The failure of the Vietnam war it was run by Politicians who made it perfectly clear why Politicians running a war are a very bad thing. Politicians should publically declare the end result desired outcome, and then GTFO of the way of the Mil and let it do what it is setup to do. If that means the Mil needs to call up 750k people, well, so be it.
We could have easily defeated the North Vietnamese, but we fucked around with utter stupidity because Politician. To say nothing of almost as dumb Mil Leadership who didn't bother to retain the knowledge of, much less develop, how to fight jungle warfare (I mean, never would there be an occasion for the US Mil to ever have to fight in the jungle again).
It is alright to try win hearts after the conclusion of the war. But it is disastrous to go to battle without a clear objective.
Do you agree or don't agree?
It is alright to try win hearts after the conclusion of the war. But it is disastrous to go to battle without a clear objective.
Do you agree or don't agree?
Our wars have clear objectives and they are to generate money for the biggest backers of politicians in Washington. The wars in Iraq were extremely successful, taken from a certain point of view.
Yeah should've taken their rubber trees and minerals like the oil in Iraq. No point leaving it for people who don't know how to appreciate democracy.That was the lesson of Vietnam.
Our wars have clear objectives and they are to generate money for the biggest backers of politicians in Washington. The wars in Iraq were extremely successful, taken from a certain point of view.
It is alright to try win hearts after the conclusion of the war. But it is disastrous to go to battle without a clear objective.
Do you agree or don't agree?
It's basically socialism. But the GoP isn't against socialism in as they claim, just socialism going to the constituents and backers of team blue. One should not buy promises of smaller government and reduced spending from Republicans. They want to expand it as surely as the Dems do, just in different ways. Those that actually want to bring the country back to living within its means are effectively out of luck as far as which party to back is concerned.
The wisdom of spending can only be qualified by what's being purchased. Fulfilling worthwhile long term goals like education or health is surely not the same as war or making the rich even richer.
Too many people fall for the Republican con - of claiming to be the part of 'small spending, small government, anti-debt', which is a con for two reasons.
One is the con that their real agenda is plutocracy - and all that 'small spending' talk really means 'small spending' for the public. Though eventually, they really would get to 'small government and small spending' as the few most rich have all the resources and don't need the policies to redistribute wealth to the top anymore, which is what's been happening since Reagan.
The second is the misrepresentation of the economic benefits of government spending and debt.
They sort of turn it into a religious issue, government is evil, taxes are evil, government spending is evil, and get people buying into that. And it's false. Too little government is bad and too much is bad, but they're not for Goldilocks, they're for baby bear, who will bring that plutocracy and reduced wealth creation.
There's really not a "right" level of government spending, any more than it's more "right" for a kid with money than one without to go to college. Some things are worth purchasing, some aren't, and fiat money provides the flexibility to pay for whatever has desirable returns over some timespan. For example, education & research have incredible long term potential; who knew that obscure physics and math from 100 years ago would be the basis of the digital revolution today.
It's simply the job of citizens in a democracy to elect the best & brightest people to determine what those things might be. That's what conservatism/traditionalism fundamentally fails at.
There's not an exact right amount of government spending, but it is a goldilocks issue - not the 'smaller is better' theology pushed by the plutocrats.
And what you get for the money is only part of the story. Yes, getting better things is better.
But let's learn perhaps the most important American economics lesson of the 20th century. People like to note that WWII was pivotal in bring America out of the Great Republican Depression pretty fully.
But what most don't notice is the lesson in that. What we did was take on massive government debt, to fund massive government spending, and burn the money - pretty literally.
Sending people overseas for battle. Building goods to be destroyed - bombs, bullets, guns, planes, ships. Boom - same as paying people to dig and fill a hole over and over, economically.
And yet - despite the money being close to 100% waste economically - it had a great effect on the economy, having all that credit money creating work and salaries and consumer spending.
Now, imagine all that WWII economic activity going to economically useful things, like infrastructure and education.
For decades, we've been squandering the fortune of the country on plutocracy. We could be doing a lot better, with more 'stimulus'.
The most apropos lesson here is what the asian economic "miracle" countries got for their well spent bootstrap fiat money.
You should make your point more fully.
You should make your point more fully.
They looked at the smart aspect of what we were doing (fiat spending), subtracted the dumb aspects (military & other waste), and came up with plans to bootstrap their countries from third world to first in a matter of a couple generations. I'm largely agreeing with what you said fwiw.
