Interventionism versus non-interventionism

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Kbg
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by Kbg » Sun Aug 05, 2018 8:26 pm

War and warfare has always been highly complex at many levels and is fundamentally a human endeavor which means it is waged for many reasons, some good, some evil, many somewhere in between.

I spent a couple of years on two different occasions emerged in the topic academically...if one really wants to get a solid foundation on thinking about it Clausewitz’s On War in my view is still the single best source. It’s not an easy book to read, and reading some associated commentaries is mandatory if you have to read it on your own.

I’m going to cease posting on this thread as I think it is getting ready to go silly and cynical which tends to push me into incivility and I don’t want to go there as an individual. Thank you for the views expressed.
boglerdude
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by boglerdude » Mon Aug 06, 2018 4:24 am

> I do know that the official explanations for the WTC building collapses, especially building 7, cannot possibly be true
:O
https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2 ... ion-report


South Korea is thriving compared to North, so intervention worked there? Why the difference compared to Vietnam?
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moda0306
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by moda0306 » Mon Aug 06, 2018 6:42 am

boglerdude wrote:
Mon Aug 06, 2018 4:24 am
> I do know that the official explanations for the WTC building collapses, especially building 7, cannot possibly be true
:O
https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2 ... ion-report


South Korea is thriving compared to North, so intervention worked there? Why the difference compared to Vietnam?
We don't know that. A unified Korea could be a balance between the two we have now and we perhaps wouldn't have killed a million Korean peasants for the current outcome.
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by hardlawjockey » Fri Aug 17, 2018 9:14 am

When it comes to the idea of fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here, I'm just thankful that most of the rest of the world doesn't think the way we do - an exception being the 9/11 terrorists of course.

In the Book "Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides", there is an interview with a female sniper who apparently was quite skilled and managed to kill a lot of American soldiers. She said it was because they were so big they were easy to hit and also if you hit one, the others would try to help him and you could get more of them.

When asked if she had any regrets for killing so many Americans her answer was that if she had gone to their country and killed them she would have regrets but since they came to her country to kill, she had none.

Made sense to me.
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ochotona
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by ochotona » Fri Aug 17, 2018 10:01 am

Seems to me WW2 and Gulf War I were the only justified wars in the 20th-21st century.
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Xan
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by Xan » Fri Aug 17, 2018 10:07 am

hardlawjockey wrote:
Fri Aug 17, 2018 9:14 am
When it comes to the idea of fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here, I'm just thankful that most of the rest of the world doesn't think the way we do - an exception being the 9/11 terrorists of course.

In the Book "Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides", there is an interview with a female sniper who apparently was quite skilled and managed to kill a lot of American soldiers. She said it was because they were so big they were easy to hit and also if you hit one, the others would try to help him and you could get more of them.

When asked if she had any regrets for killing so many Americans her answer was that if she had gone to their country and killed them she would have regrets but since they came to her country to kill, she had none.

Made sense to me.
They had come to her country to help her countrymen fight off the Communists. One side could complain when a foreign power entered a civil war, but really the problem here is that she was (is?) a flippin' Communist.
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by hardlawjockey » Fri Aug 17, 2018 10:43 am

Xan wrote:
Fri Aug 17, 2018 10:07 am
hardlawjockey wrote:
Fri Aug 17, 2018 9:14 am
When it comes to the idea of fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here, I'm just thankful that most of the rest of the world doesn't think the way we do - an exception being the 9/11 terrorists of course.

In the Book "Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides", there is an interview with a female sniper who apparently was quite skilled and managed to kill a lot of American soldiers. She said it was because they were so big they were easy to hit and also if you hit one, the others would try to help him and you could get more of them.

When asked if she had any regrets for killing so many Americans her answer was that if she had gone to their country and killed them she would have regrets but since they came to her country to kill, she had none.

Made sense to me.
They had come to her country to help her countrymen fight off the Communists. One side could complain when a foreign power entered a civil war, but really the problem here is that she was (is?) a flippin' Communist.
When it came time for North and South Vietnam to unite according to the 1954 Geneva Accords, it was determined by the CIA that Ho Chi Minh would have gotten about 80% of the vote. That's why we decided to build up and support our own puppet government which never had majority support in South Vietnam.

I bought a shirt with a label "Made in Vietnam" the other day and couldn't help but wonder what a shame it was that so many years were wasted and so many millions killed to prevent a country from working out their own damn problems. Which they eventually had to do any way.
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by Kriegsspiel » Sat Aug 18, 2018 11:33 am

I think this kinda ties into what moda was saying about Korea. If most of the Vietnamese wanted to be Communists, fuck it... let em. In retrospect, it obviously seems like a good thing that we helped South Korea, even if we didn't really know if they would have worked out a good solution if left to their own devices. Because South Korea seems pretty swell and North Korea is a hellscape.

As a current example, should the US (and Russia?) let ISIS run shit and see how it works out in a few decades?
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