Don, you can't possibly be serious with that question. Do you really need me to answer it? Or are you under the impression that they still sell slaves in Virginia and that Eastern Europe is still largely Communist and that Hitler's still in charge of Germany?
Do you actually come here to discuss ideas or just to make sophomoric arguments for the sake of arguments?
That was truly a moronic comment. I may disdain to display T-shirts with slogans on them, but I would prefer to die than to dishonor the brave and dedicated armed forces of many lands who fought to bring and sustain freedom in this world. Or do you think that bastard Adolf Hitler got defeated with League of Nations debates?
I was only a 19-year-old kid when I was called to active service in the US Army near the end of the Korean war. I never had to face service in an active combat zone, but I lived day to day with all kinds of good men who had done just that. That your fellow Americans, along with this country's allies, agreed to fight and sometimes get killed in Korea, the people of South Korea have known freedom and the dignity that comes with it for many, many decades now. Look across that country's border with North Korea and think about the difference of their lives, compared with the slaves of state socialism.
In addition, my own father served in the American Expeditionary Force in France in 1918, and I had numerous younger uncles and older cousins who served in World War II, some in the bloodiest combats of the war. It would be a true shame for anyone now to downgrade their services and their sacrifices.
I have lived briefly in a communist state. The "Peoples Republic of Croatia" in former Jugoslavia, where my wife was born and raised. In the early 1990s, all kinds of Croatians, including some of our own relatives, fought -- sometimes to the death -- against an invading Serbian army that was there not just to keep those people under control of "greater Serbia" but also under communism. I imagine Rosemary Esmay and her family could tell you about their experiences under communism in Poland.
The esssence of this: You don't really know what freedom and human dignity is all about unless and until you have walked, talked and lived with people who have lost their freedom, and all too frequently have had to pick up guns and kill in order to regain it.
Of course my comment wasn't serious, Dean---or rather, it was exactly as serious as your t-shirt touting war as a solution to the world's problems.
On a serious note, however, slavery does continue to be a worldwide problem. UNICEF estimates that 200,000 children from West and Central Africa are sold into slavery each year. Check out antislavery.org for a quick overview.
Evidently the war failed to attain its goal, so Don's right. What? Oh, you know-- that big war they had in Central and West Africa to end slavery. The name and dates will come to me in a moment.
Did war end communism? Putting aside China (which for the last several months has a constitutionally protected right to property), I don’t seem to remember tanks rolling through the plains of central Europe...
Indeed, I’ve been under the impression that it was communism’s staggering ability to turn wealth into scarcity that caused the system to collapse...
I am a supporter of SDI, but we haven’t got it yet. What they’re about to deploy isn’t gonna work too well. Poke around in Slate’s archives to find out more on Missile defense...
Besides which, had Gorbachev not been looking for a way to let the Soviet Empire die, Reagan’s bullying wouldn’t have done a whole lot of good...
I'm like Arnold Harris. I don't wear shirts or hats with slogans on them. Buttons occasionally. But this outfit does sell bumper-stickers. Anyway, I agree squarely with the statement displayed here. I also like their "Gun Control Works..." with scenes from death camps. Others, too.
Wow. I had no idea that war was so good for us. Thank God there are true patriots and humanitarians like you, Dean, to point the way to a better world. BC04: For more wars, for more wars!
War ended communism for the now free peoples of the former constituent republics and other territories of Jugoslavia. The peoples in all these places rose up against the Serbs. The Serbs sent in armies, sometimes of outright killers as in Croatia, Bosna-Hercegovina. and Kosova. Their would-be victims got their hands of guns and ammunition, organized themselves into armies, and won.
It was a combination of breaking up Serb control of the country, and the communism of Milosevic and his predecessors.
So yes, war can be used to bring or restore freedom.
Worked that way in 1776, too. In what became the United States of America.
And when the time came, guns and massed armies were needed -- and found -- to end human slavery in this country and to restore the union of free Americans.
Cold war, hot war, it's all war, people, and the many battles in that war often included rebellion and supporting people fighting off communism.
Jesus, I can't believe any of you are THAT naive. Do you have any idea how much bloodshed there was fighting off Communism, and how much money and time America spent helping those fighting to throw off the Communist yoke? It's all still war.
And do you have any idea how much blood was shed, in how many nations, to end slavery in those areas?
You people are arguing just for the sake of arguing, or just to snark. That's childish and sophomoric in the extreme. Grow the fuck up. Seriously. You know god damn well that war has thrown off the yoke of oppression for hundreds of millions of people. Stop playing snot-nose brat games, please. It's beneath you.
