Is America Doing the right thing.

[nonpuritan]

LOL back to the bush thing. This is one of my crazy brothers ideas about how he won the election (even though when my brother said this he was proboly drunk and stoned, but oh well its a funny idea...) ok here is it: "Bush won the election because his brother is the governer of florida and he got his men to go into the streets and give bums ciggarettes to vote, thats how he won...... Hahahaha isnt that funny just to think about? lol sorry im a dork

[ckdstudent]

And...if it wasn't for the USA backing Russia and England with troops and supplies during WWII, both would had the hell knocked out of them and Europe wouldn't be what it is today. Yeah, we might not be the best country, but we don't sit back and pick our behinds like some other countries.

 

Yes, I suppose you do get into wars eventually, when its in your own self-interest to do so after you've been attacked. Of course if you hadn't got involved then America would have been facing the entire world and have lost, no matter how powerful you consider your country to be.

 

Who cracked the Enigma code again?

 

 

[ZR440]

I believe it was Polish mathematicians.

[KickChick]

"World War II brought America the title of "Super Power". Why is that?? Because we bombed the hell out of Japan - our vengeance on the Japanese was horrible, to say the least. Our

 

dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima caused the world to take notice - "The Americans aren't

 

playing". But what did that do to our collective conscience? Who, in this country, as a school child after that incident, has not seen the terrifying film... the absolute ruin... the people with half a face... the dead and the dying. We caused ruin. We caused devastation. We ended lives, and we ruined the lives of those that were left. The WWII generation surely felt (as we now feel) that the ends justified the means. Generations since then have felt the grief, pain, and sorrow that we wrought on the Japanese. The reason somehow is obscured by the terror we wrought.

 

You question why we act outside of our borders ... why we continue to commit the unthinkable against those we see as our enemies. We eliminated the Japanese as a threat (and they shove that in our faces every day as we buy their cars and their VCRs)... but we allowed Russia, indeed we invited Russia, to become great, powerful, strong. And then we saw that they could ruin us when they became the USSR - more people, more intelligence, more ability. So we sought to remove that threat from our planet. We play dirty - view the Hiroshima films, no one will deny we play dirty, and we did in the cold war. Does that mean we are wrong? Perhaps, but we removed the USSR as an enemy.

 

 

 

The US is a global presence. We will, as a people, continue to pay our penance for having dropped the bomb on Hiroshima by being the globe's peace keepers. We cannot, as a collective conscience, allow people to be murdered for the sake of any one government's views. Yes, we are hated, we are taunted, but...

 

 

 

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to break free, the retched refuse of your teeming shore; send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

 

 

 

We offer hope to many. We will not stop because one madman, or a dozen, or a hundred dozen, decides that he hates us. We are here. We will prevail. We will not run. We will not rest.

 

 

 

We will be here for all those that hope for a better tomorrow."

 

_________________

 

KarateForums Sensei

 

1st dan Tae Kwon Do (ITF)

 

Cardio/Fitness Kickboxing Instr.

 

[ This Message was edited by: KickChick on 2002-07-09 10:44 ]

[CTpizzaboy]

And the crowd goes wild, chanting, "USA, USA, USA, USA!!!" But not everyone is cheering. Why? Maybe they can see a part of us that we cannot, the corruption in the business world, the lying, the half truths. But people around the world still flock to America like an oasis in an desolate world. Why? Because they can see a better life in America. My family did. We came over here in 1985.

 

 

[Don Gwinn]

When there are more people trying to get out of American than into it, I'll agree that it's a lousy place.

 

Without meaning to start a peeing contest (but it looks like that won't be a problem, since it's ongoing) what nation would you nominate as the "best country?"

 

America is exactly what we make of it, unlike anywhere else on Earth. It is the most free place on Earth. Now, the downside of this is that many will make of it the worst rather than the best. I don't like that either. But the potential is always be there, and that's our big difference.

 

We pursue isolationism because we are isolated.

 

Our massive bombing of Japan was indeed terrible to behold, but you do a disservice by calling it "vengeance." Japan wanted to rule the Pacific and Asia, and in order to do so they had to knock us off. "Vengeance" implies that their attack was over and done and we came back to get revenge. Bull. We defended ourselves against an aggressor. Not all our wars have been this "clean." But that one certainly was.

 

What did we rebuild? Japan and Germany. Duh. Had it not been for us people would have starved for a long time in postwar Germany and Japan. I might remind you at this point that it was the English, French and Italians who rejected Wilson's 14 Points plan after WWI. Wilson's plan would have denied Hitler his mode of acquiring power and thus averted WWII (many historians say that in the next hundred years the two will be seen as the same war with a pause between two halves.)

