Its as a similar way of expression yourself as saying that every man his and dog knows all men pre 1900 were rapists
But not every man and their dog were rapists.
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Geopolitics
- Thread starter Mciahel Goodman
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Its as a similar way of expression yourself as saying that every man his and dog knows all men pre 1900 were rapists
But not every man and their dog were rapists.
Exactly, marital rape during the Stuarts were so common that they had to address it.
Do you know how they addressed it?
By making this formalized into common law:
It's not even consistent in the modern era to be honest.
It's taking figures of speech literally.
"The vikings were all a bunch of looters and pillagers", doesn't literally mean, "Every single viking, male and female, went around plundering and looting and pillaging."
I think sometimes it's very obvious too when its a figure of speech.
Mate, he said all married men. Then jumped down to 50%.
The age threshold for marriage was 21 for men and women for the first quarter of that century. Also, the majority of men and women, married between the ages of 18-23 beyond that.
I’ve already ignored the lad. I’m not even the slightest bit interested in discussing how many men were having sex with children 150 years ago and I don’t know why you’re running in that direction.
Guide to win any argument
1. make a ridiculous claim
2. get called out for it
3. double down suggesting it was just a figure of speech or it's just semantics
4. learning that some topics are too serious for it
5-2549. long exchange when you post long answers not remotely connected to original point and the other person keeps pointing that out
2550. the other person gets enough of your bs
2551. claim the other person is just being emotional or a child and they need to calm down
2552. the other person finally realizes they're wasting their time and stop engaging
2553. you can finally claim victory. You were right all along!
1. make a ridiculous claim
2. get called out for it
3. double down suggesting it was just a figure of speech or it's just semantics
4. learning that some topics are too serious for it
5-2549. long exchange when you post long answers not remotely connected to original point and the other person keeps pointing that out
2550. the other person gets enough of your bs
2551. claim the other person is just being emotional or a child and they need to calm down
2552. the other person finally realizes they're wasting their time and stop engaging
2553. you can finally claim victory. You were right all along!
This thread has gone slightly off track. What was the original question?
The funny thing is there isn't exactly an original question. Just an objection to a word that spiraled into endless squabbling among several posters hellbent on not losing an internet argument.
And based on an event that happened nearly 80 years ago
Thanks for the clarifications. This thread has always been one of the most entertaining on the CE forum although it should carry “when the fun stops”-type warnings like gambling adverts.
Russia declared intent to enter Japan. They surrendered. That’s what I take as my truth on the balance of evidence.
It’s a discussion as to whether the Russian resolve/statement was a result of the Bombs dropping.
But all I ever think is; Hitler was done. The Axis was belly up. Who the hell was Japan going to fight for another year, a decade, however long? I’m more than happy for someone to tell me how the political climate could have seen them reignite the whole thing from afar, but the simple logistics of land masses in the 1940’s renders that impossible to me.
Maybe they develop their own atom bombs and nuke Europe and the US. Maybe they unite Russia as an oppositional force against America. But from my own understanding of the period and climate, they didn’t carry the global political capital to prolong the war.
Genuinely happy for any links from anyone that corrects me somewhat.
So you think that the solution was for the US to just say ‘ok guys, we are done’ and leave without a regime change?
Sure, that would have made nukes redundant but it was clear that was never going to happen. Both the Nazis and the Japanese regime had to change for the war to end (and rightly so). The idea that the US would end the war without a somewhat unconditional surrender is pure fantasy and frankly quite disgusting considering the atrocities the Japanese did during the war.
Again, the USSR had no amphibious capabilities to invade Japan. They destroyed Japanese army in Manchuria but they could not invade the Japan itself. Japan surrendering had everything to do with the US nuking them (Japan thought that the US had far more nukes) than a non existing threat from the USSR.
Of all the things that I've heard about what could have been done to end the war instead of nuclear weapons;
Amphibious Invasion of Japan by the Soviet Union is perhaps the funniest.
I wouldn't bother with him, his posts clearly show a profound lack of knowledge on this topic.
