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Of All The Wars From Korea to Date........
dreher
Member Posts: 8,799 ✭✭✭✭
As I look back I do not see one reason for even one American serviceman to have died in any of these wars, police actions etc.
Do you agree or disagree?? If you disagree, why do you disagree??
To me it seems like all we ever accomplish when we go into another country is get young (usually) Americans killed and after we leave the country is worse than when we went in in the first place. Example, is Iraq better off now or was it better off before Saddam was removed?? I believe Iraq was better off before Saddam was taken out.
So we have killed how many U.S. servicemen and women to make Iraq worse for the Iraqi's?? This makes sense in what universe??
Do you agree or disagree?? If you disagree, why do you disagree??
To me it seems like all we ever accomplish when we go into another country is get young (usually) Americans killed and after we leave the country is worse than when we went in in the first place. Example, is Iraq better off now or was it better off before Saddam was removed?? I believe Iraq was better off before Saddam was taken out.
So we have killed how many U.S. servicemen and women to make Iraq worse for the Iraqi's?? This makes sense in what universe??
Comments
When our friends call for help, America is there.
Do you agree or disagree?? If you disagree, why do you disagree??
Totally agree.
It is not, let me repeat, fellow citizens, it is not the long enumeration of intolerable wrongs concentrated in this declaration; it is not the melancholy catalogue of alternate oppression and entreaty, of reciprocated indignity and remonstrance, upon which, in the celebration of this anniversary, your memory delights to dwell.
Nor is it yet that the justice of your cause was vindicated by the God of battles; that in a conflict of seven years, the history of the war by which you maintained that declaration, became the history of the civilized, world; that the unanimous voice of enlightened Europe and the verdict of an after age have sanctioned your assumption of sovereign power, and that the name of your Washington is enrolled upon the records of time, first in the glorious line of heroic virtue.
It is not that the monarch himself, who had been your oppressor, was compelled to recognize you as a sovereign and independent people, and that the nation, whose feelings of fraternity for you had slumbered in the lap of pride, was awakened in the arms of humiliation to your equal and no longer contested rights.
The primary purpose of this declaration, the proclamation to the world of the causes of our revolution, is ?with the years beyond the flood.? It is of no more interest to us than the chastity of Lucretia, or the apple on the head of the child of Tell. Little less than 40 years have revolved since the struggle for independence was closed; another generation has arisen; and in the assembly of nations our republic is already a matron of mature age. The cause of your independence is no longer upon trial. The final sentence upon it has long since been passed upon earth and ratified in heaven.
The interest, which in this paper has survived the occasion upon which it was issued; the interest which is of every age and every clime; the interest which quickens with the lapse of years, spreads as it grows old, and brightens as it recedes, is in the principles which it proclaims. It was the first solemn declaration by a nation of the only legitimate foundation of civil government. It was the corner stone of a new fabric, destined to cover the surface of the globe. It demolished at a stroke the lawfulness of all governments founded upon conquest. It swept away all the rubbish of accumulated centuries of servitude. It announced in practical form to the world the transcendent truth of the unalienable sovereignty of the people. It proved that the social compact was no figment of the imagination; but a real, solid, and sacred bond of the social union.
From the day of this declaration, the people of North America were no longer the fragment of a distant empire, imploring justice and mercy from an inexorable master in another hemisphere. They were no longer children appealing in vain to the sympathies of a heartless mother; no longer subjects leaning upon the shattered columns of royal promises, and invoking the faith of parchment to secure their rights. They were a nation, asserting as of right, and maintaining by war, its own existence. A nation was born in a day.
?How many ages hence shall this their lofty scene be acted o?er in states unborn, and accents yet unknown??
It will be acted o?er, fellow citizens, but it can never be repeated. It stands, and must forever stand alone, a beacon on the summit of the mountain, to which all the inhabitants of the earth may turn their eyes for a genial and saving light, till time shall be lost in eternity, and this globe itself dissolve, nor leave a wreck behind. It stands forever, a light of admonition to the rulers of men; a light of salvation and redemption to the oppressed.
So long as this planet shall be inhabited by human beings, so long as man shall be of social nature, so long as government shall be necessary to the great moral purposes of society, and so long as it shall be abused to the purposes of oppression, so long shall this declaration hold out to the sovereign and to the subject the extent and the boundaries of their respective rights and duties; founded in the laws of nature and of nature?s God.
