The taste of victory has gone sour...

James S

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Some quotes from the article for you:

"The taste of victory has gone sour in the mouth of every thinking American I know."

"Two wrongs don't make a right."

"We've lost the peace... we can't make it stick."

"Friend and foe alike look you accusingly in the face and tell you how bitterly disappointed they are in you as an American."

"Never has American prestige in Europe been lower."

"...instead of coming in with a bold plan of relief and reconstruction, we came in full of evasions and apologies."

"All we have brought... so far is confusion backed up by a drumhead regime of military courts."

"The time has come for our own future security to give the best we have to the world instead of the worst."


Sounds pretty typical of what you read in the press about Iraq doesn't it. So there must be a twist or I wouldn't have posted it /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif The thing is that this is from an article written in Life magazine in January of 1946! This is 5 months after the official end of WWII.

This wonderful historical article was brought to my attention by Steven DenBeste who goes on to say that:

"One lesson from this is that it is premature to judge success or failure when you're only a few months into a multi-year process, but that someone's always going to try. But another lesson is that biased anti-American reporting is nothing new."

What do you all think about that?
 

Empath

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I really do appreciate the opportunity to see such an interesting piece of journalistic history, Thank you. It's a valuable piece and Mr. DenBeste deserves kudos for calling our attention to it, as do you.

Mr. DenBeste though is a bit disappointing. It's always a disapointment to see someone use something of such value to build a strawman.
 

James S

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Empath, though I admit to enjoying reading Mr DenBestes commentary I'll agree he's not at all apologetic for his stances. I could argue the strawman issue with several previous articles I think, but this one was rather short and while he makes a few comments I'm not sure there was space for a decent strawman construction /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif Are you referring to this particular article or to his articles in general?

Blinded: Yes, it was in WWII, in 1945 I think. Actually it was the British that did most of it but we definitely participated. The bombing of Berlin and Lepzig was supposed to be limited to industrial targets, but we bombed regardless of the weather and often it amounted to randomly bombing civilians. Dresden was worse as I don't think they even pretended to be doing anything but firebombing the city at large. Historically and on the record Eisenhower had always asked for precision bombing, or as much as the technology of the day could provide, but he went along with this plan that led to the deaths of 30,000 german civilians. The excuse given was that they wanted to do whatever was necessary to end the war as quickly as possible. It's not an excuse, but it was their reason. Roosevelt did talk about the Germans needing to be "compelled to recognize their defeat" and "accept responsibility for the horrors their country had inflicted on the world" perhaps that was what he was thinking about in this.

I'm not a scholar on WWII by any means at all, so some reading might be in order to get better information. Interestingly enough Kurt Vonnegut was actually in Dresden during the raids. I wonder if he wrote anything about it?
 

Empath

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[ QUOTE ]
James S said:
Empath, though I admit to enjoying reading Mr DenBestes commentary I'll agree he's not at all apologetic for his stances. I could argue the strawman issue with several previous articles I think, but this one was rather short and while he makes a few comments I'm not sure there was space for a decent strawman construction /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif Are you referring to this particular article or to his articles in general?


[/ QUOTE ]

I've never heard of Mr. DenBeste, so I couldn't really evaluate him overall. He said:

[ QUOTE ]
"One lesson from this is that it is premature to judge success or failure when you're only a few months into a multi-year process, but that someone's always going to try. But another lesson is that biased anti-American reporting is nothing new."

[/ QUOTE ]

His conclusion that we learn a lesson from the article indicating it's too early to know if there's been success or failure is a strawman. It may be too early, but the Life article has nothing to do with it. Simply because he found some similarities in the world reaction after WWII and now, isn't indicative of anything other than early post war times are very delicate international situations. By the time he was born in 1953 and learned a few things in school, the successes and/or failures of WWII were defined and abbreviated into a few paragraphs for him in text books, in the manner historians want it defined. The Life article was more realtime accounting, dealing with international feelings and emotional reactions to "foreigners" on their home soil and the tensions, accusations and complaints that would result. That's trivia that wouldn't even get into the text books.

