JustAsking
Sexy Member
Yes, but we have a fancy name for it. It's called a "preemptive war".I thought America's Foreign policy was "Shoot first, ask later"?
Yes, but we have a fancy name for it. It's called a "preemptive war".I thought America's Foreign policy was "Shoot first, ask later"?
Headbang8, are you talking about Hitler's disastrous invasion of Russia--in winter? (Ha. Hitler invading Russia in winter is like the USA invading Iraq in forest camouflage.)
(Or like being a tornado chaser in the Midwest. Why chase them? They'll come right to you!)
NCbear (who thinks certain things are just common sense:smile![]()
Let's leave aside the role of the US in WWII in Europe; it can be argued that the Russians actually defeated Hitler. That point is moot.
In WWII and its aftermath, the USA was both courageous and generous. Having lived in both Germany and Japan, I know for a fact that citizens of both natons were astonished at how magnanimous Americans were in victory.
That's where it stops, unfortunately. Since then, the USA has served its own interests in foreign policy. And often, arguably, misjudged those interests.
What changed?
The United Kingdom was an empire and look what they did.
Let's add to that Italy, France, Germany, Sweden, Japan, Portugal, Mongolia, Spain, Greece, Egypt, and yes, even 3000 years ago, Iran and Iraq.
The policy of the United States in the middle east is control of oil wealth first, a foil for Russia second. We moved into the middle east, into Iraq because one thing is very clear even if the government doesn't say so and that's that world's supply of oil is finite and most of the best crude in the world is in that relatively defensible area. When push comes to shove as peak oil approaches, other powerful nations will want to secure their piece of the pie and, because we ill have fortress Iraq, they're going to have to deal with the United States to get it. Without a major presence in the middle east, Russia (or even China) is free to move in and control the world's major source of oil. We're there now so that when the time comes, we will be able to secure oil for the United States and selected strategic allies like the UK, Canada, and Japan. We couldn't do that from Qatar and we can't directly take over Saudi. Iraq is the perfect strategic location and has oil of its own. Any other reason for the invasion, al Qaeda, Saddam is evil, WMDs, etc., is a side show.
The India Famine:
When an El Nino drought destituted the farmers of the Deccan plateau in 1876 there was a net surplus of rice and wheat in India. But the viceroy, Lord Lytton, insisted that nothing should prevent its export to England. In 1877 and 1878, at height of the famine, grain merchants exported a record 6.4 million hundredweight of wheat. As the peasants began to starve, government officials were ordered “to discourage relief works in every possible way”(2). The Anti-Charitable Contributions Act of 1877 prohibited “at the pain of imprisonment private relief donations that potentially interfered with the market fixing of grain prices.” The only relief permitted in most districts was hard labour, from which anyone in an advanced state of starvation was turned away. Within the labour camps, the workers were given less food than the inmates of Buchenwald. In 1877, monthly mortality in the camps equated to an annual death rate of 94%.
As millions died, the imperial government launched “a militarized campaign to collect the tax arrears accumulated during the drought.” The money, which ruined those who might otherwise have survived the famine, was used by Lytton to fund his war in Afghanistan. Even in places which had produced a crop surplus, the government’s export policies, like Stalin’s in the Ukraine, manufactured hunger. In the North-western provinces, Oud and the Punjab, which had brought in record harvests in the preceding three years, at least 1.25m died.
1. Mike Davis, 2001. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World. Verso, London.
2. An order from the lieutenant-governor Sir George Couper to his district officers. Quoted in Mike Davis, ibid.
The Response to the Mau Mau Rebellion:
Three recent books - Britain’s Gulag by Caroline Elkins, Histories of the Hanged by David Anderson and Web of Deceit by Mark Curtis - show how white settlers and British troops suppressed the Mau Mau revolt in Kenya in the 1950s. Thrown off their best land and deprived of political rights, the Kikuyu started to organise - some of them violently - against colonial rule. The British responded by driving up to 320,000 of them into concentration camps(3). Most of the remainder - over a million - were held in “enclosed villages”. Prisoners were questioned with the help of “slicing off ears, boring holes in eardrums, flogging until death, pouring paraffin over suspects who were then set alight, and burning eardrums with lit cigarettes.”(4) British soldiers used a “metal castrating instrument” to cut off testicles and fingers. “By the time I cut his balls off,” one settler boasted, “he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket”(5). The soldiers were told they could shoot anyone they liked “provided they were black”(6). Elkins’s evidence suggests that over 100,000 Kikuyu were either killed by the British or died of disease and starvation in the camps. David Anderson documents the hanging of 1090 suspected rebels: far more than the French executed in Algeria(7). Thousands more were summarily executed by soldiers, who claimed they had “failed to halt” when challenged.