Oh, and by the way, GOrbachev was never looking to "let the Soviet Empire die." He honestly believed he could save the Empire by making reforms, and to this day he insists he's disappointed that the Empire collapsed and that he wished he'd done things differently so it wouldn't have.
Gorbachev and others admit that they decided to stop the arms race because of SDI.
The Soviets also fought a bloody conflict in Afghanistan that helped speed their collapse, and guess who helped the resistance there? Yeah us. We funded resistances against Communism in countless other countries, and that's one of the reasons they eventually collapsed--they couldn't afford to keep competing with us in so many battlefields around the world.
It was WAR that solved that problem. Once again I repat: you people cannot be this naive. You are arguing just to argue, and that's a pretty shitty thing to do.
Dean, I’m nearly (sorry) speechless. To say that war is sometimes necessary to defend and protect is one thing, but your thesis that “war has thrown off the yoke of oppression for hundreds of millions of people” is downright scary in its simple-minded advocacy. Historically, war has also brought the yoke of oppression for hundreds of millions of people. Or (also in your words), “how much bloodshed there was fighting off Communism, and how much money and time America spent helping those fighting to throw off the Communist yoke". I could make a case that war helped to create Nazism and communism and it has certainly produced plenty of slavery and fascism. And, let us not forget dismemberment, rape, genocide, displacement, starvation, fear, hate, misery and, most of all, more war.
Were you wearing a straight face when you brought up Afghanistan? Yes, we probably hastened the demise of the USSR with our clandestine support of the Mujahideen against Soviet occupation (probably the right thing to do) but we also helped to create the Taliban and Al Qeada. Even when war is necessary and just (rarely), it harms innocents (a very difficult moral crime to justify) and always creates unintended consequences which can eventually rival the evil of the circumstances it intends to remedy.
If you do any reading on what Afghanistan was like BEFORE the Soviets went there, you'll realize that we were right to intervente there. The problem is what we did once the resistance was victorious: we abandoned them when they needed us most because the cold War was over and neither George H.W. Bush nor Bill Clinton really gave a shit enough to do anything about it.
But the Afghanis were still, by any sensible measure, better off even under the Taliban than they were under the Soviet yoke. If you doub tme on this point, please just ASK ME FOR SOME REFERENCES. I'll give you some that wil make your toes curl. I mean, do you think I turned into a Communist-hater simply because I think it's trendy?
As for the rest: the problem I have with your reasoning is not that you suggest that war is horrible--because it is--but that you would take issue with the notion that sometimes war is necessary and sometimes solves incredibly important problems.
If you want to tell me war is horrible, then fine, I agree. I don't like it and I"d like to live in a world where we never had any ever again. But given that we don't live in a perfect world, the question is not WHETHER we will go to war--we will sooner or later--but WHY and HOW and WITH WHOM.
If you cannot acknowlege that war is sometimes justified, sometimes necessary, sometimes the only sensible option among a set of choices that are all worse than war, then you still haven't thought seriously enough about this question.
Are there worse things than death? Yes. Does that make death good? No. Are there worse things than war? Absolutely. But if you can't get past that line of reasoning, it's all but impossible for us to even have a conversation.
Dean, as far as I can see, we are in complete agreement (you should really try to acknowledge what I actually said: Afghanistan "was probably the right thing to do", "war is sometimes necessary", etc. when you comment on it). You simply feel the need to say that war solves a lot of problems and that American wars are always justified when my claim is that war often creates as many unanticipated problems as it solves, even when it's the right thing to do. And also that your "America is always right" attitude, as I understand it, is exactly how you get there when it isn't the right, or wise, thing to do.
Well yes, Shep, we're often in agreement. Sometimes, I suppose, we argue more fiercely with people closer to our own position than those who are miles from it.
Nevertheless I can only reiterate the message that started this: those who say that war never solved anything need to spee to the city fathers of Carthage, or to look at the prosperous and non-belligerent powers that Japan and Germany are today. They should look to the American Civil War, the single most bloody conflict America has ever been involved in (before or since) and realize that whatever else its purposes, that war caused the end of slavery in the United States in a way that political action (i.e. arguing in Congress) had not been able to.
Great ideas, to be sure.
For them who customarily squawk love or politics through their T-shirts.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb
Are you saying that facism, nazism, slavery, and communism no longer exist? Because if so, I think you've been misinformed.
Yeah, I'd sign up, but as you can see from my protest coverage, I'm a neutral observer.
Don, you can't possibly be serious with that question. Do you really need me to answer it? Or are you under the impression that they still sell slaves in Virginia and that Eastern Europe is still largely Communist and that Hitler's still in charge of Germany?
Do you actually come here to discuss ideas or just to make sophomoric arguments for the sake of arguments?