Five and forty years have passed away since this Declaration was issued by our fathers; and here are we, fellow citizens, assembled in the full enjoyment of its fruits, to bless the Author of our being for the bounties of his providence, in casting our lot in this favored land; to remember with effusions of gratitude the sages who put forth, and the heroes who bled for the establishment of this Declaration; and, by the communion of soul in the reperusal and hearing of this instrument, to renew the genuine Holy Alliance of its principles, to recognize them as eternal truths, and to pledge ourselves and bind our posterity to a faithful and undeviating adherence to them.
Fellow citizens, our fathers have been faithful to them before us. When the little band of their Delegates, ?with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, for the support of this declaration, mutually pledged to each other their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor,? from every dwelling, street, and square of your populous cities, it was re-echoed with shouts of joy and gratulation! And if the silent language of the heart could have been heard, every hill upon the surface of this continent which had been trodden by the foot of civilized man, every valley in which the toil of your fathers had opened a paradise upon the wild, would have rung, with one accordant voice, louder than the thunders, sweeter than the harmonies of the heavens, with the solemn and responsive words, ?We swear.?
The pledge has been redeemed. Through six years of devastating but heroic war, through nearly 40 years of more heroic peace, the principles of this declaration have been supported by the toils, by the vigils, by the blood of your fathers and of yourselves. The conflict of war had begun with fearful odds of apparent human power on the side of the oppressor. He wielded at will the collective force of the mightiest nation in Europe. He with more than poetic truth asserted the dominion of the waves.
The power, to whose unjust usurpation your fathers hurled the gauntlet of defiance, baffled and vanquished by them, has even since, stripped of all the energies of this continent, been found adequate to give the law to its own quarter of the globe, and to mould the destinies of the European world. It was with a sling and a stone, that your fathers went forth to encounter the massive vigor of this Goliath. They slung the heaven-directed stone, and ?With heaviest sound, the giant monster fell.?
Amid the shouts of victory your cause soon found friends and allies in the rivals of your enemies. France recognized your independence as existing in fact, and made common cause with you for its support. Spain and the Netherlands, without adopting your principles, successively flung their weight into your scale. ?
The Declaration of Independence pronounced the irrevocable decree of political separation, between the United States and their people on the one part, and the British king, government, and nation on the other. It proclaimed the first principles on which civil government is founded, and derived from them the justification before earth and heaven of this act of sovereignty. But it left the people of this union, collective and individual, without organized government. In contemplating this state of things, one of the profoundest of British statesmen, in an ecstasy of astonishment exclaimed, ?Anarchy is found tolerable!? But there was no anarchy.
From the day of the Declaration, the people of the North American union, and of its constituent states, were associated bodies of civilized men and christians, in a state of nature, but not of anarchy. They were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of the gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledged as the rules of their conduct. They were bound by the principles which they themselves had proclaimed in the declaration. They were bound by all those tender and endearing sympathies, the absence of which, in the British government and nation, towards them, was the primary cause of the distressing conflict in which they had been precipitated by the headlong rashness and unfeeling insolence of their oppressors. They were bound by all the beneficent laws and institutions, which their forefathers had brought with them from their mother country, not as servitudes but as rights. They were bound by habits of hardy industry, by frugal and hospitable manners, by the general sentiments of social equality, by pure and virtuous morals; and lastly they were bound by the grappling-hooks of common suffering under the scourge of oppression. Where then, among such a people, were the materials for anarchy! Had there been among them no other law, they would have been a law unto themselves.
They had before them in their new position, besides the maintenance of the independence which they had declared, three great objects to attain; the first, to cement and prepare for perpetuity their common union and that of their posterity; the second, to erect and organize civil and municipal governments in their respective states: and the third, to form connections of friendship and of commerce with foreign nations.
For all these objects, the same Congress which issued the Declaration, and at the same time with it, had provided. They recommended to the several states to form civil governments for themselves; with guarded and cautious deliberation they matured a confederation for the whole Union; and they prepared treaties of commerce, to be offered to the principal maritime nations of the world.
All these objects were in a great degree accomplished amid the din of arms, and while every quarter of our country was ransacked by the fury of invasion. The states organized their governments, all in republican forms, all on the principles of the Declaration. The confederation was unanimously accepted by the thirteen states: and treaties of commerce were concluded with France and the Netherlands, in which, for the first time, the same just and magnanimous principles, consigned in the Declaration of Independence, were, so far as they could be applicable to the intercourse between nation and nation, solemnly recognized.
When experience had proved that the confederation was not adequate to the national purposes of the country, the people of the United States, without tumult, without violence, by their delegates all chosen upon principles of equal right, formed a more perfect union, by the establishment of the federal constitution.
This has already passed the ordeal of one human generation. In all the changes of men and of parties through which it has passed, it has been administered on the same fundamental principles. Our manners, our habits, our feelings, are all republican; and if our principles had been, when first proclaimed, doubtful to the ear of reason or the sense of humanity, they would have been reconciled to our understanding and endeared to our hearts by their practical operation.
