Has any military action in the last 50 years been justified?

[el_bryanto]

Poll question: Has any military action in the last 50 years been justified?

In your opinion. I usually like gradations but this really does seem to be a yes-no sort of question.

Bryant

[Name removed]

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[winyanstaz]

4. sorry but the evidence proves the poster is correct in that..

they knew pearl harbor was about to be attacked..and did nothing. The policy was in place to get America into the war. Just go to google and do some homework.
It is shocking but true.

[el_bryanto]

7. I have done some homework - enough to get a Masters degree in history

And this is conspiracy theory bullshit.

Bryant

[Way2go]

12. You obviously learned nothing about the history WW2. nt

[el_bryanto]

13. Do you mean the history of world war 2?

Yes I learned a fair amount. For one thing I learned that Republicans and Conservatives hate the legacy of FDR and will stoop to anything to defame this great president.

Bryant

[Captain Hilts]

28. +1000. nt

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[el_bryanto]

36. Yep - that is the claim - did you just look it up on Wikipedia?

I don't find the evidence conclusive, myself.

Bryant

[Way2go]

41. You need to take your head out of the sand.

And not be afraid to admit that your facts are wrong.

[el_bryanto]

42. Hmmmmm.

But there is a wide range of facts about this matter. A handful of them support your theory that FDR sacrificed Pearl Harbor to get us into the war. A much larger selection of facts oppose your theory.

Conspiracy theorists are masters at tunnel vision - you only look at the facts that support your defamation of Americas greatest 20th century president.

Bryant

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[mix]

24. +1

[winyanstaz]

25. sorry...its a fact jack :)

[el_bryanto]

26. No it's not - it's a theory and not a very solid one. n/t

[Name removed]

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[el_bryanto]

40. Which Army Board would that be?

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[ieoeja]

58. Unsubstantiated lists on a website is proof?

Some quotes from said website:

"CONCLUSION - ROOSEVELT WAS A TRAITOR"

"FDR was always going to ignore Japan and go after Hitler, for his ultimate goal was to save his beloved Soviet Communism."

[chrisa]

63. Rofl. Classic.

[asdjrocky]

43. You have a masters in history?

Wow.

[el_bryanto]

46. It's not that great an accomplishment n/t

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[asdjrocky]

59. It just seems you would know more about history.

[el_bryanto]

68. Well I studied actual history - not bullshit conspiracy theories.

[asdjrocky]

75. Okay.

So in other words, you learned only what they taught in school? Do you think Columbus was a hero? Jackson a great American President?

[el_bryanto]

83. No. I think Jackson had his good points, but mostly he had bad points

Columbus is more complicated, but certainly he did some awful things.

Bryant

[KansDem]

11. At least FDR didn't invade Peru afterward.

And wasn't it about..oil (again)?

edited for another country...

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[slackmaster]

10. Laugh Laugh Laugh

:rofl:

[slackmaster]

3. If we hadn't gotten into WWII the President would be named Schikelgruber

Peace in our time, eh?

[Way2go]

6. No basis for that little claim - but believe what you will. nt

[ieoeja]

21. We knew the Japanese would attack us somewhere (they attacked everyone else, so why not us?).

But FDR thought they would attack the Philipinnes.

An attack on Pearl Harbor, with our naval forces prepared, would have still provoked the Right into acceding to US entry into WW-II. Only someone insanely stupid would let the Japanese virtually disarm us.

So you either believe FDR was insanely stupid ... or you are insanely stupid enough to believe that letting our enemy disarm us is an intelligent way to get us into a war.

[virgogal]

32. WWII was in the last fifty years? Who knew?

[el_bryanto]

35. I kind of phrased it that way to exclude WW2 but . . . oh well n/t

[chrisa]

61. Completely untrue.

WWII wasn't justified? Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo were all monsters.

As for FDR knowing in advance, another baseless conspiracy. Tell me, if FDR knew in advance, why was the surprise attack so effective?

[LostInAnomie]

66. Bullshit

Provoked them into war? How? By not selling the resources they wanted so they could expand their empire?

Knew about Pearl Harbor? That's just idiotic conspiracy theory bullshit. If FDR was intent on "provoking" Japan into war, why would he allow them to cripple our Navy if he had prior knowledge? Any attack from Japan would have been enough to declare war.

[ejbrush]

74. Oh, just give it a rest.

I've read the whole thread, and it amazes me that anyone will prop up the Empire of Japan as being an innocent naif lured into war by the rascally USA.

WTF? No, really, WTF?

Did the US lure the Imperial Japanese Army into Manchuria in 1931? Did FDR prod the Japanese to bomb Shanghai, devastate Nangking, kill tens of thousands of civilians? Never mind that the Japanese attacked British forces in Hong Kong, invaded Thailand and began to invade the Philippines on the same fricking day as Pearl Harbor. What, did Emperor Hirohito pull aside Hideki Tojo and say, "Jeeze, Roosevelt suckered us into attacking Hawaii! We'd better launch attacks on every other Western power we can right now!"

