Why does U.S.A. support Israel? - Finally, I'm Asking

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-11-14 09:02:42

I said, the Jews and Christians have an equal right to live in the middle east.
Palestinians have an equal right to live there too. In fact, Palestinians lived there since 1000 BC; that's a thousand years before Christ. Also listen to me, I said to not give Jerusalem to Palestine. I said honour the commitment to give them Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Here's the map of the state of Israel today, showing the Gaza Strip and West Bank:

They have forfeited some of that right by murdering innocent people, just as the Germans have forfeited the right to live in Poland when they voted for Hitler. I think some of the land Israel holds can be kepts as justifiable compensation for all the murders of Israeli citizens commited by Palestinians. That is organized terrorism committed by some of the very people now in the Palestinian Authority government. No, I don't think the Palestinians should get all the land they want, and the Oslo accords occured before many more murders took place under Palestinian leadership direction. Whatever was agreed to in Oslo didn't take into account all the additional crimes the Palestinians have committed since then.

There clearly needs to be seperation between the Israelis and Palestinians as the Palestinians will not stop murdering them, and the Palestinians also need a place to live, so Israel is going to give up some land so it can put the Palestinians someplace, but they Palestinians aren't going to get everything they want, nor should they, since their path was one of bloody violence, they should pay the price for that. The Indians under M. Ghandi led a better example, they got Indian Independence with a minimum of violence, the only thing the Palestinians know is violence, thats the only way they know to achieve their goals. If they don't like something, they go kill someone.

Here's the approved barrier route as of May 2005:
Notice the cyan coloured sections where the barrier cuts into the West Bank. The green line denotes the border, the blue line shows where the barrier is built. Between is the area ceded to Palestine by the Oslo Accord but Israel reneged.

I think murdering innocent civilians is a more serious crime than not giving back all the land right away. You forget this all began during the 1972 Munich Olympics when they murdered the Israeli team. You are talking about Israel keeping its word to a pack of murderers, who voted in terrorists. I think so long as the Palestinians go murdering people, Israel will always give them the minimum they can get away with. If someone murdered my brother and I owed the murderer money, I think I'd be somewhat slow and neglectful in paying him back.

Also notice the Golan Heights and the UNDOF zone. That's land taken from Syria by military force. Historically Israel never had that before. Israel certainly has enough land.

Syria was raining down missiles on Israeli settlements from the Golan Heights.
People who start wars risk losing them. If Syria didn't want to lose the Golan Heights, then it shouldn't have attacked Israel. Somehow they just can't seem to resist the urge to kill the Jews, can they, they even risk losing their countries, but they cannot resist the siren call of "Kill the Jews."

And Israel circa 1000 BC, and 63 BC - 70 AD. Notice Philistia is larger than the Gaza Strip today, extending further north.

The Palestinians aren't the Philistines. The Philistines are an extinct culture, along with the Ancient Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, and the Classical Romans; their language, religion and culture are extinct, done it partly by the Islamic tide that washed over the Middle East and North Africa which spread itself with the sword. No Islamic culture predates 700 AD, because that is when that religion began. Notice how Islam requires its adherents to worship in Arabic, most other religions allow worship in the native language, but not Islam, it has washed over the old cultures and demolished them.

RobertDyck · 2006-11-14 10:52:09

Israel has killed innocent civilians too. Israelis are just as much a "pack of murderers" as Palestinians. Name calling like that will only heighten emotions, ensuring no solution is possible. I'm sure Arabs claim Israeli "terrorist" acts have forfeited any right to exist, justifies "pushing them into the ocean". We saw how well that worked. When Egypt attempted to "push Israel into the sea" they lost the Sinai. Returning Sinai to Egypt resulting lasting peace. Exterminating Palestinians won't work any better. These guys had fought for over a thousand years when Jesus was borne; the fighting won't stop until they learn to get along without attempting to wipe each other out.

The Palestinians aren't the Philistines.

Yes they are; they've been converted to the Islamic faith. In fact, Hebrew and Arab both originated from Semitic people. Read the history, you'll see Semitic people arrived 3300BC. In fact, they intermingled with the Ghassulians people where were there before; Calcholithic period was 4300-3300BC. During the Calcholithic period, Ghassulians built city states including Jericho. Before them were the Yarmukians people, the Neolithic period 8500-4300BC, and they did have argriculture. The article doesn't mention if there was any intermingling (marriage/children) between Ghassulians and Yarmukians; I think it's just too long ago. Are you getting a sense how old all this is?

Let me give you another linkage. Israelites appeared in history from Semitic people in 1550BC (late bronze age). At some point they moved to an island in the Nile delta, but Egypt conquered all the Nile. They moved back around 1200BC (the Exodus). Israel was destroyed by Assyria in 722BC, elite Israelites (upper and middle class) were deported and replaced by settlers from elsewhere in the Assyrian Empire. Of the lower classes, many fled to Judah, and many stayed behind mixing with deportees from Mesopotamia; they became the Samaritans. Israelis distrusted and hated Samaritans, despite the fact they had the same ancestors. Class bigotry?

History of Palestine

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-11-14 13:09:35

Israel has killed innocent civilians too. Israelis are just as much a "pack of murderers" as Palestinians.

Did the Israelis want to kill innocent civilians, or did they kill innocent civilians as an unintended consequence of pursuing other objectives. You just shrug your shoulders and say, "Well the results are the same so they are the same." No they are not the same! When Palestinians kill innocent Israeli civilians, those civilians were their objective. If innocent civilians die, they consider their mission to be a success; if Israelis only kill innocent civilians but don't achieve their objective they consider that a mission failure.

The Palestinians use surface to surface missiles because they really aren't concerned about who in particular they kill, just so long as they kill "some Jews." This intent produces some casualities that really aren't important to their goal of an independent Palestine because those victims aren't really the ones who are oppressing them, they are just some conveinient Jews that get in the way of their rockets and bomb.

The Israelis uses air to surface missiles usually shot from helicopters of planes, they usually wait till they have a particular wanted target in their sites and then they fire that missile, if the missile hits, then it kills their target and perhaps some surrounding individuals, if it misses then in kills some other individuals without killing the main target, but the point is they are trying to kill somebody in particular rather than killing just a general category of people, and I must add, they were much more accurate than the Allies were in defeating the Axis nations during World War II.

The Israelis know all about killing a general category of people, they as Jews were victims of just that sort of exercise, or their parents and grandparents were. The Palestinians uses terrorism and missiles because that is the best they can do in killing Jews, the result is some civilians being killed. If the Israelis were intent on killing a general category of people, they wouldn't go after a specific person, and they wouldn't use air to surface missiles. The Germans taught them how this was done. The Israelis can take control of any given part of the West Bank and the Gaza strip, the Palestinians can't hold onto Israeli land, but the Israelis can hold onto that of the Palestinians, that fact means they can occupy a village and systematically kill all the Palestinians in that village while cutting off their escape, then they would move on to the next village and town and do the same. The Palestinians would do this if they could, but they can't, they'd have to defeat the IDF on the battlefield first, so all they can manage is shooting rockets into Israeli territory and then scooting before the Israeli helicopters or fighter jets can get them. What the Palestinians are trying to do is evil, while what the Israelis are doing is for self-defense. Do you honestly think the Palestinians are defending themselves when they kidnap Israeli soldiers or target nonstrategic Israelis villages without soldiers in them with their rockets and bombs? Frankly the Media's even-handed approach to all this is just plain disgusting.

