[HN Gopher] War Is a Racket (1935)
___________________________________________________________________
War Is a Racket (1935)
Author : pasquinelli
Score : 301 points
Date : 2023-05-25 19:16 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (archive.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (archive.org)
| omginternets wrote:
| I've only skimmed this essay, and plan to read it more carefully
| later, so please be charitable if I've overlooked an important
| passage.
|
| Butler's argument appears to be conflating two questions:
|
| 1. Does anyone unfairly profit from war?
|
| 2. Is the unfair profit the result of a racket?
|
| I think few people would argue that the answer to #1 is "yes",
| but I don't think he's made a convincing argument that the unfair
| spoils of war are either necessarily or overwhelmingly the result
| of a racket.
|
| Here I would like to note that the Butler's definition of
| "racket" is rather loose. The strongest interpretation of his
| definition, I think, is that a racket is something that is
| orchestrated covertly by few, for their own benefit, and at the
| expense of the many.
|
| There is another word for this: a conspiracy. The American
| Heritage Dictionary has what I consider to be a fair definition
| for conspiracy: "an agreement to perform together an illegal,
| wrongful, or subversive act."
|
| So to show that war is indeed a racket, Butler would have to
| demonstrate that one of two things is true:
|
| 1. War can only emerge from conspiracy
|
| 2. The overwhelming majority of wars have historically emerged
| from conspiracy
|
| Demonstrating a conspiracy in turn is a two-part enterprise: (1)
| showing the act was illegal, wrongful or subversive, and (2)
| showing that a group of people agreed to perform it together. As
| far as I can tell, we are only shown instances of profiteering,
| and perhaps individual corruption in the form of draft-dodging
| and whatnot. This is outrageous, to be sure, but falls short of
| demonstrating that a "racket" is at play. And while I can think
| of recent examples of wars that _do_ qualify as a racket (at
| least, IMO), Butler 's more general claim that "War is
| (effectively always) a racket" seems like hyperbole.
| angry_albatross wrote:
| You probably meant to say that few people would argue that the
| answer to #1 is "no"
| Barrin92 wrote:
| _> A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is
| not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small
| "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the
| benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of
| war a few people make huge fortunes._
|
| Just because people make fortunes from war doesn't mean that this
| is the essential characteristic of war. People make fortunes out
| of everything regardless of its cause.
|
| War is a historic universal, and in fact it was most intense in
| pre-modern societies. Aboriginal cultures went to war not just
| for material reasons, but also for cultural reasons, ritualistic,
| and religious reasons. Long before we had organized commercial
| activity or opportunity for rackets we had warrior cultures.
|
| The conspiratorial idea that war is largely driven by shadowy
| elites doesn't really hold up to anthropology. Far from it elites
| often even have to reign the flames of war in as populations whip
| themselves into a frenzy. The fact that war generally benefits
| few people, or sometimes even nobody at all doesn't imply that
| the majority of people weren't genuinely enthusiastic about it,
| although they'll typically deny it later.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >The conspiratorial idea that war is largely driven by shadowy
| elites doesn't really hold up to anthropology.
|
| Of course not, Bush jr and his administration made up a war
| right in public. That we had no business in the middle east is
| not conspiracy. That Bush wanted to go to war in the middle
| east is also not conspiracy. Those WMDs never existed, and they
| knew that, yet off to war we went. How is that not elites
| driving war?
| graublau wrote:
| Blackrock approves this comment
| chrisco255 wrote:
| > Aboriginal cultures went to war not just for material
| reasons, but also for cultural reasons, ritualistic, and
| religious reasons.
|
| Those are always just emotional excuses for gaining more power
| over resources. If you ignore incentives and take everyone's
| word at face value, then we're all saints and nary a sin has
| ever been committed in the name of some righteous cause. Mutual
| misunderstandings, is all, I suppose.
|
| > People make fortunes out of everything regardless of its
| cause.
|
| Author took care to mark the fortunes of companies at peacetime
| vs war time and noted that fortunes increased by an order of
| magnitude in some cases, as a result of war. If your net worth
| or social standing is due to jump one or two orders of
| magnitude as a result of a war or two, your subconscious mind
| will find more reasons than are rational to justify and support
| a war. You'll say it's to _save_ your people. You 'll say it's
| self-defense. You'll say it's necessary and just. You'll ignore
| any path to peace that might avert such a disaster, in
| particular if you never have to enter the fox holes yourself.
| That's the author's point.
|
| Rackets aren't always some men conspiring to gain power or
| money or fame in smoke-filled parlor rooms. Often, they are
| emergent properties of incentivized systems.
|
| > The conspiratorial idea that war is largely driven by shadowy
| elites doesn't really hold up to anthropology.
|
| The only part that is wrong about that statement is the idea of
| the elites being 'shadowy'. No, they conduct their racket right
| out in the public eye. This isn't a particularly insightful
| phenomenon, by the way. Power always follows a power law of
| distribution. Of course the elites are primarily responsible
| for war. If the elites are ever against war, it just means that
| the incentives of the moment are temporarily more favorable for
| peace.
|
| As a blatant example, let's take the American Civil War for
| example. Well over 90% of white southerners didn't own slaves.
| So why would they go to war and lay down their life, by the
| hundreds of thousands, if they stood to gain almost nothing?
| Most of these kids were raised on subsistence farms and didn't
| even know how to read. Of course, to those boys it was a
| cultural cause, defense of their homeland, states rights, yadi
| yadi. That's what they were sold. But the ones really pulling
| the strings in that war, were the rich Southern elites, who did
| in fact own many slaves and stood to lose a great deal over
| Lincoln's election.
|
| Again, this is true of the vast majority of wars and battles in
| human history. Pick your time and place in history.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >cultural cause, defense of their homeland, states rights,
| yadi yadi.
|
| It was explicitly to enforce the white mans superior position
| over the black man. That's what many confederate soldiers
| wrote about, that's what pastors gave sermons about, that's
| what the confederate government discussed in their
| legislative chambers. It wasn't even "states rights to own
| slaves", but explicitly that most of the southern population
| believed it was by god's will that the white man guide the
| black savage. They believed the north was morally wrong to
| elevate the black man as an equal. They were fighting to
| maintain their societal hierarchy.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Let's take a couple more recent examples then circle back
| to the Civil War. If I take your interpretation, which is a
| single side of a complex multi-dimensional conflict that
| involved millions of participants, and apply it to more
| recent conflicts: the American soldiers who fought in the
| War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq were totally just
| trying to dominate the middle eastern man. In fact, they
| owned cars and stood to gain from having access to cheap
| oil. Many people texted about it, saying we should keep the
| oil and bomb the whole lot. Sermons about the risks of
| Islam, etc were spoken, in Christian churches.
|
| And if you choose to discard all the other sides of the
| die, that's all there is to the story. Those words were
| spoken at various times. People earnestly meant them on
| some level. But it's not the whole picture. It's a flat, 2D
| perspective. It's jingoistic in the opposite extreme.
|
| But what we do know from the so-called "War on Terror"
| (itself a propagandistic title), is that elites went so far
| as to even make up stories about fake nuclear weapons in
| order to drum up support for that war. We actually caught
| them in this blatant lie, for once. None of those people,
| of course, have gone to jail for it, but I digress. If you
| think that every war in history isn't similarly manipulated
| to drum up popular support, you don't know the first thing
| about war or propaganda.
|
| But we also know, from a certain perspective, that in the
| wake of 9/11, there was some popular sentiment to do
| _something_ in retaliation for the innocent lives lost.
| Nevermind that Iraq had nothing to do with 9 /11. It was
| pitched as an extension of the War on Terror. And having
| been swept up in that, I can tell you, I didn't disagree
| with it at first either. The war was supported on both
| sides of the political aisle.
|
| As for the Civil War, can you find damning documents if you
| look for them? Of course. But that doesn't tell you the
| whole story. My own brother was drafted into the War on
| Terror, not because he wanted to, but because he was a
| member of the National Guard. Similarly, in the South and
| the North and most wars in history: young men don't get a
| _choice_ , they get drafted. If they don't go to war, and
| are fully capable, they get arrested or executed. Desertion
| is also punishable by death. But there's also softer
| influences. Your own brother is going to war, your cousins,
| your neighbors and best friends. Why wouldn't you go with
| them, to have their back? They would have yours, wouldn't
| they? Reciprocation is another extremely important
| influence in human psychology.
|
| We actually have recordings of Civil War veterans taken
| from the early 20th century, when they were still alive:
| https://youtu.be/swifvJEOF6s?t=160
|
| "I didn't feel much interest in it, because I felt kindly
| towards the darkers, and they were kindly towards me, and
| towards my family."
|
| "Now, attending school, in Spring of '61, when news came
| war was declared...there was a rally among 75-100 boys at
| school. Well right then, about half of our pupils, boys
| around 18, quit school...I wanted to go too! But my father
| said I was too young, but if the war lasted long enough,
| you may have an opportunity."
|
| "Well, so I rested. War began. And I heard about it. And I
| heard about at Williamsburg, some of my classmates fell in
| the battle there, and I grieved about it because the boys I
| had been brought up with. They were a little older than I,
| and I felt sorry they were killed."
|
| "Then in 1862, General Lee began to need more men,
| naturally. Although the biggest battles had not come
| yet...I a boy, of 16 1/2 years old, joined a cavalry
| company."
|
| "It was a great curse on this country that we had slavery,
| and I thank God that I did not bring up my boys and girls
| under a system of slavery which I was brought up under."
|
| You can see in Howell's own retrospective about it. He was
| convinced it was about state's rights. He saw Virginia as
| his homeland moreso than even the U.S.A. In the 1860s, most
| men around the world would have done the same for wherever
| they resided, whatever tribe they belonged to, whatever
| monarch was in power and whatever cause was presented.
|
| But that instinct that men have to fight for their tribe,
| well that has been tapped successfully by elites for
| millenia.
| nickpinkston wrote:
| Note that he was possibly also asked to lead a coup against FDR
| [1] which was never substantiated, but rhymes with other stuff
| going on at that time such as that covered by "Invisible Hands: A
| narrative history of the influential businessmen who fought to
| roll back the New Deal." [2]
|
| These conservative groups were also heavily involved with
| extremist anti-communist and oft times pro-fascist efforts, even
| involving the CIA such as that covered by "The Devil's
| Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's
| Secret Government" [3] that shows how Dulles & Co. supported
| these same rightist American elites' business interests. One of
| these was Fred Koch - ie father of the infamous Koch Brothers,
| who expanded his campaign massively to this day.
|
| Eisenhower's "Military Industrial Complex" final speech [4]
| actually was made because he was heavily pressured by these same
| groups to both profit from fighting the Cold War and as well as
| encourage its anti-communism to remove the threat to their
| wealth.
|
| Anti-communism in the West can largely be viewed as wealthy
| businessmen being scared of getting their assets seized and
| making a long-term scare campaign to get the public onboard. I'm
| not saying I like communism at all, but their reaction was often
| very bad for the American people and the world in general, and it
| continues in forms to this day.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
|
| [2] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2751831
|
| [3] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/24723229
|
| [4]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_addres...
| ly3xqhl8g9 wrote:
| Also a reminder that after the 1932 German presidential
| election [1], won by Paul von Hindenburg, 84 years old, with
| 53%, he appointed as chancellor one Adolf Hitler in 1933
| following the advice of Franz von Papen, the conservative
| chancellor who served in 1932 and who would have rather see the
| Nazi Party in power than the Communist Party (KPD) led by Ernst
| Thalmann. In 1934 Hitler dissolves the presidency and calls
| himself Fuhrer und Reichskanzler. Ernst Thalmann will be
| executed under Hitler's orders in 1944, after 11 years of
| solitary confinement. That's how the Nazis torture (Hans Litten
| [2], the lawyer who stood against Hitler in the 1931 Eden Dance
| Palace trial, was also tortured for 5 years, 1932-38).
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_German_presidential_elect...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Litten
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| Of course capitalists prefer fascists, they will preserve the
| private property AND provide a subservient workforce.
| Communists on the other hand will seize their means of
| production.
|
| Fascism and capitalism are complementary, communism excludes
| both.
| ly3xqhl8g9 wrote:
| Right, but who's communism? Certainly not Stalin's. Perhaps
| Eugene V. Debs' [1]? Speaking of persons who were
| imprisoned and indirectly, but not really, killed for their
| anti-war stance. ( _Back in the USSA_ [2] tells an
| alternate history of USA as communistic after 1917, perhaps
| too reliant on the actual history and general
| intertextuality).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_in_the_USSA
| mrguyorama wrote:
| For the entirety of the 20th century, ALL communism was
| conflated with Stalin's "Communism" for political
| purposes. Plenty of people advocating for socialism would
| have been executed in the USSR because to Stalin,
| "Communism" meant a Stalin based monarchy with a good
| propaganda arm.
| sorokod wrote:
| Smedley Butler, previously on HN
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
| TheFreim wrote:
| It's interesting to observe people repeat the "war is racket"
| line while also supporting wars because "their" side is allegedly
| the virtuous one (and anyone pointing this out is peddling
| "propaganda" of "the enemy" in the totally virtuous war).
| l33t233372 wrote:
| Wars of defense are entirely different in my opinion.
| cubefox wrote:
| Those are not up for debate, as the US has never been
| properly attacked, as far as I know. (The Japanese attack on
| Pearl Harbor might be an exception, but that wasn't the US
| mainland, though the US attack on Japan did involve the
| Japanese mainland, so this probably doesn't count as a purely
| defensive war.)
| paulddraper wrote:
| The U.S. was "properly attacked" in the War of 1812, Pearl
| Harbor, and 9/11.
|
| ---
|
| There are conspiracy theories (which I don't believe) that
| the latter two were known, but deliberately permitted to
| happen.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Harbor_advance-
| knowledge...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_conspiracy_theories
| cubefox wrote:
| I'm not an expert im American history, but the War of
| 1812 was first declared by the US against the UK. It
| doesn't sound like a purely defensive matter. 9/11 was a
| terrorist attack which is not something one could fight a
| defensive war against.
| juve1996 wrote:
| Are you really going to suggest an attack that killed 2,403
| Americans, sunk five U.S. battleships & damaged 4 others
| ships, and destroyed 188 aircraft, is not a proper attack?
| because it wasn't on the "mainland?"
| cubefox wrote:
| The point is that the US war against Japan wasn't a
| purely defensive war.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| But it absolutely was, and the idea that an attack isn't
| an attack and responding to it isn't defense if it isn't
| on the "mainland" is ludicrous. (Also, Japan attacked the
| US mainland during WWII, and did so before any US attacks
| on Japan proper, so you'll need to move the goalposts
| farther.)
