Zonie63
Posts: 2826
Joined: 4/25/2011
From: The Old Pueblo
Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: BamaD
The U.S. lost 420,000 souls in World War II. Have Arab terrorists really claimed more than that?
I said Pearl not in the war.
9/11 alone matched our loses at Pearl.
Actually, the Japanese attacked more than just Pearl Harbor that day. That was only one piece of a larger operation which also involved attacks on the Philippines and British-controlled Hong Kong. They also attacked the US possessions of Guam and Wake a few days later.
As for the claim that the terrorists have been at war with us for 40 years, I would wonder what the basis of such a claim might be.
A little over 40 years ago was the time of the Arab oil embargo. Compare that to the Japanese in 1941, when we imposed an embargo on them, they attacked us in defiance. When the Arabs imposed an embargo on us, we got down on our knees and begged, "Oh please, pleeeeease sell us oil! We'll do anything! We'll pay double, triple...quadruple!!! Please, please, please, we need oil!" They saw our weakness and capitalized on it.
And by paying them all that money, rather than making our stand right then and there, we have unwittingly given them virtually unlimited finance. The powers that be did not recognize this as a potential problem for US security. In their own short-sighted, addle-headed brains, the policymakers probably saw it as a good thing.
quote:
So all our problems are our own fault and we deserve anything that happens to us?
I suppose this question could be answered in different ways, depending on what position one takes on foreign policy.
There are some things which are clearly our own fault, much of which has to do with our incoherent and ill-conceived policies which continue to be advocated over and over and over again.
One could argue that we never should have gotten involved in the Middle East in the first place. We had no possessions or claims there. Prior to WW2, it wasn't even in our sphere of influence, which was mainly limited to Latin America and the Pacific Rim. We chose to get involved, just because we could. The Muslims were hardly much of a threat at that time. But our own policies eventually made them into a threat. We wanted to use them as pawns in the Cold War, but much to our surprise, the "pawns" became too much for us to handle.
If they're a threat today, then the fault is ours for either causing it and/or not recognizing it sooner. If this threat has been going on for at least 40 years, then what were we doing 40 years ago or all the time since?
Sometimes, I think some people look at foreign policy as if they're watching a 1950s era Western. Each episode shows a new batch of bad guys to deal with, but without any connection to any of the other episodes. The same set of "good guys" being constantly plagued and menaced by "bad guys," coming out of nowhere for no apparent reason other than the fact that they're "bad guys."
I suppose what floors me about this is that there are those who actually believe that this is a more "realistic" view of the world and a "rational" approach to US foreign policy.
< Message edited by Zonie63 -- 9/13/2014 8:23:29 AM >
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