Name calling like that will only heighten emotions, ensuring no solution is possible.

I am not name calling, I am labeling the accurately by describing what they are doing to the Israeli civilians they are targeting.

I'm sure Arabs claim Israeli "terrorist" acts have forfeited any right to exist, justifies "pushing them into the ocean".

The Israelis, don't need terrorist acts, they have a powerful army and are capable of overunning any part of Palestinians territory and all of it at once. If they were truly intent on doing anything evil to them, they would follow the example of Nazi Germany, not Yasir Arafat. Terrorism is a tool of desperation, and the only thing the Palestinians are capable of, they are only killing innocent victims and not their enemy and they are only making that enemy mad at them and come to hate them, but they are not damaging there enemy and they won't be acheiving their goal this way, giving them that land in Gaza only brought the appearance iof their achieving their goal, but the Israelis can take it away from them very easily, and with each terrorist attack and missile launching, the Palestinians are supplying them with the motivation to do just that. We in America support the Israelis because we find our soldiers in similar situations to that of the Israelis, we don't want to tell them how to defend themselves, when it appears we may eventually have to use the same techniques. Since your country is not involved you can play the high and mighty type who is sitting in judgement of us based solely on teh results on the ground. War is messy, and you'd know that if you participated in it.

We saw how well that worked. When Egypt attempted to "push Israel into the sea" they lost the Sinai. Returning Sinai to Egypt resulting lasting peace. Exterminating Palestinians won't work any better.

The Israelis aren't exterminating Palestinians, I told you what they'd do if they were!

These guys had fought for over a thousand years when Jesus was borne; the fighting won't stop until they learn to get along without attempting to wipe each other out.

The Israelis aren't those people, they are a colony of civilized European Jews doing their best against surrounding barbarians. This appears to be the only way that democracy works in the Middle East so far, and you want to snuff this out in favor of the barbarians.

The Palestinians aren't the Philistines.
Yes they are; they've been converted to the Islamic faith.

And that makes them different just like the modern Italians are different from the Pagan Romans, the culture of Ancient Rome and Modern Italy are completely different, they speak different languages and they are clearly different people, even though is is partly descended from the other. My problem is not with the Christian Arabs, they aren't the ones blowing themselves up fanatically and killing Jews. Many of the Arab Christians have allied themselves with the Israelis, especially in Lebanon. Christians, like Jews, have been oppressed by the Arab Muslims.

In fact, Hebrew and Arab both originated from Semitic people. Read the history, you'll see Semitic people arrived 3300BC.

Yes, fortunately the European Jews have been exposed to European culture and it has improved their behavior tremedously. The Original Jews in the ancient Kingdom of Israel were probably more like the Palestinians in temperment, just ask Pontious Pilate, the Jews he governed were an unruly bunch with many fanatics, and the Romans could barely hold on. Fortunately for the Romans, the Israelis had no gunpowder or explosives, so it was just sword and shield with the occasional dagger in the back. The Jews of today are not the same Jews who gave the Romans so much trouble, they are basically European Jews with European attitides, they don't have tribes and fight endlessy like their Arab cousins do, and that is to their credit.

In fact, they intermingled with the Ghassulians people where were there before; Calcholithic period was 4300-3300BC. During the Calcholithic period, Ghassulians built city states including Jericho. Before them were the Yarmukians people, the Neolithic period 8500-4300BC, and they did have argriculture. The article doesn't mention if there was any intermingling (marriage/children) between Ghassulians and Yarmukians; I think it's just too long ago. Are you getting a sense how old all this is?

I think the Palestinians are probably related to the Jews they are trying to murder, I think many of them had Jews in their ancestory that were forcibly converted to Islam by the sword.

Let me give you another linkage. Israelites appeared in history from Semitic people in 1550BC (late bronze age). At some point they moved to an island in the Nile delta, but Egypt conquered all the Nile. They moved back around 1200BC (the Exodus). Israel was destroyed by Assyria in 722BC, elite Israelites (upper and middle class) were deported and replaced by settlers from elsewhere in the Assyrian Empire. Of the lower classes, many fled to Judah, and many stayed behind mixing with deportees from Mesopotamia; they became the Samaritans. Israelis distrusted and hated Samaritans, despite the fact they had the same ancestors. Class bigotry?

RobertDyck · 2006-11-15 21:07:49

I don't know what to say. You really don't get it because you don't want to get it. Israel has a policy of killing 10 Arabs for every Israeli killed. They really don't care who they kill, just as long as they have enough dead bodies. How is that any different? They're the same. Arab kills Israeli in revenge, Israeli kills Arab in revenge, so Arab kills Israeli to revenge that, so Israeli kills Arab to revenge that action, etc etc etc. It's been going on for millennia. Israeli military may use helicopters to shoot air-to-surface rockets, or soldiers with assault rifles. How is this different than what Arabs use? Israel isn't just responding, they sought out and killed individuals they thought were Palestinian or Hezbollah leaders. Each time they used a helicopter to shoot a car, they killed dozens of innocent civilians who just happened to be walking along the sidewalk at the time. So Israelis start conflicts, which inevitably result in revenge cycles. Do Arabs as well? Sure. They're the same.

Is your argument that commercially manufactured explosive devices with a corporate logo is Ok to kill people, but an improvised explosive device is not Ok? Try saying that to the families of those who died. Is Shooting someone from a tank or helicopter Ok, but a car or truck not? Is shooting someone Ok if the soldier wears a fancy uniform? I don't think mothers of the dead care about designer labels.

So the Israelis have a powerful army and that makes everything they've done Ok. Might makes right, or to quote from a TV show "The weak shall parish". Ah hah. We say how well that worked in Vietnam, and again when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. Before that the British invaded the renegade colonies that had the audacity to called themselves The United States of America. A determined local population using cover and "hit and run" tactics can defeat a larger, better equipped foreign invader. Just as American used guerrilla warfare to defeat the British, similar tactics are used in the Middle East. But both Israel and Palestinian live on that land, are familiar with it, and use the same tactics. There is no way either side can win, the conflict will continue as long as either side thinks a military victory is possible.