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Ellwood
| mrguyorama wrote:
| An attack made with the explicit purpose to prevent the
| US from putting up a fight as Japan took internationally
| recognized US territory.
| m463 wrote:
| Also, Eisenhower's farewell address...
|
| _" In the councils of government, we must guard against the
| acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought,
| by the military-industrial complex."_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_addres...
| beebmam wrote:
| The dominance of the US military, for all its faults (and there
| are plenty), is the reason there's a mostly peaceful world.
| Deterrence has been an absurdly powerful force towards that
| goal, and we have the military-industrial companies in the US
| to thank for that. Yes, they're also profiting from it. That's
| a win-win, in my opinion.
|
| In my 20+ years in software engineering, I've yet to meet a
| Chinese or Russian colleague who thinks it would be better if
| China or Russia had more military/political power. I've even
| argued in favor of that position in the past (that the world
| would be better off if there was more multipolarity), and they
| fervently opposed my position. They are keenly aware of the
| kind of crimes their ex-governments engage in.
|
| US military dominance is hegemonic, yes, but it would be far
| worse to have it any other way currently.
| boredpeter wrote:
| What an embarrassingly privileged comment. The US funds
| terror around the world for their own benefit. Millions die
| because of the actions of the US or are effectively enslaved
| for the benefit of US capitalists to sell overpriced products
| to wealthy consumers such as yourself. The CIA regularly
| destabilizes 3rd world countries for the benefit of US
| corporations (see United fruit company and Guatemala). To
| suggest the world is a "peaceful" place simply because you
| live in a country that has never seen war in its homeland
| during your lifetime is ludicrous especially given the wars
| the US has started and participated in. Frankly this comment
| reeks of propaganda, I wouldn't be surprised if you worked
| for the fed or a company profiting from the military
| industrial complex.
| goatlover wrote:
| Please provide sources for the millions of deaths. Your
| post sounds like an anti-capitalist screed more than an
| argument against US military hegemony. Consider that
| alternative of world war and Russian or Chinese
| imperialism.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| It's weird to set Chinese imperialism as the worst
| alternative, when the US is China's most prominent
| provider of technology, and first consumer of
| manufacturing and services. In exchange China is of
| course also the biggest holder of US dollar.
| Animatronio wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Romana
| inconceivable wrote:
| > I've yet to meet a Chinese or Russian colleague who thinks
| it would be better if China or Russia
|
| lmao the ones who live in america? yeah, of course. they
| don't want to get deported.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Initiative
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Ho_Lee <-- taiwanese lolol
| morby wrote:
| That doesn't excuse the crimes committed, nor does it negate
| the need to control the MIC. The Vietnam and Iraq wars should
| never have happened, among many other things. We shouldn't
| have PMCs running about committing crimes, either.
|
| Edit: nor does any of what you've said negate the sentiment
| Eisenhower was advocating, which relates directly back to the
| Vietnam and Iraq wars. Having power and wielding it
| responsibly are not the same.
| goatlover wrote:
| What makes the justification for the Korean War different
| from Vietnam?
| 7sidedmarble wrote:
| well that's convenient
| myshpa wrote:
| All those wars and military conflicts are a way to make
| profit. Pretty stupid way. It's a racket.
|
| No wars are good. Killing people with drones based on
| metadata, in foreign countries, without fair trial, is
| extremely immoral. Every killed father will make several more
| enemies.
|
| "In 2016, America dropped at least 26,171 bombs authorized by
| President Barack Obama. This means that every day in 2016,
| the US military blasted combatants or civilians overseas with
| 72 bombs; that's three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day" http
| s://old.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/x332z...
|
| I'll let talk someone much smarter than me - Carl Sagan
|
| https://www.youtube.com/embed/BYdxFKTYJIQ
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWPFmdAWRZ0
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KcoPODwvW4
|
| And Charlie Chaplin
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8HdOHrc3OQ
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_mili.
| .. (Read it all, I dare you)
|
| Imagine foreign power's drones over your country, over your
| city. Imagine hearing explosions of homes in your town, maybe
| few homes over. Imagine unmarked millitary man going through
| your home with their rifles scaring your children. You
| cannot, can you? Would you feel save and glad? Children there
| play outside only when it's cloudy, they're afraid of blue
| skies.
|
| Imagine foreign powers overturning your democraticaly elected
| leaders and instead putting in their figurines, all for
| profit, of course.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CIA_controversies
|
| I know a man who worked for your government, at a black site,
| in a third country. He's a shadow of a man. Torturing people,
| in third countries ... that's deterrence?
|
| With 5+millions of millitary contractors, many of them here,
| maybe this quote will fit.
|
| "It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When
| His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It"
| kornhole wrote:
| One thing to consider about your anecdotal encounters with
| people of those countries is that they were probably in your
| country. They were probably emigres. If you spoke to people
| within those countries who are happy with their country, the
| sentiment would probably be quite different.
| dirtyid wrote:
| >mostly peaceful world
|
| Except it hasn't been. Pinker's "long peace" theory with
| respect to global conflict is bad statistics - 20th-21st
| century under US military hegemony had a comparable if not
| higher number of conflicts, see Max Roser's work documenting
| global conflicts over the past 600 years. What has changed is
| that war now is generally shorter and less deadly especially
| towards combatants, but that's more reflective of the pace of
| modern war enabled by modern weapons. High intensity wars
| don't last for 20+ years anymore because you can pretty much
| destroy nations in 1-5, and belligerents are quicker to
| exhaust and forced to settle. In aggregate war fatalities is
| down, but not # of conflicts. US hegemony didn't stop USSR
| and RU from warring in their periphery, nor PRC border
| skirmishes pre 90s when US had vast more naval power
| asymmetry. When countries want to fight for their interests,
| especially regional, they still do. His conjectures on QoL
| indicators around the world are improving, and we can credit
| some of that to US/western innovation, but it's also a
| byproduct of technology disseminating as societies develop.
|
| As for the opinion of your colleagues, consider some sort of
| self-selection bias happening - I've not met many from PRC
| that don't think China needs better military and regional
| hegemony to forward her interests the same way US does hers,
| especially post Belgrade embassy bombing in 99 by US/NATO.
| And frankly even among PRC diasporas, most people I know
| except very liberal types are increasingly unabashedly pro
| PRC military power - they're just too polite to say so. See
| how PRC students in the west generally become more pro China
| the more they're exposed to western society. Many are smart
| enough to not voice "objectionable" opinions.I can't speak
| for RUs.
|
| Ultimately, US military dominance is good for US+LIO
| interests, but hard to extrapolate anything more. IMO
| multipolarity will increase the chance of "smaller" conflicts
| as poles assert their own interests for sure, but it's going
| to be greater than the baseline of conflicts that's
| consistently been simmering throughout history. The fear is
| increasing large-scale conflict between poles/blocks - ending
| the cyclic gap between major wars among major powers - but
| that's what happens when declining hegemon pushes their
| interests to the exclusion of others too intensely for too
| long.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| Absolutely this. This comment [1] hit me hard when I read it:
|
| >I never understood the good effects of American hegemony
| until they started breaking down.
|
| The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a harbinger of what a
| world without American hegemony looks like. In that world,
| you're going to have a very bad time.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27565836
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Russia's power also came from American hegemony and its
| military was built in direct reaction to it. Or how the
| middle east is a mess in huge part because of the US. Or
| Latin America after all the meddling.
|
| I really don't see an argument for US influence being
| better than the status quo, except for the US. It didn't
| stop wars or ethnic cleansings either when it was at its
| peak.
| myshpa wrote:
| Did you heard about americans in humvees running around
| ukraine-russian border and provoking russians, few years
| before the conflict ?
|
| How would your government react to russians trying to
| establish military bases in mexico, on your border? Oh, we
| know ... we can look what you did to Cubans. Are they still
| in blockade?
|
| I don't endorse what Russians are doing. But somebody was
| helping them to decide to attack. If it was successfull or
| not, we'll never know.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| To make your argument symmetric, we need to imagine
| Mexico inviting Russia after we 1) poison their President
| with polonium, 2) seize the Baja peninsula and 3) arm and
| support border incursions from Texas separatists and 4)
| have those separatists shoot down a civilian airliner.
|
| So kinda not the same.
| myshpa wrote:
| Your country does immoral things, Russians do immoral
| things, Chinese too, every big "power" does. That's not
| the point. Point is, how would you react to the foreign
| powers on your border ?
|
| Would you go south or not?
| NAG3LT wrote:
| Please, stop repeating russian propaganda. They wanted to
| control and reconquer their former imperial colonies.
| Their claimed Casus Belli were just lame excuses, not
| actual reasons.
| myshpa wrote:
| I don't have it from russians, I'm not pro-russia, far
| from it. But those concerns that US (maybe) wants war on
| european continent was pretty often repeated in all media
| in EU then.
| cpursley wrote:
| God forbid we use a little empathy, nuance and historical
| perspective in our opinions.
|
| And I know I'm a bit out there, but perhaps the people in
| the disputed territories should get a vote?
| cpursley wrote:
| Do you think hegemonic mono-culture mono-ideal is preferable
| to a multi-polar world of competing ideas and systems? If so,
| how do you prevent the hegemon from transmutating to the very
| thing we feared in the first place?
| jnsie wrote:
| I must confess...I detest the phrase military-industrial
| complex while acknowledging that it was likely defined and
| definitely used by people much smarter than I. It's too
| abstract and sounds like a phrase your tinfoil-hat wearing
| conspiracy-theorist uncle would rant about. Would much rather
| we spoke in terms of real-world organizations (start with the
| big players and go from there) that benefit from forever
| wars...
| karaterobot wrote:
| The specific players change, though. You wouldn't call it
| (for example) the "Reagan-Raytheon Complex", since that's
| just a specific, temporary instance produced by a more
| systemic pattern of behavior. Even though the more specific
| framing seems more actionable, getting rid of those
| particular players would not solve the problem if the next
| set just did the same thing. So, it's actually more useful to
| think of this as a warning about systems rather than
| entities.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Its a massive oversimplification driven by pessimism.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I've been thinking that we ought to stop using county names
| to refer to wars. Vietnam is a place, people live there, but
| when I hear its name I just think about how messed up my
| grandpa is because of his experiences in that war.
|
| So I think that instead of "Afghanistan" we should call it
| "Lockheed's War" or something like that.
| all2 wrote:
| And Iraq would the be the Bush/Cheney/Haliburton War. I'm a
| fan of this naming convention.
| goodpoint wrote:
| War? Product placement campaign.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> It's too abstract and sounds like a phrase your tinfoil-
| hat wearing conspiracy-theorist uncle would rant about
|
| That's why it was so important that it come from someone like
| a 5 star general and Supreme Commander of the Allied
| Expeditionary Force in Europe during World War II. No one was
| going to mistake Eisenhower for a tinfoil-hat wearer, a
| pacifist, or an appeaser.
| Fervicus wrote:
| It's a bit sad to see the comment section here fighting about
| left/right, Democrat/Republican, and whose fault this mess is
| instead of focusing on the military-industrial complex.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| One of the most disappointing things in American politics in
| the last ten to fifteen years has been watching the left
| abandon their antiwar fervor.
| [deleted]
| goodpoint wrote:
| More like the left abandoned American politics. At least
| compared to the rest of the world the US have 2 right-wing
| parties.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| American politics abandoned the left, not the other way
| around. We decided to make McCarthyism a national sport.
| Being against Vietnam was unpatriotic and wrong. Being
| against Afghanistan was unpatriotic and wrong. Being
| against unregulated capitalism was unamerican and wrong.
| [deleted]
| tptacek wrote:
| Predictably, this comment started a partisan political
| argument that took over the thread like kudzu.
| CalChris wrote:
| One of the most disappointing things in American politics in
| the last ten to fifteen years has been watching the right
| cozy up to Putin.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Im familiar with the argument in favor of this within the
| past couple years. But what case is there that they started
| 15 years ago?
| CalChris wrote:
| "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very
| straightforward and trustworthy," Bush said. "I was able
| to get a sense of his soul."
| labster wrote:
| We on the left realized that John Brown got it right.
| Sometimes you have to march to the sea to get basic human
| rights.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| > watching the left abandon their antiwar fervor.
|
| As left people gain political maturity, they understand that
| those in power will not give up their power willingly, so
| force is required.
|
| As a liberal person I am suspicious of any liberal who does
| not believe in gun rights, and I am even more suspicious of a
| liberal person who does not believe in unions, which is the
| 2nd amendment of labor rights. Neither the 2nd amendment nor
| unions can be used for their purpose within the bounds of the
| law.
|
| Believing in human rights means believing in defending human
| rights with force, otherwise what is to stop someone from
| violating human rights?
|
| If a powerful person uses their power against you, your
| choices are submit or fight. Leftists are slowly
| understanding: 1. There are powerful people
| 2. They will arbitrarily use your power against you 3.
| Those people use their power to influence law so the law will
| not protect you 4. You can't solve this problem within
| the bounds of the law
|
| It's not hard to look at Ukraine and see that justice cannot
| be achieved without war and that you don't get to decide when
| you are at war.
| sushisource wrote:
| The problem with this whole thought process is it's
| hilariously abstract. The people in power have F-35s. What
| is your collection of (admittedly, unnecessarily powerful)
| guns going to do against that?
|
| It also assumes that such disagreements _require_ force to
| be resolved, and that 's just demonstrably not always true.
| Even if it sometimes is.
| sparselogic wrote:
| > The people in power have F-35s. What is your collection
| of (admittedly, unnecessarily powerful) guns going to do
| against that?
|
| Military inventory, while powerful, isn't the end-all.
| Just ask Afghans about their experiences with two
| superpowers' machinery.
| fnovd wrote:
| F-35s aren't particularly useful for collecting taxes,
| for maintaining a state. You can't use them to intimidate
| an individual, it's a huge waste of resources for the
| owner of the F-35. What's more dangerous than an F-35 is
| a group of guys with guns driving around in a pickup
| truck. Guns and trucks are just so much cheaper than
| fighter jets, so much more deployable... not to mention
| the entire logistical and manpower apparatus that goes
| into getting an F-35 in the air. If you want to win a war
| of attrition you use cheap, effective tools, not the
| flashy stuff. Flashy weapons are great for blowing up
| some other country's infrastructure, it's not very useful
| if the enemy is your own people. If you blow up all your
| own people and infrastructure, what do you have power
| over?
