up to come after the US (when the international community has trouble dealing with what's left of Russia), it ends with everyone on the planet dying, not with the US going down and everyone else living happily ever after. Pointing out that we have the firepower to destroy the entire globe 10x over, or engaging in discussions about military force, does not acually mean that I think any of the things in those discussions are likely to occur, or that I want them to happen. When I actually talk about being assertive militarily, sometimes it's rather extreme (like in the case of a total war doctrine being used in conflict with The Middle East) but mostly it's on a far more limited and reasonable scale, even if still unpopular given the political leanings here. Acting more militant DOES mean attacking more people, and using more muscle, but it does not mean conquering the world, or being totally indiscriminate with the use of force. I won't go into specifics because this would make the post even longer and cause even more arguements about totally irrelvent things.
Now this is long, but I WILL also say that I think it's dead wrong to argue the attitude that the US should not ever stand up for it's own interests, which is pretty much what most arguements from the international community come down to (and I am guessing your not from the US though I'm not sure). Any time it comes down to the US supporting it's own agenda, especially if it means someone else losing out on something, we always get a ton of crying about it. I do indeed get that as the dominant world power (for the moment) we're hardly popular, as dominant powers rarely are, but it is unreasonable to expect the US to quietly and passively die off, which is more or less what this typically comes down to. There will ALWAYS be a depth of anger towards a dominant world power from the rest of the world community, that is an unchanging fact, and it will not end until there is a world unity (which is a whole differant discussion). This is one of the big reasons why it neither surprises or bothers me. It would be one thing if the world community wasn't always in a frothing, anti-American rage nowadays, but it is, and it was like that for previous dominant world powers, so really I consider that the normal state of affairs. Especially since that frothing anger lasts up until a nation needs something from us.
As far as the issue with democratic regimes and who we support goes, there is such a thing as common sense involved here. Obviously we'd be complete idiots to prop up someone who wants to blow our heads off. Given control over the situation, I doubt most of the nations making the criticism would do the same thing. Not being stupid is hardly a valid reason to complain.
What's more, just because someone claims they are supporting, or building a democratic regime, does not mean it's true. We got involved in Veitnam largely by taking the word of the goverment that it wanted to embrace democracy and become a progressive society. It had no intention of this and was a corrupt mess that did not represent those principles, and was not worth defending. By the time we go there though, it was too late, and much idiocy I won't get into ensured. Don't think for a second though that the US hasn't gotten a little bit more wary about claims of democracy and started taking a slightly better look at who is involved.
I assume your referring to the situation in Egypt right now specifically, and why the US hasn't come running in to help the protestors who are screaming democracy at times, and why a lot of people want to back the dictator. The thing to consider here is that those protestors moving against the goverment have almost no leadership at all, or any real plan on how to run the goverment. Their only point of unity is in getting rid of the dictator. The closest thing to an acknowledged leader seems to be a 30 year old google executive, whose major qualification was providing meeting information to help get things going, and talking smack about the goverment online. The biggest coordinated "block" of people that could conceivably come in and create any kind of goverment in a timely fashion are the islamics and they are hardly waving a "democracy" flag. They will try and turn Egypt into an Islamic nation going by the same agenda that makes them a block to begin with. They aren't a huge majority or anything either, and would liable spark a lot of resistance. See, right now the Dictator provides stability, we pull him out of power, or support it, and the replacement is something far worse, or an endless series of civil wars because nobody can agree who should be in charge, and that would become our fault. I also guarantee if we made that mess we'd be called on it, and the international community would quickly forget about all the pressure it put on us to create the situation to begin with. Like many things with the international community we're going to be the bad guys no matter what we do in all likelyhood, which is part of why I have such trouble taking it too seriously. My basic attitude is that the world just needs to chill out and let us try and do the right thing, and if it fails, we can ar least say we didn't run in half cocked due to pressure. Or heck, why the heck is everyone turning their eyes to us on this one? I mean everyone hates us anyway, arbitrarly elect China or France or someone... Hey Haiti hasn't made amy major world desicians, maybe we should let them decide what the rest of the world should be doing here... but oh wait, we're evil yet when something happens guess who the leadership/scapegoat falls to.
As far as being the good guys go, my point is typically that we don't really support ourselves all that well which is why I suggest being a lot more assertive of our own interests. It's also that as I point out we typically wind up not doing a lot of things that would benefit us for moral reasons, whether anyone wants to accept that or not.
One of the points that comes up in the "could" vs. "won't" discussions that annoys people is the fact that us not doing things relies more on us not doing it because it would be wrong, or stupid, as frequently the former as the latter. This as opposed to it being because of any real fear of some kind of global unity rising to stop the US. It makes the rest of the world seem more valid and confident to think that they could stop us, even together, but again, all they could do is choose to die in the end even unified. That's just a statement of fact, nothing really malevolent about it, and typically pointed out in response to some rather ridiculous hypothetical situations to begin with.
Now if you've READ this far, I'll be blunt about something. If the entire world could actually UNIFY under one voice, I would say go for it, and suggest the US disbanding and joining right in. See, that's like my personal "endgame" wet dream goal for saving humanity as a whole. If it can be done without cost from bloodshed, that's great. But you know, it's not happening which is why the idea is stupid. Yes, I get right back in people's faces about alliances against the US if we were to dare to represent our own interests (or in some purely hypothetical context that has no basis in reality to begin with), but you know by that point any pretext of common sense is usually out of the equasion. Typically when I'm being more reasonable about it, I kind of point out that Russia has been far worse than I actually suggest the US being (usually, there are exceptions). Russia tried to influance an election in Ukraine throug assasination, it invaded Georgia, threatened Poland over a defensive missle base, cut off the gas in the EU, and all kinds of things over the last few years. It hasn't even been able to get the supposed "union" of European nations to do anything united in response when it was sitting there with an army on it's border, cutting off the gas, threatening to nuke member nations, and pretty much saying "hey go for it if you can". Russia is a mere shadow of what it used to be, a world power sure, but not a super power or anything to boot. Yet I'm supposed to believe that if the US uses it's military to leverage some country for it's own interests, the entire globe is going to unite hand in hand sing "we are the world" and come after us, dude if it's that easy to bring the globe together then I am seriously going to suggest going after Anonymous in the most insane fashions possible (or something similarly stupid), because that right there would make it 100% worthwhile. Heck, if that REALLY ever happened, I'll be the first one to say the US should surrender because, hot damn, we just achieved world peace.
Hopefully this clarified some things, I doubt you'll agree with me, but I think your off base on some of it. This is going to be my last post in this thread since we're wait off topic, and I can't think of much else to say, and I've explained anything that should probably need clarification about what I think.