Soviet's capacity to invade the Japanese home islands makes Operation Sea Lion seem like a realistic endeavour.
See, this is where biases really bloody kick in: that list is so so so misrepresentative
I can break this down incident by incident
This is what I mean by the way, given the huge intrinsic biases that label every US military intervention, despite some being fully UN backed as somehow the US being the aggressor.
Afghanistan 1998, 2001- Somewhat justified, given 9/11
Bosnia 1994, 1995 - Humanitarian mission sanctioned by UN after UN missions were attacked
Cambodia 1969-70 - Horrible - unjustified
China 1945-46 - Seriously? A US Marine Corps was sent to China to pacify and force surrender on the Japanese. They were greeted in the streets as heroes and given a liberators reception.
Congo 1964 - Seriously? The democratically elected government of the Congo was couped by Soviet supported rebels. The government asked for Western support and received it.
Cuba 1959-1961 - Unjustified - although feck Castro.
El Salvador 1980s - Murky - authoritarian government of El Salvador requested support after Soviet backed coup.
Korea 1950-53 - The fact that this is in here shows how ridiculous this is. North Korea invades South korea - US is the bad guy?
Guatemala 1954, 1960, 1967-69 - Some of them are really unjustified, some of them were justified.
Indonesia 1958 - Murky - Attempted coup attempt on a dictator who was committing atrocities.
Laos 1964-73 - Unjustified.
Grenada 1983 - Murky - All of Grenada's neighbours solicited US help after breakdown in government and stability.
Iraq 1991-2000s, 2015- 1991-2000's was very justified. 2003-2009 was not. 2014+ was very justified and requested by the Iraqi government.
Iran 1987 - Seriously? The Iranians blew up a US warship for no reason and triggered a response.
Kuwait 1991 - Someone tried to say the 91 liberation of Kuwait was US aggression? They were seen as the saviours.
Lebanon 1983, 1984 - Very Murky, borderline unjustifiable.
Libya 1986, 2011- 1986 was justifiable. 2011+ was, on paper, justifiable, but the resulting incompetency made any action not worth it and increased suffering.
Nicaragua 1980s - Mostly not justifiable.
Pakistan 2003, 2006- These were requested at the behest of the Pakistani government against Pashtun Taliban.
Palestine 2010 - I do not know what this is referring to.
Panama 1989 - you might want to read up what actually happened here. But the president of Panama was basically helping smuggle boatloads of cocaine to USA and got indited for it.
Peru 1965 - I have no idea what this refers to.
Somalia 1993, 2007-08, 2010- They're referring to USN anti-piracy patrols as bombing/invasion now? 1993 was BHD, which is murky at best, probably unjustifiable.
Sudan 1998 - They literally bombed an Al-Qaeda cell which had killed 226 Americans in Embassy attacks.
Syria 2014- They bombed Chemical weapons factories...
Vietnam 1961-73 - Unjustified.
Yemen 2002, 2009- Unjustified- but feck the Houthi's.
Yugoslavia 1999 - Stopping a genocide is now a bad thing?
Yeah I wonder if these sound like the bad guys
The same evening, MacArthur's chief of staff told Stratemeyer that the firebombing of Sinuiju had also been approved. In his diary, Stratemeyer summarized the instructions as follows: "Every installation, facility, and village in North Korea now becomes a military and tactical target." Stratemeyer sent orders to the Fifth Air Force and Bomber Command to "destroy every means of communications and every installation, factory, city, and village".[12] On 5 November Stratemeyer gave the following order to the commanding general of the Fifth Air Force: "Aircraft under Fifth Air Force control will destroy all other targets including all buildings capable of affording shelter." The same day, 22 B-29s attacked Kanggye, destroying 75% of the city.[13][14]
Dean Rusk, the U.S. State Department official who headed East Asian affairs, concluded that America had bombed "everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another."[25] North Korean factories, schools, hospitals, and government offices were forced to move underground.[2] In November 1950, the North Korean leadership instructed the population to build dugouts and mud huts and to dig tunnels, in order to solve the acute housing problem.