RobertDyck · 2006-11-15 21:37:33

Tom, I don't think you know what you're talking about. I grew up in a blue collar neighbourhood. In grade 2 if the teacher didn't like my homework, I got whacked hard with a knobbed leather strap on my hand. Kids often beat me up, but if I won the teachers would take me to the principle's office to be punished. My brother often disobeyed our parents just to prove he can; half the time my mother believed him. When she did, I got spanked with a wooden spoon by my mother, then when my father got home I got beaten with a 2x4. In the neighbourhood, when a child complained about child abuse to the police, the police just took him back to his parents. The child got been again as soon as the police left. When I got a paper route, a group of kids through snowballs at me; but not normal snow, they were slush packed and frozen into ice with stones inside. If I ran away my father threatened to beat me with the 2x4. In junior high the fights weren't as numerous, but the damage was worse. Both from other students and teachers; one student who got mouthy was taken out but a teacher and beat- in the hall. The lockers were left dented and the student taken to a hospital. His parents tried to sue but courts claimed teachers could do that. Teenagers often got in knife fights, but luckily my parents moved out when I was in grade 8. The suburban junior high didn't have shop equipment, so I was bussed to an inner city school for shops classes. One day in electrical class when the teacher was out the other students were noisy. Another teacher entered the classroom but I didn't notice because I ignored all the commotion and worked on my assignment. He whacked me hard on the head, I turned and threw my chair back ready to start a major fight; only then I saw it was a teacher. Luckily the teacher pulled back wide-eyed in terror; when I froze and didn't attack he just silently but quickly left the room. I wasn't in his class and I was working on the assignment my teacher assigned; he had no justification to commit assault and battery. I should have placed him under citizen's arrest and pressed charges, but I knew from past experience that children were always held to blame. My parents got divorced, my father moved into an area close to that neighbourhood and my brother moved back in with him. He did get in a knife fight. I know what it's like to live in constant fear with an arbitrary authority figure that's worse than the terrorists.

Palestine and Israel are worse. They are arbitrarily accusing innocent civilians to make some self-proclaimed authority figure sound impressive, like the teachers where I grew up; but they aren't just whacking someone on the head or using a knobbed leather strap or wielding a 2x4 with all the strength and speed of the right arm of a steel worker, these guys are shooting with assault riffles, tanks, mortars, and rockets. And yes, I am saying Israeli forces are using these weapons on Palestinians.

You mentioned the case where a few Hezbollah soldiers kidnapped 2 Israeli soldiers. Yes that was bad, and justified a police raid to arrest the offenders. However, Israel responded with a military invasion that killed over 700 Lebanese, most of whom were civilians. That attack included targeting a Canadian observer. When combat broke out near the UN observation post, the 4 UN observers (including 1 Canadian) went down into the bunker. But the soldiers didn't just go around, they used artillery to target the UN observation post with the Canadian. A Canadian solder was targeted and killed by Israeli military. If you expect me to show any sympathy after Israel targeted a Canadian solder, you're more of a fool than I thought.

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-11-16 11:39:44

I don't know what to say. You really don't get it because you don't want to get it. Israel has a policy of killing 10 Arabs for every Israeli killed.

Where's he evidence? Show me the Death Camps. For killing 10 Arabs, any Arabs, they only have to grab the nearest ones and shoot them, they don't have to send Pilots out in Israeli war planes and fire precision guided missiles at their targets, those weapons systems are expensive, and are really a waste of money if all you really want to do is kill any 10 Arabs in retaliation for something done to a Jew. Bullets are alot cheaper that precision guided smart weapons delivered by multi-million dollar fighter jets.

They really don't care who they kill, just as long as they have enough dead bodies. How is that any different?

If all the Israelis were interested in was their enemies body count, then it wouldn't waste all that expensive hardware trying to kill them.

They're the same. Arab kills Israeli in revenge, Israeli kills Arab in revenge, so Arab kills Israeli to revenge that, so Israeli kills Arab to revenge that action, etc etc etc. It's been going on for millennia. Israeli military may use helicopters to shoot air-to-surface rockets, or soldiers with assault rifles. How is this different than what Arabs use? Israel isn't just responding, they sought out and killed individuals they thought were Palestinian or Hezbollah leaders.
Each time they used a helicopter to shoot a car, they killed dozens of innocent civilians who just happened to be walking along the sidewalk at the time. So Israelis start conflicts, which inevitably result in revenge cycles. Do Arabs as well? Sure. They're the same.

Who were they trying to kill? Palestinians or Hezbollah leaders. Can the Palestinians name who they were trying to kill with their unprecision unguided weapons that can only hit a town rather than a specific person? With a War, you can justify killing people just as long as specific military targets are aimed for, when the Palestinians just fire rockets into a town without any reasonable expectiation of achieving any military goals, all they are doing is commiting random murders, and such are not permitted under the rules of war. The UN may choose to ignore this because the victims are Jews, but the wanton slaughter of Jews by the Palestinians is not justified for their needs of self-defense or even to win a conflict. The Israelis will not give up if all the Palestinians do is make them mad. The Israelis are very interested in Peace, they have given evidence for this, and if the Palestinians stopped attacking them, the Israelis would have no reason to continue killing them. The keys to peace lie with the Palestinians, if they stop trying to drive the Jews into the sea, then the war will end.

Is your argument that commercially manufactured explosive devices with a corporate logo is Ok to kill people, but an improvised explosive device is not Ok? Try saying that to the families of those who died.

The families of those people trying to manufacture explosives to kill random Jews with? I don't care what their argument is, I do not agree with their right to kill any random Jews just walking down their streets with their homemade explosives and their shrapnel to kill the maximum number of innocent bystanders that they can, but its oil money that makes you take their side isn't it. The Arabs have bought your friendship, and that is why you refuse to see the Israelis side in this.

Is Shooting someone from a tank or helicopter Ok, but a car or truck not? Is shooting someone Ok if the soldier wears a fancy uniform? I don't think mothers of the dead care about designer labels.

You are diverting the issue, the question is not what one wears, but whether the killing inflicted is part of a military necessity and in achieving a specific military goal or is it just for the killing of a specific category of people. I would argue that a man poping up and just spraying a crowd with machinegun fire with no specific objective in mind is just a plain murderer and not a soldier. Those who commit unnecessary slaughter and willingly target bystanders are not soldiers but murderers, and being poor and not able to afford the latest military weapons is no excuse for it. If the enemy can not win militarily, it should not be commiting wanton unnecessary slaughter!

So the Israelis have a powerful army and that makes everything they've done Ok.

No, if they used that army to commit the same objectives as they Palestinians are trying to do, they would be commiting genocide. The Nazis had a powerful army and you saw what they did. The Germans didn't just plant bombs to kill Jews and stay with that. Germans didn't waste bombs on Jews, when they had a much harder enemy to kill that required those bombs. The Germans simply rounded up Jews and killed them, they weren't interested in destroying the buildings they lived in, only in killing the Jews. If you can see Israelis doing this sort of thing then you would have a point, but you don't see that happening do you?

Might makes right, or to quote from a TV show "The weak shall parish".

Right is right and wrong is wrong, whether you have the might or not. The Palestinians don't have the might and their still wrong, they can still kill innocent people, even if they don't have the might to win, and that is what makes them wrong; the Israelis have the might to win, and they also have the might to commit great wrongs that stagger the imagination, but they don't go for that Death Camp scenario, or the ethinic cleasing of the Serbs, think about that the next time Arabs complain about "genocide" after an Israeli precision strike against a terrorist leader.

Ah hah. We say how well that worked in Vietnam, and again when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.

Vietnam was undermined by "fifth columnists" that got elected into the US House of Representatives and the US Senate. Our "defeat" had nothing to do with the enemy and alot to do with traitors in our own legislature. Similarly the American people elected democrats because the Republicans weren't winning the War in Iraq to their satisfaction, they expected the Democrats to have better ideas on how to win, and yet all they brought to the table was a way to lose in 4 to 6 months, it doesn't take a genious to figure out how to lose a war.

