thepyrethatburns said:
Therumancer said:
The "America needs to be wiped out" stuff is pretty much the same thing any dominant world power has gotten. It's just with advances in media we can hear more of it, much more quickly. Spain, Britan, France, and others have all gotten their chance at being dominant global powers and every one of them was hated at the time.
Spoken like someone who hasn't been outside the country. A lot of the hate that each country got at the time was due to the inhumane way they treated others. For example, the people living in the Ivory Coast hated the French not because of some deep-seated envy of the French but because of the atrocities that the French visited upon the natives.
Other countries might have some envy of the U.S. but most of the actual hatred comes from people who have lost family members to U.S. bombs or from nations that have watched a successive line of Presidents declare that the best way to bring democracy to people is to murder large segments of those people.
Therumancer said:
We're nicer than most other dominant global powers were,
Iraq, Yugoslavia, Panama, and quite a few other countries would take issue with that statement.
Therumancer said:
but that doesn't change the fact that the people on the bottom of any system are ALWAYS going to be discontent, and the rest of the world is always going to be envious when they see another culture dominating because every people ultimatly wants their way to be #1 in the world and to be assimilating other people like dominant world powers do.
Facepalm .....this....isn't a parody video to you, is it?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWS-FoXbjVI
As for the world war thing. I actually do agree with the idea on a hypothetical basis that mankind needs a bit of culling. However, the manner in which you suggested it is telling of your ignorance. Because you know all the people who need to be culled live in America right? Not anywhere else?
Part of the thrust of this comment is that, if the U.S. had a war on their own soil, MAYBE the idea of bombing other countries, both in media and in real life, might lose a little luster.
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Ahh, one of my favorite songs. However it's a satire, not a parody. There is a differace.
That said, yes we have gone after other countries, and generally speaking they have been militarily crushed even if we have failed to complete our objectives. We had reasons to go after Saddam for decades before we invaded, we agreed with the rest of the world community to let him go for a while after "Desert Storm" and see if he got hist act together. He did not. People were asking why we didn't finish that clown off for a long time before "The War On Terror" only to whine when we actually did it. People simply have short memories. Yugoslavia was nessicary to prevent a Genocide. We generally have good reasons for going where we do, even if things don't pay off. The US generally does not engage in wars of conquest unlike some other dominant world powers out there, yes there are some incidents argued by those with anti-American sentiments but no rule is absolute.
In reality the "smart bomb" which can spare civilians while killing only the bad guys has yet to be invented. One of the USA's biggest obstacles in wartime nowadays has been that we listen to all the crying about civilian casualties and collateral damage. We've even gone so far as to load our missles and bombs with concrete as opposed to explosives as a result.
As I've pointed out before, in numerous posts, I believe that in a real war the only way to win is to target the civilians along with the military. We won World War II by turning the Nazis into a tiny fringe when they were once a huge international movement. We did this by killing massive numbers of civilians, bombing factores, farms, hospitals, and everything else. We then spent decades hunting down the survivors internationally not only to prevent some kind of resurgence, but to kill as much of the idea as possible. Isreal was especially vicious and dedicated to it. One of the reasons why things like "Operation Paperclip" and recruiting guys like Von Braun to our rocket programs were so contreversial is that we were making exceptions for scientists and "big heads" where we pretty much agreed to kill (or turn over) any of these guys we found, and then we started making under the table exceptions.
Oh sure, a lot of people don't like that, but war blows chips for a reason. We have yet to engage on such a level again (despite what anyone thinks), so we haven't succeeded since even if our military hasn't ever actually been overcome.
Perspectives of course vary, and in real life nobody thinks of themselves as the bad guys. One side's terrorists are the other side's commando units (so to speak). War and conflict are not absolute, and an atrocity from one perspective is doing what is nessicary to win a war from the other side. In general in any successful large scale war the winners write the history books, and the guys who lost wind up being the ones screaming about a atrocities (even after their culture has been changed).
Even in cases of outright conquest, the aggressors typically had reasons for doing what they were doing. Sometimes born of ignorance, sometimes legitimate.
In the overall scheme of things if anything the US is too moral in that we listen to too many differant people, let it affect policy, and then wind up not doing what we need to for our own benefit Both in terms of wars, and in general policy.
As far as the US dropping bombs goes, it's pretty much how you do business. Nobody has bombed the US because nobody has ever been in a position to. Truthfully I don't think having bombs dropped on us would do anything to change the face of war, or affect how we would fight from that point onwards. Especially if we ever really mean business again. After all World War II was largely won by bombing. Until better methods of safely killing the enemy and destroying cultures comes along, bombs are going to be a major facet of war. As certain air force pilots will say "Fighter Pilots make movies, Bomber Pilots make history".