In his book Kicking Away the Ladder (which won the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy's 2003 Gunnar Myrdal Prize), Chang argued that all major developed countries used interventionist economic policies in order to get rich and then tried to forbid other countries from doing similarly. The World Trade Organization, World Bank and International Monetary Fund come in for strong criticism from Chang for "ladder-kicking" of this type which, he argues, are the fundamental obstacle to poverty alleviation in the developing world. This and other work led to his being awarded the 2005 Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought from the Global Development and Environment Institute (previous prize-winners include Amartya Sen, John Kenneth Galbraith, Herman Daly, Alice Amsden and Robert Wade).[15][16]
The book's methodology was criticized by Douglas Irwin, Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College and author of a 2011 study of the Smoot–Hawley tariff,[17] writing on the website of the Economic History Association:
Chang only looks at countries that developed during the nineteenth century and a small number of the policies they pursued. He did not examine countries that failed to develop in the nineteenth century and see if they pursued the same heterodox policies only more intensively. This is a poor scientific and historical method. Suppose a doctor studied people with long lives and found that some smoked tobacco, but did not study people with shorter lives to see if smoking was even more prevalent. Any conclusions drawn only from the observed relationship would be quite misleading.[18]
In contrast, Stanley Engerman, Professor of Economic History at Rochester University praised Chang's approach:
Ha-Joon Chang has examined a large body of historical material to reach some very interesting and important conclusions about institutions and economic development. Not only is the historical picture re-examined, but Chang uses this to argue the need for a changing attitude to the institutions desired in today's developing nations. Both as historical reinterpretation and policy advocacy, "Kicking Away the Ladder?" deserves a wide audience among economists, historians, and members of the policy establishment.[19]
Following up on the ideas of Kicking Away the Ladder, Chang published Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism in December 2008.[20] Chang countered Irwin's criticisms by arguing that countries that had failed to develop had generally followed free market policies. Chang also argued that while state interventionism sometimes produced economic failures, it had a better record than unregulated free market economies which, he maintained, very rarely succeeded in producing economic development. He cited evidence that GDP growth in developing countries had been higher prior to external pressures recommending deregulation and extended his analysis to the failures of free trade to induce growth through privatisation and anti-inflationary policies. Chang's book won plaudits from Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz for its fresh insight and effective blend of contemporary and historical cases but was criticised by former World Bank economist William Easterly, who said that Chang used selective evidence in his book. Chang responded to Easterly's criticisms, asserting that Easterly misread his argument. Easterly in turn provided a counter-reply.[21][22][23]
They looked at the smart aspect of what we were doing (fiat spending), subtracted the dumb aspects (military & other waste), and came up with plans to bootstrap their countries from third world to first in a matter of a couple generations. I'm largely agreeing with what you said fwiw.
But didn't they do alot of military spending. Japan, Taiwan, S.Korea didn't have a choice because of their neighbors.They looked at the smart aspect of what we were doing (fiat spending), subtracted the dumb aspects (military & other waste), and came up with plans to bootstrap their countries from third world to first in a matter of a couple generations. I'm largely agreeing with what you said fwiw.
They looked at the smart aspect of what we were doing (fiat spending), subtracted the dumb aspects (military & other waste), and came up with plans to bootstrap their countries from third world to first in a matter of a couple generations. I'm largely agreeing with what you said fwiw.
In his book Kicking Away the Ladder (which won the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy's 2003 Gunnar Myrdal Prize), Chang argued that all major developed countries used interventionist economic policies in order to get rich and then tried to forbid other countries from doing similarly. The World Trade Organization, World Bank and International Monetary Fund come in for strong criticism from Chang for "ladder-kicking" of this type which, he argues, are the fundamental obstacle to poverty alleviation in the developing world. This and other work led to his being awarded the 2005 Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought from the Global Development and Environment Institute (previous prize-winners include Amartya Sen, John Kenneth Galbraith, Herman Daly, Alice Amsden and Robert Wade).[15][16]
That was worth a necro ? But I guess I'm not improving it much.
There we have it, an expected immature interjection to advocate genocide and slaughter. No solution to peace -- just a desire to devastatingly increase harm and destabilised horror. Hardly an unexpected desire when in consideration of this user.As Patton would say the object of war is not to die for your country but to make some other sorry son of a bitch die for his country. Just wipe out everyone in the country that started the war. Napalm falling everywhere . . . Babies cry, I do not care! If they started the war make them all die.
? Most certainly not. 'Clear objective...?' No.That was the lesson of Vietnam.
There we have it, an expected immature interjection to advocate genocide and slaughter. No solution to peace -- just a desire to devastatingly increase harm and destabilised horror. Hardly an unexpected desire when in consideration of this user.
Time to repeat what I wrote over a year and a half ago:
? Most certainly not. 'Clear objective...?' No.
Lesson ought to be -- adeptly choosing or avoiding what wars to fight.
Be just in fighting a just war.
Vietnam, not a war the USA had an ounce of justification to wage.
The primary objective of Vietnamese sovereignty does not appear to be your concern, Greenman. Rather, imperial subservience, from the gun of the French, Japanese, French again, and then the apparent objective of the USA.
Sovereignty was natively attained against the Japanese after they first drove out the French. The US did an about face against the independent Vietnamese in encouraging the return of the French, warfare resumed, and defeated French tagging out for a defeat of the USA. All at a great and avoidable cost, that far too many of you can recognise and learn from.
What it comes down to -- to too many of you Yanks -- is that you are so blindly self indulgent as to believe that if you opt to act then upon that arrogance alone lends determination for credence of the act being justly in the white and any opposition in black deserving to wallow in deference to your know-it-all influencing control if not all out rule.
- Picking sides in a civil war?
- Waging a war of imperialism to prop up your puppet and deny native self-determination?
- Total war? Then what outcome? This entire thread is of military ignorance of the first act outweighing any concerns to any following let along a final act in terms of social and political status.
This thread concerns encouraging the perpetuation of destabilised enemies and of destruction. It is a misdirected promotion of repeated failure.
War ain't easy. Fools and criminals think it as such.
...Then, this began as a failure of a discussion as it did not even define:
The last US attempt at total war? How did the escalating battles of Fallujah go for ya? Following acts after the utter devastation of a city?
- Total War
- whom against:
- organised state militaries
- domestic insurgencies
- multinational yet numerically minor terrorist groups
The Iraqi Sunni population had significant elements of ever lasting distrust and animosity. The US example of overt and merciless force enabled the Shia government of Iraq to further a marginalising campaign against a targeted domestic population..... A simplified route of US arrogant ineptitude to the current act: ISIS.
Total war against such an insurgent group? What do bastards desire to devastate now? What cities? Are you as immoral as the likes of Bashar al-Assad and do worse than barrel bomb or gas civilians to exterminate all opposing terrorists? Are you a Putin? Do you admire, tolerate, and even endorse either? Are you as immoral and unreliable as a Trump?
The start and end of this discussion has been simple in its ineptitude to fail to discuss the complications and reality.
Rather, just a rah-rah foolishness of total war is cool with objectives.....