|
| If you and everyone in a 10-mile radius of where you're
| sitting right now decided to ignore some federal law,
| like maybe the one against cannabis, what the heck is an
| F-35 going to do about it? Blow up a building, is that
| supposed to help? No, you get some guys with guns and
| trucks and then you can start going door to door,
| threatening people, looking around, collecting stuff,
| whatever. You can set up checkpoints and block off
| bridges, the whole shebang, because you're trying to
| establish control, not just blow things up.
|
| Blowing things up has its uses but if you want to
| intimidate someone to the point where you have power over
| them, you need to be a little more intimate. You can't
| just be a fleck in the sky and you can't just show up do
| to the big stuff. You need to be in their face as a
| persistent, immediate threat. That's what influences
| human behavior and that's how power is established.
| That's exactly why small guns are such a sticking point
| in the USA, they're a very effective counter to this
| intimate threat.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| I wonder what the Vietnamese would think of your argument
| or the Ukrainians. I wonder if the people in Tiananmen
| wish they had had guns. I wonder if people in Hong Kong
| wish they had had guns. I wonder about the people in
| Myanmar or the educated class in Cambodia, or Afghani, or
| Iranians wish they had more guns.
|
| "Who are the 2nd amendment protected guns theoretically
| meant to be used against? When are they supposed to be
| used? Can the 2nd amendment ever be used to protect a
| free state within the bounds of the law?" are pretty
| major critical thinking questions that it are probably
| worth meditating on, especially for liberal people.
|
| What would have happened if Trump won is a question every
| liberal person needs to contemplate.
|
| When the rule of law (the idea that powerful people
| cannot arbitrarily exercise their power) fails, it
| becomes might makes right. Would you rather be in a might
| makes right society where you have a gun or where you
| don't? I think that answer is obvious.
|
| > Even if it sometimes is.
|
| If you want peace prepare for war.
| jasmer wrote:
| Where is the 'war fervor' of the Left?
|
| What does helping Ukraine defend themselves have to do with
| 'war fervor'?
|
| Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014 and Obama/Trump reaction was to
| ignore it - which directly resulted in a much bigger war.
|
| The US Military Industrial Complex is why there are no wars
| against rich allied states. If Ukraine were part of the
| system and had a well managed, functional military - Putin
| could not have invaded, in fact he never would have tried.
| mistermann wrote:
| > What does helping Ukraine defend themselves have to do
| with 'war fervor'?
|
| For me: the manner in which it is done (the rhetoric in
| media, etc).
| all2 wrote:
| This is incomplete. Ukraine was supposed to be a buffer
| between NATO and Russia. As soon as Western folks started
| talking about getting cozy with Ukraine, Putin saw the
| eventuality where US/joint bases would be on his border and
| he didn't want that. He would rather start a war with
| Ukraine than go toe-to-toe with the US and NATO.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Any ideology that doesn't allow Ukraine to make their own
| destiny is unacceptable. Ukraine told Russia it wouldn't
| join NATO, tried to set itself up to join the EU instead,
| and got invaded anyway, back in 2014.
| epgui wrote:
| Other people making friends is not really a good reason
| to start killing them, either way.
|
| I know it's not what you're saying exactly, but it's what
| Putin's actions boil down to.
| [deleted]
| watwut wrote:
| Russia has borders with NATO and had them for years. The
| buffer theory makes zero sense, considering Ukraine was
| not even trying to get to NATO and there is pretty long
| border between Russia and NATO anyway.
|
| NATO basis were next to Russia for decades.
|
| Plus, one does not need to commit genocide to achieve
| safety. Anand Putin just happen to be committing
| genocide.
| jnwatson wrote:
| NATO was already on his border.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| The Korean War began and was fought under a Democrat. It was
| ended by a Republican.
|
| The Vietnam War began under one Democrat, escalated and
| spread beyond Vietnam under his Democratic successor, and
| then under a Republican. It was ended by another Republican.
|
| The Persian Gulf War was entirely a Republican affair.
|
| The Bosnian war and the bombing of Serbia were overseen by a
| Democrat.
|
| The "war on terror" was started by a Republican who invaded
| Afghanistan and Iraq and continued for nearly 8 more years
| under a Democrat.
| dekhn wrote:
| you're confusion "the left" with "democrats".
|
| democrats are centrist relative to the left.
| graublau wrote:
| The left in america votes blue no matter because idpol
| and maybe climate, the only nationally palitable Left
| ideas since Marxism any class are anathema to USA,
| particularly since fall of USSR.
| bdamm wrote:
| Nah; the 2016 election saw many "leftists" that were
| dedicated to Sanders go on to vote for Trump.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Sanders is Marxist?
| graublau wrote:
| "Drain the swamp" leftists are separate category to DSA
| members and almost nonexistent post-COVID (RFK JR.
| maybe). Is this beyond explanation why someone would do
| that?
| wk_end wrote:
| I know establishment Dems liked to whine about that, but
| is there any evidence that this actually happened in
| meaningful numbers?
| WhatWorkingOn wrote:
| I and many other people I know did. I saw Sanders get
| snubbed and schemed against by the DNC, to the point
| where Hillary got the questions ahead of time. So many
| gaffes in this campaign between two "equal" Democratic
| candidates that we just don't talk about anymore.
|
| No, I refuse to play that game and I'd rather burn the
| place to the ground and suffer together than walk
| willingly to my own execution.
| smolder wrote:
| Thanks. I've never met a single person who flopped from
| Sanders to Trump. I can't for the life of me figure out
| how you'd make that leap. I thought that the stories
| about people doing that were mostly BS, but I guess there
| are a few of you out there, assuming you didn't make this
| account to LARP as a Bernie turned Trump voter.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| "I think I should have more of my richer neighbors' money
| and if I don't get it I'll vote for trump ahaha" isn't
| the own that you probably think it is, but this is very
| illustrative nevertheless.
| dekhn wrote:
| [flagged]
| mrguyorama wrote:
| [flagged]
| kodah wrote:
| I think there's a good amount of debate in leftist
| circles whether Sanders is actually a global leftist or
| if he's just an American progressive. The two are
| categorically unalike, which would agree with other
| comments that any form of Democrat and Republican are
| just symbiotes attached to the same thing.
| HPsquared wrote:
| That's the "insider/outsider" thing. Trump is a rightist
| outsider, Bernie a leftist outsider. Both are favoured by
| "anti-establishment" types.
| asdff wrote:
| Trump merely coopted the fig leaf of outsider to sway
| voters, since he did get full support of the GOP
| establishment unlike Sanders.
| pessimizer wrote:
| This isn't true under the current terminology, where
| Democrats have assigned themselves the title of "the
| left" with the enthusiastic agreement of Republicans. And
| while that's a new situation, we're also currently
| experiencing a vast majority of people who identify as
| "left" falling under two categories: _Obama socialists_ ,
| who were enthusiastic supporters of candidate Obama and
| were disappointed in the absolutely traditional run of
| his presidency, esp. its second term; and _Clinton
| socialists_ , who went along with the catastrophe of the
| 2016 Democratic primary because they let themselves be
| convinced that while they mostly agreed with Sanders, H.
| Clinton was the only one who could defeat Trump (and they
| resent the party for this.)
|
| These aren't intellectual positions at all, they're just
| soap opera stuff. If they've picked up anything about
| political economy, it was because they were in _left-wing
| spaces_ during the rise of the Sanders campaign. As far
| as I can tell, all they took away from it is the slur
| "tankie," which they think has something to do with
| Tienanmen Square and should be screamed at anyone anyone
| to the left of Bill Kristol.
| Aloha wrote:
| Tankies are the people who I'd loosely call
| neostalinists, they're seemingly for a Soviet style
| violent revolution of the proletariat - they're also the
| people who are often reflexively anti-american, and pro-
| russia, because america is the force of imperialism.
| There are many socialists who are fine with achieving
| socialism via electoral means those people are not
| tankies - tankies are generally not okay with waiting for
| that.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Will this "true" left you're talking about criticize
| democratic party leaders for their wars with the same
| fervor that they criticize republican party leaders?
|
| When Trump was campaigning for his first presidency
| everybody was saying he would start a bunch of wars and
| nuke the whole world. When none of that happened he had
| to be a traitor since he didn't start any beautiful
| patriotic wars. Reality is of no consideration to the
| uneducated and educated masses. War is peace, peace is
| war.
|
| I will not be mutilated by mortar in a ditch or send my
| children to die in a trench, no matter who is president.
| War is a racket, I feel truly sorry for those who suffer
| and will suffer for following their "leaders".
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >When none of that happened he had to be a traitor since
| he didn't start any beautiful patriotic wars
|
| Find me a quote of someone on the left saying Trump was
| bad for not starting a war
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I bet you if Trump somehow served an extra 1.5 years,
| you'd have plenty of such people - the ones that today
| love to use the term "acquiesce" to criticize careful
| handling of a conflict that could easily spiral into end
| of the world with one press of a button.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| You are misunderstanding. When Trump turned out to not be
| a crazed war monger, the narrative changed to that he was
| a traitor taking orders from Russia. If you can't find
| quotes for that, you are offline.
|
| I am fully aware that most leftist (which means most of
| HN) think that Trump is an insane war monger, even though
| he served four years as president without starting any
| wars. Like I wrote, reality does not matter at all
| anymore to anyone.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Well, there was an exchange of Missiles with Iran. That
| almost went full war, until Iran shot back and they were
| like 'Wuuuut, they can do that?'.
|
| And missiles shot at Syrian air base, where
| Russian/Syrian planes were luckily moved just in time,
| very conveniently, almost like it was a good PR stunt.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Yes, the United States will always be at war. Trump waged
| much less war than what is convenient for a US president
| and way less than everybody said he would. Compared to
| other US presidents he was a man of peace. I know the
| power of denial is much stronger than that fact.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| He had press conferences where he openly 'colluded' with
| Russia, I can't believe that isn't brought up more. It
| was live, recorded video. I saw it on the news, in a live
| press conference. Its just that nobody believes what he
| is saying, so he gets away with saying anything he wants.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Diplomacy is collusion now? That's a pretty hawkish
| stance.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| "If any Russians are listening please hack my political
| opponent"
|
| How is that diplomacy?
| wk_end wrote:
| ...which is particularly egregious in the context of wars
| like Vietnam - or even the war in Iraq - which the left
| was famously outspoken against compared to most
| Democrats.
| jasmer wrote:
| The missing artifact from the comment is that Republicans
| and Democrat Left/Rightism as we understand it is a
| modern thing established (edit: I should say
| 'consolidated' - because the shift started earlier) under
| Reagan.
|
| The 'Democrats' were very popular in the South in the
| 1950's among people who would now refer to themselves as
| 'conservative'. (Edit: look at the electoral maps for mid
| century US - Democrats/Republicans were not Left/Right)
|
| Not that Left/Dem are different things today, they are
| effectively the same, it's just that policy is
| constrained by the other side, which has a dampening
| effect on legislation.
| hackernoteng wrote:
| JFK would be considered a right-wing extremist by todays
| democrat party (the political powerful left wing, not the
| average voter)
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Well he did try to invade Cuba
| dekhn wrote:
| He also put nuclear missles in turkey which were then
| used as part of the negotiation to get USSR to dismantle
| their Cuban bases so we wouldn't invade.
| asdff wrote:
| Other way around. He put missiles in Turkey and Italy,
| USSR responded by putting missiles in Cuba, then both
| parties agreed to deescalate and withdraw. Then of course
| a few years later none of this matters because ICBMs
| become a thing and the soviets and americans can just
| launch over the north pole.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| And he was critical of the CIA and FBI.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| I think everyone is confused of what is the left / right.
|
| Traditionally the left has been associated with social
| policies (stemming from socialism/communism vs
| capitalism)
|
| And there always was a part of the left which was anti-
| war, and always was a more "totalitarian" version of the
| left that felt it was morally justified.
|
| But in every society the meaning of left and right has
| been fluid.
| bboygravity wrote:
| You're missing the point that
| left/right/democrat/republican religions are a divide and
| conquer strategy to distract from the realization that
| there is no democracy.
| dekhn wrote:
| Uh, no? Left and right are generalized terms used to
| describe political philosophies. Democrat and republican
| are terms used to describe political parties- those
| parties don't fully overlap with left and right, and in
| fact the parties have completely changed their overlap
| over time.
|
| We (Americans) live in a representative democracy (for
| choosing public officials) and that democracy gives a
| great deal of influence and power to
| capitalists/industrialists (the "racket"), which has been
| absolutely successful in establishing and maintaining the
| existence and wealth of the country.
|
| If you want to argue there is no democracy, find another
| person to argue with; my premise begins with the US being
| a representative democracy.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| It _is_ a representative Democracy. I vote directly for
| all of my representatives. Anyone arguing it 's not is
| moving goalposts or arguing No True Scotsman.
| mistermann wrote:
| For semantic clarity: are you saying that it ticks the
| boxes for being a "representative democracy", but not
| extending the meaning of the word representative to
| encompass _representative of the will of the
| constituents_?
|
| > Anyone arguing it's not is moving goalposts or arguing
| No True Scotsman.
|
| With this be considered rhetoric?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Looking from outside as a non-American, I feel that
| Democrats and Republicans are really first and foremost
| sports clubs. Any actual political leanings are mostly
| based on what is most likely to keep support of their
| existing fans, and secondarily a matter of inertia.
|
| And nowhere in these splits - neither in
| Democrat/Republican, nor in left/right - is there any
| notion of actually looking at the problem and trying to
| find an actual, effective, efficient solution, that
| maximizes the desired impact and minimizes undesired
| second-order effects.
| kodah wrote:
| That is exactly how it works, just none of the
| constituents think that's how it works on their team, so
| we're in this sort of stasis. The unsolved and repeatedly
| retrodden problems are called wedge issues and they're
| key to these teams staying in power collectively.
| shigawire wrote:
| When you ignore domestic politics entirely I can see how
| it would look that way.
|
| But there is a very real difference in policy between
| rural Alabama and Chicago. In no small part because of
| different parties exercising control in those localities.
| all2 wrote:
| [flagged]
| tinco wrote:
| Trump's election proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that
| the elections are as fair as they could ever be. Not in a
| million years would anyone in any establishment left or
| right have wished for Trump to be president in 2016. Yet
| it happened anyway.
| njarboe wrote:
| Maybe you could say that for the 2016 election. Trump
| lost in 2020.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Which just goes to show that the system was robust even
| against tampering from the administration (in that case
| at least).
| bee_rider wrote:
| To be specific, it proved that the elections are "fair"
| in the sense that they follow the rules as written. They
| don't, for example, fairly represent the populace.
