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Old 12-05-2018, 09:40 AM
 
Location: Manchester NH
15,507 posts, read 6,375,756 times
Reputation: 4831

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Quote:
Originally Posted by jbgusa View Post
That one, without further explanation, I cannot go with.
I can only speak for myself, but look at your own opinions.

You claim to be far left and yet support the government's position no matter how radical it is. Genocide in Guatemala, el Salvador, Yemen, and east timor your good with.

Slaughtering Koreans, Iranians, Iraqis, and Vietnamese with chemical weapons, another thing you're good with.

Step out of line and oppose these 'common sense' policies, you're a traitor. That is what you yourself said to me once, "I know what side you're on" when I gave mild criticism to US terrorism.
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Old 12-05-2018, 09:42 AM
Status: "A solution in search of a problem" (set 24 days ago)
 
Location: New York Area
34,567 posts, read 16,631,798 times
Reputation: 29711
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winterfall8324 View Post
You claim to be far left and yet support the government's position no matter how radical it is. Genocide in Guatemala, el Salvador, Yemen, and east timor your good with.
Please try not to define my political posture. It resembles that of Che Guevera, the Symbionese Liberation Army and Seminora Luminoso, or Shining Path.
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Old 12-05-2018, 09:45 AM
 
Location: Manchester NH
15,507 posts, read 6,375,756 times
Reputation: 4831
Quote:
Originally Posted by jbgusa View Post
Please try not to define my political posture. It resembles that of Che Guevera, the Symbionese Liberation Army and Seminora Luminoso, or Shining Path.
Say it as many times you want, now please answer my last paragraph.
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Old 12-05-2018, 12:32 PM
 
Location: Midwest City, Oklahoma
14,859 posts, read 8,157,147 times
Reputation: 4590
Quote:
Originally Posted by jbgusa View Post
I'll leave that one for the many Holocaust and/or psychological history threads.That one, without further explanation, I cannot go with.
You cannot go with it because you think what I said isn't true? Or that it shouldn't be true?

Last edited by Redshadowz; 12-05-2018 at 01:38 PM..
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Old 12-05-2018, 12:34 PM
 
45,676 posts, read 23,858,265 times
Reputation: 15558
Sad that y'all have to explain history to some folks.
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Old 12-05-2018, 02:39 PM
 
Location: Ohio
24,623 posts, read 19,066,222 times
Reputation: 21733
Quote:
Originally Posted by burdell View Post
Pearl Harbor vs. NO justification for war
An intelligent diplomat or military officer should have foreseen that an embargo against Japan might lead to military action.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil75230 View Post
Saddam Hussein unquestionably was an evil man. Same for his sons. Yet there's still a lot of question whether the US and other nations were right to invade Iraq.
He was accepted by the US so long as he was a useful tool. Once he stopped being a useful tool, that was it.

The US had King Faisal II murdered, because he contemplated nationalizing the oil companies. The US backed General Qasim, who took control of Iraq. Qasim made the same mistake as Faisal, so the US had Qasim murdered and backed the Baathist Party.

While the US did not put Hussein in power, Hussein was in constant contact with diplomatic staff like foreign services officers and military attaches who guided his political career, which allowed him to gain power.

The US relied on Hussein after it lost Iran, and the US sent military advisors to Iraq to help win the war against Iran. Hussein failed, and the US had to sink all three of Iran's destroyers screening the Iranian army advancing through Khuzestan into Iraq to stave off a loss by Iraq.

Because Hussein failed in Iran, and because of his other actions, he became a political liability, and had to go, and that decision was made in 1988.

In spite of the fact that Bush announced the withdraw of the US VII Corps and Tiger Brigade (under NORTHAG command) under the IFR agreement with the Soviet Union in 1989, the US started sending VII Corps units to Turkey to undergo desert-warfare training in the desert on the Turkish border with Iraq.

The three VII Corps artillery brigades (the 17th, 172nd and 210th) and the forward brigade for the 1st Infantry Division did a single rotation, while the Tiger Brigade, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, 1st Armored Division and 3rd Infantry Division did two training rotations.

The REFORGER exercise that was slated for September 1990 was moved up to January 1990, and for the first time ever, the VII Corps units trained with the Tiger Brigade.

The Tiger Brigade was the only American combat unit in northern Germany, and it was the only American unit under British command. The Brits and Germans didn't trust the Dutch or miserable fat Belgian bastards, whose armies sucked and who would most likely welsh on NATO and not fight the Soviets, so to appease the Brits and Germans, the US stuck a forward infantry brigade there (2 infantry battalions, an armored battalion, a field artillery battalion, engineer company and support units).