 

This is not to say that Americans as a rule wanted peace more than English and Italians. The point is to illustrate the absurdity of such generalizations.

 

Bashing America is fun, huh? Enjoy it with my blessing. I live here, so I've got plenty to be happy about and no reason to be bitter.

 

 

[--]

It is a common thing for a country to fight when it has to, but what America does is unjustifiable.

 

Basically, American militarism started with WW II. Let's have an overview:

 

WW I: American doesn't fare too well. It realizes that war on this scale is not a good idea.

 

WW II: America tries to stay out, but is dragged in by Japan. American makes a lot of money, gets a lot of glory, and wins.

 

WW II aftermath: Europe, having taken the full impact of WW II, realizes that "Hey, war sucks!". So Europe does everything in its power to prevent another one, the latest measure being the Euro currency. America, on the other hand, sees that war makes it money. They never took much of a beating, so they don't see the real side of war. They just see cash and glory.

 

Korean War: America tries its cash and glory policy. Things get ugly. It does NOT work out. Russia is pissed.

 

Vietnam War: America gives it another shot. This time, it gets REALLY ugly, and does not work out.

 

Wrapping up the Cold War: America glamorizes warfare, gets tangled up in the Middle EAst, and teaches some Arab millionare guerilla combat, to fight the Soviets. The US is now making lots of money off of the war, and is getting lots of media glorification.

 

Persian Gulf War: America annihilates Iraq. The Middle East goes crazy. America enters a new era of warfare, one in which it can gly its pretty little planes over some country, drop bombs, and fly away unhurt.

 

Kosovo: America demonstrates more of it's "oh, look, we're Superman, we help everybody out, as long as we get money from them" policy. America gets arrogant.

 

September 11th: That Arab millionare who was double-crossed by America ten years ago and exiled from his home country is pissed. America gets a hard, solid kick square in the ass.

 

What will happen now? Will America's attitude towards war as a money-making enterprise change, or will it simply go into a war-driven frenzy? Are the days of safe, almighty America over? Or did the treatment of the Taliban by US forces teach other would-be terrorists a lesson? Will America, seeing how war can rear its ugly head and strike back, resort to diplomacy over ammo? Or will tradtional American masochist ignorance prevail? To be continued...

 

 

[BlueDragon1981]

I appreciate your opinions. I however do not want anyone to get to the point where they are getting mad at each other. So please keep any anger to a minium. Most of us are martial artists. We should know not to get angry because of our training.

 

America does have some very good things about it. I just think that all the power in America lies in WEALTH. The politicians in this country are usually rich. The greed of America is becoming evident by all they business scandals.

 

America is a great place to live but if we keep making other countries mad then we are going to end up having a lot of bad things happen.

 

One thing I do not get about this whole thing is the other countries that hate us and blame it on the religion. No religion in my knowledge condones killing people. If you kill someone for your religion isnt that going against its code. Now I dont want a big religious contrevousy here. That is just a point that I never seemed to understand with these so called holy wars.

 

If things get heated up I will ask Patrick to remove the thread. So please be nice in your opinions.

 

[--]

In a lifetime of slaying monsters, I myself have become one.

 

~Quote from Tolkein

 

Maximinus became an emperor by crushing all opposition and proving himself as one of the greatest pankrationists of all time. He was eventually defeated and brutally beaten to death in the arena.

 

Morihei Ueshiba proved himself to be a true warrior by embracing peace, making no enemies, and living out his long and prosperous life as a teacher, symbol of wisdom, and a legend.

 

America is taking Maximinus's course, and trying to make the end justify the means. It never, ever does. Ever.

 

 

[tessone]

You would all do well to read a little history before trying to enter a debate on shaky facts.

 

To start, I'd recommend reading Flags of Our Fathers, about the attack on Iwo Jima. You'll see there why dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved lives, both American and Japanese. Keep in mind that the Japanese did not surrender after a bombing campaign that claimed more Japanese lives than the atomic bombs did, and that it took two bombs and nearly a quarter of a million Japanese dead for them to give it up. The projected figures for an Allied invasion of Japan were for nearly a half million American casualties and around 200,000 British wounded or dead. The Big Three were looking at those numbers when they decided, unanimously, to use the bomb.

 

I'm not even going to get into the other nonsense posted about Korea and Vietnam. Vietnam was lost by the politicians, not the military. Read Otto Lehrack's No Shining Armor or another history of Vietnam to see what went wrong with that war.

 

You can't just go on ranting about US mistakes until you actually know something about what happened. More often than not, it's the public's opinion swaying politicians that causes a war to be lost or servicemen's lives to be lost in vain. Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down tells of a prime example, not too far back in time.