| HFguy wrote:
| Hasn't 2000 Mules been debunked multiple times? It is
| basically "election was stolen" nonsense. Why do you
| think it is true?
|
| https://www.texastribune.org/2022/10/07/texas-ken-
| paxton-200...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/11/2000-m
| ule...
| all2 wrote:
| I don't know about the debunking. I do know what I saw
| with my own eyes; the video shows people stuffing ballots
| in boxes all across the country. There's also the weird
| phenomena where ballot counting was shut down in four
| states simultaneously and then restarted. Suddenly there
| was a statistical anomaly of hundreds of thousands of
| votes for Biden. And there's other weird stuff that I
| honestly should have been keeping track of.
|
| I don't think the election was fair, I think it was
| rigged. And I think it smells so badly that I suspect our
| elections have been rigged for a long, long time.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| "Saw for my own eyes" ... "Video"
|
| Were those videos in context? Were those videos
| accurately described? Why do all the judges across the
| country think those claims were a farce? Are they part of
| the deep state too?
|
| There were no "statistical anomalies" during that
| election, yet there are a surprising number of people who
| have never taken a stats class in their life absolutely
| sure there were.
| u801e wrote:
| > I do know what I saw with my own eyes
|
| What did you see with your own eyes. Were you a first
| hand witness of a ballot box stuffing incident? When and
| where did it happen? Did you take a video of it with
| sound?
|
| > video shows people stuffing ballots in boxes all across
| the country
|
| How do you know when those videos were made? Who recorded
| those videos? Where was each video taken (which voting
| district and when)?
|
| > where ballot counting was shut down in four states
| simultaneously and then restarted
|
| Which four states? What what was the date and time the
| ballot counting stopped? What was the date and time the
| ballot counting resumed?
|
| > And there's other weird stuff that I honestly should
| have been keeping track of.
|
| Like what? Any concrete examples?
|
| > I don't think the election was fair, I think it was
| rigged.
|
| Yet you're very non-specific about your reasoning and
| evidence. Typically, people cite sources that support
| their argument, but you did not.
| dekhn wrote:
| Please, share some reliable evidence that this is the
| case. So far, nobody has managed to anything but cast
| doubt on a process that seems to be fair and mostly
| working.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Indeed "Leftists" mostly vote Democratic for lack of a
| more viable alternative, but many do not consider
| themselves Democrats.
|
| Even really smart and educated people I know are
| surprised to discover most voters in the US do not have a
| party affiliation.
| pessimizer wrote:
| There aren't really political parties in the US. In other
| countries, people pay membership dues to their political
| parties and get membership cards. Here, we just declare
| our allegiance to these private organizations on twitter.
| RajT88 wrote:
| That's not true.
|
| We poll the hell out of our populace and ask, "What do
| you identify as?" That's how we know how people identify.
|
| > In other countries, people pay membership dues to their
| political parties and get membership cards. Here, we just
| declare our allegiance to these private organizations on
| twitter.
|
| Some states in the US have state-level party
| organizations which you join and receive a card. Not all.
| the_only_law wrote:
| How does these polls work? What's the selection process?
| I've never been asked what I politically identify as, and
| I imagine anyone who asks would be disappointed that I
| would refuse place myself as something fitting whatever
| binary/trinary categories they have in mind.
| shigawire wrote:
| Generally polling organizations poll a random sample of
| Americans via phone calls or online polls. There is a lot
| of process to try to guarantee a representative sample.
|
| I don't think a pollster would be disappointed that you
| don't have a party affiliation. In fact some of biggest
| emphasis in election season is on independents or
| undecided voters.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Many states allow you to pick a party affiliation when
| you register to vote, and some require a declared
| affiliation before you can take part in primaries.
| reso wrote:
| Hard agree. Democrats pay lip service to anti-war voices
| when they are out of power, then often rule as hawks.
|
| It's not necessarily meaningful to call one party more or
| less hawkish than the other. It often comes down to the
| leader, era, and coalition behind them. Bush/Cheney were
| definitely more aggressive than Gore would have been, but
| HRC was positioning herself to be much more hawkish than
| Trump ended up ruling as. That's why in the post-2016 era
| many infamous hawks like Bill Kristol and David Frum have
| been Democrat-aligned.
| greedo wrote:
| US involvement in the Vietnam war started with Eisenhower,
| who last I checked was a Republican...
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Sometimes Democrats get backed into a corner. Like with
| Korea, Vietnam. No matter what they do, Republicans call
| the Democrats communists/evil/Satan. So when there is a
| communist country in the mix, then they better damn well go
| to war, or it proves they are stooges of those same
| communist countries. Because Democrats can't appear weak on
| communists, they might fight them harder than a Republican
| would, (see recent history where Republicans are backing
| Russia, which is like bizzaro world).
| nonethewiser wrote:
| What real-world circumstance does this theory explain?
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Korea, Vietnam. If Communist China wasn't involved, we
| probably wouldn't be either. It was a policy of
| containment. And yes, Democrats went along with it. What
| could they do, say "no we're siding with China"? They
| would be voted out.
| colpabar wrote:
| So they don't actually have any principles?
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Why the down votes? Republicans love war, sometimes
| Democrats go along with it. It's called compromise. You
| mean, why do Democrats sometimes bend their principles in
| the face of gun toting Republican's calling for a coup? I
| don't know, to thread the needle to keep the peace. When
| half the country is ready to re-enact the Civil War, what
| is to be done? It isn't like Lincoln didn't compromise
| when needed.
| sillywalk wrote:
| I gotta nitpick :)
|
| Ignoring the whole background of Korea, it's occupation by
| Japan, and split at the end of WW2, the Korean War began
| when the North invaded the South.
|
| For Vietnam, the war ended when the North Vietnam 'won' and
| the South collapsed.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > The "war on terror" was started by a Republican who
| invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and continued for nearly 8
| more years under a Democrat.
|
| And ended by a Republican
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Is Biden a Republican? What president ended the war for
| you?
| cpursley wrote:
| Trump started the legal process of ending that war, like
| him or not.
| mcculley wrote:
| The Republicans keep saying that Biden improperly
| withdrew from Afghanistan.
| mc32 wrote:
| One committed the country to the withdrawal the other
| executed the withdrawal.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| And Democrats keep pinning it on Trump.
|
| Regardless, who is there when they withdrew is not the
| same as who made the plan and started the withdrawal. The
| Doha Agreement was drafted and signed under Trump. Biden
| didnt renege on the agreement and executed it.
|
| We have no idea if he would have drafted such an
| agreement but his track record in that regard isnt good.
| Obama and Biden increased troops as another commenter
| noted.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The reality is that there was no path to a good exit from
| Afganistan, and we should condemn Bush for starting it,
| condemn Obama for doubling down, condemn Trump for not
| pulling out earlier, and same for Biden.
| mullingitover wrote:
| Afghanistan is a wash, nobody gets to take credit for
| ending that. Trump entered into the surrender agreement,
| but delayed the execution of the agreement past the end
| of his term, so if he doesn't take the blame for the
| fallout he doesn't get credit for ending it either.
| Meanwhile Obama surged troops while he was in office,
| sure, but then tried to steeply draw down and was blocked
| by republicans[1]. They also blocked his effort to close
| the human rights embarrassment at Guantanamo[2]. This is
| basically an 'everyone sucks here' situation, at best.
|
| [1] https://thehill.com/homenews/286787-gop-questions-
| obamas-afg...
|
| [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-defense-
| guantanamo/ho...
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Trump drafted and signed the agreement and Biden executed
| it. That's about as fair as you can put it.
|
| As you noted, Obama and Biden increased troop count
| before Trump signed the Doha agreement to end the war.
| mjevans wrote:
| Trump, denying they lost the election, refused to support
| any transfer of power or awareness to the incoming
| administration as traditionally happens. This combined
| with the agreement taking effect very shortly after the
| new term enhanced the scale of the damage, particularly
| with the new administration's cabinet bootstrapping
| during the same period.
| sesuximo wrote:
| I think it's fair to say American politics are violent, and
| it's not really a partisan thing
| all2 wrote:
| [flagged]
| rad88 wrote:
| Blowing up buildings, murdering jews, plotting
| assassinations etc. is substantially damaging. It is
| "extremist".
| all2 wrote:
| I'm unfamiliar with these. Sources?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Bombing abortion clinics used to be a fun pastime. Go
| read a newspaper from the 70s or 80s.
|
| The FBI has considered right wing extremism a serious
| threat to the US since before Ruby Ridge and Waco. The
| turner diaries was written before either.
|
| And the KKK was exactly a militant right wing political
| group, with members being politicians, sometimes openly.
| watwut wrote:
| Majority of violence is done by right wing. It is beyond
| cynical to lie so much and try to pin it on the left. The
| right is the ones who are the biggest and actual threat
| to both freedom and democracy - and actual perpetrators
| of murders and terrorist attacks.
|
| And no, j6 were no tourist not peaceful. They were
| literal violent attempt to prevent votes count.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| It sounds like the left is much more powerful than the
| right then given that they can overpower them with no
| repercussion. I think it would probably be best to give
| into their demands so the right are not further
| victimized if this is the case.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Ain't it amazing how powerful the left is and yet we
| can't even raise the debt ceiling?
| jscipione wrote:
| [flagged]
| sangnoir wrote:
| > One of the most disappointing things in American politics
| in the last ten to fifteen years has been watching the left
| abandon their antiwar fervor
|
| You might be mixing up anti-imperialism with antiwar
| sentiment. In the past, the 2 were typically hand-in-hand due
| to the geopolitics of the day, but it is not a given -
| depending on the circumstances[0].
|
| It's interesting how the American right is also taking up an
| anti-war stance, while maintaining pro-imperialist
| attitudes[1]
|
| 0. Cf. The left's attitude towards the Vietnam war vs. the
| Apartheid government in South Africa.
|
| 1. With Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the "peace with
| North Korea at all costs" under Trump
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Its about not wanting to fight other people's wars.
|
| Republicans are a lot more interested in the militarization
| of the pacific and southern border.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Like a lot of things, it went off like a light switch when
| Obama was elected. It was crushing. I thought it was genuine
| anti-Iraq-war sentiment, not merely well-deserved hate for
| Bush. But a lot of it turned out to be a cudgel to beat the
| other guys.
|
| COVID is similar; Trump fucked it up because everything he
| touches turns to shit, not a surprise. Biden continues to
| fuck it up to this day and... crickets from Democrats.
|
| Thankfully, Biden is doing the right thing, very skillfully,
| with Ukraine. I wish he could get it together on domestic
| policy. Making his bumblefuck COVID czar his chief of staff
| was a incredibly bad decision, though.
| lizardking wrote:
| The outcome of the conflict will be the only metric that
| matters for assessing Biden's performance. If we end up
| spending hundreds of billions of dollars and have nothing
| to show for it except Russia controlling the territory they
| originally intended to seize, it will be difficult to
| consider anything we are doing as 'skillful'. Dumping money
| and weapons into the proxy war du jour is the default
| policy of D.C.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Biden shouldnt be judged on the outcome of Ukraine. And
| im no fan of Biden. But its just not in his power nor all
| of NATO, unless we got in a direct conflict with Russia.
|
| And sadly, this is more normal than peace when it comes
| to Russian border states.
| lizardking wrote:
| American leadership deserves to be judged if they commit
| hundreds of billions of dollars to cause with no benefit
| to the American public. A Russian victory that we are
| spending huge sums to prevent doesn't bring any benefit
| to the American public.
| digging wrote:
| > Biden continues to fuck it up to this day
|
| In what way? Don't get me wrong, I think Biden sucks. But
| when wearing a mask became an issue of deepest political
| ideology before Biden was elected, it's a tough task to
| change public opinion when you're a politician.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| There's something to be said that we literally lost the
| war on covid and just kinda pretended that it ended, but
| I'm not sure what other option there was. If democrats
| pushed to keep fighting covid with gusto, it would not
| have been popular and would easily lead to Republicans
| running everything in the next decade.
|
| History books will hopefully acknowledge just how
| terribly the entire world handled it.
| digging wrote:
| Yeah I agree but, like I say, we were defeated by COVID
| before Biden was elected, just like we were defeated in
| Afghanistan before he was elected. He could have pulled
| off something excellent in either case, but that would
| have been very difficult and I don't know how he would
| have done it.
| asdff wrote:
| How was this country defeated by covid? What could he
| have done otherwise? Hospitals aren't overwhelmed today,
| that was the entire concern of the pandemic.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Covid is over. It might still be around but we are done
| melting down over it.
| asdff wrote:
| We won the war on covid though, it was always about
| hospital capacity.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > Biden continues to fuck it up to this day
|
| what is there left to do on COVID? The healthcare system is
| not collapsing and lockdowns have ended. Remember, the
| lockdowns where there only to prevent the healthcare system
| from collapsing. We even have vaccines and a host of other
| treatments widely available. If you're expecting total
| eradication of an airborne respiratory virus I don't think
| you're being realistic.
| pstuart wrote:
| Obama doubled down on Afghanistan from the get-go -- I
| consider that fiasco as much his as his predecessors.
|
| As an "anti-war leftist", I find myself cheering on the
| assistance to Ukraine, as that is the first war in my
| memory that seemed worth fighting.
|
| Still no love for the Military Industrial Complex though...
| CalChris wrote:
| I'm a _huge_ Obama fan but Afghanistan was his biggest
| mistake. In fairness, he got sold a bill of goods by the
| Pentagon and with the economy in a shambles, he was
| somewhat distracted. The Republicans greeted anything he
| did with stubborn resistance with McConnell pledging to
| make him a one term President. McCain prevented him from
| closing Guantanamo.
|
| But he was still Commander in Chief.
| pstuart wrote:
| Yes, he was sold a bill of goods, but in his 8 years
| never re-evaluated the situation.
|
| I'm going to guess that he was wary of the political
| attacks over doing so -- if all it took was french
| mustard or a tan suit, imagine the outrage of "cutting
| and running"
| graublau wrote:
| [flagged]
| digging wrote:
| I'm a different anti-war leftist, but IMO it's a lose-
| lose. This is more about mitigation than doing what's
| good. The MIC wins whether or not we support Ukraine - if
| Russia conquered Kyiv, you think the MIC wouldn't be
| ramping everything up in preparation for further
| invasions of NATO allies?
|
| It's not like Ukraine is some socialist utopia I want
| preserved at all costs. But it's a free nation that's
| less fascist than Russia, and it deserves to exist, and
| more importantly the Ukrainian people deserve to exist.
