RadiusXd said:
Therumancer said:
derelix said:
Ok clearly your way too close minded on the subject to fully understand it. You keep fighting the good fight you patriot. We need to stop them freedom hatin terrorists.
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I was going to write a response to this, but since your resorting to flames and are unable to discuss the subject seriously I'm not going to bother.
However, you are correct to some extent about brainwashing. I recommend doing some reading on propaganda, military discapline and conditioning, and the reasons for it. You will probably learn something. Take a spin through the WW II section of the Smithsonian sometimes and all the stuff they have on the propaganda of the war including some of the videos, fliers, and other assorted things along with some explanations it's quite eye opening.
As to why the Nazis needed to be stopped, well like most wars both sides have their own points of view on things and neither thinks they are wrong. Reality is "us against them" not any great battle between good and evil despite what the propaganda might say. That propaganda is nessicary though because if your going to exterminate an idealogy so yours can dominate or survive, you need to demonize them as much as possible so the soldiers doing the bombing and killing don't think about "well this is an 11 year old I'm killing" or "OMG, there are innocent civilians just going about their lives in those houses, they did nothing wrong except be raised and educated here", or view the enemy soldiers as ordinary guys like you with wives and kids back home or whatever.
You might not like it, but that's the truth. As I said, check it out some time.
soldiers aren't SUPPOSED to kill innocents, thats a large part of the reason america pulled out of vietnam, they were tired of seeing the US armys bullshit.
i mean, they put napalm on kids for gods sake, thats horrible no matter how many cut-outs you've killed.
Veitnam was in part an example of why fighting a war without invoking war powers is a stupid idea. People would have reacted the same way if they knew what we had to do in order to win World War II. The differance was that the goverment took control of the information at the time, conditioned the troops properly, and controlled what information the population was given during the time of conflict.
Let me be honest, war sucks which is why it's one of the last resorts you go to. In Veitnam we napalmed kids, but people heard about it and got to whine and cause all kinds of problems. In World War II we bombed farms and factories out of existance, and exterminated The Hitler Youth. The diferance was you never heard about the latter in those terms. Nobody was allowed to get up on the proverbial rooftop and start screaming "Baby Killer".
We also did things like round up and inter all the Japanese- Americans for the duration of the conflict... and all paranoia aside we did it right and released them after the war.
Today people view that as being a bad thing, but that's the 60s liberals painting it that way in retrospect. At the time it was not all that unpopular and seen as being nessicary. It took a lot of domestic pressure off of us, and also prevented a lot of more touchy civil liberties stuff that we're dealing with now.
Understand something, in war there is no good or bad, it's "our side against their side" when you get down to it. The most ruthless and murderous bastards are the ones that win.
Throughout history people have tried to put "rules" on war, only to inevitably find themselves defeated when the other side didn't play by those rules. Chivalry pretty much ended when the French came riding into Britan to win their big war "by the book" only to get gunned down against all standards of conduct by massed longbow fire.
The Samurai aristocracy developed very detailed codes of conduct and engagement which they followed unto death. Bushido died with them when they were torn down by what amounted to revolting peasants who likewise didn't follow the rules.
The moral standards the US puts on itself and has done so since World War II, as well as international things like "The Geneva Convention" are the modern equivilents. The US has been faring pretty poorly militarily (in a general sense) because of our morality and not invoking war powers and doing the job right.
Understand that in the end the winner writes the history books. The guy who beats you gets to record for all time that his side was good and honorable, and your side was a giant group of bastards even if the opposite is true and your side fought with morality and was defeated by the other side being totally ruthless. Once your defeated and gone, it no longer matters. People have serious trouble getting their heads around this. I however think that things are slowly changing and as th Baby Boomers fade out more we'll see the US get it's act together.