His other conclusion was that the article was biased, proving that biased reporting is nothing new. I'll agree that biased reporting is nothing new, but the article has no bearing on such a conclusion. The article dealt with international dissatisfactions. The idea that Europeans said basically "thanks for the help; now go home", and wanted the Americans to leave as quickly as possible doesn't seem like a stretch. Reporting on that attitude wouldn't necessarily be biased reporting; though it might have been. But, Mr DenBeste doesn't know that.
 

BentHeadTX

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Never look at history with "PC" eyes,
The bombing of Germany was no percision by any means of the word. Just guessing were the bombs will land. The Germans killed 10 million + civilians (Jews, Europeans and Russians) so 30,000 is a drop in the bucket. Stalin killed 30 million of his own and the Japanese killed, tortured, raped and murdered millions more.
IMHO, the point of Iraq is to babysit the middle east. Having US, NATO or (scrary thought) UN troops in Afganistan and Iraq really makes it much easier to track the people they prefer to watch.
One part of European psyche that is bruised: their military power. In the last 60 years, the power has shifted east and west. The US and China are the military might in the world, Korea has millions (and millions, and millions) of troops, nukes and advanced weaponry. Re-unite Korea and they would be #3 in military might in the world. The rest of the far east is arming in response to China. The struggle is shifting east to the middle east or far east in the upcoming future.
Europe is out of the equation, they will get their collective asses kicked by China so I personally don't care what the western Europeans whine about. Ask the Eastern Europeans what they think, Poland is a critical country in the 21st century...ask them. Germany and France were the big guys in the last 250 years...the sun has set.
The big dogs are the US and China... the USSR has died and the power has shifted east. The critical ocean is the Pacific, not the Atlantic. Personally, I think 30 years from now China will the the top dog on the earth...they are firing on all cylinders and their economy is going to cause tremendous damage to both the EU and US's economies. Their military will then force the issue and the US power will decline.
All things that go up will also go down...
 

ChrisA

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@BentHeadTX - Gosh, that's a great example why America is getting such a bad reputation around the globe right now. You really think it's all about military power of a single nation (or about military power at all). That's ignorant BS... Have you learned anything from history ? What's the NATO and the UN all about ? I guess, you have to learn it the hard way, if you don't realize what's going on. It's not about power of a single nation, it's about working TOGETHER !

Chris
 

smokinbasser

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I know I am going to regret this but: ok look at India and Pakistan, Israel and palestine, this type of list goes on and on. The only way this blue marble will ever be conflict free is when the next to last person on earth passes away. It will be a lonely place but no fighting.Given my druthers I will choose the winning side ty.The meek may inherit the earth but not till the strong have finished with it.
 

James S

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Hey, stop hijacking my thread /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

The point was that people don't need to freak out just yet given the medias presentation of the situation in Iraq. There is historical evidence that this is a normal part of the healing after a war.

it doesn't necessarily mean that we're headed into a "quagmire" or that the rest of the world will end up hating and shunning us for the rest of our days.

Thats all.

I'll think about the rest and see if it makes any sense to me later on...

Thanks guys, I knew this would be interesting /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 

vcal

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I read Iraqi newspapers, as well as follow other media from all over.
-Not just from U.S. sources like Fox News on the far right, or CNN (domestic version) perhaps on the left).

My own impression after reading everything that I can-from many sources, is that most of the American public are suffering from the real "sticker shock" $ cost of the Iraq war.

This comes at a particularly bad time -for the US, when it's budget is already wildly in the red ($455 billion overspent just in this fiscal year alone-not counting the extra 87 billion for Iraq), and also during a still persistent jobless recovery from a recession.
-And particularly galling is the fact that this an open-ended commitment of blood and treasure that at the present time shows no time envelope. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif
Comments?
 

keithhr

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weapons of mass destruction? I'm still waiting to see results from our search for these weapons that were the sole reason that we went into Iraq. We didn't go there because Sadam was a bad guy, he's always been a bad guy, we went there because we were told that there was evidence, proof that weapons were there and we had the goods on him. I personally will settle for nothing less and feel duped. What happened to fiscally conservative financial planning?$500 billion dollar deficits are mortgaging our future for forever.
 