| If Russia wins, we'll be looking at genocide on a huge
| scale (because we're actually currently dealing with
| genocide on a "small" scale). So, I'm more anti-genocide
| than I am anti-MIC, and I think it's a good thing we're
| helping Ukraine fight back against Russia.
| glogla wrote:
| I would say, they are both complicated.
|
| Afghanistan shows that trying "nation building" on a
| place where they don't actually want any nation doesn't
| really work. But it did work for Japan and Germany after
| WW2, so maybe it was worth trying. I'm sure the women who
| are now forbidden to learn to read liked the Americans
| more than they like Taliban, but does that mean extending
| the war was worth it?
|
| As for Iraq, the WMDs were a complete lie and Bush and
| Cheney just wanted more war - some say Cheney was the
| mind behind and Bush was just idiot, some say Bush wanted
| to finish what his father started - but average Iraqi is
| now better off than with Saddam. That doesn't help those
| who died in the war, of the people who could have has
| better lives for the money the war had cost though.
|
| It was actually Ukraine that changed my opinion on Iraq,
| because the arguments "Iraq under Saddam's brutal
| dictatorship wasn't that bad, there was no reason to war"
| started resonate with "don't help Ukraine, their lives
| aren't going that bad under Putin's brutal dictatorship,
| tell the to surrender" little too much. Was Iraq
| different from Ukraine only because in one the dictator
| was status quo and in the other it wasn't?
|
| Yeah, complicated.
| pstuart wrote:
| But they emphatically said they weren't nation-building,
| and armies are only good for fighting and destroying
| things, not building things (with an exception to the
| Corp of Engineers).
|
| There was never a plan, more so, never a formal
| declaration of what the hell victory was _supposed to
| look like_.
| BrotherBisquick wrote:
| [flagged]
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Hell, plenty on the right want Trump as king, with his son
| as next in line. I don't think that is broadly popular
| Republican policy though, despite their official policy
| being "Do whatever Trump wants"
| 3192029941 wrote:
| > ...or rallying to the defense of the Duchess of Sussex, a
| literal princess married to a family of billionaires
|
| FWIW, nobody I know (either left-leaning or right-learning)
| cares about her at all. I'm curious where you're hearing
| this from.
|
| > while kicking poor white workers in the teeth
|
| How?
|
| > the latter are suspicious that a man belongs in a woman's
| locker room.
|
| Well, I'm glad that we can all agree that trans men are
| okay, then!
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I'm actually not sure anymore which side of the aisle, if
| any, anyone in this conversation joins, but in the US,
| both the Democrats and Republicans have spent the last 70
| years selling the average worker down river, whether by
| trade agreements that made it profitable to do all
| manufacturing in China or decades of successful anti-
| union and anti-"socialism" propaganda or banking
| deregulation, or letting coal mines poison you while also
| letting them write the textbooks that tell you you should
| be thankful for being poisoned, to embroiling us in
| middle east nonsense, to the war on drugs, to stabbing
| important unionized transportation workers in the back
| directly (Both parties have an explicit case of this!!!)
|
| The republicans switched to ideological and religious
| stuff mid century, and the democrats seemingly responded
| by just.... walking away from the common man? It's weird.
| If you want to vote for workers empowerment in the US,
| you don't have an option.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| How do you mean? Seems like the left is still pretty antiwar.
| Also, not all war is equal. Otherwise you're in the paradox
| of tolerance. It should be a last resort but it necessarily
| must remain an option. Unprovoked wars of aggression (US
| Iraq) are different from provoked wars (e.g. Germany in
| WWII). The other problem is when there's provoked aggression
| but the response is disproportionate (9/11 Afghanistan
| considering Afghanistan offered to remand Bin Laden into US
| custody). There's a lot more nuance in the real world too
| (e.g. how should Israel respond to inbound rocket attacks
| which are provoked but failure to respond with outsized force
| tends to cause attackers to get more emboldened).
| nonethewiser wrote:
| No one is antiwar. Its a non-sensical position. There are
| just people who want de-escalation in a subset of cases.
|
| Antiwar doesn't really make any sense because you can't end
| wars without fighting in wars. Or surrendering but that
| proves the "doesnt really make sense" point. It also just
| encourages more wars in the future. There can be diplomatic
| solutions but you still have to embrace the war until then.
| mindslight wrote:
| "Anti-war" is a sensible coherent position relative to a
| country making war. It only seems ambiguous these days
| because Russia is trying to tap into existing anti-war
| sentiment against the US (caused by elective wars the US
| created), to undermine western support for Ukraine in a
| war that Russia created. The actual anti-war position on
| Ukraine is "Russia, stop making war in Ukraine" - which
| can be expressed by citizens of Russia and anyone else.
| Russia however is not stopping (just as the US didn't
| stop in Iraq), and so war continues.
| psychphysic wrote:
| The paradox of tolerance can not be used here.
|
| It requires fiat control of the situation.
|
| That control of sovereign entities can only be attained by
| threat or actualised violence.
|
| Putting it another way.
|
| That you even consider yourself entitled to tolerate a
| sovereign nation requires that you believe you are entitled
| a degree of control it.
|
| Anti-war thinking requires not just that you consider war a
| last resort. But you consider that you have no option at
| all. War is not another just lever.
|
| If it is then you do not have anti-war beliefs you just are
| more adverse to it than some hawks.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| > That control of sovereign entities can only be attained
| by threat or actualised violence.
|
| Treaties are signed regularly having nothing to do with
| any kind of threat of violence. Breaking of treaties
| often even has legal redress mechanisms within
| international courts of law, all without military
| threats. Instead economic sanctions are often the
| recourse.
|
| Re "paradox of tolerance" it's a pretty close analogy so
| I'm really not sure what you're going on about. An
| absolute anti-war position puts you in the position of
| tolerating wars. Thus any group that wants can engage in
| violence to acquire more resources. At the limit it can
| even overpower you although that's not so important
| because your tolerance of the war has a net result in
| having caused more war and violence. In military circles
| it would be called appeasement* but it's the same basic
| philosophy.
|
| * Interesting side note is that there are some historians
| that suggest that Chamberlain's appeasement strategy
| wasn't because he thought it would work to pacify Hitler
| but because he was desperately trying hard to avoid
| Britain getting sucked into a conflict until they were
| properly staffed up (Stalin did the same btw).
| Additionally the appeasement strategy arguably was
| helpful in also pulling America into the European theater
| because domestic supporters of Germany couldn't claim
| that Hitler's expansion was somehow legitimate given that
| every grievance raised by Germany had a legitimate
| attempt to redress.
| psychphysic wrote:
| What are you blathering on about? Intolerance, treaties,
| Hitler?
|
| Your comment is the best example of Godwin's law I've
| seen in a while.
|
| I'll take your sprinting away from the point at hand to
| mean you're not interested in the original discussion?
|
| To tolerate suggests you could not tolerate it. That
| requires control.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Left politicians have never been antiwar.
|
| Truman, Johnson, Clinton, Obama, etc.
|
| The only difference between now and the 70s is that the
| politicians have more control over the left.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| The progressives (bernie, AOC, etc.) had very very
| disappointing responses to Ukraine that showed they are not
| ready to rule. I was particularly devastated by AOC's
| response.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> Truman, Johnson, Clinton, Obama, etc.
|
| The Carter presidency is in the running for the most
| peaceful modern presidency. He did start arming the rebels
| in Afghanistan, and ordered what I guess amounts to a brief
| invasion of Iran, but overall, pretty peaceful. It's either
| him or Trump.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| What about when the entire left voted for going to Iraq
| twenty years ago? (Except Bernie Sanders I believe)
| runarberg wrote:
| > The dramatic, much-debated vote on Joint Resolution 114
| was taken on Oct. 11, 2002. It passed the Senate by a vote
| of 77 to 23, and the House of Representatives by a vote of
| 296 to 133. In the end, 156 members of Congress from 36
| states had enough information and personal insight and
| wisdom to make the correct decision for our nation and the
| world community.
|
| > Six House Republicans and one Independent joined 126
| Democratic members of the House of Representatives in
| voting NAY. In the Senate, 21 Democrats, one Republic, and
| one Independent courageously voted their consciences in
| 2002 against the War in Iraq.
|
| https://www.thoughtco.com/2002-iraq-war-vote-3325446
|
| Worth mentioning among the NAY votes is Barbara Lee
| representative of California's 12th congressional district
| (9th during the vote) who has announced she'll be running
| to take Dianne Feinstein's (who voted YAY) seat in the 2024
| senate race, and is a favorite among many progressives
| (i.e. left wing Democrats).
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I still don't understand why people think it was the wrong
| decision.
| runarberg wrote:
| I'm sorry for the snark, but Major General Smedley Butler
| offers a generic explanation for wars in general in his
| 1935 essay _War is a Racket_.
|
| But for the Iraq war specifically (a part from the
| racketeering) why many people think it was the wrong
| decision is in large part based on the lies and
| deceptions that were used to justify the invasion.
|
| At the time many people believed those lies and thought
| they were justifiable reasons for the invasion. When it
| later turned out there were no weapons of mass
| destruction, that ties of the Ba'ath party to terrorist
| organizations were none, that the USA imposed government
| was corrupt and offered little benefits to regular people
| over Saddam's dictatorship, etc. etc. When this all
| became common knowledge, on top of all the war crimes,
| the torture scandals, the massacres, after Chelsea
| Manning and Julian Assange went to prison for revealing
| some of those war crimes, many of these people who
| previously believed the war was justified, changed their
| opinion of it.
| DirectorKrennic wrote:
| "I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow
| for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only
| that which they defend." _Faramir_ , "The Lord of the Rings: The
| Two Towers"
|
| "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket
| fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who
| hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
| This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending
| the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the
| hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is
| this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two
| electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
| It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of
| concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half
| million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new
| homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is not
| a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of
| threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
| _Eisenhower_
| chasd00 wrote:
| Schools, homes, power plants etc are pretty meaningless if
| they're stolen or destroyed by a foreign power. I understand
| there's a balance to be made but spending on national defense
| is necessary. The money spent on the deadbolt on my front door
| could have bought me lunch but I still bought the deadbolt.
| paulddraper wrote:
| No one will disagree with that. (Well, I guess there is
| Defund the Police...)
|
| There are, however, plenty of people who say with a straight
| face wAr Is GoOd FoR tHe EcOnOmY
| globalise83 wrote:
| Totally fair, and yet, the incidental fruits of WW2 such as
| radar, powerful long-range aircraft, all kinds of advances in
| electronics, radio communications, atomic energy etc. led to 60
| years of incredible subsequent technological progress and
| economic development that without any question raised enormous
| numbers of people out of starvation, abject poverty and misery.
| asdff wrote:
| A lot of that is from world governments adopting centrally
| planned economic and scientific goals. We could do this
| whenever. We don't need a war for it. Its just our leaders
| favor things like rugged individualism and privatizing what
| should be public works instead today, probably because that
| leads to outsized benefits to certain connected individuals.
| toast0 wrote:
| Sure, we could adopt centrally planned goals and the will
| to carry them out (the goals are much easier than the
| carrying them out), but war, cold or hot seems to be just
| about the only means to generate that will.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| In some sense that's okay. We shouldn't bypass democratic
| means easily. It's similar to how democratic societies
| have "state of emergency" powers and just as dangerous,
| and also why armed pacifism should be a good default for
| democratic society. You should not cause war, but if
| someone brings war to your door, you have a duty to your
| people to protect them and prevent occupation.
|
| Important in this ideology is that flying a boeing into a
| building and killing 3000 people is not bringing war to
| your doorstep.
| asdff wrote:
| The thing that is bad about democracy as we experience it
| today, is that while in theory you get an equal choice at
| the ballot between different options, the sources of
| information you have to rely on to form an opinion to
| vote a certain way are not providing information on
| options at equivocal levels, or in an unbiased manner. It
| begs the question, is this really your vote, or did
| someone successfully convince you to vote in their
| interests thinking they are your own? Considering the
| massive incentives behind the ability to control voting
| in a democratic country, it should be expected various
| interests are working tirelessly to influence your voting
| behavior. It makes you wonder if the end product would be
| very different whether we bothered with the performance
| of elections or not. Certainly at least people believe
| they chose this government having cast the vote, so maybe
| that's the benefit of maintaining the system for elites:
| not to have the public shape government, but to have the
| public believe they have shaped government, and don't
| need to try and shape it through other means that might
| disrupt the order of things.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| I recommend checking out the fantastic, "The Rise and Fall of
| American Growth". The book provides very strong evidence that
| the era of American growth which produced our modern standard
| of living starts in 1870 and actually ends in 1940, though
| there was also an era of less important but still strong
| growth from 1940-1970.
|
| Furthermore, this is a bit of a counterfactual as we don't
| actually know the trajectory of technology without the war.
| Some thing we know for certain though, mass electrification
| and public health were well underway before the war and
| continued through it. These being probably the two most
| important developments that improved productivity and the
| quality of life for most people.
| asdff wrote:
| Its crazy how little this country has really changed since
| 1970, when you remove the superficial fluff like iphones or
| flat screen tv. Take a neighborhood in socal. It might be
| full of dingbat apartments. 50 years ago in 1973 it
| probably looked exactly the same since thats when those
| apartments where built. Go back another 50 years though,
| and you have a former spanish ranchero with cattle, oil
| derricks, or fruit orchards depending on what block of
| southern californian suburbia you are considering. The
| world was growing and changing rapidly then basically
| stalled out. much more restrictive zoning separating
| degrees of use (e.g. apartment versus a home) versus type
| of use (residential vs industrial) came in to replace
| redlining in effort to limit movement of the working poor
| into certain neighborhoods so as not to affect real estate
| valuations, and now we have our world today, full of 50+
| year old apartments and 70+ year old single story "starter"
| californian homes going for over $1000 a square foot thanks
| to our inability to add more housing to an in demand area.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| Yeah. I think that a lot of these changes after 1940 are
| much more to do with socio/political factors than growth.
| By 1940 you have the GDP to support a middle class. It's
| the collective experience of the Great Depression, WWII
| and the rheotric of the New Deal that produce a populace
| that just wouldn't put up with significant imbalance in
| the riches of society.
|
| People who fought in and justified WWII contrasted it
| with WWI. The claim being that WWI was a war fought on
| behalf of the old world system. And WWII was a true war
| for Democracy. I think it would've been very hard after
| that kind of mobilization, sacrifice and rhetoric to re-
| instute the Gilded Age ethos of a system which the rules
| of the game were sacred about the outcomes.
