I started paying attention to this when I lived close to DC around 2002. Bush was cutting the top tax brackets while ramping up for the Iraq invasion, the defense contractors made record profits (I remember one CEO making around 30 million) and the DC metro was plastered with ads touting the patriotism of the defense contractors. I thought "these guys are making record money, are getting their taxes reduced, try to look like patriots and some clueless young guys have to go to war and die". Since then I honestly think there should be no profit in making weapons while a war is going. It's just not right that some people are raking in the big money without risk while some poor guys have to go and die.
*some clueless young guys have to go and kill untold numbers of innocent people in another country.
It never ceases to amaze me how citizens of the USA place the vast majority of sympathy to their beloved “troops” and barely any on those who actually get invaded.
Yep. About 5000 American soldiers died in the Iraq War. A tragic loss, undeniably.
Iraqi deaths? Estimated to be between 400,000 and 1,000,000. That doesn't include deaths that will follow for decades from lasting damage and the instability that followed in the region and continues to this day.
People everywhere care more about people like them than about foreigners. German people were more upset about the 200 people killed in the 2021 floods than about the hundreds of thousands killed in the Indian Ocean Tsunami.
It’s sad, but not specifically American.
(That said, I always use the number of Iraqi deaths when arguing that GWB is the worst president of all time.)
Thanks for the reminder. I remember it being a big deal in the early 2000s but I don’t recall any mention of it in the last 15 years. I had completely forgot about the issue.
Why's that amazing? The media dictates what most people talk about, and how they do it.
Never noticed how topics switch over time depending on what's in the news? That's what people talk about! News switches the main topic, people switch the main topic. The old topic becomes forgotten and it does so quickly.
If you take a closer look, you'll even see that they talk about the thoughts they've read, in the perspective they've received read them. I have little reason to assume it's not like this everywhere.
There will always a part who disagrees, but it will always be a minority compared to the masses, which creates beneficial controversy and keeps people arguing.
And many people pick up terminology or even whole headlines really quick. Sometimes it’s super easy to tell which newspaper/website someone is reading by that.
Even television and entertainment play a huge part. They introduce and normalize issues, and in that way shift the borders of the overton window. It's strange how much of culture is, in a sense, manufactured. With the internet, at least there are some places where you can go to have open conversations now
I've found more and more places where people, under the umbrella of doing good, dictate what's allowed to be said. Often it's not even the actual admins of the channels, but a mob of people outraged-on-behalf-of-others. Powerhungry assholes.
It is kind of fun to just not follow national news and then get into conversations with relatives / friends that do. Most conversations are really pre-programmed including the views that they will have. "Telegram is bad because it is used by extremists" for example. The most egregious example being COVID of course. The different national narratives were slightly out of sync at all times, so that people got told the Vaccines were effective at preventing infection, spread and the "way out", while at the same time another country was already running Booster programs because two doses were not enough and weren't even effectively preventing hospitalisations after 6 months.
"It never ceases to amaze me how citizens of the USA place the vast majority of sympathy to their beloved “troops” and barely any on those who actually get invaded."
Yes - but don't confuse average people in the street with the ra-ra'ing media. Especially in war situations, it is the media's job to propagandise the populace, and ensure that 'the people' are behind whatever it is they are doing. Dissenting opinions will not get any air.
> Since then I honestly think there should be no profit in making weapons while a war is going.
It is an interesting thought but ... if the government tells the industrial chain "you aren't getting paid for this" then there is a pretty high chance the war will be lost. Being optimistic, maybe it could work for one war. Then the next war people ask "where are our weapons?" and the answer is "there are none".
There is really only one solution to DC's warmongering - someone needs to be held accountable for constantly lying and sleepwalking the US into wars. And not the weapons manufacturers, the actual politicians who are pretending that they didn't realise there were billions-to-trillions being sunk into blowing up taxpayer dollars to kill random goat herders.
The public seems pretty peaceful, anti-war rhetoric has been doing well for a while. They just keep getting distracted by political issues (which are obvious distractions if you look at them in context of the US's defence & fiscal policies).
So first, looking at recent decades' experience doesn't seem to support a "arms profiteering = victory" correlation.
Second, historically... actively curbing private profiteering has generally been considered a crucial part of a successful wartime economy. Post WWII conflicts didn't really have a "war economy" but the principle, IMO, stands.
The US hasn't fought a serious war in recent decades. They've been bullying countries that practically couldn't fight back. A war against someone with an actual military (Russia, China, India) is different.
There is a great argument that they shouldn't be bullying people. It is a disgrace that the people who benefit from the bullying are getting rich. The bullying doesn't make the US strong either, it probably rots the military in strange ways. But that doesn't change the basic dynamic that the people who support the US war machine need to be paid or the machine will rust and become ineffective. The old maxim "he who wants peace, prepares for war" is a good hint at what will happen if the US tries to curtail war by cutting off funding to their suppliers. Real wars will be started and the US military would lose them.
I don't disagree, but I think you're neglecting to consider that there is a relationship between defense contractors making money and politicians making war. Not per say causal, a more complex one than that, but incentives can align and push things into happening even in the absence of explicit quid pro quo. Eg, defense contractors can spread projects out over many states to maximize the political impact of their economic activity; politicians observe that war brings money into their state; their incentives have become more aligned, but no laws were broken or bribes exchanged.
There are many ways for this to happen, and all of them occur (to some degree) simultaneously and the impact is cumulative.
The result is that you cannot create a lasting solution by addressing one side of the equation or the other. You have to address them both, simultaneously, or the system will form again for exactly the reasons if formed before.
...then there is a pretty high chance the war will be lost.
That is the status quo. USA military has not won a war in my parents' lifetimes. USA military is optimized to consume resources, not to accomplish traditional military objectives.
The first Iraq war could be considered a victory. Clear objectives, once achieved the war stopped. Bush Sr was smart enough not to expand the war although a lot of people were pushing for a march into Baghdad.
That war didn't "stop", since USA military remained in Arabia for reasons. This occupation was cited as the reason for the 9/11 attacks. So, the enlisted did their jobs but the end result makes it feel sort of weird to call this a victory.
Well, we also say that the allies won the first world war, even though many people see the harsh treatment of Germany as contributing to the second world war.
(So I think that calling both of them victories is reasonable. If you want, you can also call both of them failures. But it seems a bit weird to call one a victory and the other not.)
"- someone needs to be held accountable for constantly lying and sleepwalking the US into wars."
I'm forever whingeing on HN about this. The real problem is that much of the citizenry has lost faith and trust in its leaders and in many of its longstanding institutions and rightly so given the never-ending scandals.
We need a new covenant - a formal undestanding - between the Government and the people but I, like millions of others, have little clue where to begin.
selling guns is just a side business, the actual profit is in: "I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."
The idea of a government, especially the US, laundering money doesn't really make any sense. Generally, the point of laundering money is to pay taxes on it so it can enter the financial system. Governments (and especially the US who has the most control of international monetary pipelines like SWIFT) can freely do what they want with their money generally, at least within their own countries. Their money is going to make it into the financial system without any laundering.
Laundering as a term might not be a good fit, but the parent comment's main claim that war is a vehicle for moving public money into private pockets is absolutely correct
Agree but we have other words specifically for that: grift, corruption, kickbacks.
War is definitely a racket but that racket isn't money laundering. The racket isn't about obfuscating the origin of the money but to direct it to certain parties
it does, the point is take tax revenue and transfer it to rich buddies, now if it requires starting wars and spending trillions, so be it as long as your buddies end up getting few trillions from it
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.” - John Stuart Mill
> Since then I honestly think there should be no profit in making weapons while a war is going.