3. Caroline Elkins, 2005. Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya. Jonathan Cape, London.
4. Mark Curtis, 2003. Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the World. Vintage, London.
5. Caroline Elkins, ibid.
6. Mark Curtis, ibid.
7. David Anderson, 2005. Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire. Weidenfeld, London.-Monbiot.com
Oh let's see.....
First, let's not disregard the fact the UK marched (or sailed) into foreign lands, erected a flag, and then proceeded to use military force to make people accept its rule. This was the British Empire, not the Commonwealth, not a United Kingdom, but an empire. Assuming for a minute that any of these sovereign nations actually wished to be invaded militarily in the first place...
If the British built schools, roads, and railroads, it was for the betterment of Britain, not the indigenous peoples. After the UK left all these colonies did they continue to build and maintain the infrastructure in all these places? No. Why? Because they built these things for themselves, not the people whose land they occupied. Schools indoctrinate, roads and railways allow for better passage of peoples, goods, and services, but also troops, materiel, and communications. With a good infrastructure in place, the easier and quicker it is to loot the country but also to control it. Getting troops where they need to go is a priority of any military commander.
The UK smuggles, then uses military force against China, who had prohibited the importation of opium, to force the Chinese to import the narcotic. China eventually bans all importation of opium as an estimated 2,000,000 Chinese are addicted to cheap British opium from Bengal, but Britain needs to balance trade with China and thus militarily forces China to accept the importation and distribution of opium. Vastly unequal trade agreements then forced upon the Chinese government in the Unequal Treaties and Hong Kong is ceded to the UK. The economic and social effects were devastating to China, weakening it to the point of collapse in 1911.
How many foreign countries aided in Hurricane Katrina?
the mexicans are more of a threat than the terrorists to our country
I think the US is repeating both these errors.
The anti-americanism thread rumbles on.
The dollar is barely worth the paper it's written on right now. How exactly are we a threat to the rest of the world?
But I am interested to know where you draw the line for your country's foreign policy in being a means to an end for the perceived self interest of the US.
I get the feeling that a lot of your citizens are ignorant of the realities of American activities, financial, political and military in order to secure American interests. This is true. I doubt I know half of them. :redface:
Do you really benefit from them? I would like to think we benefit from some of our foreign activities. By "we" I mean the American people not just Halliburton.
Would you vote for a government that would raise your taxes to make your economy less of a threat to the rest of the world or reduce your requirement for the world's natural resources?
I don't think we are an economic threat to anybody right now.
I am not so sure.
Really? cause if I win the Powerball I would split my time between the Jersey Shore and Tuscany, Italy.There is no other place in the world that I would rather live than in the United States.
....I'll even raise everyone's favorite spectre to which blame can most likely be assigned (in both the old UK and present US instances): career politics. The longer an individual remains in a public office, and the larger the percentage of a legislative body is comprised of tenured incumbents, the more they tend to become self-serving entities.
....
It's obvious that campaign finance restrictions are about as effective at curbing such corruption as lopping off the heads of the Hydra. The sensible tack would be to eliminate the demand for such corruption by killing the entire idea of career politics. Yep, I'm talking about term limits for legislators. I don't have any numbers to support a specific limit off the top of my head, but surely something similar to the Executive...less than a decade for any office. Maybe one term in the Senate, and three in the House...the specifics aren't as important as the idea itself. Make it almost like jury duty...go in, serve your term, get the fuck out.
If anyone has a better idea for making the majority of the fucknuggets in DC start altruistically representing their citizens and their nation, I'm all ears.
I'm not sure, was this part of your post for my benefit? I'm in the "empires are bad" school of thought. Some good things occasionally result from empires, but it's almost NEVER good for the conquered. It just nearly makes me want to puke when I hear some idiot blustering, "them terr'ists only hates us cuz of our freedom." What a crock of shit. They hate us because we are occupying their countries and pillaging their resources.First, as I've said, no country is altruistic. If a country makes a move in foreign affairs, it's to do so to further its own goals.
Russia has been an empire and look at what they did.
The United Kingdom was an empire and look what they did.
Let's add to that Italy, France, Germany, Sweden, Japan, Portugal, Mongolia, Spain, Greece, Egypt, and yes, even 3000 years ago, Iran and Iraq.
It's the way of the world. Every country sees to its own best interests. [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif][/FONT]
That ties in to so many things I've posted in the past. Of course, the sheeple always begin to bleat about how unAmerican I am for saying it.A citizenry's biggest threat is usually it's own Government. I'm always amazed how many people don't realise that.
Keep your friends close...
Those links are astonishing, Rob. The USA refused help from France?International response to Hurricane Katrina - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Canadian response to Hurricane Katrina - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Another example of an American rattling on about what a bunch of Americans he had nothing to do with did sixty years ago, while refusing to admit that America has ever received help from anyone else.
Those links are astonishing, Rob. The USA refused help from France?