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Hitler posed NO threat to the United States, so you support that war that killed millions but not the Cold War against the aggression of Communism in Southeast Asia...inconsistent are you? LOL
Oh, please.
The Kriegsmarine mauled American merchant shipping in the first half of 1942, including in the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, and off the Atlantic coast. In the first half of 1942 off the Carolina coast alone, over 70 American ships were sunk by u-boats.
In other words, Germany had the force-projection capability to carry the war into American waters and cause significant commercial damage to the United States. To compare this to North Vietnam, which had no ability whatsoever to do the same, is ludicrous. And as for the Domino Theory that was the raison d'etre for fighting that war - remember, the insistence that if South Vietnam fell, then so would Indonesia and Thailand and other strategically important nations. Guess what? That never happened. Actually, 'ludicrous' is probably too kind a characterization.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tablemtn
We spent a trillion dollars to empower an Iranian client state and ethnically-cleanse half of Iraq's ancient Christian population. Iraq is currently in a civil war. That's a good example of selfish private interests "capturing" the US foreign policy/military apparatus and using it to their own ends.
Indeed.
If, a dozen years ago, someone had asked the Iranian leadership for an international wish-list, it would surely have included:
"See Saddam Hussein toppled and his virulently anti-Iranian Ba'athist regime replace with a pro-Iranian Shiite regime"
The only phrase that comes to mind is... 'Mission accomplished!"
Quote:
Originally Posted by waimeagreenside
And what would have happened to the islands of Hawaii if the US wasn't there during WW2?
Nothing - because they would have been strategically irrelevant and of absolutely no use to Imperial Japan in securing the critical resources of Southeast Asia that were the point of the entire war.
As for the punishment meted out to women for adultery, you should read "Women in Early America: Struggle, Survival, and Freedom in a New World" by Dorothy A. Mays. While adultery escalated to a capital crime in the 17th century, the punishment doled out to adulterous women became progressively less harsh in the 18th Century and beyond. So I guess technically "Americans" didn't hang the adulterous women from the gallows because they were English subjects at the time. All of the rest of the atrocities you mentioned were committed against Native Americans under the purview of the United States government (as already discussed by previous posters), of course not in the exact same way, but a very close approximation. Some interest quotes and passages from American political leaders in favor of the eradication of Native Americans:
I'll let others debate what are American moral obligations despite "others doing it too".
So what...they whacked a few hundred.....thousand? Compare that to Rwanda.....800,000 were killed in 3 months....3 months......Pol Pot wiped out 2 million Cambodians as an after thought.....Stalin committed millions to their death (this coming from the guy that coined the phrase: "1,000 killed is a tragedy....a million is just a statistic"). We don't even have the mindset to kill that many, that quickly, for any reason including the witch trials of salem or the adultery of a few bored school marms.....
You are comparing apples to oranges. We aren't even in the same solar system with the types of genocide that are perpetrated routinely in the African Continent, the Malaysian corridor or in certain enclaves of the Middle East.
So what...they whacked a few hundred.....thousand? Compare that to Rwanda.....800,000 were killed in 3 months....3 months......Pol Pot wiped out 2 million Cambodians as an after thought.....Stalin committed millions to their death (this coming from the guy that coined the phrase: "1,000 killed is a tragedy....a million is just a statistic"). We don't even have the mindset to kill that many, that quickly, for any reason including the witch trials of salem or the adultery of a few bored school marms.....
You are comparing apples to oranges. We aren't even in the same solar system with the types of genocide that are perpetrated routinely in the African Continent, the Malaysian corridor or in certain enclaves of the Middle East.
Please....
You can feel free to ignore the last sentence of the post you responded to if you choose. I believe the atrocities committed against Native Americans under the auspices of the United States government are well documented and stand on their own merits. I'm not Rwandan or Cambodian. Perhaps you should forward your comments about Stalin and atrocities committed in Russia and the Ukraine to John McCain et al. so they can stop cheerleading for Putin.
The frequently used City-Data Forum counterargument of "well look at what others have done" is childish and weak. The human rights violations committed by China are a reflection of the shortcomings of its own political destiny and has little bearing on the expectations I have for my nation and fellow countrymen. My country has a Bill of Rights. When you can go into a courtroom in the United States and have a murder charge dismissed because "well others do it too" then I will hear you out as to why an American should excuse atrocities that violate the sanctity of our own laws because some backwater ex-colony with no tradition of democratic rule does so.
What saddens me about a certain sector of America is the denial of how past events in our history have negatively impacted our present. You keep bringing up Cambodia and Rwanda. These countries were mired in far more international interference than the U.S. was in its formative years. But yet, within the first 120 years of American history the Native American Genocide occurred. Absolutely a genocide took place in Rwanda after its first 30 years of independence and is it surprising to see civil wars in Africa 50 years after these countries' independence much like a civil war raged in the U.S. four score after our own independence?