Why should the weapons manufacturers be left out while oil companies, mercenary corps, and construction/logistics companies get all of the action? "Everybody" deserves their place at the feeding trough.
Maybe once a war starts officially the whole economy should go into a non profit mode. I think that would make a lot of people much less interested in waging wars.
Beforehand [0] the author of this text, Butler, the most respected general in the US at that time was offered to lead a coup d'etat to overthrow FDR and then to become effectively a dictator.
>Remembering when bankers tried to overthrow FDR and install a fascist dictator
Ironic considering that FDR's economic reforms were openly modeled on fascist Italy, and FDR was on good terms with Mussolini. He was also in the process of following Mussolini's lead and attempting to overthrow the American institutions that were in his way. He had already gone out of his way to install a KKK member on the Supreme Court, and was planning to double the size of the Supreme Court if they wouldn't accept his unconstitutional changes.
The article even admits this by quoting articles written at the time that were calling for a fascist takeover of the country and supporting FDR's goals in this direction. Many were terrified that this was indeed what FDR was planning.
This whole thing about Butler coming out and saying it was the other way around, and fascists were tying to overthrow FDR was just a political point scoring. This article even admits that if something like that even happened it was at best a “a cocktail putsch.”
This is just the typical rewriting of history from people who refuse to face their ashamed past.
This just show that fascism means different things to different people.
There are indeed several aspects to it:
- suppression of labor unions and other political organisations that go against the interests of the ruling class, using mob violence
- a nationalist/religious/wtv ideology portaying anyone discussing orders as a dangerous enemy (dividing the people in the name of unity)
- the will to at least temporarily ignore the rules of normal, consensual arbitration within the society, to face dangerous times (for the ruling class, thus their initial approval/encouragements).
- to various degrees, the new regime goes out of hands and also ends up terrorizing the ruling class.
Many different movements/regimes in history matched with several of those points. Many military coups are called "fascist" despite they lack the "mob violence" aspect, relying instead on the support on some external army's paratroopers. And many exceptional regimes ignoring past laws temporarily to face a dire situation are also labeled as "fascist", despite they make little use of violence.
>This just show that fascism means different things to different people.
Fascism is a very specific political ideology, based on Marxism, and involves (what they call a third-way economic policy) transforming the state into an amalgamation of trade unions working together to create a socialist state. It does not have different meanings to different people. It has only one meaning. The problem is just that many people refuse to know what the word means because it is a dirty word and they don't like how similar it is to their own ideology.
>There are indeed several aspects to it: - suppression of labor unions and other political organisations that go against the interests of the ruling class, using mob violence
This is the exact opposite of fascism. Not only were trade unions the center of the fascist state, but it was mandatory for people to be a member of one.
I was going to go over your other points, but they are so vague that I can't really even discuss them.
Fascism explicitly opposes Marxism, and "trade unions" under fascism were simply fascist-run organizations designed to suppress labor power. The Italian fascists banned non-fascist trade unions, and the fascist "union" was essentially run by the employers' association.
The conspiracy talk started around the end of FDR's first 100 days in office (mid-June 1933), during which he accomplished an awful lot (mostly later tossed out by the Supreme Court), and the malefactors of great wealth had reason to be frightened.
FDR was scheduled to address the
American Legion (mostly WW1 veterans), an organization supported by conservative money and in the middle of most of the conspiracy allegations, at its convention at the end of September and start of October of 1933. An early draft of his remarks had him asking the veterans to serve as paramilitary reserve police to maintain civil order in the face of a collapsing economy. But he killed the whole idea, pivoting to be a much kinder and gentler middle-of-the-road kind of a guy. He was hitting his stride with no reasons to be tyrranical.
> economic reforms were openly modeled on fascist Italy
Or on things he had done in New York State as governor.
> Supreme Court if they wouldn't accept his unconstitutional changes
His changes, and the Congress's changes, which the American people had overwhelmingly supported in his 1936 reelection where he won by overwhelming margins which almost decimated GOP representation in DC.
Also with Roberts switch in time that saved nine, the Supreme Court accepted many of the reforms.
FDR had reduced judge pensions, which kept the GOP judges on the bench longer and gave them an axe to grind. He did not have to act like Mussolini he could have just broke his campaign promise about judge pensions and have seen a lot of retirements by 1936.
The US never came anywhere near the conditions that gave rise to fascism in Italy and Germany.
The tragedy is that poor unfortunate grunts only get to know it's a racket after it's too late - when half of them are already dead.
Unfortunately, it seems to be a chararistic of the human condition that learning about war is a slow prossess and that the horrors of experiencing it cannot passed down from one generation to the next.
Experience gathered over millennia has demonstrated that it's essentially impossible to teach recruits before they enter the military that war is not only a racket but also it will be the most horrible and devastating experience of their lives.
The fact is, it's impossible to put an old head onto young shoulders.
It doesn't help that each new generation gets a barrage of propaganda pushed onto them equating military service with heroics, honour, patriotism, and so forth. We could teach the next generation that war is bad, if we wanted to, but since the decision to go to war is made by the same government that sets the educational curriculum, well, odds are slim.
"It doesn't help that each new generation gets a barrage of propaganda pushed onto them equating military service with heroics, honour, patriotism, and so forth."
I certainly agree. In my opinion, the basic principles are simple but in practice things get complicated very quickly. If I'm not careful here I'll be quoting everyone from pacifists through to Clausewitz and we will all be bogged down in a mire of detail. This is a huge subject, thousands of books have been written about it.
I'll keep it short. The propaganda and heroics are long inbred and they go back a very long way - thousands of years and there's no better place to start than with the famous Latin quote from the Roman poet Horace:
"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori"
"It is sweet and fitting to die for the homeland (one's country)"
Just about everyone knows these facts but for the few that may not I'll repeat them. During WWI the English poet Wilfred Owen wrote probably the most famous poem of the War and it's a very cynical and poignant reminder of how terrible war is. Therein he lashes out against the wisdom of Horace's quote.
Lttle else need be be said. The poem is short enough to quote here:
.
Dulce et Decorum est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
History is a problematic subject because it creates false dichotomys all over the place. When actually sacrifice for your country, your community, or your friends is admirable. It is also an utterly pointless waste. A waste that can be justified at some levels of abstraction but not at others. These points are not inconsistent. But people want to take one simple truth away from the complexity. History has obvious lessons in hindsight and can be turned into trite propaganda in the moment.
Agreed, history is very problematic, it can and does create false dichotomies.
My comment and your reply provide an excellent example of why it's so difficult to post an adequate reply in short HN posts (see my detailed reply to anm89 in response to a similar issue).
No doubt, self sacrifice can end up being noble in circumstances where such action contributes to an overall better outcome but that's not the general case with WWI. (Please, I know that statement is grossly inadequate and that in specific 'local' instances it's not even correct—given that many of those soldiers who made such hugely noble sacrifices did so in order to directly benefited their buddies—not the nation state that actually sent them to war – however that explanation will have to suffice for now.)
Whether Owen fully realized it or not, the reason why his poem is so often associated with the negative aspects of Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori is that in the real political context of the First World War it is an undisputed lie.
At the time, if the average soldier, French, German, English, US etc., etc. had been fully informed of the actual reasons for the start of said war—the horribly degenerate state of the underlying politics of the nation sates involved, the pathetically inept and inbred thinking of both English and European monarchies—just to mention a few, then these soldiers would likely have walked away from those hellish battlefields and left the fighting to the protagonists who actually stated the war.