Tiger Brigade's mission was to withdraw to the west bank of the Weser River (of Pied Piper fame) and await the arrival of the 1st Cavalry Division, the remainder of the 2nd Armored Division and the 6th Air Attack Brigade, who would fly to Belgium and the Netherlands and pick up their vehicles and equipment from the POMCUS storage sites there and then move into Germany. A German infantry division took up a position north of the Tiger Brigade and British Army of the Rhine units linked up south of them.

South of that in central Germany is CENTAG, which is the US V Corps' Area of Operation, and then south of them in southern Germany is SOUTHAG and the US VII Corps' Area of Operations. Soviet forces opposing them in East Germany were arrayed as the Northern Army Group, Central Army Group and Southern Army Group.

As you can see, there's no good reason for those units to train together, unless they're going to war together, and they were.

They'd all been trained in desert-warfare, so all they needed was a war, a desert and pretext for war, which is what Saddam gave them.

Anyone who thinks the Gulf War was a spontaneous event is dead wrong, because it had been planned for years.
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Old 12-05-2018, 03:59 PM
 
Location: Ohio
24,623 posts, read 19,066,222 times
Reputation: 21733
Quote:
Originally Posted by desertdetroiter View Post
The Vietnam War was an attempt at establishing American hegemony over a region that we had no business being in.
At the time, your geo-strategy was the Pacific Rim Strategy, so you had business there.

In the late 1960s, it was realized that strategy was going to fail, so the US adopted a new strategy, which would allow someone to drive from Tripoli to Tabriz to Tashkent to Vladivostok and hit lots of McDonald's and Starsucks along the way.

Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnBoy64 View Post
Robert McNamara was the highly controversial Secretary of Defense under JFK and LBJ which included the Cuban Missile Crisis and The Vietnam War...where he admits that we were wrong.
You weren't wrong, you just executed wrong.

You failed to create a stable democracy in South Vietnam, and you failed to negotiate with Ho Chi Minh in an effective way.

You could have used the threat of invasion to compel Ho to an agreement. And, a little flexibility would have gone a long way. Offering Ho money and agreeing to support the North politically --even though their views are diametrically opposed to yours -- instead of trying to tear down his regime would have built bridges and mended fences.

If you read Nguyen Vo Giap's memoir, he says they were so distraught after the Tet Counter-Offensive that they were ready to throw in the towel. The Viet Cong were totally annihilated, so that less than a battalion of cadre survived (Vo's words). 98% of the Viet Cong were killed, wounded, captured or MIA.

The only reason they didn't, is because the US Media incorrectly portrayed Tet as a stunning North Vietnamese victory.

Tet only happened, because the NVA could move weapons, ammunition and supplies down the Ho Chi Minh Trail into South Vietnam to the Viet Cong units training to attack the provincial capitals.

If you had moved three divisions into Cambodia and up the Trail through Laos to the border of North Vietnam, you put a complete stop to everything.

US Army companies, troops and batteries only have ammunition and supplies for 1-3 days, depending on whether contact is heavy, moderate or light. The battalions and squadrons have another 3-5 days, brigades and regiments 7-9 days and divisions 9-11 days. After that, you need resupply by Corps and Army support units, or you're out of action.

Once you block the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the Viet Cong are out of action in less than 30 days. Most Viet Cong units would be done in a week. Sure, some units had weapons, ammunition and food cached, but assuming they could get to them, they'd only be able to fight another week.

So, game over.

Why do you think General Paulus surrendered at Stalingrad? Because the Red Army encircled them cutting off supply convoys. After that, the Germans could only be resupplied by air, and once the Soviets cut that crap out, Paulus ran out of ammo, food and fuel, so there was nothing left to do but surrender.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Winterfall8324 View Post
And again Pearl Harbor was a surprise attack of a power that had not yet mobilized their military.
It was no surprise. The US knew it was coming, but faulty intelligence led them to believe it would happen on Wednesday, December 10th (at the earliest), instead of Sunday, December 7th.

In preparation for the known attack, the US put a radar unit on one of the outer islands, armed and fueled all aircraft and parked them on the tarmac for quick take-off, brought in three squadrons of B-17 bombers (with the last squadron arriving during the actual attack), and sent the carriers out to take up a position north of the islands.

The US would be waiting, and as soon as Japanese aircraft were detected by radar, all US aircraft would be launched to ambush the Japanese. US aircraft would trail the Japanese back to their carriers, radio in their positions, and then carrier-based and land-based attack aircraft would sink or damage the Japanese carriers, then the B-17s come in and mop up the rest.

FDR has his casus belli and a stunning US victory over the Japanese all at once.

The problem was Viktor Sorge, Stalin's spy at the Reich Embassy in Tokyo, misidentified a sister-ship as the actual ship in his list of ships in the strike force. Based on the ship's reported position, it would have taken a day to get to the marshaling area, and then the strike force would leave and arrive on December 10th, but unbeknownst to everyone (except the Japanese), the strike force had already left.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Boss View Post
Hitler was so stupid, he declared war on the USA. Apparently he did not get the memo from his General staff they could not invade the USA.
He was bound by a treaty with Japan to come to the aid of the Japanese.