But, OK, let's imagine that the wacky conspiracies are right, and FDR had hours or days of advanced knowledge. What could he do? Attack the fleet of a sovereign power in international waters? Pretty illegal, and it'd probably start a war. Crank up the entire fleet and scatter it to the four winds? Maybe, and I suppose the IJN would have just turned their fully laden dive bombers around and returned to the carriers, without attacking the military bases that supported the fleet...

Ah, hell, I'm tired of this logarithmic dumbosity. FWIW, people of all sorts will make claims like this, but they tend to be either Conservative who hate FDR's legacy, or Japanese History Revisionists who tend to gloss over the entire WWII era. Which are you?

[cemaphonic]

80. Logarithmic dumbosity - heh, gotta remember that one.

And I agree that along with not being at all supported by any facts (other than that FDR had reason to believe that Japan would attack us ...somewhere...sometime) this line of conspiracy theory isn't even self-consistent.

[MH1]

85. "logarithmic dumbosity" - classic! I'm gonna steal that. :)

[Unvanguard]

8. Afghanistan (in itself, not how it was fought), Kosovo, conceivably the Gulf War

though probably not.

[johnaries]

27. Agreed. nt

[cemaphonic]

81. I think the Gulf War was reasonable.

Military invasion annexation of a sovereign nation isn't really kosher (and shouldn't be) in post WWII international diplomacy.

[Way2go]

9. Silly question. Couldn't you be a little more generalized/vague

when you make these things up?

[el_bryanto]

14. I could, but it'd be difficult. I think I'm about as vague as can be already.

But I guess you never know what you are capable of.

Bryant

[Way2go]

16. Must make you awfully proud to claim to have Masters in

history and know so little about a major war.

[el_bryanto]

20. Ah - perhaps I should be clear.

I know a lot about world war 2, and I am aware of the allegation that FDR knew about the war. I have read Day of Deceit by Robert B. Stinnet, for example. I just don't think the theory holds up under scrutiny unless you have another reason to hate FDR. Like say if you, Way2go, were a conservative and hated FDR, well, that'd explain why you were so willing, and indeed eager, to believe this particular canard. Obviously you aren't, or you wouldn't be posting here.

Bryant

[ieoeja]

22. "How can I start a war? I know! I'll let our enemy disarm us!"

Even GW Bush wasn't that fucking stupid.

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[ZombieHorde]

60. I am not a conservative, but I don't like FDR. Locking up kids for their skin color is pretty fucked

up in my opinion.

I don't know if FDR new about Pearl Harbor or not.

[el_bryanto]

69. in fairness he was pressured by many others - it's not like it was all his own call n/t

[haele]

15. Stopping (or slowing) ethnic clensing in Bosnia and Croatia with NATO? of course, that didn't last

As General Smedly Butler said "War is a racket" - that was one of the few times that corporate interests using the military actually matched humanitarian interests.

Haele

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

17. Gandhi.

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy.” - Gandhi

[Mari333]

52. +10000000000000000000000

[cemaphonic]

82. Well, in his case,

his passive resistance tactics would have failed miserably in the face of Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Soviet Union.

[invictus]

18. NO!

[leftstreet]

19. IT'S ALL JUSTIFIED IF IT GETS ME CHEAPER CONSUMER GOODS

Oh,

:sarcasm:

[ieoeja]

23. For those voting "no", how was rescuing civilian foreign nationals in Liberia not justified? (nt)

[Greyhound]

38. I think that a reasonable person is able to distinguish between the literal and

what the poster meant.

This isn't a court or a class.

[ieoeja]

49. Then the poster needs to provide a list.

One that does not include Kosovo, Liberia, South Vietnam (the '75 rescue), liberating Kuwait, protecting food shipments in Somalia (not the later mission), the Sinai Desert, Yemen, the Iranian rescue attempt, Lebanon (brief and a failure), etc.

Some of these were fairly extensive. Are we supposed to just ignore them because they were justified? Shouldn't the question then be, "were any of the un-justified US military actions in the last fifty years justified?"


On edit: I purposefully left out fighting a volcano in Sicily (I think) to limit this to the military acting in a military fashion instead of any action undertaken by the military.

[Way2go]

54. Perceptive points and a very important question. nt

[gratuitous]

29. *Any* military action?

Like providing the honor guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier? Kind of a silly question, if you ask me.

[el_bryanto]

31. Yes but i think most people know what I mean.

I mean military action meaning a bombing or invasion or the like.

Bryant

[jmowreader]

30. I think Panama was

Full disclosure: The reason we went to Panama was to fix another Poppy Bush fuckup. This dumbass put two of the worst dictators of the late 20th Century--Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein--on the CIA payroll, and we had to expend lives and treasure to fix his mistakes.

But once we created the Noriega monster we had to fix it--the guy was a gangster and drug trafficker, as well as being a tinhorn dictator. There's not enough room on this board to hold all Noriega's sins; suffice it to say Noriega was about as bad as Saddam Hussein.