In short, millions of lives were lost unnecessarily over inept and faulty reasoning and the many 'petty' squabbles that occurred at both domestic political levels and similarly with international politics wherein diplomacy failed most spectacularly with enormously disastrous and tragic consequences for just about everybody. Moreover, many of these issues were never fully resolved let alone properly handled at war's end—Versailles and all that—which, in the end, led to WWII and even many more millions of unnecessary deaths.
If ever there were a war to make Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori the ultimate lie then the First World War has to be its quintessential example (it's why I selected it as the example).
I live in Maryland and keep a boat at a marina in Annapolis. By chance I meet students from the Naval Academy now and then. Every time I meet one the advice I share with them is I greatly hope no one will have to call them to action and get them or their fellow soldiers killed as a result of more stupid military adventurism.
And every single time there's been a look of revelation, if just a brief glimmer, as they realize the point I'm making.
Will it matter? Maybe. At some point one of them might be in a position to make better decisions about their fate and that of their subordinates. I do hope some random old guy saying "I hope they don't get you killed" certainly matters lot more than empty "thank you for your service" nonsense.
"And every single time there's been a look of revelation, if just a brief glimmer, as they realize the point I'm making."
Yeah, let's hope it sinks in, but with some it can be too slow - after the event when they've PTSD.
I recall around the time I was drafted I occasionally got into discussion about these issues (it was never a big or oft repeated topic).
My current stance now has changed very little from my position back then. For some, the 'bravado' mob, perhaps 10% -15% of the platoon, took my position of war being the absolute last resort as me being 'yellow'. It never erupted into serious animosity but I was never part of their in group. Others thought similarly to me but wouldn't say much (or for that matter neither did I), still others said nothing.
The interesting aspect of this was that I developed these views very early when I was a child. My father and my uncles served in WWII and whilst the War was mentioned it was always a muted discussion and I learned quickly that there was something truly rotten about war - I sort of picked the notion up as if by osmosis.
I often wonder what the home environment of the 'bravado' mob was like. In one sense it can't have been too different to mine in that almost every father of kids in my school had also been in the War.
Perhaps it's one's temperament or personality in that I picked up the negative vibes whilst others did not.
I've often thought about it since but I can't say I'm any more informed now than in the past.
"Most recently in TN where they ban books about it."
That's a worry. What kind? Those that put war in a negative light presumably.
"It would help if the US would actually teach history..."
The US isn't alone, many others do the same. The other worrying observation is that antiwar sentiment doesn't last more than a generation or so if that (the Vietnam generation was about as anti as it has gotten in my lifetime and come the 1980s/90s the feeling had almost totally dissipated).
Yes, but it ought to be absolutely the last resort.
In that sense I'm not a pacifist (I once had a unform on but I was lucky to avoid major trouble). If you've ever experienced the system and mil training it's impossible to unlearn it.
Pretty simple really. If you are being invaded without provovation and every attempt at diplomacy has failed, and going past form, you know that if your enemy succeeds in overrunning you, then your women wiil be raped and you and your children killed then you've no option other than to fight with all your might.
That's the extreme case, at what point on a sliding scale the options change is moot and subject to vigouos debate. That's where things become complicated, not far down the scale you'll be faced with a serious moral dilemma.
That's the extreme case, but there's also the argument that the Afghans were fighting a just war from their perspective against foreign invasion. Despite all the horrible stuff they're inflicting on their own people day to day.
Let me give you a few well-known countries and you can think about whether there are any parallels between them and Afghanistan.
1 England: the English Civil War (very simplified description). The terrorists as we would call them nowadays [the Parliamentarians] won and King Charles I was executed. The people that now rule the UK have inherited the system of government originally set up by those victors. (Yes, there have been changes but we've stopped executing kings).
If we had Dr Who's Tardis and took a modern army back to restore the monarchy (the then rightful heir to the throne King Charles), then would this be a legitimate exercise?
2. What about that rebel mob of colonies in the US led by Washington in 1776? They defied the rightful King of Great Britain an Ireland, George III, and many, many people on both sides died during their act of succession.
3. Then there's the American Civil War/The War Between the States. It can be argued strongly that Lincoln started the war; and or did nothing to stop it or defuse the tense situation between the time of his victory in the polls and that of his inauguration.
In the process of saving the Union Lincoln started a war that killed more Americans than in all other wars that the US has fought in ever since - Spanish, WWI, WWII, Vietnam, etc. Like Pontus Pilate, he sat on his hands and did nothing to stop it.
It can be argued that by 1860 slavery was on the decline world wide and that given several more decades the South would have been forced to abandon slavery due to pressure, sanctions, from other countries such as the UK. A trade embargo on Southern cotton would have bitten the South very hard.
In the grand scheme off things, Lincoln could now be classed as a war criminal for starting a war that killed somewhere between 600,000 and a million people. Do the utilitarian equation - was that number of lives worth it when waiting a decade or two may have seen the same outcome? When you consider the inequlity and illtreatment that negros have had in the intervening 150+ years since the War then the answer may not be so obvious.
Today, current rulers in Washington are the beneficiaries of both of those conflicts. Thus one could ask the question about how legitimate is their rule nowadays (many Southerners would still probably question the victor's legitimacy).
4. 1789 France. The French Revolution culminated in the execution of the legitimate king of France Louis XVI in the Place de la Concorde by mob of essentially out of control 'terrorists'.
What followed was The Reign of Terror (la Terreur) - barbarism, death and destruction beyond anything seen since the Crusades of the 12th and 13th Centuries and not equalled again until the Nazis came to power in the 1930s.
The current government of France has inherited many aspects of that violent revolution and now claims legitimacy to rule the country as a republic instead of a kingdom.
5. The same goes for the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the murder of the legitimate czar of Russia, Czar Nicolas.
I hear everyone saying hey, hey now. However, think about it for a moment, most of our governments today have their historical routes in one form of insurgency or revolution or another. Governing the world is no easy matter and it's always been thus.
I'm not here to argue one way or other except to say you're correct about Afghanistan but then that's only correct inasmuch as to who one considers to have legitimacy. My view is that the poor longsuffering ordinary people of Afghanistan should be allowed to live and run their lives as they see fit without hindrance and interference. But then that's taking the naïve view and it's certainly not the current reality.
Yes, terrorism is alive and well
Afghanistan but it was also the case in Vietnam with the Vietcong. Now, that's all over and friendship has been restored between the belligerents. Trouble is that two million people had to die in the process.
Afghanistan has had a rotten time for much of its existence, especially so since the British tried to tame the country in the 19th Century.
Many of the troubles in the Middle East in the 20th Century can be traced back to the dissolution and break up of the Ottoman Empire after WWI together with interference from Western countries, the UK, France etc. Problems that arose from those ill-considered policies which were forced on those countries more than a centuary ago are still with us today. For example, the 1917 Balfour Agreement was a well meaning but somewhat failed attempt to sort out the Jewish-Arab problem in that area of the world and it is still in an unmitigated mess today.
Whenever grand political policies are introduced always expect there'll be fallout from them for hundreds of years to come.
At all but the most superficial level you'll find armed conflict motivations over all of human civilizations isn't "pretty simple really" and you'll find there are a lot of "that's the big problem's". Trying to reduce a topic as big as armed conflict in human history to a single idea of "just" or "unjust" isn't a particularly insightful or explanatory approach.
...you'll find armed conflict motivations over all of human civilizations isn't "pretty simple really"
I have said in posts to this HN story and also in posts to other HN stories about similar matters that these issues are complex. Translation: I do NOT believe these issues are "pretty simple really". I have never said that either here or elsewhere.
From what I said, it ought to have been crystal clear that my comment about armed conflict were my own views and that I had no doubt about them in my own mind. I did not say that the view as presented were some universal understanding or edict. Had it been so then I've have spelt that out with references.