ChrisA

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[ QUOTE ]
...because Sadam was a bad guy, he's always been a bad guy,...

[/ QUOTE ]

Funny you mention that, because back in the 80ies (Reagan era), America was rather relaxed about what was going on there. Here's an article that sums up the love-hate relationship between America and Irak during the last few decades: Link

Chris
 

BentHeadTX

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ChrisA
The only way I can see this crazy planet ever getting peaceful is for one country to take it all. The trick is to bring the living standards of the planet's citizens up to a decent level. OK, now mix religion, nationalism and greed into the equation.
Personally, I was against the war in Iraq and not because the UN was not on board. The US and the EU have both known how Iraq tortured and killed it's own people for decades. We also know that is going on in Africa, death by the millions this very day. If the EU and the US actually gave a crap about the world they would be in the Congo, Liberia, Sudan and other countries to stop the genocide.
The thing that gives a country some power is the economy. Take a country with 1.2 billion people, a government that will control it, enough factories to produce goods for the entire planet, a huge standing army and the drive to take "it's rightful place as a world superpower" and you have China.
Chris, if you like history... read up on China. I did for a few weeks and it was a fascinating read. They say they will do X and they do X! Their goverment is communist, will remain communist and uses capitalism to fund it's economic and military muscle. China is busy kicking the EU and US's asses economically and will continue to do so. China has spent at least 80 billion dollars (~68 billion Euros) on their military for 2003.
Considering they probably get 10 times as much out of their spending as the US... that is a lot of money. I don't think they are doing it because they like parades!
The world changed in 1917, again in 1945, 1989 and 1991. Although I wish that we all can get along, the oppressed countries are going to raise hell. Religion gets in the mix, nationalism starts boiling up and more insanity rolls across the landscape.
Ultimately, China is going to be the top dog on the globe. Hopefully, they will do a much better job of it than Europe or the US has. Such is history...
 

ChrisA

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@BentHeadTX - I agree to that. After reading your first post I felt you we're too much focussed on military power of a single nation... Anyway, it seems that I was wrong and we think along the same lines. Speaking of China, I too think that this country will be the next generations Superpower. Not only because of the military, but because of the economies mighty potentials. But who knows what US, Europe and the rest of the world will come up with until that day - quite interesting times we live in...

Chris
 

Charles Bradshaw

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The world outside the USA has an anti-USA view. Why is this?

The short answer, is the the US Government has a long history of meddling in other countries' affairs, toppling governments and setting up pro (or so they think) dictators, for US Gov. Political and particularly Coporate interests (Greed).

The unfortunate problem, is that ordinary americans are just as disgusted at this sort of behaviour on the part of our Government and Corporations, as those people are, BUT, those outside the USA blame ALL americans for this.

I know we are not the only country to meddle in other countries' affairs. Most Governments are or have been guilty of this at one time or another, throughout recorded history.

The perception regarding the USA and Iraq by others, may indeed be fully justified. History militates towards that.

Regarding Africa, what I am going to say is callous. However, I present it as a possible private Governmental Attitude. Nothing more than that. It has alot to do with HIV/AIDS, since it did come from Africa. The perception may be that ALL black africans are infected with HIV/AIDS. So, who cares if they exterminate each other??? Remember, that this supposition, is based on the percieved attitude of the US Government towards Haitians, IV Drug users, and Gays in the early days of the US AIDS Epidemic. Reasearch into treating AIDS required loud agitating by trouble making Gays (AIDS Activists), to even get started.

'Trouble making' is from the Government perspective, not mine.

The above supposition(s) are possible, and in my mind: plausible.
 
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