Before that the British invaded the renegade colonies that had the audacity to called themselves The United States of America. A determined local population using cover and "hit and run" tactics can defeat a larger, better equipped foreign invader. Just as American used guerrilla warfare to defeat the British, similar tactics are used in the Middle East. But both Israel and Palestinian live on that land, are familiar with it, and use the same tactics. There is no way either side can win, the conflict will continue as long as either side thinks a military victory is possible.

American soldiers didn't commit wanton murder just for the sake of killing British citizens. Everything the US Continental forces did was in view of achieving a military objective. American Soldiers attacked British regulars because they were trying to occupy them, they didn't lable British civilians as "occupiers" and attempt to murder them and their families. Thomas Paine, they guy who wrote "Common Sense" was a British citizen, he was born in England, American continentals did not lable him as an "occupier" simply because he was born in England and had a British accent, the way Palestinians label Jews as "occupiers" simply for living on territory they claim as theirs. American Soldiers didn't go into Great Britian and murder civilians their either, they did not consider all British citizens to be their enemy, their quarel was with the British government and they confined their attacks to those people working for that government.

DonPanic · 2006-11-16 16:18:59

Vietnam was undermined by "fifth columnists" that got elected into the US House of Representatives and the US Senate. Our "defeat" had nothing to do with the enemy and alot to do with traitors in our own legislature.

http://www.menziesera.com/vietnam/diary_cost.htm

Is that what you want again ?

Say yes, and I can tell you, I've not more a respect for you than for any napalmist

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-11-16 17:05:30

The Cost

. An estimated total of 2,122,244 were killed and 3,650,946 wounded.
. 58,169 Americans were killed (11,465 of them were teenagers) and 304,000 wounded.
Notice more enemy casualities than American and fewer American casualities than in World War II
. More than 74,000 French had been killed before the first Americans arrived in 1956.
Yes, it was a French colony wasn't it.
. 499 Australian military personnel and 7 civilians were killed; 2 more were missing in action; 2,069 were wounded. The average Australian soldier in Vietnam was 20 years old and saw 314 days of combat in a period of one year. The average World War 11 soldier in the South Pacific had been 26 years old and saw 40 days of combat in a period of four years.
. 444,000 North Vietnamese and 220,557 South Vietnamese military personnel and 587,000 civilians were killed.
So that means we were winning until Congress pulled the plug.
. 2,590,000 Americans and 59,520 Australians served in Vietnam
. 6,727,084 tons of bombs were dropped (compared with 2,700,000 tons dropped on Germany during World War 11.)
. 3,750 fixed wing aircraft and 4,865 helicopters were lost. Australia lost 2 fixed wing aircraft and 10 helicopters.
. 3,500,000 acres of Vietnam were spayed with defoliants, the effect of which will last up to 100 years.

I see no reason to go back to Vietnam. we get along fine with Vietnam and Vietnam is not bothering us, which is more than we can say about North Korea

DonPanic · 2006-11-16 17:55:42

I see no reason to go back to Vietnam. we get along fine with Vietnam and Vietnam is not bothering us, which is more than we can say about North Korea

So, these of US citizens which protested against war in VietNam were right, they weren't traitors, as you pretended, peace with Viet Nam has been more positive than war, as you see.

Six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear programme are to resume soon after a diplomatic breakthrough.
Agreement came at an informal meeting in Beijing between North Korea, China and the US.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6102092.stm
your war screamings were useless, as I told you, the North Korean regime needs food and oil, it was just chantage, if conflict, North Korean army would have been crushed by an US air forces and south korean Army offensive, US leaders were aware of that, they didn't even send aircraft carriers, no matter to loose your cold blood.
Just take it easy. Frankly, you just looked like somehow hysterical about a small nuke puff.

France acts as an US ally !
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6154986.stm

You'd better notice that North Korea has only two neighbours, South Korea and China, if China points a finger at Kim telling him to be a good boy, he'll obey.
China doesn't want an unified democratic Korea as a neighbour, Chineses just want a weak satellite neighbour. If you understand China, and know what they want, then they will collaborate.

For Iran, it will be quite the same, cleric leaders are rationnal, don't think that they will provide terrorists with nukes, they just try to be the influent regional leaders, they don't want to go at war against any country, not even Israel.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad voices as loud as he can, that's all.

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-11-16 18:19:23

Like I said, Vietnam is not bothering us, and so we have no reason to bother it. The North Vietnamese took the worst of the casualities in the Vietnam War. even thought they ostensibly won, they paid a high price for it. I don't think Vietnam is interested in causing any more trouble for the world, so they try to get along. the price they paid when the Superpowers got involved was very high, I don't think they want a repeat of that.

Iran on the otherhand is always stirring up trouble, it never seems content just to sell oil and make alot of money, they have to cause trouble too, they have to fund terrorist attacks and state that they intend to wipe Israel off the map, they want to overthrow neighboring states, and impose their "cookie cutter me too" religion on everyone else. Iran causes all sorts of headaches for us, and they threaten the World's supply of oil besides, and that is why we must pay attention to them, and they want to build nukes and threaten the United States just because they can and for no other reason. If Iran wasn't out their stirring up trouble, they would have nothing to fear from us, just like many other countries don't. So why won't Iran get along? Why does it always fund terror and try to kill Jews? Israel never did anything to Iran, what are they so mad and hateful at? They want us to aim our missiles at them and threaten their populations? What the Hell is their problem anyway, it could be such a nice world if only people like that wouldn't ruin it!

DonPanic · 2006-11-16 18:56:25

Like I said, Vietnam is not bothering us, and so we have no reason to bother it. The North Vietnamese took the worst of the casualities in the Vietnam War. even thought they ostensibly won, they paid a high price for it.

That's true, but US casualties have been minimized, you should know that a wounded soldier dying in his bed wasn't accounted as a war victim, not more than the ones which died of malaria years later.

You still forget that Iran has been listed among the Axis of Evil, that's a wrong decision.
Seeing the balance of forces, who does feel threatened, Iran or USA ? Be realistic, it's USA which can wipe Iran out of the world map, don't play comedy !

During the Iraq-Iran war, Israel helped Iran. there is no fatality in an agressive iranian attitude at Israel. Shia islam have a long time been an ennemy of Salafi islam, and it remains. Shouting at Israel is just a way to boost Iran's influence among muslims.
Israel problem is that Israelis must withdraw from occupied territories without seeming to be defeated.
Please, I insist that the only valuable solution is to push at peace, not to justify retaliations for each side
As we see right now, the palestinian factions will be too busy to fight at each other for the power to think about fighting Israel, if Israel agrees on withdrawing from 95% of the occupied territories.
Stop fueling this too long conflict on which terrorists justify their actions. With a little more welfare, a large majority of the Palestinians will have hopes instead of despair.

RobertDyck · 2006-11-17 09:22:32

Who were they trying to kill? Palestinians or Hezbollah leaders.

They didn't care if they killed dozens of innocent civilians while attempting to take out their target. I don't care how important they thought their target was, there's no excuse for killing innocent civilians. Besides, these attacks were conducted at a time there was no conflict with Palestine. That proves Israeal doesn't want peace, they are initiating the conflict.

