Just wanted to get that on record.

No, I don’t think WWII was justifiable. Your remembrance of history is correct, but it’s important to note _why_ Pearl Harbour happened. Public opinion was overwhelmingly against entering the war. WWI had been such a disaster that nobody wanted anything to do with another foreign war at the time. It would take something huge to turn that public opinion around. FDR needed something to get us into that war and he used Pearl Harbour to do it. There is major evidence now, after years of FOIA requests to show that FDR knew exactly what would happen when he moved our fleet to Pearl Harbour. He maneuvered us into being attacked first. The proof of this is documented in Robert Stinnet’s book(http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=30396) and his evidence is virtually irrefutable. People were called conspiracy theorists for years for saying that FDR caused the attack at Pearl Harbour, but there is little doubt any more. It’s an awful fact.

John Denson calls WWII just WWI with a 20 year intermission. There were the same players on the European front, and a US President that was committed to enacting Wilson’s failed dream of a League of Nations. FDR fulfilled that dream by creating the United Nations, but it took a war and 20 million dead to do it. The truth about the a-bomb is even worse. It’s now known that there were secret delegations from Japan sent to Truman to negotiate surrender if they would be allowed to keep their Emperor. They were told that only unconditional surrender would be tolerated and Truman wouldn’t meet with them. So all of the talk of dropping the bomb to avoid a million casualties from a mainland invasion is just superfluous. None of that was even necessary. The bomb was a muscle flex to send a message to Stalin, and Truman was willing to sacrifice tens of thousands of Japanese civilian lives to do it.

I don’t agree that you can’t protect our country without a standing army. The Vietnamese kicked our butt, and we spend as much on a single tank as they did on their entire army. Same with Afghanistan. They’ve been the bane of many foreign superpowers for 100 years with little more than street gangs at their defense. 100 million brave, determined American men could withstand 200 million Chinese if we knew our families and lives depended on it. We’ve done it before during 1812 and the Revolution, and we could do it again if need be.

I do agree that my hypothetical terrorist group would be hard pressed to exist here in the U.S. But, the point I was trying to make is this: Imagine you are an Afghani. And, your government can’t stop such groups from operating inside your borders. Is it ok for the U.S. to come and bomb your country in order to make themselves safer? I’m not ok with that. Just because we can take the fight to them doesn’t mean it’s morally ok to do so. People will die. Lots of them. Some of the pictures that come out of Afghanistan of little kids with amputated legs and burned bodies because of bombing raids we’ve done in Iraq and along the Pakistani border just rip my heart out. Those were our drones that dropped those bombs. And we justify it all because of 9/11. The current body count in Iraq is over 90,000(http://www.southernbread.org/iraqi-death-toll/).

My “world’s bully” comment depends on which side of the ocean you are on. We don’t see ourselves as the world’s bully, but I guarantee you that Iran does. Who stopped us from going into Iraq? Nobody. When we decide to attack a country, there is nobody that can withstand us, because we spend more on our military each year than the next 15 countries combined. And that’s just how FDR wanted it. That’s why the UN security council is constructed as it is. We basically show up and inform the rest of the pack what we are going to do and then go do it. It’s a de-facto empire that’s funded by the U.S. taxpayer.

I didn’t say we would stop having enemies by closing bases. I just said the number of enemies would be reduced dramatically by stopping all of our military presence in other people’s back yards. There’s a reason that perpetually neutral countries such as New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Switzerland, etc. never get attacked. Because they don’t posture themselves as a threat to others like we do. For instance, we have bases in Iceland, Norway and Turkey already. And then Bush was going to help install a missile shield in Poland. And we’re shocked that Russia has a problem with us and says we’re being provocative. To a country like Iran, who we were allies with as recently as the 60′s, we are the child molester in your example. The CIA operation that caused the Iranian coup in 1953 is a perfect example of the U.S. meddling in other countries affairs ad nauseum. We bring this hatred on ourselves by using bully tactics such as this over and over. Look at the map now. We have Iran boxed in by occupying Afghanistan on one side and Iraq on the other. And then we wonder why they want nukes. They want them for the same reason North Korea did. To keep us from ever daring to invade their country.

The U.S., Russia and England have created an entire radicalized youth generation in the middle-east from all of our meddling. Then we go bomb them a few more times when those terrorists lash out at us. It’s my contention that none of this would be the case(sure, we would stilll have different problems) if we re-embraced Jefferson and Washington’s motto of “Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.”

Hey, just for thoroughness, I’m goint to do a blog post with all of the materials I’ve read/listened to that brought me to my current thinking and reference this comment thread for anyone else that may want to join in.