What is frightening is not the hypocrisy and contempt with which we look at "developing" countries but what will become of Americans when they form EU-style economic unions in the future. Yeah Nigerians have ethnic and religious turmoil. Many of your skilled and educated Nigerians come to the U.S. to escape this strife. As a result, as I have said on numerous forums, Nigerian Americans are already the most highly-educated nationality in this country.
But what happens when a genocide clears out the impetus for the turmoil and their upper classes stop coming here? What happens in 2050 when Nigeria forms an African Union with its neighbors and the cartel ridiculously jacks up the prices on our oil (and steel and microprocessors and whatever else they will be manufacturing) and we have not thoroughly developed our alternative fuel economy? What will America devolve into? Who is to say this country won't become some massive re-enactment of "Mad Max: The Road Warrior"? (Since quite a few City-Datites are so fond of hypotheticals!)
You can feel free to ignore the last sentence of the post you responded to if you choose. I believe the atrocities committed against Native Americans under the auspices of the United States government are well documented and stand on their own merits. I'm not Rwandan or Cambodian. Perhaps you should forward your comments about Stalin and atrocities committed in Russia and the Ukraine to John McCain et al. so they can stop cheerleading for Putin.
The frequently used City-Data Forum counterargument of "well look at what others have done" is childish and weak. The human rights violations committed by China are a reflection of the shortcomings of its own political destiny and has little bearing on the expectations I have for my nation and fellow countrymen. My country has a Bill of Rights. When you can go into a courtroom in the United States and have a murder charge dismissed because "well others do it too" then I will hear you out as to why an American should excuse atrocities that violate the sanctity of our own laws because some backwater ex-colony with no tradition of democratic rule does so.
What saddens me about a certain sector of America is the denial of how past events in our history have negatively impacted our present. You keep bringing up Cambodia and Rwanda. These countries were mired in far more international interference than the U.S. was in its formative years. But yet, within the first 120 years of American history the Native American Genocide occurred. Absolutely a genocide took place in Rwanda after its first 30 years of independence and is it surprising to see civil wars in Africa 50 years after these countries' independence much like a civil war raged in the U.S. four score after our own independence?
What is frightening is not the hypocrisy and contempt with which we look at "developing" countries but what will become of Americans when they form EU-style economic unions in the future. Yeah Nigerians have ethnic and religious turmoil. Many of your skilled and educated Nigerians come to the U.S. to escape this strife. As a result, as I have said on numerous forums, Nigerian Americans are already the most highly-educated nationality in this country.
But what happens when a genocide clears out the impetus for the turmoil and their upper classes stop coming here? What happens in 2050 when Nigeria forms an African Union with its neighbors and the cartel ridiculously jacks up the prices on our oil (and steel and microprocessors and whatever else they will be manufacturing) and we have not thoroughly developed our alternative fuel economy? What will America devolve into? Who is to say this country won't become some massive re-enactment of "Mad Max: The Road Warrior"? (Since quite a few City-Datites are so fond of hypotheticals!)
Hey, no one says the Indians didn't get screwed. I get it. If anyone deserves reparations it's definitely them. They had all.....this....and now? Just casinos and a severe alcohol problem....no matter, if you are counting bodies, usually the statistic of choice when comparing atrocities, then we are WAY ahead in morality compared to most. Innocent? Never said that but, contrasted to OTHER countries?
Please....it doesn't make us right, it just makes us less of a killing force overall....still killed plenty....just not as many and never, ever as quickly....
Hey, no one says the Indians didn't get screwed. I get it. If anyone deserves reparations it's definitely them. They had all.....this....and now? Just casinos and a severe alcohol problem....no matter, if you are counting bodies, usually the statistic of choice when comparing atrocities, then we are WAY ahead in morality compared to most. Innocent? Never said that but, contrasted to OTHER countries?
Please....it doesn't make us right, it just makes us less of a killing force overall....still killed plenty....just not as many and never, ever as quickly....
I don't think we differ too much in our opinions that atrocities are atrocities and only Antarctica hasn't had any. I just think as Americans we hold injustice to a higher standard. In Nigeria they have Boko Haram kidnapping girls and killing 150 people at a clip in bombings. In the 90s we had David Koresh and Timothy McVeigh. I can't make a qualitative assessment as to what mass murder is worse on which continent due to the body count. McVeigh and Nichols may have only been the only two murderers, but 168 people were killed.