You are diverting the issue, the question is not what one wears, but whether the killing inflicted is part of a military necessity and in achieving a specific military goal or is it just for the killing of a specific category of people.

I'm not diverting, that is the issue. Israel is trying to kill a specific category of people, the Palestinians. Israel wants to commit genocide, to kill all Palestinians so they can take all the land. That's no different than the Arabs; radical Palestinians as well as other radical Arabs want to "push Israel into the sea". Same thing.

So the Israelis have a powerful army and that makes everything they've done Ok.
No, if they used that army to commit the same objectives as they Palestinians are trying to do, they would be commiting genocide.

They are committing genocide.

Look, before 1947 neither Israel nor Palestine existed as a country. Three groups of Israeli terrorists conducted terrorist attacks to achieve Israeli freedom. One group only attacked Arabs, but the other two attacked the British directly. The Israeli government was formed from the terrorist group that didn't directly attack the British. Palestine sees this as a model, Israel has taught them how to create a country, they're just following. In terms of "right", both groups have existed there since 1000BC, but neither was a country prior to 1947/48. Palestine is as much "right" as Israel.

Vietnam was undermined by "fifth columnists" that got elected into the US House of Representatives and the US Senate. Our "defeat" had nothing to do with the enemy and alot to do with traitors in our own legislature. Similarly the American people elected democrats because the Republicans weren't winning the War in Iraq to their satisfaction, they expected the Democrats to have better ideas on how to win, and yet all they brought to the table was a way to lose in 4 to 6 months

Um, what? That is such crap I don't know what to say. If you truly believe that then I'm wasting my time, you're so full of fantasies that you'll never listen to reality. The Vietnam War started under a Democrat administration. John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960, sworn in January 20,1961. After his assassination Lyndon B. Johnson completed his term of office, then was elected himself. Richard Nixon (Republican) was elected in 1968, sworn in on January 20, 1969. His election campaign was a secret plan to end the Vietnam War. After he was elected his "secret plan" proved to be raiding NASA's budget to supply funds to the military. We saw how well that worked out, the Vietnam War continued through 1975. Such a conflict was just wrong; you were meddling in affairs that were none of your business. South Vietnam president Diem did some really bad things that left legitimate grievances.

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-11-17 13:08:40

Like I said, Vietnam is not bothering us, and so we have no reason to bother it. The North Vietnamese took the worst of the casualities in the Vietnam War. even thought they ostensibly won, they paid a high price for it.
That's true, but US casualties have been minimized, you should know that a wounded soldier dying in his bed wasn't accounted as a war victim, not more than the ones which died of malaria years later.

I'm pretty sure it was standard policy to vaccinate soldiers for Malaria before sending them to Vietnam. Still the North was taking higher casualities that we were. North Vietnam was going to run out of soldiers sooner than we did. If we lasted their long enough, the North would have ended up sending old folks and children to fight us while we still had plenty of young people to send. That 50,000 figure is not very impressive when you compare it with the casuality count during the American Civil War which was something like 600,000 for the North and 300,000 for the South. We won that war by outlasting the enemy through attrition as we had more yound soldiers to send, while the south was scraping the bottom of the barrel. Our kill ratio in Vietnam was alot better than our losing two soldiers for every one confederate killed in the Civil War, and by that standard we should have ground the insugency into the ground if it weren't for our chicken-hearted Congress and the Defeatist Democrats who take pride in losing Americas wars. The Defeatest Democrats tried to make Abe Lincoln lose the Civil War too.

You still forget that Iran has been listed among the Axis of Evil, that's a wrong decision.

So your saying that terrorism against innocent people is not wrong? Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism, they supported the Hezbollah, and they took our American Diplomats hostage in 1979 for 444 days, now why do I have to keep on reminding you of this? True they weren't French Diplomats, but to us they were evil, and that is why we listed them on the Axis of Evil.

Seeing the balance of forces, who does feel threatened, Iran or USA ? Be realistic, it's USA which can wipe Iran out of the world map, don't play comedy!

Let me put this in terms you understand. Lets say I'm a dictator and I've got 6 nuclear tipped ICBMs and you got thousands. Now I'm going to destroy 6 of your largest cities once I get these weapons operational, fueled up, and ready to launch. I'm a religious fanatic, and I know I am doing God's work on Earth. I don't care about your thousands of missiles because I got faith in God and faith is all I need. I believe God wants me to launch those 6 missiles I've prepared and destroy those six cities filled with infidels, and as long as I'm following my mission, I know that my faith in my religion will save me.

From your point of view their is this country led by a religios fanatic who is entirely unconcerned about your ability to retaliate with nuclear weapons if he launches an attack. You know he is building missiles and he is getting ready to launch them toward your country.

Here are your options:

1) You can do nothing, let him build his missiles with nukes and then one of two things happen.

a) he launches them, so then you radar detects 6 nuclear warheads heading for your six largest cities. You can choose to retaliate or not but in either event millions of your citizens die. If you retaliate then you can destroy Iran, liquidate all of its cities, and towns. The government that killed millions of your citizens is now dead, but millions of your citizens had to die before you removed that menace from the globe. Now your critics are going to ask, why didn't you remove the threat before he had nukes. Your answer would be if you were honest that you were afraid that your citizens were going to protest if you started a War with Iran, so you allowed the Iranians to proceed in building their weapons hoping that they would be dettered by our existing nuclear arsenal, but what you didn't count on was the Iranians totally disregarding that deterrent and launching those missiles anyway. Your critics are going to say that you should have known, what with all that suicide bombing that was going on.

b) He doesn't launch them, instead he launches a series of terrorist attacks against your citizens, attacks that you can't respond to because he is hiding behind his nuclear unbrella and you don't want to start a nuclear war, those 6 missiles would be quite costly to you nation and citizens lives even if you were to win, which would be a likely outcome if it is your thousands of missiles against his 6. Your critics are still going to call you to task and ask you why you hadn't taked care of this terrorist threat before the Iranians had nuclear missiles. Your going to respond that you were afraid the citizens might protest your starting a War with Iran, and that's why now we must tollerate these terrorist attacks on us without responding to them.

2) This option is that you invade Iran, topple their government, and now your fighting a war against insurgents in Iran. You are trying to set up a government, and hold elections, but those insurgents keep on blowing themselves up, killing people and your soldiers. Your critics now ask you, why you have started this war, they say it was totally unnecessary and that the Iranians could have been deterred. Now look at the mess you created. You say you can't withdraw immediately, because you want to train up the Iranian troops and make sure the democratically elected government is secure in its power. You don't want to leave a power vacuum and let the terrorists take over.

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-11-17 13:14:45

During the Iraq-Iran war, Israel helped Iran. there is no fatality in an agressive iranian attitude at Israel. Shia islam have a long time been an ennemy of Salafi islam, and it remains. Shouting at Israel is just a way to boost Iran's influence among muslims.
Israel problem is that Israelis must withdraw from occupied territories without seeming to be defeated.
Please, I insist that the only valuable solution is to push at peace, not to justify retaliations for each side
As we see right now, the palestinian factions will be too busy to fight at each other for the power to think about fighting Israel, if Israel agrees on withdrawing from 95% of the occupied territories.
Stop fueling this too long conflict on which terrorists justify their actions. With a little more welfare, a large majority of the Palestinians will have hopes instead of despair.