Don,
That was truly a moronic comment. I may disdain to display T-shirts with slogans on them, but I would prefer to die than to dishonor the brave and dedicated armed forces of many lands who fought to bring and sustain freedom in this world. Or do you think that bastard Adolf Hitler got defeated with League of Nations debates?
I was only a 19-year-old kid when I was called to active service in the US Army near the end of the Korean war. I never had to face service in an active combat zone, but I lived day to day with all kinds of good men who had done just that. That your fellow Americans, along with this country's allies, agreed to fight and sometimes get killed in Korea, the people of South Korea have known freedom and the dignity that comes with it for many, many decades now. Look across that country's border with North Korea and think about the difference of their lives, compared with the slaves of state socialism.
In addition, my own father served in the American Expeditionary Force in France in 1918, and I had numerous younger uncles and older cousins who served in World War II, some in the bloodiest combats of the war. It would be a true shame for anyone now to downgrade their services and their sacrifices.
I have lived briefly in a communist state. The "Peoples Republic of Croatia" in former Jugoslavia, where my wife was born and raised. In the early 1990s, all kinds of Croatians, including some of our own relatives, fought -- sometimes to the death -- against an invading Serbian army that was there not just to keep those people under control of "greater Serbia" but also under communism. I imagine Rosemary Esmay and her family could tell you about their experiences under communism in Poland.
The esssence of this: You don't really know what freedom and human dignity is all about unless and until you have walked, talked and lived with people who have lost their freedom, and all too frequently have had to pick up guns and kill in order to regain it.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Of course my comment wasn't serious, Dean---or rather, it was exactly as serious as your t-shirt touting war as a solution to the world's problems.
On a serious note, however, slavery does continue to be a worldwide problem. UNICEF estimates that 200,000 children from West and Central Africa are sold into slavery each year. Check out antislavery.org for a quick overview.
Evidently the war failed to attain its goal, so Don's right. What? Oh, you know-- that big war they had in Central and West Africa to end slavery. The name and dates will come to me in a moment.
Did war end communism? Putting aside China (which for the last several months has a constitutionally protected right to property), I don’t seem to remember tanks rolling through the plains of central Europe...
Indeed, I’ve been under the impression that it was communism’s staggering ability to turn wealth into scarcity that caused the system to collapse...
Andrew -- that and the certainty of Gorbachev and his underlings that Reagan's SDI was beyond the USSR's capabilities, but not ours.
"Cold" war is still war.
Dean, are you arguing with moonbats again? What's next, windmills? :)
Heh.
Hey, let's add Talibanism and Saddamism to the list.
Next addition, Islamism?
Give war a chance!
I am a supporter of SDI, but we haven’t got it yet. What they’re about to deploy isn’t gonna work too well. Poke around in Slate’s archives to find out more on Missile defense...
Besides which, had Gorbachev not been looking for a way to let the Soviet Empire die, Reagan’s bullying wouldn’t have done a whole lot of good...
I'm like Arnold Harris. I don't wear shirts or hats with slogans on them. Buttons occasionally. But this outfit does sell bumper-stickers. Anyway, I agree squarely with the statement displayed here. I also like their "Gun Control Works..." with scenes from death camps. Others, too.
Wow. I had no idea that war was so good for us. Thank God there are true patriots and humanitarians like you, Dean, to point the way to a better world. BC04: For more wars, for more wars!
"Did war end communism"
You don't consider the Korean War, Vietnam War, Soviet War in Afghanistan, etc., hot wars that had a negative impact on Communism? uh ...
War ended communism for the now free peoples of the former constituent republics and other territories of Jugoslavia. The peoples in all these places rose up against the Serbs. The Serbs sent in armies, sometimes of outright killers as in Croatia, Bosna-Hercegovina. and Kosova. Their would-be victims got their hands of guns and ammunition, organized themselves into armies, and won.
It was a combination of breaking up Serb control of the country, and the communism of Milosevic and his predecessors.
So yes, war can be used to bring or restore freedom.
Worked that way in 1776, too. In what became the United States of America.
And when the time came, guns and massed armies were needed -- and found -- to end human slavery in this country and to restore the union of free Americans.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Idiots
My post on war was entirely serious.
As for the ongoing problem of world slavery: since I bring that up regularly on this blog, for anyone who pays attention.
Cold war, hot war, it's all war, people, and the many battles in that war often included rebellion and supporting people fighting off communism.
Jesus, I can't believe any of you are THAT naive. Do you have any idea how much bloodshed there was fighting off Communism, and how much money and time America spent helping those fighting to throw off the Communist yoke? It's all still war.