In the progress of 40 years since the acknowledgment of our independence, we have gone through many modifications of internal government, and through all the vicissitudes of peace and war, with other mighty nations. But never, never for a moment have the great principles, consecrated by the Declaration of this day, been renounced or abandoned.
And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the older world, the first observers of mutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to inquire, what has America done for the benefit of mankind?
Let our answer be this?America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, equal justice, and equal rights. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations, while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when the conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama, the European World, will be contests between inveterate power, and emerging right.
Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause, by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.
She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself, beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world: she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.
Stand forth, ye champions of Britannia, ruler of the waves! Stand forth, ye chivalrous knights of chartered liberties and the rotten borough! Enter the lists, ye, boasters of inventive genius! Ye mighty masters of the palette and the brush! Ye improvers upon the sculpture of the Elgin marbles! Ye spawners of fustian romance and lascivious lyrics!
Come, and inquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind! In the half century which has elapsed since the declaration of American independence, what have you done for the benefit of mankind? When Themistocles was sarcastically asked by some great musical genius of his age whether he knew how to play upon the lute, he answered, No! but he knew how to make a great city of a small one.
We shall not contend with you for the prize of music, painting, or sculpture. We shall not disturb the ecstatic trances of your chemists, nor call from the heavens the ardent gaze of your astronomers. We will not ask you who was the last president of your Royal Academy. We will not inquire by whose mechanical combinations it was, that your steamboats stem the currents of your rivers, and vanquish the opposition of the winds themselves upon your seas. We will not name the inventor of the cotton-gin, for we fear that you would ask us the meaning of the word, and pronounce it a provincial barbarism. We will not name to you him, whose graver defies the imitation of forgery, and saves the labor of your executioner, by taking from your greatest geniuses of robbery the power of committing the crime. He is now among yourselves; and since your philosophers have permitted him to prove to them the compressibility of water, you may perhaps claim him for your own. Would you soar to fame upon a rocket, or burst into glory from a shell? We shall leave you to inquire of your naval heroes their opinion of the steam-battery and the torpedo.
It is not by the contrivance of agents of destruction, that America wishes to commend her inventive genius to the admiration or the gratitude of after times; nor is it even by the detection of the secrets or the composition of new modifications of physical nature.
?Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera.? Nor even is her purpose the glory of Roman ambition; nor ?tu regere imperio populosa? her memento to her sons.
Her glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of mind. She has a spear and a shield; but the motto upon her shield is Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.
My countrymen, fellow-citizens, and friends; could that Spirit, which dictated the Declaration we have this day read, that Spirit, which ?prefers before all temples the upright heart and pure,? at this moment descend from his habitation in the skies, and within this hall, in language audible to mortal ears, address each one of us, here assembled, our beloved country, Britannia ruler of the waves, and every individual among the sceptred lords of humankind; his words would be, ?Go thou and do likewise!? -John Quincy Adams
I would say Adams's words have proven to be correct.
Can America take on the entire World?
Sending Americas heroes to fight PC wars is WRONG!
Smoking hole in NYC?
Giant smoking hole formerly called Afratastain should have been the result.
No boots - just KABOOM!! Repeat if necessary.
All conflicts have been what I have learned to be called "Police Actions"
These "actions" have been politically activated and run by the politicians. Declared wars on the other hand were activated by a unified Congress, signed by the President and run by the MILITARY.
We have run into problems when the military (which specialize in warfare) are bypassed by politicians.
They are the one's who select the generals who are to lead various operations during all of our military actions. Most of our presidents have had very little military experience (with a few exceptions) prior to their elected positions.
Having studied a bit of our history of warfare, I have noted that many mistakes have been made in this process which have cost the lives of American soldiers, sailors, and airmen.
War is HELL.
I do not know what this country would be if we had not had the War of Independence. I do not know what it would be if we had not had the War Between the States, or what it would be had the Southern States prevailed. Certainly WWI and WWII would have turned out different without our participation. What if we had stayed in Asia post WWII and stopped the spread of communism there? I do not know what it, or the world stage, would be had we not been in the wars/conflicts you reference. Would we be better off, worse off, who knows. One thing is for sure, good or bad, we wouldn't be where/like we are, neither would the world stage.
"Never do wrong to make a friend----or to keep one".....Robert E. Lee
It's all because of Adolf Hitler.....the U.S and the world has seen what can happen when a tyrant is left alone to grow, with the weapons on this planet now that is unthinkable [;)]
You're correct. We can't allow the psychos to run free. With all the weapons available today, some of these psychos would surely use them if they're allowed to.