The Arab governments that are so "concerned" about the Palestinians can spend their oil wealth and improve the lot of the average Palestinian. Palestinians can have schools and jobs right where they now live, but the Arab states want them constantly warring on Israel and dying instead.

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-11-17 13:35:35

Who were they trying to kill? Palestinians or Hezbollah leaders.
They didn't care if they killed dozens of innocent civilians while attempting to take out their target. I don't care how important they thought their target was, there's no excuse for killing innocent civilians. Besides, these attacks were conducted at a time there was no conflict with Palestine. That proves Israeal doesn't want peace, they are initiating the conflict.

Was Hezbollah at war with Israel? I think so, its mandate was to wipe Israel from existance, and the Palestinian authority allowed them to operate from their territory, they weren't fighting them, they were leaving them alone so that could go kill Israeli citizens. The reality of war is that if you live or work near the combatants of a War, you stand a chance of being one of the War's victims. A neutral country that hosts a hostile enemy is by definition not a neutral country. There is no way to fight a war without harming innocent victims, especially when the enemy uses those victims as human shields. You should have seen the devastation we inflicted on the Axis countries during World War II. I don't think there was any other way to win that war, short of the enemy just volunterring to give up and surrender for no reason, an action they didn't take.

You are diverting the issue, the question is not what one wears, but whether the killing inflicted is part of a military necessity and in achieving a specific military goal or is it just for the killing of a specific category of people.
I'm not diverting, that is the issue. Israel is trying to kill a specific category of people, the Palestinians. Israel wants to commit genocide, to kill all Palestinians so they can take all the land.

Show me the proof: Where are the Death camps, the Mass graves, the Death Squads? I don't see any of that. I only see the Israelis fighting a war with a group of insurgents buried within a civilian population. The reality of war means that some of those civilians are unavoidably going to die in order to kill those insurgents.

That's no different than the Arabs; radical Palestinians as well as other radical Arabs want to "push Israel into the sea". Same thing.

Precision guided missiles are expensive and not very efficient if the goal is to erradicate the Palestinian population. The Germans didn't need all that high tech cutting edge stuff when they were exterminating the Jews. What is you explaination for this lack of evidence that the Israelis are exterminating Palestinians other than they are not exterminating the Palestinians, but in fact fighting an insurgency that exists among them?
Some civilians undoubtably get killed in these operations, but it is not a systematic extermination effort.

So the Israelis have a powerful army and that makes everything they've done Ok.
No, if they used that army to commit the same objectives as they Palestinians are trying to do, they would be commiting genocide.
They are committing genocide.
It took the Germans 5 years to kill 6 million Jews. If the Israelis killed 6 million Palestinians in 5 years, how many Palestinians would be left today, it is a simple math problem, why don't you go figure it out?
Look, before 1947 neither Israel nor Palestine existed as a country. Three groups of Israeli terrorists conducted terrorist attacks to achieve Israeli freedom. One group only attacked Arabs, but the other two attacked the British directly. The Israeli government was formed from the terrorist group that didn't directly attack the British. Palestine sees this as a model, Israel has taught them how to create a country, they're just following. In terms of "right", both groups have existed there since 1000BC, but neither was a country prior to 1947/48. Palestine is as much "right" as Israel.

So why don't they stop killing Jews so they can live in peace with the Israelis? They've been given some land in which to live. Why don't they stop killing Israelis so the Israelis can stop killing them?

Vietnam was undermined by "fifth columnists" that got elected into the US House of Representatives and the US Senate. Our "defeat" had nothing to do with the enemy and alot to do with traitors in our own legislature. Similarly the American people elected democrats because the Republicans weren't winning the War in Iraq to their satisfaction, they expected the Democrats to have better ideas on how to win, and yet all they brought to the table was a way to lose in 4 to 6 months
Um, what? That is such crap I don't know what to say. If you truly believe that then I'm wasting my time, you're so full of fantasies that you'll never listen to reality. The Vietnam War started under a Democrat administration. John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960, sworn in January 20,1961. After his assassination Lyndon B. Johnson completed his term of office, then was elected himself. Richard Nixon (Republican) was elected in 1968, sworn in on January 20, 1969. His election campaign was a secret plan to end the Vietnam War. After he was elected his "secret plan" proved to be raiding NASA's budget to supply funds to the military. We saw how well that worked out, the Vietnam War continued through 1975. Such a conflict was just wrong; you were meddling in affairs that were none of your business. South Vietnam president Diem did some really bad things that left legitimate grievances.

So Democracy Bad; Communist Dictatorship Good!

Was our army crushed by the North Vietnamese? No it was not it was withdrawn because congress cut off the funds for continuing the operation. We were defeated by the Democrats that started this war apparently for the only reason of forcing the United States to lose a war! The United States cannot lose a war if their isn't one to begin with. John F. Kennedy took care of the War thing, and his successors took care of losing it. The only way Nixon could have won the Vietnam war with a hostile Congress would be to overthrow the Congress in a coup and establish himself as dictator so he could finish the war without interference. Nixon didn't want to try this step, so he resigned.

DonPanic · 2006-11-17 14:44:00

I'm pretty sure it was standard policy to vaccinate soldiers for Malaria before sending them to Vietnam.

There is still not any anti malaria vaccin
As you are such naive, let me explain you that mosquitoes were used as a weapon by general Giap which alternated actions in Viet Nam highlands with mountain populations called Meos or Mois troopers and in low lands with Viets troopers, each population has specific immunities against mountain and low lands mosquitoes' species.
So, as US airborn troops were used everywhere, there were good probabilities they got infected by both mosquitoes species, one mosquito specie bite make sick, both are long term lethal. Just wonder why so many vets suffered so-called "post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)"
http://www.historynet.com/magazines/vie … 38271.html

Was our army crushed by the North Vietnamese? No it was not it was withdrawn because congress cut off the funds for continuing the operation. We were defeated by the Democrats (...)

I do notice that you have none of any question on the morality of this war set up first by the French which thought they could restore their colonial empire, and by the USA which used so-called South Vietnam as a jack on their domino's theory.
At first, it was an independence war, led by Viet nationalists, then they turned to whom could supply them with weapons, Moscow and Beijing.

So Democracy Bad; Communist Dictatorship Good!

VietNam, alike China had collectivist day to day practice in their traditions.
They use to harvest all toghether on each one cultivated parcels. That's much more efficient and enjoying a way than to cultivate alone. When young peoples get married, the whole villagers used to build them a house within couple of days.
Communism fitted to these countries, its was a rural based communism different from supposed urban labour class dictature described by Karl Marx.

Our kill ratio in Vietnam was alot better (...)

All of your says are about war, destructions, retaliations, none of any of your posts are constructive, so up to my vietnam born child eyes, you are war freak, a napalmist predator, I see you with a much disgusting manner, as somebody which cannot even be called a human being, Mr Kalbfus

It's useless from you to try to answer or to say you aren't a bad guy, I can't see which answer from you couldn't boost more anger and hate at you, you are definitively a ennemy.

