I'm going to go off on a tanget here so, mods, feel free to impose whatever penalty you like. I have a box full of soap that has been feeling a little neglected lately.Amoreyna said:
Please. This is kind of misguided world view that makes the United States look like a ruddgedly handsome hero standing alone against a legion of slobbering idiots jealous of his good looks and pretty girlfriend.
Do you have any idea how expensive a land war is? Let's forget the human cost for now and just look at figures. One box of ammo is already expensive, so multiply that by the few hundreds of thousands of bullets that will be fired. If you want to invade another country you'll want to get there first, which means cars, trucks, tanks, APCs, planes, etc. One fighter jet costs a few million so you'd better be ready to pony up for that. And then there's the troops. You have to feed them, wash them, give them armor and weapons and patch them up when they get shot, and then when they die pay their families to get the legions of weeping widows off your back. My point is that another country realisticlly invading the US (or another developed nation) and "taking away our system of beliefs" is wholly unrealistic to the point of being laughable. I really hate invoking 9/11 but it's a good example. That wasn't an attempt to convert Americans to Muslims, nor was it the harbinger of the next Persian War, but rather an attempt to spread fear and dismay - a goal in which it was a resounding success. This is the kind of thing mom and dad tell you when you're five because they don't feel like explaining large-scaled global socilogy, in the same way that "Mommies and Daddies hug each other sometimes" stands in for wild, kinky, rough sex.
Of course, I do have to admit that there is one country that actually does go around imposing its beliefs on other nations - kicking in the door, tossing in a flash grenade and before everyone knows it they've got aforementioned ruggedly hansom troops telling them to love God and Micky Mouse: the United States. Case and point? Afganistan. Remember our little stint where a by-product of the invasion was going to be liberating the women? What we created, in effect, was a surge in popularity of Islamic law and burning brides. I'm all for women's rights but when you jog into a country that is so entrenched in its beliefs and tell them they're a bunch of backward yokles, you can't expect a good reaction. Imagine if a Jehova's Witness showed up on your doorstep with pamphlets explaining why you are too stupid to wipe yourself and you need to convert to their standards because it's for you own good. Something tells me you'd kick him off your yard with your special kicking boots.
My point is that the notion that wars start because someone is jealous of someone else is unrealistic. Sure, maybe "jealousy" comes into play in a resource war, but in those too, the US has been the main agressor. Evangelical Pat Robertson is a noted supporter of Isreal, which seems to contradict itself because he is a devout Christian and the archaic interpretation is that the Jews were mean to Jesus. It makes sense when you look a little further and find out that for the Apocolypse to happen rightly, Isreal needs to exist so God and descend from the clouds, breathe fire all over it and then piss it out. Religious fundamentalists do not despise developed nations because they're jealous of our X Boxes and access to internet porn. Nor do they hate freedom of speech and have decided that if they can't have it, nobody can. These are people who, like Sarah Palin, think the world, or at least their way of life, is coming to an end soon and want to make as big a bang as possible. And in the case of the Middle East, if you start from the 1950s when the Shah was implemented in Iran (look it up), the US has pretty much been cocking it up over there ever since.
I know this doesn't directly relate to the topic at hand, but being that I'm all preachy about ethics and motivation and shit, I'll attempt to salvage the rant: it deals with why wars happen and what defines a soldier. And ultimately, the people are the ones who win or lose a war - so doing stuff like not killing them seems like a step toward a "just war."