"2) > That's the big problem!"
The first issue is that I did not use the words just or unjust in the above post and by saying that I can only assume that you either didn't fully read what I had written and or that you hadn't read the full thread up to this point.
Nor did I reduce the idea to a single argument (I cannot conceive how you read that into what I had written). The point I was making was (and is) abundantly clear, which is that whether a political cause or action has 'legitimacy' or not is dependent on who actually holds that view—and not that that view is fixed in the firmament as if by some divine right. Like Lorentz transformations in Relativity, one's worldview depends on when and where one is standing (i.e.: one's specific circumstance).
I then went on to give you the reader a number of important—in fact, very significant—examples from history where key protagonists had a very different worldview to their [then] ruling establishments and because they were all successful winners in conflicts with their respective establishments, then their worldview ultimately prevailed, that is, over time (and for many and varied reasons), their respective positions in today's world have been 'legitimized'.
I even went as far as to ask and question whether such 'legitimization' was justified in today's world (i.e. with the para commencing: 'If we had Dr Who's Tardis and took a modern army back to restore the monarchy...').
Frankly, I do not know how I could have been clearer given the restrictions of a HN post. Sure, I acknowledge that, with time, I could have chosen my words more carefully but then I'm no Shakespeare, nor do I have his ability to paraphrase the way he does. I even plead guilty to not having properly proofread my post with sufficient rigor—hence my failing to correct the misspelling of 'century', however I'd excuse this given the fact that I was posting from a smartphone under somewhat adverse conditions.
So how pedantic should one be in submitting a post to HN? For example, given HN's international readership, should one's pedantry extend as far as having to explain the differences in spelling between British and American English and or the way hyphenations differ between both version of the language just to ensure absolute accurate interpretation by one's readers? I would certainly think not. (If you haven't already noticed, I'm guilty of intermixing both aspects of language with considerable inconsistency and indiscretion in that post, moreover I was aware of doing so at the time).
Back to my examples: each case ought to be well known to most HN readers, therefore one automatically has to make make assumptions about what the average HN reader knows about said subject matter (after all, they are responding to a story within a specific context so one has to assume they have some knowledge about the matter).
Moreover, one must assume the average HN reader has a certain (base) level of knowledge of those events, which, on average, would not be overly deep (if one had to explain the background information and history from first principles for every case then one would get endlessly bogged down in a minutiae of details. Not only would space not permit such a post but even if it did then most readers would never bother to read it.
Let's be clear about this: when posting comment about any involved matter one has no option other than to compromise and put limits upon what one has to say, and, by necessity, that significantly limits the scope and extent of what one is able to cover.
Here, even if one were truly expert and knowledgeable with respect to said events—and I'm making no such claim in respect of myself—then to cover them in sufficient detail in order that the reader would gain a full understanding of them simply isn't possible. To do so, the reader would have to study many tomes of information related to each example at an academic level, which in volume would well exceed the size of Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire many times over. Furthermore, the reader would also need to be versed in political philosophy to a reasonably sophisticated level. (I say that as one who once studied the subject as a subset of the main its discipline not to mention having studied history. Even then, I would never claim great expertise in these matters). That said, in this case such level of expertise is completely unnecessary as I am only stating the undisputed historical facts (as opposed to the myriads of disputed minutiae).
Ipso facto, such in-depth understating is not necessary to comprehend the point I was making.
Moreover, lecturing detailed points to HN readers serves little purpose (although I admit that it's sometimes hard to avoid). Doing so is likely to only alienate the average HN reader as it is an insult to his or her intelligence (HN readers being smarter than most). Also, grinding points overly fine serve little purpose, if a HN reader doesn't know a particular point then there's always Wiki to fall back upon.
That said, I always try to make my posts as explicit and unambiguous as is possible, and if you look back at my past efforts then you'll find that many of them are overly long specifically for that reason.
Even then, I accept that my attempts can fail as was recently brought home to me in a big way when on the matter of a COVID issue I replied to someone who had earlier offered a critical reply to what I had posted. Unfortunately, he was one of those increasing numbers people who are completely immune to facts. In my reply I provided him with additional evidence in support of my argument by way of undisputed facts (authoritative scientific references commonly agreed upon by experts in their relevant fields) only for him to further respond to effect that I could not have made such comments unless I possessed certain wartime and pre-war German sympathies (out of politeness I will not repeat what he said herein).
As you'd expect, HN quickly deleted his comment including my very retrained reply which also included my denial of such accusations. (In my reply I also mentioned that despite his unwarranted criticism of me, I was not going to attempt to flag his comment (and I did not) – and that it should stand as is as a testament to his view.)
As I see it, if one dares to comment online then one must come to accept such unwarranted criticism from time to time.
Why is it that so often it happens that if one comments on some topic or other then others automatically assume that one's of a certain belief and or that one belongs to some group or organization? I'd suggest that this likely shows a more narrowed thinking on behalf of those responding to the comment than it does of the comment's originator.
Often, in the grand scheme of things, the unfortunate outcome is that many people self-censor themselves to avoid being criticized or being in the spotlight.
This is very undesirable as it can shut down important debate.
The justice of the case does not tell you how much suffering will be caused by a particular course of action. People chose to run away, do nothing, comply, or collaborate all the time. And that may be the best way to protect your family. Talking about "just war" is a way or moralising a practical decision.
True, as I said it's a very complex problem. However, in complex societies the lowest common denominator applies (to most anyway).
You may not have the chance to run away as you'll be forced to stay, like it or not. We saw that played out many times in WWI, WWII and in Vietnam where conscription was rife and the rules of the draft were essentially inviolate and not negotiable.
I know from personal experience, I opposed the Vietnam and was drafted anyway much to my chagrin (I won't bore you with details as they're not relavant here).
However, the Vietnam War was not one of those conflicts to which I was referring above. This is why there was so much opposition to it. Simply, it was hubris and false logic on the part of those governments involved and that's only a tiny fraction of the story.
Where a war is not 'legitimate' (as I've defined above), I verily believe one has a moral duty to oppose it at every opportunity. However, that's much easier said than done. One should never lose sight of the fact that armies have been recruiting for millennia and they know evey trick in the book. Feigning illness, etc.in an attempt to escape is often extremely difficult.
There's always the conscientious objetion route but that too can be an unusually difficult path.
As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I believe there is an extreme case where one has no other option other than to fight, so I couldn't honestly argue conscientious objector case (perhaps I'm just a bad lier).
In the scenario where there's no other option, escaping to safety also has horrible drawbacks. First, you're leaving the dirty work for others thus increasing their burden, second if you have any conscience or moral fortitude then you'll live with that for the rest of your life. You may not think so now but you will later - perhaps many years later.
A more pragmatic look would just see this as political posturing to save face with the Russians to give off some look of independence and not wholly being lockstep with NATO geopolitical goals for the region.
I'm not going to claim to be some geopolitical expert, but if you want to negotiate your way out of this mess it would seem to absolutely necessary to divert yourself away from the West (even partially) in order to come across as more autonomous. It would give talks much more credence rather than Russians seeing Ukraine as US puppets and not speaking for themselves.
I said less concerned, which still means concerned... but apparently a lot less than the US. What I was referring to is this disagreement:
"US warns Russian attack may be 'imminent,' Ukraine disagrees"
From President Volodymyr Zelenskyy down, the Ukrainian government has tried to urge calm, with senior officials making clear in recent days they don't see the risks now as any more heightened than over the last eight years of Russian-stoked conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Why? So you are refusing to look at an information source with real quotes by the leaders involved if it isn't from one of your CIA-staffed western big-name news sources?