RobertDyck · 2006-11-17 18:41:35

So Democracy Bad; Communist Dictatorship Good!

No, but you obviously don't understand democracy. The people who live in a country must decide what they want to do. If anyone outside that country attempts to impose their will with military might, it isn't democracy, it's imperial conquest. You keep buying into the "us vs. them" propaganda. It isn't that simple, never has been. Often both options presented are not acceptable. That's when you tell whoever is attempting to rig the decision to go **** himself. Was the only choice in Vietnam rule by the Soviets or rule by Washington? No, and the people of Vietnam didn't accept either.

Another thing you keep missing is the fact that communism is an economic system, not a political system. Democracy is political, it selects the government by rule of the people. The opposite of communism is capitalism, but both extremes don't work. Actually, socialism is another system, it isn't a linear continuum. Look at America today, it has government controls over free enterprise, that's socialist. It also has labour unions, that communist. If you want to claim labour unions are anti-American, try saying that to the face of a Teamster. If you want to claim anti-trust laws are anti-American, try saying that to a small business owner who was forced out of business by a large corporation. Or a consumer who has to pay exorbitant prices for a product controlled by a monopoly. The system is the way it is for a reason; what works is a little of each system, extremism never works.

The Soviet Union had a socialist economy with communist tendencies, but wasn't truly communist. Their political system was an oligarchy, rule by a small group. The real problem was the oligarchy. You can have a communist economy with a democratic political system; the Kibbutz of Israel made it work quite well. I believe the plural of Kibbutz is Kibbutzim. They restricted their communist economy to one small farming town each; that's the largest scale on which it works. On a large scale it's too easy to abuse the system, you have to know everyone with pier pressure to put in a hard day's work and show results. That only works for a small town where everyone knows each other. Some hippy communes in the United States also made it work; the trick was to keep it small. Do I want to live in a commune? No, but I don't treat anyone who does as evil.

Was our army crushed by the North Vietnamese? No it was not it was withdrawn because congress cut off the funds for continuing the operation. We were defeated by the Democrats that started this war apparently for the only reason of forcing the United States to lose a war! The United States cannot lose a war if their isn't one to begin with. John F. Kennedy took care of the War thing, and his successors took care of losing it. The only way Nixon could have won the Vietnam war with a hostile Congress would be to overthrow the Congress in a coup and establish himself as dictator so he could finish the war without interference. Nixon didn't want to try this step, so he resigned.

Ah, the rant of the war monger. We failed because we didn't use enough bombs. Well, as one Vietnamese official once said "What are they trying to do? Bomb us into the stone age? We already live in the stone age." High tech weaponry won't work for civilians dug into rough country with plenty of cover.

As an alternative, try reading just a little about Gandhi. His got Britain to leave India. He didn't do so with direct military conflict, but rather by telling the people just to disobey. It didn't matter how many guns or bombs or high tech weaponry the British had, the citizens just didn't obey. What are you going to do, slaughter every man woman and child? In one dramatic demonstration Gandhi lead the Indian people to walk just two at a time into a compound guarded by soldiers. The soldiers beat them, and carried them off. But they just kept coming. They didn't rush the soldiers as a mob, they just calmly walked two at a time into the front gate. They did this until the soldiers realized this is a bad thing to do and stopped. It didn't matter how much force the soldiers used, the civilians did not obey. That completely undermined British authority, effectively they didn't rule. All done without armed revolution. There are a lot of details, but that's how India separated from the British empire; it worked.

In Vietnam they chose to fight. But they did so with simple guns, hand grenades, and dug tunnels barely large enough to crawl through on your belly. Drop all the bombs you want, they won't collapse the tunnels beyond a very short radius. Bunkers were dug so deep that explosives dropped by aircraft of the day couldn't collapse them. They weren't fancy high tech bunkers, just deep. Locals were too well dung in, literally. There was no way to win. The victors could not have won if the locals didn't want them to. Same reason, locals on both sides could dig in. America had no chance to win because the Vietnamese people didn't want them to win.

DonPanic · 2006-11-18 03:26:55

the Kibbutz of Israel made it work quite well. I believe the plural of Kibbutz is Kibbutzim. They restricted their communist economy to one small farming town each; that's the largest scale on which it works. On a large scale it's too easy to abuse the system,

I have worked five weeks in a kibbutz. They told that only kibbutzim under 400 peoples worked well. There was a central shop where each could freely help himself for what he needed, just writting on an intendance book what he had taken for the shop gestion. As long as everybody know each other, peoples agree to work for the community. Over 400 peoples, peoples become selfish. It was a labour party kibbutz, but had tight and very good relationships with a neighbour religious kibbutz. Both were close to the jordan fronteer and had defensive networks with trenches, barbed wires and bomb shelters. When I talk about Israel, it's not fictionnal. I spent two more weeks visiting the whole country, from the lebanese fronteer to Eilat

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-11-18 09:19:29

I'm pretty sure it was standard policy to vaccinate soldiers for Malaria before sending them to Vietnam.
There is still not any anti malaria vaccin
As you are such naive, let me explain you that mosquitoes were used as a weapon by general Giap which alternated actions in Viet Nam highlands with mountain populations called Meos or Mois troopers and in low lands with Viets troopers, each population has specific immunities against mountain and low lands mosquitoes' species.
So, as US airborn troops were used everywhere, there were good probabilities they got infected by both mosquitoes species, one mosquito specie bite make sick, both are long term lethal. Just wonder why so many vets suffered so-called "post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)"
http://www.historynet.com/magazines/vie … 38271.html

Malaria used to be quite common in North America too, but we sprayed the place with DDT. If people are resistant to malaria, its also possible to vaccinate against it.

Was our army crushed by the North Vietnamese? No it was not it was withdrawn because congress cut off the funds for continuing the operation. We were defeated by the Democrats (...)
I do notice that you have none of any question on the morality of this war set up first by the French which thought they could restore their colonial empire, and by the USA which used so-called South Vietnam as a jack on their domino's theory.

Its not a theory, communism is an iseology that is designed to spread, and indeed here I see you are trying to perpetuate it. Communism is like bad medicine with a sugar coating. The first thing any communist does is criticise the system by pointing out its short comings, and then they say, "Trust me, I can fix things." What communism is really good at is producing critics of the system, they have no solutions other thanoverthrowing the system and putting them in power, and afterwards they rig the system so that no one can criticise them, they are basically fixing the weaknesses of the prior dictatorship or tyranny that wasn't able to stay in power. Controlling all the levers of power such and monopolizing employment, helps them to stay in power, even if it produces bad economic results. Just look at North Korea. People are starving there, but they will not overthrow the government, because the government has so many levers of power and they set people to spy and work against each other that rebellion is impossible. The communist countries that have fallen are the ones that have loosed up and allowed some measure of free expression, not the ones like North Korea, that have maintained tight-fisted control.

At first, it was an independence war, led by Viet nationalists, then they turned to whom could supply them with weapons, Moscow and Beijing.

Don't confuse independence with freedom. Alot of people on the left act as if independence is a meaningful thing to the common man, when all it really could mean is their dictator is free to act independently without an overlord looking over their shoulder.
I figure that if the Vietnamese weren't ready for democracy, the French might as well have maintained their Empire until they were.