|
| In this way American Democracy is born of the FDR era. I
| don't mean this in the narrow sense of the size of the
| electorate though that is important. At every level,
| America's systems Democratized. From the way the Supreme
| Court interpreted the law, to the choices of industry in
| what to produce, to how the rewards of production were
| distributed. There was a broad transition from the notion
| that institutions existed to maintain rules towards a
| notion that these institutions in their largest sense
| needed to serve the people.
|
| I think a lot of what has happened since 1970 is a
| transition back to a way of looking at the world through
| the pre-democratic lense. The biggest difference being
| that now there is a plurality which is the upper half of
| the middle class who have some similar interests to the
| wealthy in protecting their wealth.
| asdff wrote:
| >I think a lot of what has happened since 1970 is a
| transition back to a way of looking at the world through
| the pre-democratic lense. The biggest difference being
| that now there is a plurality which is the upper half of
| the middle class who have some similar interests to the
| wealthy in protecting their wealth.
|
| I agree although I believe that the upper middle class
| and the capital class still don't actually have similar
| interests if you think about things that are actually in
| the upper middle class's best interest. In the context of
| a propaganda model (1), most people just aren't exposed
| to opinions that even align with their true economic
| interests. They are often exposed to opinions that
| actually kowtow the economic status quo that benefits the
| existing elite establishment more than anything. Mass
| media has been able to stratify labor: it has divided the
| working poor among right and left on cultural
| considerations versus unifying it through economic
| arguments, and made the white collar class which still
| has to sell their labor for wages believe they are no
| longer of the working class, and have little need to
| organize themselves. Labor as a unified movement has been
| divided and effectively conquered. A sad state of
| affairs.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The people who got into power in the 70s basically still
| haven't left. Plenty of our politicians were born before
| the civil rights act.
| asdff wrote:
| I think its even more insidious than that. The political
| party machine on both the GOP and Dem side control what
| candidates are even put in front of us. Populist
| antiestablishmentism doesn't get you far because both the
| media and the political party itself are working against
| you. So you will still see younger politicians who hold
| these opinions in positions of power, because these are
| the opinions of the elite more than anything
| generational, and these are the candidates who receive
| the most support and most air time in front of voters.
| scrlk wrote:
| To add to the Eisenhower quote - I highly recommend watching
| his 1961 Farewell Address, where the term "military-industrial
| complex" was first used:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyBNmecVtdU
| Animats wrote:
| Butler's experience was from the period when the United Fruit
| Company more or less ruled Central America.[1] At times U.S
| Marines were used to enforce US authority, and Butler was a
| leader in some of those operations. That's why he says war is a
| racket.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company
| beambot wrote:
| > [War's] bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed
| gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and
| homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant
| miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and
| generations.
|
| Still as relevant to today's veterans as in 1935.
| Animats wrote:
| Not really. Wars are mostly money-losers today. They're more
| likely to be a power trip for some leader.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| I'm not understanding your comment.
|
| Wars have generally been money losers for the nations
| involved and money-makers for businesses and individuals
| connected to power (Krupps to United Fruit to Wagner Group
| to etc). Wars have generally involved the egos of leaders
| but these leaders nearly always consider their friends
| who'll get rich through it.
| throwuwu wrote:
| Good thing corporations are no longer deeply involved in and
| profiting from war, right? Right?
| joe_the_user wrote:
| That's certainly not the only reason he says war is a racket.
| He provides many examples (WWI notably).
| keroro wrote:
| What do you think has been happening for the past couple
| centuries in the Congo (and various other countries of the
| global south)? US imperialism is alive and well and The Jakarta
| Method [1] by Vincent Bevins is a damning account of it from
| the cold war to present day.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jakarta_Method
| asdff wrote:
| One need only look at the map of military bases. Its a really
| modern way to rule and avoids the issues of old imperialism
| while reaping the benefits. You have people thinking they are
| self governing themselves, but they are actually on a pretty
| tight leash, and should a regime change occur guess what side
| the US and all her allies will back with money and arms: the
| side that favors letting the US keep their military bases and
| preferential trading relationship. Its basically imperialism
| through the transitive property. A country like the
| Phillipines is still basically a US colony, Japan is still
| basically occupied by the US, the northern border of south
| Korea is still defended by the US military. There's only been
| a few times the US was ever rooted out from a country, like
| during the fall of Saigon, or recently when the US abandoned
| Bagram airbase.
| agumonkey wrote:
| And societies never learn.
| w10-1 wrote:
| He came from generations of influential Quaker's (pacifists) but
| defied his father in signing up for the Spanish-American war
| before he left school. He lied about his age to be commissioned
| as an officer.
|
| It's no surprise the military didn't meet his idealistic
| expectations.
|
| His awards were probably not legitimate. At the time, his father
| was the chair of the House Naval Affairs Committee, overseeing
| the budget of the Marines. E.g., one award was for a spy mission
| that consisted of taking a train incognito into Mexico.
|
| His claims in "War is a racket" were designed to elevate his
| reputation as a truth-teller and good guy, an unwitting
| accomplice.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I don't think the world gives the US enough flak for the
| Spanish-American war. It was an invented war to steal
| territory. No wonder he became cynical.
| jasmer wrote:
| The people driving the wars generally don't profit from the wars,
| and it's generally not true that the war profiteers have that
| much influence over spending during war time, rather, they are a
| bit like doctors during a plague and have huge pricing leverage
| once a war starts.
|
| There are almost zero wars which are profitable even for the
| antagonist.
|
| 'Making needed weapons during war is exceedingly profitable' -
| yes it is, and often nations are in ruin after the fact, which
| will lead to profiteering like 'a racket'. And the proceeds will
| indeed go to very few.
| leobg wrote:
| There's also The War Racket by Harry Browne (2004).
| wyldberry wrote:
| In Marine Corps bootcamp, this man is lionized for his
| accomplishments during service. After my service ended I read war
| is a racket and it profoundly changed a lot of my viewpoints.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > I read war is a racket ... After my service ended
|
| If only we could get US marines to read this before their
| service started. :-(
| wyldberry wrote:
| That would likely require a return to mandatory service.
| carpet_wheel wrote:
| I'd love to see it. Probably the quickest way to end
| imperialism would be to force Americans to do the dirty
| work themselves.
| all2 wrote:
| This has been in my head for awhile. It would give a
| "common ground" or "common understanding" that Americans
| seem to lack at this point. I would hope something like
| this would provide a framework to communicate for wildly
| differing political ideas.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Return to mandatory service is a possible action of the US
| (federal) government, I was talking about an oppositionary
| initiative.
| wyldberry wrote:
| I understand where you are coming from, it's just naive
| to think that a nation state won't form a counter action
| to preserve it's ability to wage war.
| milkytron wrote:
| Switzerland has a mandatory service requirement for men,
| and the people there experience fewer gun deaths per capita
| despite having a relatively high gun ownership rate.
| jacquesm wrote:
| This thread is not about gun control or lack thereof.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Even ignoring that part - it's weird bringing up War and
| Switzerland.
|
| All those wars Switzerland has fought...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| That's actually an important point though. The kind of
| isolationist neutrality that Switzerland has is only
| possible if you can make it seem like conquering you is
| impossible to justify. Switzerland will protect its
| neutrality by force if necessary. They also have a
| military industrial complex, so is that one a racket?
| lmm wrote:
| Isn't that exactly the point, that it's possible to be
| neutral and isolationist?
| tmtvl wrote:
| Hey, when I was young Swiss mercenaries were considered
| truly elite troops. Remember the battle of Nancy.
| jollyllama wrote:
| It's not going to happen. You couldn't get enough able-
| bodied people to show up or communities to enforce it. The
| ideals that made this possible for Vietnam will die with
| the boomers.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| After 20 years of blowing things up in a far away desert,
| the US military is struggling to find enough volunteers
| to meet it's requirements. Nobody wants to go die in the
| desert. Maybe if we had spent the past 20 years not doing
| that, the US would have a bit more gusto from the
| youngins.
|
| If we go to war with China, and it's not just some minor
| skirmish, I expect there to be a draft.
| giantrobot wrote:
| You mean the Boomers' _parents_. Because those were the
| ones that were fine with the draft. The Boomers were the
| ones being drafted.
| Jotra7 wrote:
| [dead]
| mikece wrote:
| [flagged]
| kibwen wrote:
| This is likely being downvoted because the US isn't donating
| weapons to Ukraine, it's leasing them to Ukraine in the same
| manner that the US leased weapons to the UK during WWII. The UK
| only finished repaying that debt in 2006.
| glogla wrote:
| It is being downvoted (hopefully) because it is known Russian
| propaganda point.
| keonix wrote:
| > US isn't donating weapons to Ukraine, it's leasing them
|
| Could you kindly support your statement with the source?
| AFAIK most aid provided to Ukraine is not under lend-lease
| but donated to them
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Most aid takes the form of cash for humanitarian support,
| ~disposing of~ donating old hardware to Ukraine, or a loan
| for the express intent of buying a modern system.
|
| The vast majority of the "billions" given to Ukraine is
| made up of stuff that we actively are trying to throw away.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| What you're citing is really all Russian propaganda.
|
| There's also a lot of financial support to pay for basic
| services, which doesn't directly translate into machine guns,
| but is vital for Ukraine's war effort.
|
| But the fact is, there are no missing howitzers or HIMARS.
| That's just Russian propaganda meant to dissuade western
| support.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| So not only has Russia destroyed more HIMARS systems than
| were sent to Ukraine, but those destroyed systems never made
| it to Ukraine in the first place because """corruption""".
|
| Just a firehose of bullshit. It's insane how easily people
| want to buy it.
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| Is it your intention to discourage the free world from arming
| Ukraine? Because that's usually the intention of those who push
| this narrative.
|
| I wonder, too, if you would be doing the same thing if you saw
| a russian missile flying towards you.
| jbm wrote:
| If the parent is to be believed, there are intermediaries who
| may be robbing Ukraine of 3 bullets for every one they get.
|
| On the contrary, what benefit would accrue to you for
| stopping an investigation of these blood suckers?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Seeing as there is no evidence of these "blood suckers",
| what are we supposed to investigate?
| jbm wrote:
| First, I make no claim that the 4x or 20x numbers are
| true. Sans an investigation, any such claim should be
| viewed with suspicion. However, the claim that financial
| irregularities are almost certainly there can't possibly
| be controversial.
|
| If I was forced at gunpoint to point out the obvious,
| Ukraine was one of the most corrupt countries in Europe
| prior to the war. Unless you are saying that - magically
| - the people who were syphoning money and treasure from
| the Ukrainian people were all killed or "vanished", the
| same appetites for corruption still exist while large
| amounts of resources are being poured in. This is
| literally the opportunity of a lifetime for
| aforementioned bullet-stealing bloodsuckers.
|
| The US has never been good at tracking money or getting
| value for money. Even during the Civil War, Union
| capitalists initially looted the Union with broken
| weapons and badly made uniforms. Haliburton is a more
| recent example of this poopstain on the American economy.
|
| While the amount of corruption is in question, given the
| above two, there is every reason to believe financial
| corruption is happening. Those who disingeously pretend
| everything is normal are frankly suspicious.
|
| Honestly, I can't believe I need to make this clear in a
| discussion about "War Is A Racket". Then again, a weaker,
| poorer America that isn't able to murder brown people for
| fun and profit is in my personal benefit, so maybe your
| ignorance is beneficial. Yes, please don't investigate;
| any such suggestion was clearly made by Russian bots.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Can you provide sources for these claims? I haven't seen any
| reports that stuff was going "missing" instead of making it to
| the front lines. There's a lot of stuff that's been "promised"
| that hasn't been delivered yet, but that's not corruption,
| that's just certain groups dragging their heels.
| mikece wrote:
| Written by one of the very few (only?) people to have received
| two Medals of Honor. Dude knew a thing or two about war.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| He claimed also to have been approached to be installed as
| dictator of the US. He immediately exposed the plot.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
| Eumenes wrote:
| FDR was a borderline dictator, so this is ironic.
| pphysch wrote:
| Even if he was, he clearly represented the national/public
| interest. These guys wanted an entirely different flavor of
| dictator.
| Eumenes wrote:
| yeah no doubt, he was popular, mostly because of great
| depression social programs and war ... but he also
| expanded executive power and ultimately led us on a path
| to the welfare state status we're at today.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Calling the modern USA a welfare state is laughable.
| pphysch wrote:
| It is remarkable that the totally ahistorical narrative
| of "FDR ruined the US (economy), Reagan saved it" is
| still popular outside of the elite whom it benefits.
| Propaganda works.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| "Welfare queen" stereotypes are still alive and well on
| the Right, despite there NEVER BEING A WELFARE QUEEN. It
| was a complete fabrication. Maybe they haven't had a
| great grip on reality for quite some time, or at least a
| willingness to ignore it.
| timschmidt wrote:
| > led us on a path to the welfare state
|
| You may be interested in this pamphlet written by
| founding father Thomas Paine:
|
| https://www.ssa.gov/history/tpaine3.html
| Eumenes wrote:
| I wasn't aware of this paper, thank you for sharing.
| Paine is an interesting character and mused on alot of
| subjects. Way more utopian in his ideas compared to his
| peers at the time. Obsessed with Revolution. Wouldn't say
| economics was his strength.
| timschmidt wrote:
| On the contrary, it seems to me that his reasoning about
| taxation - that it is unjust to coerce via force from the
| living and thus infinitely preferable to collect from the
| dead since they no longer need it, whereas the elderly
| and young do - to be unmatched in halls of power to this
| day.
| Eumenes wrote:
| And its not unjust for the state to seize inheritance in
| the name of equity? I think there are limits ... I'd like
| to give my children my wealth when I pass, but I am a
| modest person, not Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos. We pay tax
| on our income, things we buy, our property, our
| investments, etc - now we must fork over what is left to
| the state to divvy out? There's a reason only 6 people
| attended Paine's funeral - he was advocating for a
| Peoples Monarchy.
| timschmidt wrote:
| Mr. Paine answers all your concerns in his wonderfully
| well thought-out pamphlet. If more people read it, the
| world would be a better place. Here's the full text:
| http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Paine1795.pdf
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| You mean, Corporate Welfare. The right often bemoan the
| welfare state for people, but love welfare for
| corporations.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > ultimately led us on a path to the welfare state status
| we're at today
|
| That's one way of looking at it. Another way would be: he
| made enough basic concessions to the working class to
| prevent an outright socialist revolution. We weren't very
| far from it at that point in history.
|
| The welfare state is a safeguard. Every modern state has
| social supports, just like every modern road system has
| traffic control devices and other safety measures. The
| alternative, as we've seen repeatedly, is to allow
| unchecked profit motive to grind the masses down to the
| point that they start erecting guillotines.
| timschmidt wrote:
| This is a very important point.
| [deleted]
| wyldberry wrote:
| The real question is: if it's true, what do you think those
| who tried learned from it? Did they find a way to achieve
| their goal without any outright observable changes from the
| public's perspective?
| pphysch wrote:
| It sure puts the 60s in a new light.
| z3c0 wrote:
| Yes, mostly through the ideas of Edward Bernays and Ivy
| Lee.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Nobody went to jail, the united states is primarily run by
| business interests since the 80s, and facism is alive and
| well in the states. It sounds to me like they got exactly
| what they wanted, just had to be patient.
| knute wrote:
| > the united states is primarily run by business
| interests since the 80s
|
| The 1880s.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Arguably the revolution was heavily motivated by business
| interests. Arguably.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The 1780s.
|
| And earlier, but then it was _Britain_ being run by
| business interests, and the main reason for the US
| becoming independent was conflict between local and
| remote business interests. (Particularly, North American
| interests and regulation serving the East India Company.)
| maksimur wrote:
| Dictator of the US. That's one of the weirdest things I have
| ever heard. But I know once upon a time that word had no
| negative connotation. Just like fascism after all.
| [deleted]
| tonetheman wrote:
| Not really Trump was planning the same thing a few years
| ago.
|
| Hopefully the Republicans choose an adult this time who
| will not try that again but that is doubtful given the
| choices so far.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The two front runners are Trump again or wannabe
| Theocratic Dictator. There's no hope.
| VagueMag wrote:
| The movie AMSTERDAM which came out recently touches on the
| Business Plot, and themes of sub rosa fascists and Nazis in
| the American ruling class more generally. Fairly worth a
| watch if you're interested in history viewed through this
| sort of parapolitical lens.
| swayvil wrote:
| But when the bad guys are doing all kinds of bad stuff. When your
| good friends in the media are telling you all about all this bad
| stuff that the bad guys are doing. When all your friends are hot
| to go out and fight these bad guys. What can a right-thinking
| person do but join the fight?