Hm, maybe i am not the one who is disqualified here.
I'll take non-CIA-staffed eastern small-name source too, as long as it's not literally the official propaganda agency of the regime that's in the middle of planning the fucking invasion being discussed. I don't think that's a very high bar, personally.
> I'll take non-CIA-staffed eastern small-name source too, as long as it's not literally the official propaganda agency of the regime that's in the middle of planning the fucking invasion being discussed. I don't think that's a very high bar, personally.
Ya, so... you have a choice between the official propaganda agency of the US (the so-called "free press" all marching in lockstep), or the propaganda of the person responding to a completely made-up "imminent" invasion. The second propaganda source is in agreement with the person who is literally the president of the nation whose "imminent invasion" is in question.
There is no imminent invasion, only a deliberately provoked one.
He also launched more drone strikes than Obama, relaxed the rules of engagement and civilian oversight over the chain of command, and killed hundreds of civilians in airstrikes on Afghanistan and the first use of a MOAB in combat.
Well, that's not for lack of trying. He subjected Iran to a strict regime of (illegal) sanctions, then assassinated Iranian general Qassem Soleimani. That could easily have started a war.
Now, I should perhaps qualify the above, since there are reasons to believe that Trump was not really able to get his way, foreign-policy-wise, due to military-intelligence-industrial complex objections, plus his defense secretary, head of the CIA etc (poor staffing which is mostly on him).
For the people who are getting shot and bombed, the distinction between "war", "operations" and "conflicts" are meaningless. It's semantics used to do an end-run around the fact that Congress needs to approve a declaration of war, but it doesn't change the nature of the activity.
I didn’t make a distinction between those. But there is a big difference between starting and interceding in any of those. American didn’t “start” ww2 for example, but did “start” the war in Iraq.
I read this book (or a good chunk of it) awhile ago and something was off about it. I didn't believe he knew what he was talking about. I dont recall any counter examples in his book, or him claiming he had direct experience with businesses matters. Perhaps he conflated correlation and causation. Some businesses are going to profit from war because demand for certain items will spike. But to claim WW I was pushed by business interests is a huge leap (with no other evidence than "hey look, people are profiting from this!!!")
I have not read the book but what about the campaigns in China, the Philippines, and Latin America? I don't think it's controversial to say commercial interests were a significant (if not the main) driver in those cases.
Why does that specific war need to be the only piece of evidence? In the US we literally spend trillions on war in spite of not really openly fighting them.
WW1 was thought to have been impossible to happen ahead of time because of the losses in business and trade would have been too great. Claiming that it was pushed by business interests is an extraordinary claim which to my knowledge has never been substantiated with any extraordinary evidence.
Defense spending has never been a majority of US GDP, at most representing just over 40% at the high of WW2, reaching at most 12% of GDP again during the Korean war, but remained below 6% over the past 40 years.
So how exactly are you proposing that less than 6% of the economy is directing the other 94%. Because that doesn't make any sense. For that matter, if war is so profitable and defense such a good market, why have so many companies which used to have major defense business exited that business? In WW2 just about every big business was partaking in the war effort. Companies like Ford Motors was producing aircraft and tanks. Ford has long left defense, and what remaining companies are in the sector have been consolidating or dying. Not exactly the sign of a booming industry.
The military budget is ~$700B and more than half of that is personnel costs going to your recruits and staff. About $300B goes to procurement annually, and not just weapons. There are uniforms, engines, paint, cleaning supplies, food, fuel, etc...
That's less revenue for an entire industry than Apple or Walmart does per year.
Business interest didn't start WW1, but they were certainly pushing hard for the the entry of the US into the war.
Wall Street banks (especially JP Morgan) had loaned huge amounts of money to England and France. They stood to suffer masses losses if the war didn't turn out favorably for them. On April 24th, 1917, only 8 days after the US entered the war, congress passed the Emergency Loan Act which sent hundreds of millions of dollars to England and France. The lion's share of this money was used to immediately make interest payments to JP Morgan.
>Morgan brokered a deal that positioned his company as the sole munitions and supplies purchaser during World War I for the British and French governments, bringing his company a 1% commission on $3 billion ($30 million). He was also a banking broker for financing to foreign governments both during and after the war.
>Morgan played a prominent part in financing World War I. Following its outbreak, he made the first loan of $12,000,000 to Russia.[6] In 1915, a loan of $500,000,000 was made to France and Britain following negotiations by the Anglo-French Financial Commission.[7] The firm's involvement with British and French interests fueled charges the bank was conspiring to maneuver the United States into supporting the Allies in order to rescue its loans. By 1915, when it became apparent the war was not going to end quickly, the company decided to forge formal relationships with France.
Then there were the manufacturers and the farmers. Demand for goods, foodstuffs and merchandise of all kinds was a large part of what helped pull the moribund US economy out of a long period of economic distress that stretched all the way back to The Panic of 1907. England and French (borrowed) money was flooding into the coffers and US companies and US workers. A poor outcome for England and France would leave an uncertain future (at best) for the prospect of future exports for many companies.
There were other, non-economic factors to be sure, but much has been written about the influence that the banks and the business community had on pushing US entry into the war.
This guy is amazing and it really speaks of the troubles of war.
>The flag follows the dollar, the soldiers follow the flag.
I find this "business plot"[0] to be fascinating as well.
>Retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler asserted that wealthy businessmen were plotting to create a fascist veterans' organization with Butler as its leader and use it in a coup d'état to overthrow Roosevelt.
>Early in the committee's gathering of testimony most major news media dismissed the plot, with a New York Times editorial falsely characterizing it as a "gigantic hoax".
Don't forget that congress redacted a ton of stuff from his testimony and the unredacted version wasnt discovered until the 1970s or something like that.
Smedley Butler has always been my favorite Marine because he saw the bigger picture, and I like to give the Chesty lovers a talking to about the differences.
From my experience I can confirm that war is indeed a racket.
Capitalists tend to dislike Democracy. In a Democracy, groups of people tax the Capitalists to pay for all sorts of frivolities like Health Care, Elder Care, poor folk care, and crazy useless stuff like Libraries, parks (aka future mining locations), policing, and community-sponsored housing.
It's so much easier for the Capitalists if there is a fascist in charge, because then such nonsense as just mentioned is tamped down, and the people can fend for themselves. Things are just more tidy and predictable.
Hi, I'm a Social Democrat. I want all of those things and a capitalist system. I don't think markets solve every problem, however. For example, I think universal healthcare is a good idea.
I think UBI is the best compromise as well for solving worker's rights issues and poverty. It doesn't have to exclude all other governmental programs though.
I don't think fully private healthcare works in practice. It disincentivizes cures and proactive treatment. It's also difficult or impossible to ensure you're getting a good price for emergency treatment. Empirically, public healthcare is cheaper and has better outcomes. I'm not wholly against some private higher-end care for those that want to pay, though.
Privatizing all land/parks sounds disasterous. There are some things we pay for that we don't expect to profit from monetarily. Our national and state parks, blm land, and libraries fit that bill.
Schools, yeah maybe. I'd push for a voucher system while still making school a requirement.
Social security, food stamps, etc. could all be rolled into direct cash payment. People having cash just doesn't solve the issues with having market incentives in places where it is detrimental, imo.
How does that solve the problem of capital-owners simply raising prices to match new general level of income? For example, if renting housing previously cost $X, and UBI was implemented giving everyone an additional $Y dollars, I would expect leasing costs for housing to immediately jump by, say, 0.75*Y, and the costs of other goods to rise similarly. UBI would then just be a general transfer of money from the poor and middle classes (through taxation) to the capital-owning classes.