[Way2go]

33. Panama was done to make sure NORIEGA couldn't spill

the beans on Bush re Iran-Contra and other matters.

[jmowreader]

70. Set Bush's justification aside...

The effect of the Panama invasion--putting Noriega in jail and leaving him there--was ultimately a good thing.

How fucking rotten Noriega was can be illustrated by a simple tale of woe: Noriega attempted to rig the 1989 Panamanian presidential election. One of the things he did was to put all his troops in civilian clothes and bus them from precinct to precinct so they could vote early and vote often. This they did--for the opposition parties' candidate. Noriega also had a serious goon squad called the Dignity Battalions--they were into minor atrocities like kidnapping and murder. As I said two posts ago, I don't consider Noriega any better than Saddam Hussein. Well...you remember the Hill & Knowlton-concocted fairy tale about Iraqi soldiers going into Kuwaiti hospitals and dumping the babies out of the incubators? Noriega's digbats (or as General Thurman called them, "dingbats") would have done that.

[Hugabear]

77. Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein were two of the worst dictators of the late 20th century?

Maybe if you buy into rethug propaganda, but neither one comes even close! I think that Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Pinochet, and a few others would be at the top of that list. You could even make a good case for Mugabe and Kim Jong Il.

[jmowreader]

86. They're definitely in the top 11

My list of the top 11:

1. The Saudi royal family
2. Idi Amin
3. The Kim family--not much difference between Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il
4. Noriega
5. Pinochet
6. Pol Pot
7. Saddam
8. Mugabe
9. Moammar Qadhafi
10. Ferdinand Marcos
11. Mullah Mohammed Omar

You can move the order around some, but there's no getting around the fact these are supremely evil men.

[struggle4progress]

79. Sort of. Poppy put Noriega on the payroll. Later, Noriega made the same mistake Saddam made later:

when he was off the payroll, he suggested he would sing like a canary about his time in the employ of the CIA. This was very embarrassing to Poppy: in fact, it briefly popped up as an infighting issue during the 1988 Republican presidential primary. Poppy's solution, once he was CIC, was to invade and grab the guy

Noriega wasn't at all great guy, but he wasn't nearly as bad as the murderous death squad thugs we'd been supporting in El Salvador or Guatemala in those days

[nadinbrzezinski]

44. Bosnia comes darn close

And we, as in the West, should have gone into Rwanda.

Genocide Convention and all... after that NO.

[defendandprotect]

48. In fact, as WWII was ending they were trying to swing troops out to VN and Korea . ..!!!

Troops protested and didn't happen --

But they were all loaded up -- all the supplies --- for the movement ..

How much war and war profit and disruption is enough for the right wing?

[el_bryanto]

51. I'm not familiar with this particular claim - evidence? n/t

[Name removed]

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[chrisa]

62. Burden is on you.

What evidence have you provided, Way2Go? You're the one spouting the extreme claims and made the original claim, so the burden of evidence is on you.

[ieoeja]

53. Korea, yes. But the Brits went into Vietnam.

What were we supposed to do? Leave the Japanese in charge?

[Hippo_Tron]

64. Actually we weren't very concerned about them until 1949

Truman wanted the French out of Vietnam because he didn't want the Europeans re-establishing their colonial Empires. But as soon as Mao came to power and Truman was attacked by the Republicans for "losing China" his attitude changed very quickly.

[Posteritatis]

67. Mmm, cryptohistory. (nt)

[timeforpeace]

55. No, although a permanent presence in Iraq, however odious, may prove beneficial if the Islamofascist

regimes in that region keep sponsoring terror.

[hayu_lol]

65. It would be very helpful if way2go would divulge his/her age...

what you've read of history is just that...reading. My take on WWII is different from yours, but then I was alive then and you obviously were not.

No president could justify the destruction of our 'Battleship' fleet and the potential loss of all our carriers(fortunately they were at sea during the attack).

Korea: Justified because one official forget to mention in a speech that we considered Korea a country of interest to us. Officially, Korea was a UN Police Action.

[jmowreader]

72. They'd be better just slightly west

Saudi Arabia's government was the model for the Taliban.

[grahamhgreen]

73. You mean Saudi Arabia, Dubai, and friends?

[grahamhgreen]

71. Only if you make $$$ from selling bullets and killing people!

Although Korea seems like a success....!

[seeinfweggos]

76. we should have gone into rwanda

[DainBramaged]

78. WOW, A history poll thread turns into a flame fest

who knew?

:shrug:

[FreeJoe]

84. Some

Comparing North and South Korea today, I would say that the intervention in Korea was very justified.

The attempted hostage rescue in Iran was justified, even if unsuccessful.

The Grenada action, tiny as it was, was still justified.

The removal of Noriega from Panama certainly appears to have been a good thing.

The intervention to stop the genocide in Rwanda was...oops, we just sat back and let that happen.

The campaign in what was Yugoslavia definitely looks good.

The Gulf War? Borderline.

Afghanistan was necessary.