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Style note: I can't tell if you're echoing propaganda or
| parodying it.
| swayvil wrote:
| Stripped of context, it certainly does look suspicious.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Tie always goes to the echo side when dealing with propaganda
| operatingthetan wrote:
| That's why satire tends to be exaggerated to an extreme
| degree.
| [deleted]
| paulddraper wrote:
| Parody
| EA-3167 wrote:
| What do you figure he had to say after 1945?
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| What would you expect?
| swayvil wrote:
| I appreciate the brevity but what exactly are you saying? That
| WW2 wasn't a racket? Is that your thesis here?
| dekhn wrote:
| I'd interpret the question as: "given the copious evidence
| that the US did not enter WWII intentionally to make money
| for industrialists, is Smedley's thesis that _all_ war is a
| racket reasonable? To what extent are humanitarian or
| democratic concerns as important as war profits in the
| decision to go to war? "
|
| (with the unstated assumption that the US was just in its
| choice to fight the Axis)
|
| I actually don't think Smedley would have changed his message
| at all; I think he started from a false premise that he was
| 100% convinced of, and would have pointed at the enormous
| profits made by war industrialists in the US during WWII. He
| might not also notice that post-war US was the most
| economically productive country of all time, that it opened
| up huge options of African Americans, or even really
| recognize quite what motivated Hitler and the Nazis.
| lagolinguini wrote:
| > given the copious evidence that the US did not enter WWII
| intentionally to make money for industrialists
|
| The USA started selling weapons to the allies long before
| it entered the war.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The USA sold weapons to the allies largely because the
| president genuinely believe hitler would invade
| everything if not stopped. Congress wouldn't let him
| enter the war, because the US has a strong Isolationist
| vibe, but the President believed if we didn't go stop
| hitler in europe, hitler would eventually find his way to
| coming after the US and by that point we wouldn't have
| any allies left.
|
| This is AFTER the allies attempted appeasement. If a
| foreign country wants to war, you can't not war. The only
| alternative is to roll over and accept new ownership, but
| usually new ownership disagrees with the people on how
| things should be done, so that "solution" largely isn't.
|
| There was a period were Germany seemed unstoppable
| remember.
| dekhn wrote:
| I'm referring to our entry into the war. That the US is
| an arms merchant is well understood- and didn't have the
| costs (to Americans) that Smedley describes.
| lubesGordi wrote:
| Just because it's a racket, doesn't mean its unjustified?
| mythrwy wrote:
| Maybe the US didn't enter WWII with the idea of making a
| profit. I don't know.
|
| But what is undeniable is the US exited WWII in a very good
| position and lots of profits were made.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| What does that matter though? Should we have bombed
| ourselves because germany and japan couldn't do it?
| swayvil wrote:
| So, yes. You are saying "nuh uh smedly, ww2 was a proper
| justified fight"
| [deleted]
| dekhn wrote:
| Actually, the only thing I said above was that I think he
| started from false premises.
| pfdietz wrote:
| WW2 was a fight against evils of an absolute and appalling
| nature.
| krapp wrote:
| A lesser evil against a greater evil. And then the lesser
| evil became the greater evil.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The US has death camps? The US was prepared to have 70
| million citizens commit glorious smashed-jewel suicide
| rather than surrender?
|
| Your facile equivalence is rejected with prejudice.
| krapp wrote:
| >Your facile equivalence is rejected with prejudice.
|
| It's your facile equivalence, that because these specific
| things don't apply to the US, American imperialism was
| morally justified.
|
| You could just read the Wikipedia article on American war
| crimes, or learn about how much of the Nazi's ideology
| was based on American eugenics and racial segregation, or
| take even a glance at the last several decades of
| American militarism throughout the Middle East, but I
| guess you won't.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The US absolutely had a purposeful genocide of native
| americans, and directly implemented prison camps and some
| property confiscation of japanese immigrants and
| citizens.
|
| This is explicitly not a support of the parent's comment.
| The US was not great, and even had explicit segregation,
| but was not trying to spread it's own abysmal ideals to
| all of europe. Hitler was clearly trying to spread facism
| through all of europe, and eventually the world. His
| desire to do so was broadly popular in Nazi Germany, so
| the country's people were never going to stop him. Going
| to war to grind Nazi Germany into the dust was the only
| option. It is justified. We also didn't preempt anything.
| We sacrificed two sovereign countries hoping to avoid
| that war, which should be clearly not acceptable.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| "told you so" -- WWII was one of the best things to happen to
| the US from an economic standpoint. Before joining the war
| effort the US was selling weapons to the allies and making
| piles of money doing so. Post WWII the US had the largest
| economic boom in history.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| It was also one of the worst things to happen to Europe, the
| Soviet Union, and Japan.
|
| All of them were completely devastated, while the US was
| largely unscathed.
|
| I really wonder what the world would look like today if
| they'd managed to avoid this senseless war and/or the first
| World War.
| lizardking wrote:
| This is one of the main reasons for our economic prosperity
| post WW II. You have room for a lot of excess in your
| economy when your global competition are all living in
| smoldering piles of rubble.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > WWII was one of the best things to happen to the US from an
| economic standpoint
|
| Sadly, that is true.
|
| > the US was selling weapons to the allies and making piles
| of money doing so
|
| Indeed.
|
| War Is a Racket.
| bell-cot wrote:
| General Rule: If a war is existential, then countries which
| want to keep existing usually find ways to turn down the
| "racket" aspects.
| mythrwy wrote:
| I suspect he may have had a preemptive opinion on that even
| though he wasn't around any more when it started.
|
| "WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the
| oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It
| is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in
| which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in
| lives." - SB
|
| We are told a version of things, and maybe that version is even
| mostly true, but I'm less sure about this now then I was when I
| was a kid in grade school.
| lagolinguini wrote:
| We are often told that the conflict in WW2 was a conflict
| between a clearly good side and a clearly evil side. While
| it's true one of the sides was certainly the a much greater
| evil, it would be disingenuous to hide the short comings of
| the "good" side. The USA was a country that at the time still
| practiced segregation, and was the only country to use
| nuclear weapons. The British, French and Belgian empires and
| their conduct in India and their African colonies was not far
| off from what the Germans were accused of. It's not good to
| whitewash these facts.
| pfdietz wrote:
| So, resisting attack isn't allowed unless you're pure as
| the driven snow? This is nonsense.
| lagolinguini wrote:
| The points I am trying to make is that it isn't black and
| white as "resisting attack", and that the history that is
| taught shouldn't be whitewashed. The Indians fought in
| the 2 world wars for the freedoms of others while their
| own freedoms were not guaranteed under British
| colonialism. 1/6th of all the "British" forces in ww2
| were Indian, while India was suffering British induced
| famines due to redirection of supplies and scorched earth
| policy of the British in the south east Asian theatre. Do
| you think it's fair to them to not acknowledge this fact
| and teach it in history?
| pfdietz wrote:
| We were talking about WW2. It absolutely was black and
| white. Trying to deny that is itself a despicable act, in
| the same spirit as Holocaust denial. Pointing to other
| acts of evil alters that not one whit.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| I think it's complicated. I don't think Butler believed that
| every single war was unjustified. When reading 'War is a
| Racket', you have to look at the context of war in which we
| lived. He was too young to fight in the American Civil War. So
| his consistent experiences of war were those fought in
| America's most blatantly Imperial phase. Even compared to
| Vietnam, Iraq, etc, the wars of the turn of the century were
| cravenly driven by capital and imperial ambitions.
|
| And to that matter, some of what brought the U.S. into the
| orbit of WWII was a lower key version of the kind of foreign
| policies of that earlier era. Disrupting Japanese interests in
| Asia was very much about economic benefit and power balance in
| the mode of realpolitik.
|
| And in the end, the Roosevelt administration remains unique in
| American history for how hard it pushed against colonialism.
| Truman was much more aligned with British interests in this way
| than FDR. So while the war is justified in the name of stopping
| two monstrous regimes, its precursors and its aftermath do
| carry a fair amount of the same taint that Butler thoroughly
| observed in his time.
| meteor333 wrote:
| There are always at least two parties involved in a war, an
| aggressor and a defendant. 'War is a Racket' is always true
| or war unjustified in case of the aggressor. Defendant
| usually doesn't have much choice in it.
|
| Even the example you've taken for WWII, UK and US weren't the
| aggressor. The war already at their door for British, so they
| had a little choice in it. Similarly for US they knew, if
| they don't do something early enough, they could end up being
| a victim or suffer from it eventually. So they had to support
| Britain in the war.
| Bran_son wrote:
| Maybe "We may have been fighting the wrong enemy all along." -
| https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/36062/did-gen-p...
| thsksbd wrote:
| [dead]
| DDSDev wrote:
| For anyone curious, Smedley Butler died in 1940[1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
| jhbadger wrote:
| Which was probably good for his reputation. Some people die
| at the right time. Had he lived a bit longer he might have
| come out against entry into WWII, which would not have aged
| well.
| buildsjets wrote:
| He was an Anti-Fascist, but wanted to prevent a war with
| the Fascists. In fact, he was so Anti-Fascist, that the US
| Government apologized to Benito Mussolini on his behalf,
| and court-martialed him over his Anti-Fascist comments
| about Mussolini.
|
| Source: New York Times.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/1931/01/30/archives/united-states-
| ap...
| allemagne wrote:
| Sounds like he won a moral victory over the US Government
| and the Fascists, and then the US Government (ever full
| of contradictions) later helped depose the actual
| Fascists through the war he wanted to avoid.
| buildsjets wrote:
| Also, record of the apology from the Department of State.
|
| https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1931v02
| /d6...
| deeg wrote:
| To anyone just passing through the comments, the Wiki article
| on Butler is a worthy read. He was an interesting person.
| DicIfTEx wrote:
| The YouTube series _Knowing Better_ had a very good episode
| about Butler and this essay too:
| https://www.yewtu.be/watch?v=74wrX8rKtzw
| celtoid wrote:
| "I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am
| sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I
| never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental
| faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the
| orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the
| military service." - Major General Smedley Butler, USMC, 1933
| speech
| mkadlec wrote:
| Smedly Butler!
| major505 wrote:
| Smedley Butler, the writer of this book, latter in life claimed
| he was sought in a facist conspiracy to lead and overthown
| Franklin Roosevelt and assume power.
|
| He claimed to had stayed in the conspiracy long enough to find
| out the identity of the conspirators (owners of big america
| monopolies), and denounced their plans to the president.
| rektide wrote:
| Shout out to @floydnoel for citing this yesterday in the _F-35
| Malpractice_ submission.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36056584
|
| Very apt then, & what a crazy topic! How the government has payed
| a ton of money to develop & purchase jets it basically
| doesnt/can't own operate or repair. Right to repair/upgrade at
| the highest level. A racket!
| jmartrican wrote:
| I have mixed feelings about this. The problem is that if you are
| being attacked, you will gladly allow people to make big profit
| if they save lives. You can try to fight the war without profit
| but you might not like the results. Ultimately, wars are started
| by governments. They cajole the resources of the nation to fight
| the enemy. Each country has the things they are good at it and
| they will use those things to their advantage. In the US we are a
| free market society and happily give out big rewards (aka
| profits) to those that can make a difference and build things
| that the nation wants.
|
| So the reason I say I have mixed feelings is because I can
| imagine a world where the entities that make profit off of war
| can use their influence to prod the nation into war. And this
| should be prevented. I suspect this has happened in the past.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| I'm often very conflicted about USA's history of military use
| in the last 100+ years. Imperialistic? I don't know. But what I
| do know is that I would rather be a South Korean than a North
| Korean. And post-defeat Japan has been one of the preeminent
| countries in the entire world.
| waffleiron wrote:
| South Korea was a brutal dictatorship for quite some time,
| just because they aren't now doesn't mean the US's military
| intervention is to thank for that.
| l3mure wrote:
| Multiple brutal dictatorships, which were a direct
| continuation of Japanese colonial control, and which
| massacred their own people with US support and approval.
|
| > In the fall of 1946, the US military authorized elections
| to an interim legislature for southern Korea, but the
| results were clearly fraudulent. Even General Hodge
| privately wrote that right-wing "strong-arm" methods had
| been used to control the vote. The winners were almost all
| rightists, including [Syngman] Rhee supporters, even though
| a survey by the American military government that summer
| had found that 70 percent of 8,453 southern Koreans polled
| said they supported socialism, 7 percent communism, and
| only 14 percent capitalism. [...]