And do you have any idea how much blood was shed, in how many nations, to end slavery in those areas?
You people are arguing just for the sake of arguing, or just to snark. That's childish and sophomoric in the extreme. Grow the fuck up. Seriously. You know god damn well that war has thrown off the yoke of oppression for hundreds of millions of people. Stop playing snot-nose brat games, please. It's beneath you.
Oh, and by the way, GOrbachev was never looking to "let the Soviet Empire die." He honestly believed he could save the Empire by making reforms, and to this day he insists he's disappointed that the Empire collapsed and that he wished he'd done things differently so it wouldn't have.
Gorbachev and others admit that they decided to stop the arms race because of SDI.
The Soviets also fought a bloody conflict in Afghanistan that helped speed their collapse, and guess who helped the resistance there? Yeah us. We funded resistances against Communism in countless other countries, and that's one of the reasons they eventually collapsed--they couldn't afford to keep competing with us in so many battlefields around the world.
It was WAR that solved that problem. Once again I repat: you people cannot be this naive. You are arguing just to argue, and that's a pretty shitty thing to do.
Thank you, Dean. I was going to take that one down myself if you hadn't.
Dean, I’m nearly (sorry) speechless. To say that war is sometimes necessary to defend and protect is one thing, but your thesis that “war has thrown off the yoke of oppression for hundreds of millions of people” is downright scary in its simple-minded advocacy. Historically, war has also brought the yoke of oppression for hundreds of millions of people. Or (also in your words), “how much bloodshed there was fighting off Communism, and how much money and time America spent helping those fighting to throw off the Communist yoke". I could make a case that war helped to create Nazism and communism and it has certainly produced plenty of slavery and fascism. And, let us not forget dismemberment, rape, genocide, displacement, starvation, fear, hate, misery and, most of all, more war.
Were you wearing a straight face when you brought up Afghanistan? Yes, we probably hastened the demise of the USSR with our clandestine support of the Mujahideen against Soviet occupation (probably the right thing to do) but we also helped to create the Taliban and Al Qeada. Even when war is necessary and just (rarely), it harms innocents (a very difficult moral crime to justify) and always creates unintended consequences which can eventually rival the evil of the circumstances it intends to remedy.
Who’s naïve?
You're naive, Steve. Sorry, but you are.
If you do any reading on what Afghanistan was like BEFORE the Soviets went there, you'll realize that we were right to intervente there. The problem is what we did once the resistance was victorious: we abandoned them when they needed us most because the cold War was over and neither George H.W. Bush nor Bill Clinton really gave a shit enough to do anything about it.
But the Afghanis were still, by any sensible measure, better off even under the Taliban than they were under the Soviet yoke. If you doub tme on this point, please just ASK ME FOR SOME REFERENCES. I'll give you some that wil make your toes curl. I mean, do you think I turned into a Communist-hater simply because I think it's trendy?
As for the rest: the problem I have with your reasoning is not that you suggest that war is horrible--because it is--but that you would take issue with the notion that sometimes war is necessary and sometimes solves incredibly important problems.
If you want to tell me war is horrible, then fine, I agree. I don't like it and I"d like to live in a world where we never had any ever again. But given that we don't live in a perfect world, the question is not WHETHER we will go to war--we will sooner or later--but WHY and HOW and WITH WHOM.
If you cannot acknowlege that war is sometimes justified, sometimes necessary, sometimes the only sensible option among a set of choices that are all worse than war, then you still haven't thought seriously enough about this question.
Are there worse things than death? Yes. Does that make death good? No. Are there worse things than war? Absolutely. But if you can't get past that line of reasoning, it's all but impossible for us to even have a conversation.
Dean, as far as I can see, we are in complete agreement (you should really try to acknowledge what I actually said: Afghanistan "was probably the right thing to do", "war is sometimes necessary", etc. when you comment on it). You simply feel the need to say that war solves a lot of problems and that American wars are always justified when my claim is that war often creates as many unanticipated problems as it solves, even when it's the right thing to do. And also that your "America is always right" attitude, as I understand it, is exactly how you get there when it isn't the right, or wise, thing to do.
Well yes, Shep, we're often in agreement. Sometimes, I suppose, we argue more fiercely with people closer to our own position than those who are miles from it.
Nevertheless I can only reiterate the message that started this: those who say that war never solved anything need to spee to the city fathers of Carthage, or to look at the prosperous and non-belligerent powers that Japan and Germany are today. They should look to the American Civil War, the single most bloody conflict America has ever been involved in (before or since) and realize that whatever else its purposes, that war caused the end of slavery in the United States in a way that political action (i.e. arguing in Congress) had not been able to.