Quote:
Originally Posted by burdell View Post
Even IF that's true, what part of US policy would suggest we have an obligation to share resources with anyone who wants them or that we don't retaliate against those attempting to steal resources from us?
You're accusing the Japanese of stealing resources that you're stealing?

What do you call it when assassins accuse assassins?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Redshadowz View Post
I think he is referring to the deaths from mass-starvations, which were either intentional, or the result of incompetence.
The collective farms resulted in lower crop yields, and weather conditions were the coup de grace.

Stalin could only feed the Ukrainians at the expense of other Russians.

So, it was either cut rations for all Russians, which might actually lead to even more deaths, or let the Ukrainians starve, and since Stalin -- as a Georgian -- despised Ukrainians, he would rather let them die for sins of the past against Georgians.

One other solution would have been to ask the World for help, but then that would have been an admission that the Soviet system was a failure.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hrw-500 View Post
Then, the guys of National Lampoon wondered once what if WWII had been fought like the Vietnam war?
You'd still be fighting WW II to this day, but on a brighter note, Vietnam would never have happened.

If all you were going to to do was occupy Paris and control the principal cities in major regions and keep the supply routes open, you'd never have gotten anywhere.
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Old 12-05-2018, 04:51 PM
 
Location: Midwest City, Oklahoma
14,859 posts, read 8,157,147 times
Reputation: 4590
Quote:
Originally Posted by jbgusa View Post
The collective farms resulted in lower crop yields, and weather conditions were the coup de grace.

Stalin could only feed the Ukrainians at the expense of other Russians.

So, it was either cut rations for all Russians, which might actually lead to even more deaths, or let the Ukrainians starve, and since Stalin -- as a Georgian -- despised Ukrainians, he would rather let them die for sins of the past against Georgians.

One other solution would have been to ask the World for help, but then that would have been an admission that the Soviet system was a failure.
So it was both intentional and the result of incompetence, gotcha.
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Old 12-05-2018, 05:17 PM
 
Location: Midwest City, Oklahoma
14,859 posts, read 8,157,147 times
Reputation: 4590
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mircea View Post
An intelligent diplomat or military officer should have foreseen that an embargo against Japan might lead to military action.
And not just that. The United States had been actively aiding/supplying China for years before Pearl Harbor.

https://thediplomat.com/2015/08/when...a-were-allies/

https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/wwii/88734.htm


Basically, we refused to sell to the Japanese, and we froze Japanese assets(bank accounts, stocks of investors in America, seized property owned by Japanese nationals, etc), while we sold weapons to China. And with the lend-lease act, we effectively just gave weapons to them(which they could pay back at some time in the future).


America was not neutral prior to WWII, and the attack on Pearl Harbor was not a war of conquest(which is why there was no invasion of Hawaii). They hit the Navy at Hawaii, left, and never wanted to come back.

The main imports to Japan from America was oil, and Japan also was in desperate need for rubber, which Japan had neither, and which were necessary to carry on the war. Japan had hoped to find other countries it could buy oil and rubber from, but those countries also had an embargo on Japan. If Japan could not find access to oil and rubber from somewhere, it could not carry on the war.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-...apanese-assets

This meant Japan had only one of two options, admit defeat, or force open trade with a country in the Pacific who had oil and rubber. The only country with them in the Pacific was the "Dutch East Indies". But the UK and the United States had already made treaties with the Dutch government-in-exile.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_government-in-exile


If Japan invaded the Dutch East Indies, the fear was that America's position, including in the Philippines, which was a US Common-wealth at the time, would cause US intervention. And Japan realized it could not win a direct war with the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common...he_Philippines


So the Japanese hoped to surprise the entire America Pacific fleet stationed at Hawaii, destroy as much as it could, which would prevent US intervention in the Pacific until Japan could sweep through southeast Asia, and use the oil to finish off China. After which it hoped to bring about a peace-treaty with the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Events...n_Pearl_Harbor


I don't know what most Americans think Pearl Harbor actually was about, but it seems to have very little resemblance to reality.

Last edited by Redshadowz; 12-05-2018 at 05:42 PM..
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Old 12-05-2018, 05:41 PM
 
46,838 posts, read 25,764,732 times
Reputation: 29317
Quote:
Originally Posted by Redshadowz View Post
The point I was trying to make is, Hitler NEVER wanted war with Britain. He said it over and over again, and in fact, asked for an alliance with Britain repeatedly.
Well, duh. He wanted for free what would otherwise be very difficult and costly to get.
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