However, I really don't like sending America's kids overseas to fight, only to pull out and let the country go to crappola. Lives lost for nothing...
Now, if we were to keep the resources of the countries that we "help" that would make it a little less painful. And the psychos might think twice if they know that the US would be keeping the oil and land that we'd won. Right now, we go in, break things, leave, spend money to rebuild, then give it back. Foolish...
It's all because of Adolf Hitler.....the U.S and the world has seen what can happen when a tyrant is left alone to grow, with the weapons on this planet now that is unthinkable [;)]
+1
Imagine if Pol Pot had a nuke[:0]
BTW 118 years ago today US troops arrived in Beijing to put down the Boxer Revolution in China.
So sending our soldiers to fight in other country's is not a new thing.
The UN has a role and responsibility for this.
I suppose one could make this statement about every war. I for one am grateful to my countrymen for going over seas and avenging 9/11. Irregardless of the politics, and previous world history that led us to this point a statement needed to be made to the world. Killing millions of these jihadis over there over the past 17 years is far better than fighting them in the streets of America. Probably a simplistic view, but I am content knowing our Military have thwarted evil as best they can and wasn't simply in vein, as you have no idea what these villains would have done had they not been eliminated.
Not a fan of being the world's policeman, but we are the brightest beacon of freedom and at some point someone has to take a stand against evil. Killing them over there is much preferable to killing them here.
You know what I mean!! Kind of like laying an overcooked pea on an anvil and hitting that pea squarely with a 12 pound sledge hammer. Reduce the problem to the point there is literally nothing left of the problem, as in completely smashed into oblivion.
You know what I mean!! Kind of like laying an overcooked pea on an anvil and hitting that pea squarely with a 12 pound sledge hammer. Reduce the problem to the point there is literally nothing left of the problem, as in completely smashed into oblivion.
I disagree about Saddam Hussein. Do we not remember the horrific torture rooms? the mass executions? the thousands who simply vanished? And that was better than now?
After 58220 dead in Vietnam, we walked off and let Ho have it all.
In both cases, politicians prosecuted the wars...the wars that we won were all prosecuted by the military leaders... people that know how it is done. If you go to war, go to win...otherwise, don't go.
If we would have "taken the gloves off" in Korea and nuked the Chinese, we would have ended up in a nuclear war with the Soviets.
It is far better to fight over there than here.
My thoughts exactly and yes I served proudly.
Rocky, I totally get what you are saying. Yes it was bad under Saddam but I would bet the death toll on Iraqi citizens went up after Saddam's ouster not down. What I'm saying is there any reason for our servicemen and women to die for the Iraqi people?? I don't think trying to help people that if there is a change in their leadership, the change always seems to go from one tyrant to another tyrant. If they aren't willing to die for their own freedom why should our servicemen die for their freedom??
Sounds like America every 4 years; some other bonehead politicians in charge, changing everything the last batch of politicians did.
Don't want to fight wars? Then don't. Some other poor sucker will take your place at the tip of the spear so that you can sit safely in your own home, whining about politics & estimating death tolls in countries you know nothing about.
Sorry to be blunt, but there's a whole lot of forgetful out there.
Protect the free South Koreans from the oppressive North.
Stabilize and maintain a flawed but freer South Vietnam from an aggressive and oppressive North.
Liberate Kuwait from an oppressive Iraq.
Clean out Afghanistan so the festering sore that is islamic extremism does not have a fertile field in which to grow.
It gets murky when one looks at the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
It gets murkier still when one looks at our support of islamic extremists in Libya and Syria.
We have a foreign policy driven by emotion at times, and absent the cold hard calculations required to evaluate the end result of our actions.
The history of Afghanistan should have informed us of the dangers inherent in trying to first subdue and then integrate a very tribal society.
It was supremely optimistic to hope that Iraq would embrace democracy when forced upon them, and equally optimistic to think that the removal of a despotic yet stabilizing force in the region would not have larger consequences outside the borders of the country itself.
In Libya, we had another despot who had made overtures towards the peaceful reunification of his county with the greater world, and when he was faced with an extremist rebellion, we sided with the rebels and left him to die.
Likewise in Syria, we have a secular ruler who is brutally attempting to put down an extremist rebellion that we are supporting.
In most of these cases, we need to ask ourselves if it is better to hold our noses and accept the evil in power rather than undertake military action to replace that known evil with the potentially greater evil of islamic extremists. The Taliban offered to discuss Bin Laden and requested proof of his complicity in the 11 September, 2001 attacks. We had no reason to trust them explicitly , but decided that the blood lust we were feeling needed to be satisfied, and refused to consider their offer.