Obviously, this can't be captured in the limited "scale model" research economists do because a temporary UBI given to a small segment of the population is not comparable to a permanent and general UBI that landowners can fully exploit. In all the arguments I've seen for UBI, I've never seen someone address the issue of the response of the landowners without relying on full-blown communist control of prices by the government.
You're assumption is untested as well. I'd rather guess that with greater mobility and the ability to move between jobs without fear of losing everything, people would move elsewhere and invest in housing outside of expensive cities. I can see an argument for some sort of regulation around housing which disincentivizes financialization of that market and increases supply. A Land Value Tax seems like a possibly good approach.
Why do you assume that the UBI will lead to greater mobility or financial safety? My point was that it simply moves the first rung of the ladder up, such that housing that cost $X before will now cost $X+0.75*Y. Nothing changes on the ground except that numbers go higher - until existing social services are removed as "unnecessary" now that UBI is in place, which is how I often see UBI pitched. Otherwise, how is it paid for? This is beside the point, of course, but even a modest UBI of $2,000 a month will cost over 7 trillion dollars annually, which is 50% greater than total federal government spending last year.
Even now, people can move out of expensive cities and into the hinterlands. A few weeks ago, we had a story here about a guy who worked himself up from blue-collar work to carpetbagging (his words) in a rural town. It's possible to do that for anyone on a reasonable salary, but most people choose not to. On a known stipend, the prices in those tiny towns will rise just the same; the incentives to do so are the same as those that keep them at their current level, after all.
The recent move to remote working is probably going to do a lot more for equalization and social/physical mobility than UBI ever would, simply because it gives people the option to opt out of life in major cities. That's something that UBI by itself could never do. People will still have the fear of losing everything, of spiralling into unrecoverable debt, of never actually owning the house that they live in and the car that they drive. Look at Social Security as an example. A monthly stipend does not stop the elderly from going homeless.
After his military days, Butler had tried to translate his military skills into a term as head of the Philadelphia police, so you can see why a group of tyrants-to-be might want him to join a group trying to bring civilians under an authoritarian regime. You might also see why it is better to give former high-ranking military officers medals and pensions than to give them police departments.
"The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. It's not even close. We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined."
1) 7 of those 8 are allies
2) It might be the next 15 or 20 now, as the DoD budget has increased since.
"Our troops are the finest fighting force in the history of the world. No nation dares to attack us or our allies because they know that's the path to ruin."
3) Worked out well. 20+ years in Afghanistan. The lives. The money. And that's The Best?
Except Eisenhower made those statements under the specific context of economic situation just after WW2, which revitalized the American economy after the great depression. At the height of WW2 the United States was spending over 40% of its GDP on defense. Given that WW2 did wonders for the American economy, it would be legitimately tempting for contemporaries to think that another war would be a good idea in an economic slump. That is what Eisenhower was warning against.
>Obama in his 2016 State of the Union
The Armed forces he spoke of were a result of decades of investments of previous administrations. Obama's oversaw one of the most draconian defunding of the DoD in decades. The sequestration of the DoD budget cuts was devastating to readiness and has left the United States vulnerable for the 2020s. The PLA has grown at truly incredible speed since then. It now outnumbering the USN in the number of vessels. At the same time, the USN is retiring more ships than it's building. The United States is on track to lose a Taiwan Flashpoint.
Succinct and timely as we watch the US media and political class breathlessly try to rally us all to go to war with Russia. Even the Ukrainians aren't as eager and worked-up; NATO, in fact, has not stood up any forces so far. It's insane.
"Among the members of the global alliance dedicated to destroying the American-led order, Iran is the most vulnerable. The job of the U.S. is to defang it." [0]
"With negotiations likely to fail, [Biden] better be prepared for a military strike [on Iran]." [1]
Where is major media in the US commonly arguing in favor of a US war with Russia? They're certainly talking about Russia re Ukraine frequently.
I've seen a lot of the headlines spilling out of NY Times, WaPo, Fox, MSNBC, et al. and they're not arguing in favor of the US going to war with Russia. That's a very rare argument.
Almost exclusively the arguments are about how to respond after Russia invades Ukraine, in terms of the severity of sanctions. As well as if the US should be (or can) doing anything right now to dissuade Russia from invading.
I'm also seeing no common arguments in the US media in favor of a NATO war with Russia more broadly.
Go look at the home pages for CNN, Fox, MSNBC, CNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, Washington Post, NY Times, LA Times. Where are all the arguments in favor of war with Russia? All I'm seeing is a lot of discussion about the context of Russia being on Ukraine's border and the odds they'll invade or not, and what non-war response will be appropriate afterward (including eg moving more US forces into other eastern NATO nations as support to the security of those nations).
It's hard to sort it out. I've read stories in American media that describe a Russian troop build-up and make an invasion seem inevitable ("they wouldn't expend these resources to mobilize this many soldiers without plans to invade"). I've also read stories that claim the Russians only have ~10,000 troops at the border, not nearly enough for an invasion, and that the amount hasn't actually changed.
The Ukranians seem to be downplaying the risk of invasion. Whether or not the US media wants a war, it may be the case that they've overestimated the likelihood of an invasion.
> The Ukranians seem to be downplaying the risk of invasion. Whether or not the US media wants a war, it may be the case that they've overestimated the likelihood of an invasion.
The goal of V. Poopking is to make billions for him and his friends in RF and Germany. For that, he needs Nord Stream 2 to work, so he needs to exchange something for Nord Stream 2. RF has weak economy, so it has nothing to propose in exchange, except safety from RF army.
If RF does not invade Ukraine, Germany will allow Nord Stream 2 to work, which is beneficial for both Poopking and his German partners. Goal achieved.
Yep. Moreover, they don't want USA company (Shell) at their border (in Ukraine), because they compete hard with USA already. So, they asked government for help. The government used their knowledge about soviet spies, collected during hunting for agent 26, to convince Angela to ask her brother for help, promising hundreds of billions of profit in return and strong support for a campaign. So, Vova invaded Ukraine to kick out Shell from Eastern Ukraine, to avoid competition, and to portray Ukraine as an unreliable partner, which can cut Russian gas at any time.
Believe what you want but this¹ is a clear indicator that an invasion is inevitable. 10k troops is likely Russian propaganda. I've read the Russian point of view and it's basically "the US has provoked this by extending NATO into Eastern Europe, Ukraine is controlled by fascists". They have failed to install a pro Russian administration in Ukraine, so their only remaining option is "liberating eastern and southern Ukraine from fascists". I've posted a map with their plans but the comment was downvoted. I'm not posting it again but they basically want to occupy and control the whole Northern Black Sea coast.
1. Russia moves blood supplies near Ukraine, adding to U.S. concern, officials say
Sorry, it was actually 100K which still doesn't seem enough for an invasion. The question is whether the number of soldiers has increased as of late, which the Ukrainians deny.
My overall point is that I don't know whether to trust articles like the one you linked or things the Ukrainians and Russians are saying. It's not that I think the American media is lying exactly but it occurs to me that they may be deluding themselves.
Don't know, but I really wish they are wrong and the Russians are right in their claims that the West is "hysterical". So far all the evidence points towards preparations for an invasion and failure to recognise it as such is just wishful thinking. If they were only amassing troops, it could have been an exercise, but when mobile hospitals start to appear near a conflict area, it means preparations for war. Hopefully this will end like the Russo-Georgian war. Similar military effectives were involved on the Russian part then. To get a better view on this, I'd read what Pavel Felgenhauer has to say about this. He was right in his prediction that Russia was going to attack Georgia in August 2008.
