Got WMD? Just listen to Chemical Ali...

> There are those who would believe that by eliminating
> hostile regimes, the US is saving lives in the future.

Oh yes, the Marshall Plan worked wonders at turning around the former Axis countries. Do you think the state we're leaving Afghanistan in will have as good results? Do you think the Iraqis will start loving us now?

> Passiveness didn't save 3,000 people in New York.

You think Bin Laden targeted the U.S. because it was "passive"? Many other countries are much more passive than the U.S.

I'm not advocating passiveness. If I believe we should spend more on foreign aid and less on the military, is it because I'm "passive" or because I believe our interventions should be more positive?

 

Less than a year:
US Nuclear stockpile:
1945 2 warheads
1946 9 warheads
1947 13 warheads
1948 50 warheads
1949 250 warheads
1959 12,000 warheads
(source Nuclear Weapons Data Book, Volume 1, U.S. Nuclear Forces and capabilities, Natural resources Defense Council).

 

Sure the Marshall Plan worked as did totally crushing the Axis and occupying them for 10 years.

Other countries were certainly more passive but are not the sworn enemy of Arab terrorists.

Foreign aid has made brutal dictators some of the world's wealthiest men. Foreign aid that extends beyond education and infrastructure is often counter productive.

Even feeding hungry people can destroy the local agricultural economy and turn a temporary situation into a permanent one. Why raise food when it is provided for free?

 

I agree, Dennis. Foreign aid has to be intelligently distributed. And sometimes war is the best or the only option. I'm not a total dove.

 

And what were these atrocities that made dropping The Bomb (a horror to be sure, and one I still anguish over) justifiable? What were their extent?

I don't have my published research in front of me (I'm at a public access terminal), but I re-read it a few days back. So I must relate only fragile memory.

Poli Sci prof R. J. Rummel calculates that over 6 million died at the hands of the Japanese occupations - the majority killed in "massacres/atrocities."

--Orson

 

THIS is rather churlish!

In an age when - a Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis points out - authoritarian rule may well be eliminated from the earth for the first time in human history, the proper direction to look is not backwards but forwards!

Right now, only the regime of North Korea looms as a greater evil-doer to humanity.

If eliminating evil states against people matter most, then we must measure by how far the world has yet to go - not by the "greatness" of the past.

--Orson

 

Re: Re: Got WMD? Just listen to Chemical Ali...

It's certainly possible that our leaders lie to us. Democracies are notoriously difficult to move towards war, and politicians are famous for nothing if not their lies (although I disagree that the case for lying has yet been proved here with either Blair of Bush). Scepticism and debate are about rulers is always warranted, whatever their stripe or party.

But the reasons and rationale for war in Iraq were always multiple; it was always a "spread case" in forensic terms, covering lots of grounds.

Now the only important question is what we - our nation's and humanity - will leave behind there?

--Orson