My only assertion is that we have to be careful when identifying who are just rogue operators killing a lot of people versus when it is the actual government complicit in the killings. McVeigh and Nichols may have believed their crimes were justified, but I don't. So what is worse, two "counterrevolutionaries" purposefully detonating a building killing 168 or the government making the Cherokee walk the "Trail of Tears" and 4,000 people dying? No, the government didn't put bullets in the backs of their heads but I would think some casualties were expected by making Cherokee walk from Tennessee to Oklahoma in the winter. And this isn't even taking into account the similar experiences of the Choctaws, Creeks, Chickasaws, and Seminoles. So when the Turks forced the Armenians on marches through the desert are we any morally better or any less accountable as a nation just because our government managed to kill less unwanted people?
We have court systems on local, state, and federal levels that mete out justice and the role of the federal courts are clearly enumerated in the constitution. A lot of these ex-colonies flying by the seat of their pants just don't have that. Some of them didn't even have a city to make the capital upon independence! Mass murder without rule of law (Somalia) is to be expected. There has always been rule of law in America, it's just a matter of picking and choosing when it was followed.
If the measure of accountability is based solely body counts and not the standards (moral or otherwise) that the citizenry demand of their own governments, then clearly the British have a LOT of 'splaining to do over anybody else.
I don't think we differ too much in our opinions that atrocities are atrocities and only Antarctica hasn't had any. I just think as Americans we hold injustice to a higher standard. In Nigeria they have Boko Haram kidnapping girls and killing 150 people at a clip in bombings. In the 90s we had David Koresh and Timothy McVeigh. I can't make a qualitative assessment as to what mass murder is worse on which continent due to the body count. McVeigh and Nichols may have only been the only two murderers, but 168 people were killed.
My only assertion is that we have to be careful when identifying who are just rogue operators killing a lot of people versus when it is the actual government complicit in the killings. McVeigh and Nichols may have believed their crimes were justified, but I don't. So what is worse, two "counterrevolutionaries" purposefully detonating a building killing 168 or the government making the Cherokee walk the "Trail of Tears" and 4,000 people dying? No, the government didn't put bullets in the backs of their heads but I would think some casualties were expected by making Cherokee walk from Tennessee to Oklahoma in the winter. And this isn't even taking into account the similar experiences of the Choctaws, Creeks, Chickasaws, and Seminoles. So when the Turks forced the Armenians on marches through the desert are we any morally better or any less accountable as a nation just because our government managed to kill less unwanted people?
We have court systems on local, state, and federal levels that mete out justice and the role of the federal courts are clearly enumerated in the constitution. A lot of these ex-colonies flying by the seat of their pants just don't have that. Some of them didn't even have a city to make the capital upon independence! Mass murder without rule of law (Somalia) is to be expected. There has always been rule of law in America, it's just a matter of picking and choosing when it was followed.
If the measure of accountability is based solely body counts and not the standards (moral or otherwise) that the citizenry demand of their own governments, then clearly the British have a LOT of 'splaining to do over anybody else.
Understood. Murder is, well...Murder...be it 1 or 1,000,000. An Atrocity is just that. Only folks like Stalin and Hitler could take it to an art form. Unfortunately, that massive killing style tends to lessen the view of "minor" atrocities by comparison. Just human nature. As whacked out as Stalin was, he was right when he said, "100 people killed is an atrocity.....1,000,000 is just a statistic"....humans adapt in all ways...even in death and murder....slippery slope and we haven't found a way back yet.
Nothing - because they would have been strategically irrelevant and of absolutely no use to Imperial Japan in securing the critical resources of Southeast Asia that were the point of the entire war.
Under those and many other near misses, a claim of ownership would have taken hold. Then it would have been a Japanese base, and a target to US attack, as well as springboard for Japanese attack on US/Canada.
Well,the Usa could apologize to its own citizens like blacks and Natives.
Native Americans were butchering each other for thousands of years before the first white man even thought of sailing west. Their casinos are getting revenge on said evil white man.
Blacks? Their fellow Africans who captured & sold their ancestors into slavery to be shipped over here should be first in that apology line.
Native Americans were butchering each other for thousands of years before the first white man even thought of sailing west. Their casinos are getting revenge on said evil white man.
Blacks? Their fellow Africans who captured & sold their ancestors into slavery to be shipped over here should be first in that apology line.
Well, if thats the case, and since every livable square foot of our planet has been taken from the previous occupier, everybody should do a group appology to each other. "To the Victors goes the spoils" It has always been that way and will continue to be. The Human animal, like most animals is very aggressive and the recent Western phenominon of feeling bad for your ancestors past transgressions is a con.
You say Hawaii would have been ignored by the Japanese during WW2 because of a lack of resources? Then exactly what resources did the Midway Atol have? The Japanese lost part of their naval fleet trying to occupy it. Think about it.
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