In an interview with U.S. Air Force historians in 1988, USAF General Curtis LeMay, who was also head of the U.S. Strategic Air Command, commented on efforts to win the war as a whole, including the strategic bombing campaign, saying “Right at the start of the war, unofficially, I slipped a message in "under the carpet" in the Pentagon that we ought to turn SAC lose with some incendiaries on some North Korean towns. The answer came back, under the carpet again, that there would be too many civilian casualties; we couldn't do anything like that. We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another, and some in South Korea, too......Over a period of three years or so we killed off, what, 20 percent of the population of Korea, as direct casualties of war or from starvation and exposure? Over a period of three years, this seemed to be acceptable to everybody, but to kill a few people at the start right away, no, we can't seem to stomach that”.[27][28][25]
Pyongyang, which saw 75% of its area destroyed, was so devastated that bombing was halted as there were no longer any worthy targets.[29][30] By the end of the campaign, US bombers had difficulty in finding targets and were reduced to bombing footbridges or jettisoning their bombs into the sea.
After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops. The bombing of these five dams and ensuing floods threatened several million North Koreans with starvation; according to Charles K. Armstrong, "only emergency assistance from China, the USSR, and other socialist countries prevented widespread famine."
Oh I totally agree that the way the Korean War was conducted was hideous, especially as China got involved more and more grim stuff was done. McArthur is an absolute cnut of the highest order, an actual war criminal meeting many definitions and deserved to get fired. The fact that it took until him asking to use Nukes to get him fired is a stain on American political leadership when it should have been done a long time ago.
But the context here isn't "Was the way the Americans conducted these wars good?", the context here is, "What aggressive acts of foreign policy in the form of invasions did the US start?"
Good moment for this:
Well, that second question was in the context of a previous discussion about the lesser of two evils etc.
If you go by technicalities*, the USSR was repeatedly invited by the ruling party of Afghanistan to intervene in its civil war, similar with US in Vietnam. Both committed pretty horrendous acts once inside.
*and yes, a UN vote without the only geopolitical opposition present doesn't count as not a technicality!
I’m not suggesting that the war could/would have ended without a Japanese surrender, so don’t wang on as if that’s what I said. I was asking ‘who the Fcuk would they be fighting, and how?’’
Islands around Japan were taken, and those and further incursions would have served as bases for bombing runs.
I’m well across the detail of Japanese losses, and I’m more than open to a measured argument that killing 150-250k civilians to end a war, can be justified. I was objecting to ol’ Captain Mercy gobbing off.
My question to you was ‘who the Fcuk would they fight?’ After the war had ended. I’d hoped that someone would say ‘The following countries would have carried on with them’. But Europe was lost. There weren’t any important allies left for them.
You can argue over whether killing 250k innocents immediately is better than 4 times that number over 12 months. I just disagree with you.
But you can’t possibly think that Japan would have risen from its tiny island mass, and taken a war to the entirety of the world?
I judge Afghanistan the same way as I judge Vietnam in terms of justification.
I'm not saying Vietnam was not justified because the way the conflict was fought. You cannot install a puppet government there after blood has been shed, curtail all opposition in authoritarian forms with literal massacres and then claim that you're helping a legitimate nation when, shock horror, that regime starts to get toppled.
The corrupt South Vietnamese government was as much a legitimate government as much as the PDPA were of Afghanistan.
I personally a not familar with all of these but as stated some were UN sanctioned, some of them are NATO as well as a number related to terrorism
The US have the 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 5th largest Air Force in the world.
The silver lining is if that girl grows up and gets to go to college, she will more than likely wean herself off the Kool Aid. Women in general are trending liberal at a much faster rate than men becoming more conservative.
This is one of the worst copypasta's out there.
Yeah cause the US Army Air Wing, which is 90% Transport Helicopters and Transport Planes with the rest of it being Attack Helicopters really counts as an air force.
Also, you've named 4 branches there.