|
| > Chung Koo-Hun, the observant young student of the late
| 1940s, said of the villagers' attitude: "The Americans
| simply re-employed the pro-Japanese Koreans whom the people
| hated." [...]
|
| > Seventy of the 115 top Korean officials in the Seoul
| administration in 1947 had held office during the Japanese
| occupation.
|
| > In the southern city of Taegu, people verged on
| starvation. When 10,000 demonstrators rallied on October 1,
| 1946, police opened fire, killing many. Vengeful crowds
| then seized and killed policeman, and the US military
| declared martial law. The violence spread across the
| provinces, peasants murdering government officials,
| landlords, and especially police, detested as holdovers
| from Japanese days. American troops joined the police in
| suppressing the uprisings. Together they killed uncounted
| hundreds of Koreans.
|
| > American anthropologist Cornelius Osgood, spending much
| of 1947 in a village west of Seoul, watched as police
| carried young men off to jail by the truckload. A "mantle
| of fear" had fallen over once peaceful valleys, he wrote.
| The word "communist," he said, "seemed to mean 'just any
| young man of a village.'" On August 7, 1947, the US
| military government outlawed the southern communists, the
| Korean Worker's Party. Denied a peaceful political route,
| more and more leftist militants chose an armed struggle for
| power.
|
| quotes from _The Bridge at No Gun Ri_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Uprising
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| > just because they aren't now doesn't mean the US's
| military intervention is to thank for that.
|
| The alternative was that the entire peninsula would be
| "North Korea". And then there would never be any chance of
| formulating a functional democratic society.
| waffleiron wrote:
| You don't know what the alternative would be. US
| intervention and the massive amounts of civilian deaths
| caused in Korea are a major reason why North Korea is so
| anti-West.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| There is no good north korea timeline. The entire
| revolution that created it was for the express purpose of
| putting an idiot dictator in charge, one who immediately
| went to work on forcing the population to consider him a
| god king and putting his equally selfish, stupid,
| paranoid, and vile progeny in charge.
|
| Unless you believe a unified korea without US
| intervention but still with USSR support would suddenly
| overthrow that repressive regime, that was never going to
| produce a free society.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| throwuwu wrote:
| Why would they be less authoritarian if they weren't anti
| West? This sounds a lot like the argument that the only
| reason communist countries terrorize, murder and starve
| their own people is because of the evil capitalist in
| other countries who aren't doing that to their people. If
| only we could execute all of the kulaks together there'd
| be no need for the NKVD, comrade!
| anticodon wrote:
| Without USA there would be no division of Korea. Also, before
| US sanctions, North Korea was more successful than South
| Korea.
|
| How people seriously can blame North Korea for poverty if it
| is deliberately being suffocated by USA for decades?
| threeseed wrote:
| North Korea could simply abandon their nuclear weapons
| program, stop antagonising their neighbours and then the
| sanctions would be lifted.
|
| Also having actually been to the country the issue isn't
| sanctions. It's the lack of foreign investment and
| restrictions on business. Many China businesses for example
| would love to have broader access to the North Korean
| market not just for exports but as a source of cheap
| labour. But this is not happening because North Korea is
| fearful of their population being 'indoctrinated'.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| > North Korea could simply abandon their nuclear weapons
| program, stop antagonising their neighbours and then the
| sanctions would be lifted.
|
| Stop resisting and I'll stop choking you.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Yes, that is how subduing a belligerent person works.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| A person that wouldn't be belligerent in the first place
| if you didn't make it so?
| asdff wrote:
| Kim Jong Un isn't belligerent. The north koreans have a
| different playbook for foreign policy than you might be
| used to but its a playbook nonetheless. For their people
| the program is akin to something like the Apollo program
| in terms of national pride. Its also a dead man's switch
| effectively. The ruling family obviously wants to
| maintain their life of idyllic luxury and nuclear weapons
| and belligerent public addresses are a good way to make
| people second guess just steamrolling you over. In effect
| they are just playing a hand thats already dealt to
| continue their positioning.
| threeseed wrote:
| More like stop trying to attack your neighbours and I'll
| stop choking you.
|
| And nobody in this world including the US wants North
| Korea to continue to be a relic from the 1970s.
| Prosperity lifts us all.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| Then lift the sanctions. How are sanctions going to
| protect anyone from nuclear attacks anyway, if NK already
| has an arsenal?
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| Flood them with Yankee dollars. Fidel Castro would have
| been ousted immediately. Kim Jong Il would have been
| murdered.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| North Korea actually already makes millions (at least) of
| passable US currency. North Korea isn't impoverished
| because of lack of resources, but rather because the Kim
| regime would rather spend those resources on themselves.
| metadat wrote:
| They did it for a 3 year period from 2002-2005.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea%E2%80%93Unite
| d_S....
| pfdietz wrote:
| Without reservation, I can.
| [deleted]
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_imperialism
| ThorsBane wrote:
| [dead]
| threeseed wrote:
| Also look at what is happening in Europe and the Ukraine war.
|
| After the weak and inept leadership shown by France and
| Germany in their response to Russia's aggression the hopes
| for a EU defense capability is all but finished. Eastern
| European countries would rather have the US to defend them
| [1].
|
| And I think more appreciation needs to be given to the US for
| supporting Ukraine in those early days because if Russia
| over-ran Kyiv it's quite possible that Belarus, Moldova,
| Estonia etc could have been next. US military leadership can
| credibly be argued to have saved Europe.
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/ulrichspeck/status/1661710156944535554
| jmartrican wrote:
| > US military leadership can credibly be argued to have
| saved Europe.
|
| more than once
| pphysch wrote:
| [flagged]
| threeseed wrote:
| Because Lukashenko is dying.
|
| And countries like Poland are seeing a unique opportunity
| to fill the power vacuum in order to change the
| government to one that isn't interested in being part of
| Russia's sphere of influence.
|
| If Putin was successful in Ukraine it's not inconceivable
| he would have rather have invaded rather than risk it
| becoming pro-EU, joining NATO etc.
| timschmidt wrote:
| https://news.yahoo.com/russia-belarus-strategy-
| document-2300...
|
| A leaked internal strategy document from Vladimir Putin's
| executive office and obtained by Yahoo News lays out a
| detailed plan on how Russia plans to take full control
| over neighboring Belarus in the next decade under the
| pretext of a merger between the two countries. The
| document outlines in granular detail a creeping
| annexation by political, economic and military means of
| an independent but illiberal European nation by Russia,
| which is an active state of war in its bid to conquer
| Ukraine through overwhelming force.
|
| "Russia's goals with regards to Belarus are the same as
| with Ukraine," Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to
| the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe,
| told Yahoo News. "Only in Belarus, it relies on coercion
| rather than war. Its end goal is still wholesale
| incorporation."
|
| According to the document, issued in fall 2021, the end
| goal is the formation of a so-called Union State of
| Russia and Belarus by no later than 2030. Everything
| involved in the merger of the two countries has been
| considered, including the "harmonization" of Belarusian
| laws with those of the Russian Federation; a "coordinated
| foreign and defense policy" and "trade and economic
| cooperation ... on the basis of the priority" of Russian
| interests; and "ensuring the predominant influence of the
| Russian Federation in the socio-political, trade-
| economic, scientific-educational and cultural-information
| spheres."
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > And post-defeat Japan has been one of the preeminent
| countries in the entire world.
|
| Imagine if they weren't defeated. Because they where one of
| the most preeminent countries in the world before defeat as
| well.
| all2 wrote:
| And brutal. As empires go, the Japanese had no regard for
| the lives of humans who weren't ethnically Japanese. This
| old-world way of doing war saw some 250,000 [0] Chinese
| killed for aiding American pilots after their bombings of
| targets in Japan. [1]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhejiang-Jiangxi_campaign
|
| [1] https://www.historynet.com/jimmy-doolittle-and-the-
| tokyo-rai...
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| It's called the military industrial complex and it happens all
| the time.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Wars are fought by governments, but often started by
| individuals with massive leverage over the war-fighting
| apparatus of governments. Industry veterans hired to patronage
| positions in high office, who then push the government into a
| war that will benefit the industry or company. Or media
| companies, headed by executives seeking to push their own
| political will on nations, that harangue the public with fear
| and anger to instill a desire for war.
|
| Governments have basically no agency or will of their own.
| They're like a mecha suit from an anime. Lots of
| infrastructure, but where they go and what they do is up to
| whomever's at the controls at the time.
| jasmer wrote:
| "who then push the government into a war that will benefit
| the industry or company."
|
| Where is the evidence for this ?
|
| Wars are generally not started by the arms makers, rather,
| the profiteer off of the situation.
|
| Obviously there might be influence but I don't think that
| industrial complex is in charge of anything really.
| mrburkins wrote:
| "Industry veterans hired to patronage positions in high
| office, who then push the government into a war that will
| benefit the industry or company."
|
| Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney seem to fit this mold
| squarely
| isk517 wrote:
| Probably more appropriate to compare it to the type of mecha
| Power Rangers use, except unlikely to be piloted by a group
| of people that both A) want to work together and B) want to
| work towards the common good.
| hammock wrote:
| >The problem is that if you are being attacked, you will gladly
| allow people to make big profit if they save lives.
|
| Reminds me of the covid pandemic. Pfizer made $100 billion last
| year
| threeseed wrote:
| Pfizer was making on average $50b revenue [1] before COVID.
|
| And the profits they generated by COVID could well save
| countless more lives given that their MRNA technology is
| successfully being applied to other use cases.
|
| [1]
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/PFE/pfizer/revenue
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Thats a massive difference in absolute and relative terms.
| $50B and 100%
| pfdietz wrote:
| COVID vaccines are estimated to have saved 20 M lives world
| wide. In the US, the statistical value of a human life is
| $9 M, so (extending that to the global population, which is
| perhaps problematic) the value is $180 T. Making a measly
| $50 B is chump change in comparison.
| bratwurst3000 wrote:
| Where did that 9 million come from? Pls
| all2 wrote:
| The value is something the US Transportation Admin. has
| calculated [0]. It's rather cold-blooded, but it makes
| sense.
|
| [0] https://www.transportation.gov/office-
| policy/transportation-...
| H8crilA wrote:
| It seems a bit excessive, but if you assume someone
| working from 25 to 65, that is 40 years, at $50k per year
| then they're "worth" >= $2M to the economy. Really more
| than that because they will do some things for free to
| other people, such as family members. So it is probably
| at the right order of magnitude.
| goodpoint wrote:
| By your logic there would be nothing wrong in charging
| $100 or more for an insulin injection.
|
| Instead https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-
| rankings/cost-of-i...
| pfdietz wrote:
| The problem with insulin, at least in the US, has been
| elaborations (still under patent protection) on it that
| are slightly better than the old versions. But doctors
| have to prescribe the best treatment. There's no
| quality/cost tradeoff.
| VagueMag wrote:
| Are the people who were saved by COVID vaccines never
| going to die from any other cause? I believe the $9M
| figure is actually just a reference to what the FAA
| considers a reasonable threshold for imposing a new
| expense on aircraft manufacturers and airlines in order
| to make flying safer?
| pfdietz wrote:
| So, saving a life has no value unless the person was
| already otherwise immortal?
|
| Ridiculous.
| VagueMag wrote:
| No that isn't what I said, and yes it would be just as
| ridiculous as attributing the same value to preventing a
| 90 year old nursing home patient from dying of an endemic
| respiratory virus as we do to preventing deaths in plane
| crashes.
| pfdietz wrote:
| That's going to alter the number by less than an order of
| magnitude. The benefit still is massively larger than the
| cost.
| hammock wrote:
| Typically the way it is done is by calculating how many
| years of healthy life you saved
| bee_rider wrote:
| Which would, of course, bring the "money saved by
| vaccines" number down a bit.
|
| On the other hand, if we were able to factor in the
| benefit of milder cases and less long COVID/other side
| effects, I guess the number would go up a bit.
|
| I suspect it is just too complicated for us to work out
| here.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The agreement was $20 a vaccine, which IMO is perfectly fine.
| Making a profit from doing a necessary thing is very
| capitalism. Remember that shareholders were very upset they
| didn't make MORE profit.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Canada paid $175 per dose.
|
| https://www.oxfam.ca/news/vaccine-monopolies-make-cost-of-
| va...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| That's likely the price executives and shareholders would
| have wanted for the US. I wonder what leverage Trump held
| over Pfizer to get the $20 price. It's a genuine
| negotiating win from someone who considers just not
| paying your contractors to be good business and
| negotiating.
| hammock wrote:
| Pfizer also got billions of dollars in free and taxpayer-
| funded advertising
| glogla wrote:
| They also saved millions of lives.
| ipaddr wrote:
| [flagged]
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| And caused many unnecessary deaths by witholding the
| vaccine from less rich countries that couldn't outcompete
| richer ones, since the supply was very limited in the
| moments of most need.
|
| If they really wanted to save lives they should have
| liberalized the vaccine's production, but all they cared
| for was profit, the life saving just a coincidence.
| glogla wrote:
| Eh, it's not like you people would share SinoVac, even if
| it worked properly.
| einpoklum wrote:
| [flagged]
| 3192029941 wrote:
| I'm genuinely asking--what's the alternative to appeasement
| in this situation, aside from fighting?
| einpoklum wrote:
| I can't believe I have to explain that joke, but ok. There
| is no "appease or defend" choice - neither of these
| alternatives are real. The US is not being attacked at all,
| or attacked in the way the empire in Star Wars is attacked:
| While it attacks/oppresses everywhere and all the time,
| occasionally it meets violent resistance.
| 3192029941 wrote:
| Sorry if I'm being thick here, but I'm still confused.
| Why is neither alternative real? I get that the US isn't
| being attacked. However, appeasement in the 1930s wasn't
| a policy enacted by countries that were being actively
| attacked yet. It was a policy enacted by other countries.
|
| I guess, in my head (and I'd love to hear your take on
| this), the US doing nothing _is_ appeasement.
| steviedotboston wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| Lammy wrote:
| I agree with Butler's point but think he's missing the forest for
| the trees by focusing on territory acquisition and profits from
| production of war materials. The real point of war is that it's a
| way to farm us (the masses) for rapid development of promising
| _new_ technologies, e.g. --
|
| -- US Civil war: Rifles, telegraph, railroads
|
| -- World War 1: Optics, radio communication, aviation, tracked
| vehicles
|
| -- World War 2: Computers, cryptography, atomic energy, radar and
| microwave communication, global logistics (fuels,
| containerization, etc)
|
| -- Cold War: SPAAAAACE
| nipponese wrote:
| This has to be the most re-posted piece on HN
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?q=War+Is+a+Racket
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