You've completely glossed over the root of it here. The lie that Russia is going to invade Ukraine is the "Saddam has WMDs"
Every time the US media talks about an imminent "Russian Invasion", or suggests that they are not the ones instigating the war, they are indirectly instigating war with Russia by lying.
The current lie is that there is a threat of a new invasion. Not even Ukrainian leadership agrees with this, but it doesn't seem to affect planning in the United States.
Lesser of two evils applies when there is a dichotomy of two likely outcomes both of which you see as evil.
In this case, the United States can simply not invade. Then there will be no problem.
The problem is that Jen Psaki is going on television and telling the country a bold-faced lie. It is just a lie, that is all there is to it. Russia is not the aggressor. The United State is the aggressor.
Amazing. It's like you live in a parallel universe where the US, not Russia, is preparing to invade by amassing a hundred thousand troops, issuing insane ultimatums, dehumanizing the enemy daily on its propaganda outlets, etc.
And well... By giving far right proxy forces in the Ukraine arms and training, so the proxy forces can then be used for clandestine operations and hopefully (so nato/us/UK think) instigate a Russian military response to which they can scream casius Beli and create more unrest in the entire area
It's all about making the war seem unavoidable. Building a common frame of reference that will then be played by media and politics to position the US on the "right side".
Do the US media talk about how the US (via NATO) is, and has been for years, provoking Russia?
If you find the above outrageous, then the media has done a fine job, and the country is ready to go to war. No need to explicitly argue in favour of it.
I would like to see the Ukrainians be able to determine their own fate: without war. All the numbers say the Ukrainians, by vast majority want their country for themselves, unmolested.
What I hear from Western media is deep worry for the fates of these people who have become friends of the EU bloc. I work with Ukrainians daily. I am deeply worried they will be crushed beneath the tank treads of an authoritarian dictatorship. No one should have to suffer that fate. May they be free, happy and peaceful.
So it's all right to close media just because it's "Russian"? Ok...
You know, Ukraine has media control agency and laws which regulate quite strongly what can be and can not be said and shown by media. Opposition media was regularly pressured by this agency (while handling of "pro-Western" media was much more lenient), but in the end they were unable to close them using this legal channel, so instead Zelensky simply used unconsitutional executive order.
> So it's all right to close media just because it's "Russian"?
It's in law. See law about defense of Ukraine. All gov workers must take actions against aggressor.
> Ukraine has media control agency and laws which regulate quite strongly
Thank you for your kind words, but you are contradicting yourself: how such strong agency can be developed in a rotten democracy?
> Opposition media was regularly pressured by this agency
s/opposition/Russian/g
Yes.
> instead Zelensky simply used unconsitutional executive order.
It's by law. President is defense commander at time of war. Law about Defense says that time of war begins after a first battle with an aggressor and ends at the end of war, so time of war started in 2014 and continued today.
It's looking like you have misunderstanding about how liberal democracy (равноправное народовластие) works.
In dictatorship, people serve a Great Leader. In regular democracy, majority wins.
In liberal democracy, unlike regular democracy or dictatorship, value of human life is equal to infinity, thus value of a single human life is equal to value of whole nation, even when it's poor black gay against top elite: they are equal.
This creates a problem at time of war, because liberal democracy cannot force it citizens to go to war to defend the state or do any other actions required for survival. To solve this problem, liberal democracy must have two modes: peace time mode and war time mode. In peace time mode liberal democracy works as intended, in war time mode liberal democracy works as dictatorship.
Was multiple times already that a dictator or fascists country tried to capture «rotted» liberal democracy, thinking «we can capture them in 2 weeks, before they even create a defense committee», only to see as democracy switches to war time mode, creates effective chain of command, then beats sheet out of aggressor.
I recommend to watch http://justiceharvard.org/ (Russian translation is available), if you want to understand how liberal democracy is constructed.
So instead of pointing to at least single false fact in my comment you point me to a website which quite aggressively translates the official Western stance and does not even tries to look as independent (it's an EEAS outlet), which I should blindingly trust? For reference, I do know both Russian and Ukrainian (the latter to an extent of being able to understand news), so I built my opinion based on Ukrainian media and social networks.
EUvsDisinfo contains both Russian propaganda and EU vision. Just search for your «facts» there. (They have Russian translation).
When Russian outlets and TV channels will present both RF and Western points of view, I will watch them, but currently I prefer to read EUvsDisinfo.
> a website which quite aggressively translates the official Western stance
«Aggressively»? It's not a TV channel in each major country and a show at prime time at major channels in RF, with 9 zeroes in budget. It's just a site with few guys.
> For reference, I do know both Russian and Ukrainian (the latter to an extent of being able to understand news), so I built my opinion based on Ukrainian media and social networks.
I guess, you're already banned from pro-Ukrainian social circles, because I see no guys like you anymore in FB. Which is a bit sad, because I like to argue with them to better understand our enemy. Where I can meet people like you on FB or YouTube?
A couple nights ago I was watching some blowhard host on CNN describe going to war with Russia as “defending democracy” which is something we do “because we’re the good guys.”
The idea that Russia is about to invade Ukraine is pure Western propaganda. This is not Russia's plan, and is not in Russia's interest. That this unlikely event would be breathlessly trumpeted from every corner for weeks is itself a puzzle.
Some have speculated that the war-pig plan is for certain fringe Ukrainian neo-Nazis who have received training in southern USA to commence a "reign of terror" against ethnic Russians in Donbas. Supposedly Putin will be unable to resist coming to the rescue. However, recent events in Artsakh have emphasized Putin's composure in such situations. American chatterers have poor mental models of Russian leadership.
>Even the Ukrainians aren't as eager and worked-up
This is so intellectually dishonest. Ukrainian politicians are downplaying the Russian threat because they don't want their population to panic and flee the country.
Personally, I like the opinion I read once that it is an inevitable consequence of the existence of power itself, and as a result, the existence of those who seek it and compete for it. The best you can do is stay out of its way.
(Credit goes to a Vietnamese tribal leader named Bear, whose tribe made it through the big war there despite all that happeend.)
If interested, for more data including names and dates, try Carroll Quigley's Anglo-American Establishment or his Tragedy and Hope. For a shorter version, try Joe Plummer's Tragedy and Hope 101.
If true, not all is as it appears. But then, in the day and age of propaganda, when is it?
The synopsis on Wikipedia[0] makes it sound like a fairly quaint, run of the mill cabal-style conspiracy theory. What makes it stand out among dozens of others, exactly? Like, say I didn't have time to humour them all, why should I invest effort into this one?
I believe this racket has only been growing and growing every decade since. It needs to be brought up more often, and people and organisations with large audiences must dare to speak openly about it.
War is a racket. But to imply that the little guy does not profit is disingenuous. 330 million Americans profit from the fact the US dollar is a reserve currency. Countries and people park their money in dollars, and as the world economy grows, there's a need for more dollars, and the US Government obliges by running mind blowing deficits. In the old times, vassals would pay tribute, today, they simply buy US Treasuries. Tribute (or if you prefer, protection money) is the very definition of racket.
Putin and Xi don't like to pay protection money. In fact, they'd rather be racketeers themselves [1].
Having the dollar as the reserve currency resulted in at first the draining of American gold reserves, and now the draining of American manufacturing. So it hasn't been without a cost.
What higher ups? Where and when the US military is used is not decided by the military. It's decided by politicians.
This resonated strongly with me when I was a young US Marine but I don't feel the same now. It's one of those pure and simple ideas that's easy to say but the world is not pure and simple.