If war is simply about defending our soil, then was WWII justifiable. If my remembrance of history is correct, we stayed out until the attack on Pearl Harbor. I agree that WWI, Vietnam and possibly the Korean wars were unnecessary advancements, but I’m not a military strategist so my opinion there is pretty worthless.

No “standing army” might have worked in Jefferson’s day, but if we didn’t have one now, we’d be crushed. You can’t protect a country of this size with a militia or a draft.

If a radical US group attacked China, we wouldn’t sit back and let China go after them, we would make every effort to eradicate them ourselves. We wouldn’t harbor and protect them in the first place. Their existance in the US would be too difficult for them to operate in the first place. There’s no comparison between our reaction to a radical group on our soil and Iraq’s.

I don’t yet think we are the “world’s bully”, more like the “world’s police” and I frankly hate that. I wish everytime a major disaster or fight broke out, the world didn’t look at us as say, “What are you going to do about it?” And when we respond we get one of two answers, “You did too much,” or “You didn’t do enough!” Should we jump in and assist in the relief efforts in Haiti? Certainly, but is it the job of the US to stop genocide in Darfur or the Balkans? I don’t know, but it’s “danged if you do, danged if you don’t,” to the rest of the world and someone out there has decided that it matters what the rest of the world thinks about us. Why can’t we do what’s right regardless of world opinion?

Lastly, I don’t think pulling military bases is the answer to “stop having enemies.” I think we’ve made it clear what are intentions are in those places. While it’s another huge expense, it’s about keeping peace in those areas. No, I wouldn’t be comfortable with China having ships patrolling the Gulf, but that’s like asking if I would be comfortable with a child molester babysitting my daughter for the night. I would be fine with an ally doing it but it’s obviously not necessary. We can take care of ourselves, many of these third world countries cannot.

This is fun! :)

It took a long time and a lot of research to come to my current position, and each war has it’s own history to be expounded on. But, in a nutshell, the State uses war as it’s primary expansionary and control mechanism. This is why Jefferson abhorred a “standing army” and lobbied furiously against it. It’s during war time that the State ratchets up it’s powers and control. Then in peace-time those controls never diminish back to pre-war levels. It’s what Bob Higgs refers to as the “ratchet effect.” That’s why, for instance, al quieda is effectively non-existent, yet we still have warrantless wire tapping, full body x-ray scans, etc. This is what Hayek was getting at in the video as well.

With regard to the middle east, we were never attacked by Iraq or Afghanistan. It was a terrorist group that attacked us. But, for some reason Bush thought he was justified in invading two countries and killing tens of thousands of people because of that. Was it justifiable? The reason I say no is because if it was turned around the other way, we would not tolerate it. If we had some crazy group here in the U.S. that launched periodic attacks on Chinese landmarks, would it be ok if China invaded us and bombed U.S. cities in order to “take the fight to the enemy?” No. There would be a great hue and cry go up. And justly so. The only reason we get away with it is raw power. Nobody can stand up to us. We are the world’s bully.

Here’s what I’m not saying. I’m not saying that:

-Islam is a peaceful religion. It’s not.
-terrorism isn’t a big deal. It is.
-I am a pacifist. I’m not.
-George Bush is any worse than any other president. Actually, when it comes to killing, compared to Wilson, FDR and Truman, Bush was small potatoes.

I know you were kidding, but we could actually reduce our enemies very easily. We currently have military bases in 50 countries. If we just closed them all down, brought everyone home, and declared that we would engage in no other foreign wars, I suspect that the number of enemies we have would fall dramatically. And, that’s not just some naive statement. Think about it. Would you be comfortable with chinese destroyers and air craft carriers constantly patrolling the Gulf of Mexico? No way. But, that’s what the Iranians have to put up with on a daily basis. No wonder they hate us so much.

All of this game is what Robert Murphy refers to as leveraging our “cry for security.” Republicans keep us in fear of foreign enemies so that we will keep electing them to protect us. Democrats keep us in fear of financial and social ruin so that we will keep electing them to enact social programs. It’s the welfare/warfare state.

I hope all of that made sense. It’s hard to condense so much down into a small set of thoughts. I should probably just do some blog posts on it.

I hate that we have to go to war, but I also believe it’s the governments job to protect it’s citizens and if we weren’t in those places, the fight would be much closer to home. It might still get here, but hopefully the enemy will be much weaker by then.

Of course we could take Sheryl Crow’s advise and not have any enemies. :)