USAF and USN has high numbers of combat aircraft. As mentioned, US Army Aviation is barely an air force, is the 4th branch you're referring to USMC? Because it's numbers are tiny.
Yes, USMC Aviation is the 5th largest Air Force in the world, despite ‘tiny numbers’.
And I actually made a mistake in my original post, the USN airforce is the 2nd biggest, not 3rd, in the world.
Seriously, how much is enough? You have overwhelming AirPower, you have the biggest fleet of aircraft carrier, you have the biggest nuclear stockpile, you have the biggest armed coalition, the fecking UN is in NYC, your troops are more combat experienced than any of its potential adversary due to, you know, the fact that the US have been at war for all but 2 decades of its entire existence, so at which point can you not feel threatened in your global hegemony on military might?
The F-32 Technically does exist. It just looks stupid because it looks like the plane is grinning
The jet looks how I'd imagine Olaf dreaming he was a fighter jet.
1) USMC Aviation is not the 5th largest Air Force in the world - I'm going to need a credible source for that. And some infographic is not a reliable source.
2) PLAAF has well exceed 2500 Airframes and Russia has over 3000 (Although how much of that is actually cannibalized is unknown), well over the size of USN.
3) I'm not American.
4) US does not have the largest nuclear stockpile.
5) Not sure where the UN is is really relevant.
6) US does not have much experience in the war it needs to fight (near peer in the Pacific)
7) What is enough? What is enough will be when the 7th Fleet + 3rd Fleet isn't outmatched by the PLAAN. When the USAF Pacific Squadrons aren't outnumbered facing peer tech threats. What will be enough will be when the USN won't be defeated in a Pacific War without the help of all it's allies in the region. When the number of SM-6 Missiles is in enough quantity to protect CSG's from massive Ballistic and Cruise Missile attacks. It will be enough when the USN + USAF have enough LRASM's to launch saturation attacks on PLAN navy bases.
To be fair, they need all that to compensate for a paper thin national ego.
America is the loud guy at the bar that wangs on about how great he is. How he was a stud at school and now has an amazing life. You reply ‘Ok’ and get back to your beer, then they go off again and demand you be impressed too.
Utter shambles of a country in terms of how they report their need for gigantic military spending. For a time, yes, America as ‘World Police’ had a point of value. But so many of their population has onboarded that as a forever message. Oblivious to the fact that their ‘We have so many hammers, we will smash all the global nails’ policy, is baking in a need to keep buying very expensive hammers.
Truly wonderful people for the most part though. Most beautiful country on earth too. If they could be a lot less shouty about everything that would be ace.
Why are they less needed now, than in the past?
Strange timing on that, since Russia is doing the largest invasion in Europe since WW2.
And china is undergoing the largest naval buildup in peacetime in history.
Well if the world had a fully formed adult that was trustable in both thought and deed… great.
Instead we have a crazy cnut with all of the weapons.
The military industrial complex is now the tail that wags the dog of America. They’ve not been a welcome global Police and Protector for decades. I’d extend that to ‘In my lifetime’ but that would write off all of the positives and be a little unfair.
What knowledge do you have on the MIC?
Can you explain your criticisms of the MIC rather than throw off the dude comments about “tail that wags the dog.”
Do you have data and actual citations? Are you even aware of how the relationship between DOD and MIC actually works?
He can’t now, a bipartisan bill was signed that stopped a Us president from pulling out of nato.
US doesn’t want to be world police, it takes that role up because almost everywhere when shit hits the fan, they go bowl in hand to the US asking for security guarantees and bases for protection.
US has a troubling history as "world police" across the world, i know, but they are still quite welcome in Europe, so got to take it from there.
Europe is trying to build up, but not there yet, so in the meantime, US is still needed here, particulary considering how unhinged Russia has become.
That's a bit of a naive view of global politics, IMO. There have certainly been more isolationist politicians, but there's no doubt that after WW2 there was and has been a very cleary view that the US should involve themselves in all parts of the world. The Truman doctrine didn't come about out of the goodness of Truman's heart.