There’s a clear feedback loop between the military and the politicians, it is absolutely not a one-way street of control. This is the entire premise of the term military-industrial complex. Military will always advocate for itself to get more funding and more use (as in, bombing things). And it will continue to serve as a successful launching point for political careers. Not to mention all the companies, fat off of defense contracts, that heavily lobby the government same as any large corporation.
> There’s a clear feedback loop between the military and the politicians.
Definitely. I recommend H. R. McMaster's Dereliction Of Duty, which discusses how military leaders, many with political ambitions, helped to get the US into Vietnam.
You should read some memoires from higher-ups in the military instead of trying to lecture people about something you have no experience with. Military leaders will say they don't need more equipment, but politicians will spend a ton on it anyway because the equipment is built in their district. Military advice is often ignored by politicians in order to score political points, like when Obama ignored advice to increase military presence in Afghanistan to regain control, and instead let it drag on with insufficient resources, ensuring it was a waste of time and life.
Your example of military not advocating for increased use of itself is… Obama ignoring the military advocating for increased use of itself in Afghanistan?
I’ve read memoirs. Some interesting ones about the Vietnam war and how every military higher-up was champing at the bit to throw more troops into the meatgrinder.
My “experience with” this is watching the military incinerate orders of magnitude more taxes than I will pay in my entire life on useless bullshit as I walk past dozens of homeless people a day. Like that $80-150 million plane they threw in the drink just the other day. Real good stuff!
I think some of it is still relevant, like all the money being wasted buying unnecessary equipment during war time. From what I read in memoires written by generals that retired more recently, they probably wouldn't agree with the extreme isolationist policy that Smedley Butler advocates.
This book is a great example of how wrong it is to think that the concept of the state is evil and oppressing. When in reality the state acts in favor of those in power, and i don't mean politicians or the president. It's the capitalists. The ones who control production control society.
We don't have wars because of ideas or justice, we have war because of the hard economic incentives of the powerful. The states mass surveillance isn't based on a corrupt evil, they do it to secure the interests of the powerful.
We don't pay taxes solely because 'the states' or politicians want to take from us, they do it to pay subsidies and bailouts to industries.
This book is about capitalists, their state and how they use it to secure profit. To have capital is to have influence, so where are you when laws get written?
Soldiers who have never fought are less capable in battle. It doesn't really matter how much they train or how many drills are run. Nothing really prepares you for the trauma of watching your friend of many years die by getting his head blown off next to you, or worse, bleeding out while crying for his mother. There are two kinds of people who witness that: those who curl up and pray for it all to stop, and those who pick up their weapons and keep fighting. Generals never know which kind of men they have unless battles weed out the first kind, by death or discharge. And militaries with too many of the first kind lose wars.
Yes, it's horrible. It's gut-wrenching just to think about it. We'd all be better off if we could resolve our conflicts without war. But in the world we live in, there are too many military and paramilitary actors who are not guided by such Enlightened ideals. What will we do if we are not prepared and they come knocking on our door?
Maybe you don't believe that the same irrational forces that first manifest as teenage graffiti, then grow into organized crime, could ever result in organizations the size of militaries. Maybe you don't believe that, in societies which have abolished all adventure, the only adventure left is to abolish that society. That's fine. I respect that. But what if you're wrong? Shouldn't society hedge that bet, considering the cost? Can no such hedge possibly justify its cost?
There's a reasonable discussion to be had about where the line (i.e. cost) should be drawn, and what shape the line should take. But the opinion that it is worth it to pay some cost should be relatively uncontroversial. And if you understand that society should pay some cost to maintain an effective military, you ultimately understand that, until the diplomats can succeed at building a genuine global peace, war is inevitable.
What does this have to do with the linked essay? The author is claiming that America is the aggressor in these wars. You make it sound like it’s all for practice in case one day the tables are turned
> there are too many military and paramilitary actors who are not guided by such Enlightened ideals.
A majority of which being: US forces per se, forces of US allies (NATO etc.), and forces of states which the US has paid off, extorted, or otherwise manipulated.
> What will we do if we are not prepared and they come knocking on our door?
But what will "they" do when _you_ come knocking on _their_ door? And they can never 'prepare' to fend off the leading military power in the world.
Had this been believed by decision makers in the US, we would probably be under Nazi regime right now, or at least most of Europe would be. Of course many aspects of war are profitable and it should be avoided at all cost. But to think that all war is nothing but a money maker for a small group is incorrect. American Isolationism, at least many decades ago, was bad for the rest of the world.
This talk from 1933 aged poorly. America's initial lack of intervention in WW2 resulted in Pearl Harbor and German conquest of most of Europe. Smedley Butler can stay forgotten as a footnote in the dusty annals of history.
America's initial lack of intervention in WW2 resulted in Pearl Harbor and German conquest of most of Europe
Europe's refusal to follow Wilson's Fourteen Points plan and instead punish Germany as hard as possible is what created WW2 in the first place. Exactly how many of Europe's messes was the US supposed to help clean up before saying "No more"?
Smedley Butler can stay forgotten as a footnote in the dusty annals of history.
The legacy of the most decorated marine in history will live on longer than yours or mine.
> punish Germany as hard as possible is what created WW2 in the first place
People like simplistic arguments for WW2. But the truth is that the terms given to Germany weren't that hash, certainly not as harsh as the terms imposed by Germany on Russia and Romania in the separate peace treaties before the end of the war.
Let's not give Wilson too much credit. He could have simply kept his campaign promises to keep USA out of WWI. At the start of 1917, all combatants were ready to negotiate peace. Wilson's perfidy on behalf of armaments manufacturers invigorated the bloodlust of the English and (especially) French ruling classes, lengthened the war, and through the "Spanish" (really Kansan) flu epidemic killed tens of millions. Later at Paris, he made a show of resisting their excesses for about a week before he contracted the flu (karma!) and lost the intellectual capacity to affect negotiations.
Except that this description of war seems to paint every US military intervention post WWII extremely well.
There's also no point in positing counter-factual scenarios regarding WWII. If you want to imagine a world where the US rushed in and "saved" Europe early and prevents Pearl Harbor, you also have to imagine a world where US domestic support for Germany ultimately wins out and we end up supporting them.
True, that said I think it's viable to argue that just defending America at coastline in WWII would likely have led to an undesirable outcome.
But yes, colonial conflict before after WWII is probably more of a racket.
That said, the cold war didn't stayed cold -- which was nice. Credit NATO (maybe), to be fair NATO is probably also a racket for the military industrial complex (by making countries buy more F35s for example).
I mean, there is certainly a reason why US has been upset for so long that EU countries haven't been spending enough money on military equipment, these Raytheon ceo and stock bonuses are not gonna appear out of thin air!
OP does make interesting point. Why didn’t the capitalists (if they are so powerful) bring America into the war sooner?
This is a very valid point. Maybe worded badly but a perfectly valid thing to point out.
There is a clear contradiction here: In Democracies, public opinion does matter. It isn’t 100% capitalism. The capitalists might be able to get away with some excursions here and there, but when it comes to invading Europe and Japan, public opinion still mattered. The lack of public support was a major factor in why USA did not engage sooner, Pearl Harbor put it over the top definitively.
I didn’t read anything into his speech about being against going to war under all situations.
The Nazi war machine was identical to the group of gangsters outlined in this talk: Integrated capitalist warfare by way of industrialists. His point applies perfectly well to that situation. It’s exactly what happened.
Once one side begins the process, there wasn’t much that could be done, have to respond in kind.
> Why didn’t the capitalists (if they are so powerful) bring America into the war sooner?
Plenty of them were selling products to Germany, including many that would end up being used by the German war machine. If the US entered the war against Germany, all that would have had to stop.