It is unquestionable that fewer Afghanis, Iraqis and Syrians are alive today because the US has decided to take military action either directly or by proxy in their country. While we may believe in 'Live Free or Die', it is not our right to force this belief upon other individuals.
I love my country, and always will. It has done some very stupid things over the past 15 years, however, and even though our motivations are almost always noble, it is not too hard to understand how 100s of thousands of individuals in these countries view our incursions as less than noble, and even evil.
Brad Steele
Do you think Trump would appoint me Secretary of State?? It seems like we are to interested in being diplomatic. Screw diplomacy!! You got to know how to give them the "Dutch Uncle" treatment. Using North Korea as an example, sit ol' Kim down and explain to him the facts of life!! "Here's the deal Kim, You get to keep being a sick little pervert doing God only knows what with any Korean woman you want to do it with and play nice, doing what we want you to do, including no nukes or we will park a Shock and Awe on your *, ending your fun filled pervert nights!"
Make any ruler with evil intentions towards us understand how short his life expectancy is if he wont play nice. Back up these harsh words with harsh actions. No second, third, forth or four hundreth chances like these tyrants have gotten in the past. Play nice or we will be having this same conversation with your replacement and his replacement until we find the person who likes living better than dying.
Again, if they wont die for their own country why do they expect our people to die for their country??
Never again should one of our people be sent some where to die without a better reason than I've seen in my lifetime. Never again should we send soldiers into harms way with their hands tied behind their backs in the name of political correctness. Never again should our people be sent into any combat situation without the end result being winning and winning quickly. Never again should our people be hung out to dry like took place in Bengazi. Never again should one of us have to go to an airport to receive our child's coffin without one Hell of a good reason.
I did my bit in the Korean thing and after about 50K dead we wound up at square one...right where it started.
After 58220 dead in Vietnam, we walked off and let Ho have it all.
In both cases, politicians prosecuted the wars...the wars that we won were all prosecuted by the military leaders... people that know how it is done. If you go to war, go to win...otherwise, don't go.
^^^^^^this...If you go to war, go to win...otherwise, don't go.....Vietnam was lost at home, with a subversive media conspiring with communist sympathizing politicians to impact the hearts and minds of the American public. After the Tet offensive the VC and NVA were decimated, it was a clear US military victory. But there lacked the political will for follow through.
quote:Originally posted by Arby
I did my bit in the Korean thing and after about 50K dead we wound up at square one...right where it started.
After 58220 dead in Vietnam, we walked off and let Ho have it all.
In both cases, politicians prosecuted the wars...the wars that we won were all prosecuted by the military leaders... people that know how it is done. If you go to war, go to win...otherwise, don't go.
^^^^^^this...If you go to war, go to win...otherwise, don't go.....Vietnam was lost at home, with a subversive media conspiring with communist sympathizing politicians to impact the hearts and minds of the American public. After the Tet offensive the VC and NVA were decimated, it was a clear US military victory. But there lacked the political will for follow through.
We lost Vietnam.
What were the long term consequences of that?
Looking back, knowing what happened after Saigon fell.....would you spend American blood and treasure to prevent it? If so, how much?
We lost Vietnam.
We didn't lose we quit in Vietnam. Sorta hard to say we lost a war when we still had the means to blow them clean off the map if we wanted to.
quote:Originally posted by Rack Ops
We lost Vietnam.
We didn't lose we quit in Vietnam. Sorta hard to say we lost a war when we still had the means to blow them clean off the map if we wanted to.
We left the battlefield in the possession of the enemy, which is a standard military definition of a defeat.
And "blowing them clean off the map" would have likely saw us blown clean off the map in retaliation.
so you can look back from that and say it was pointless. but that wasn't the reason we went in. it was because George Bush wanted revenge on the part of GB1 from the first Gulf War, he wouldn't admit it but he did say as much; probably also because there was oil to be had; but the biggest reason was because they had invaded Kuwait kicking off GW1 and now were determined to have WMD's and considered an immediate terrorist threat. it was well advised to invade Iraq. we couldn't allow that.
we didn't go there to spread democracy. we did it as a preemptive strike. as far as we knew we were fighting them over there before having to deal with death and destruction that biological or chemical weapons could wreak here.
was it worth it? yes.
we didn't go to Iraq to "spread democracy", but in the aftermath that was the idea. then we come to find out that they don't understand the word "democracy", don't want it...
And neither do we. Thank God we don't have a democracy or Hillary would be president. We have a representative republic that even our political leaders don't have a clue.