So Democracy Bad; Communist Dictatorship Good!
VietNam, alike China had collectivist day to day practice in their traditions.
They use to harvest all toghether on each one cultivated parcels. That's much more efficient and enjoying a way than to cultivate alone. When young peoples get married, the whole villagers used to build them a house within couple of days.
Communism fitted to these countries, its was a rural based communism different from supposed urban labour class dictature described by Karl Marx.

You shouldn't confuse community spirit with Communism. Communism is always from the top down, it comes with a political leader that makes all the important decisions and it leaves the people below it without a voice in the government, because they aren't allowed to choose their government or replace it. the Government stays in power with any means available, and since they monopolize employment, everyone is working for them, this isn't a community government, it is the means of a self-perpetuating leadership to stay in power.

Our kill ratio in Vietnam was alot better (...)
All of your says are about war, destructions, retaliations, none of any of your posts are constructive, so up to my vietnam born child eyes, you are war freak, a napalmist predator, I see you with a much disgusting manner, as somebody which cannot even be called a human being, Mr Kalbfus

North Vietnam started the war, it invaded the South. the United States did not start the Vietnam War, we were only trying to defend the South from the North.

It's useless from you to try to answer or to say you aren't a bad guy, I can't see which answer from you couldn't boost more anger and hate at you, you are definitively a ennemy.

I never said the Vietnam war was a good thing, I only said we should have won it, so that future enemies wouldn't be so tempted to wage war on us such as Al Qaeda. I don't know what your problem is, I haven't done anything to France, I never hated France, I just wonder why some French such as yourself hate Americans, everything that's wrong with the world is America's fault you say,it never the fault of the people who attacked us or our allies, or the fault of the people who actually started the war. The Vietnam War was already going strong when we got involved, I don't know how you can accuse the United States of Starting the Vietnam War. We gave them a good fight, I can tell you that, we did not let the North win easily, but we did not start the War they started. If you French had managed your Empire properly, this War wouldn't have even happened.

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-11-18 09:57:13

So Democracy Bad; Communist Dictatorship Good!
No, but you obviously don't understand democracy. The people who live in a country must decide what they want to do. If anyone outside that country attempts to impose their will with military might, it isn't democracy, it's imperial conquest. You keep buying into the "us vs. them" propaganda. It isn't that simple, never has been. Often both options presented are not acceptable. That's when you tell whoever is attempting to rig the decision to go **** himself. Was the only choice in Vietnam rule by the Soviets or rule by Washington? No, and the people of Vietnam didn't accept either.
Another thing you keep missing is the fact that communism is an economic system, not a political system.

Communism is about as economic a system as is the Army, and it workd the same. Communism has a top down authority structure, the people at the top give the orders and the people down below follow them or they go to the gulag. There is no private property because the leadership controls everything, they can give out privaleges and take them away as reward and punishment. the government decides how and whether to feed the people, they order people to produce and the reward and punish people for production and for their lyalty to the government. Communism is not about economic production, which takes a back seat, but about control, a communist system is designed to be controlled from the top. The government gives the orders and the population carries them out whether they make economic sense or not. Communist governments realize that people are their source of power, so therefore they try to do two things, one is keep them under control and the other is keeping them alive, and they also give out orders to spread the propaganda telling the World what a wonderful system communism is, and how the rest of the World should try it, no doubt under their direction.

Democracy is political, it selects the government by rule of the people. The opposite of communism is capitalism, but both extremes don't work. Actually, socialism is another system, it isn't a linear continuum. Look at America today, it has government controls over free enterprise, that's socialist. It also has labour unions, that communist. If you want to claim labour unions are anti-American, try saying that to the face of a Teamster. If you want to claim anti-trust laws are anti-American, try saying that to a small business owner who was forced out of business by a large corporation. Or a consumer who has to pay exorbitant prices for a product controlled by a monopoly. The system is the way it is for a reason; what works is a little of each system, extremism never works.

Communism is a means of control over an economy, it gives out directives that people must follow like soldiers in the army. If orders aren't obeyed their are serious consequences, but decisions are made from the top, not at the individual level. Under Capitalism, their are a bunch of individual decision makes called consumers that make most of the economic decisions for themselves. Communism is all about control control control, maximizing power at the top and staying in power, it does little for the average joe except make him obey the authorities.

The Soviet Union had a socialist economy with communist tendencies, but wasn't truly communist. Their political system was an oligarchy, rule by a small group. The real problem was the oligarchy. You can have a communist economy with a democratic political system; the Kibbutz of Israel made it work quite well. I believe the plural of Kibbutz is Kibbutzim. They restricted their communist economy to one small farming town each; that's the largest scale on which it works. On a large scale it's too easy to abuse the system, you have to know everyone with pier pressure to put in a hard day's work and show results. That only works for a small town where everyone knows each other. Some hippy communes in the United States also made it work; the trick was to keep it small. Do I want to live in a commune? No, but I don't treat anyone who does as evil.

In a commune everybody knows everybody, in large systems most people are strangers and all tyrants exploit that fact and can turn people against one another to produce a tyranny that accrues benefits for themselves. Its hard to have opne person be dictator over 9 other people. If the 9 people don't like him, they just get rid of him. When small numbers exist in isolation, the rule is either democracy or every man for himself. As the population gets bigger the leader can set up burocracies, comprised of people who don't know each other. people obey the leader because they fear what the burocracy will do to them. There are rules and regulations and people looking over other people's shoulders to make sure the rules are obeyed. The way the rules are put together can either benefit a dictator or run a Republic. Direct Democracy only works with small numbers, the exact system used to parcel out the goods and work is irrevelant as each individual is free to make his own decisions as to whether to obey the leader or not. Each person has his own circle of friends and supporters, it is a very democratic thing when you have small numbers of people, with larger numbers democracy begins to break down and either a Dictatorship or a Republic must fill the power vacuum.

Was our army crushed by the North Vietnamese? No it was not it was withdrawn because congress cut off the funds for continuing the operation. We were defeated by the Democrats that started this war apparently for the only reason of forcing the United States to lose a war! The United States cannot lose a war if their isn't one to begin with. John F. Kennedy took care of the War thing, and his successors took care of losing it. The only way Nixon could have won the Vietnam war with a hostile Congress would be to overthrow the Congress in a coup and establish himself as dictator so he could finish the war without interference. Nixon didn't want to try this step, so he resigned.
Ah, the rant of the war monger. We failed because we didn't use enough bombs. Well, as one Vietnamese official once said "What are they trying to do? Bomb us into the stone age? We already live in the stone age." High tech weaponry won't work for civilians dug into rough country with plenty of cover.

Such is a fairly tale about the little guy defying a large Army. nothing they did actually won the War for them, we had every advantage except for a sooperative Congress. If the North Vietnamese actually crushed and captured all of our soldiers and destroyed our army, I might agree with you, but it did not. Too many people apparently bought their propaganda.

As an alternative, try reading just a little about Gandhi. His got Britain to leave India. He didn't do so with direct military conflict, but rather by telling the people just to disobey. It didn't matter how many guns or bombs or high tech weaponry the British had, the citizens just didn't obey. What are you going to do, slaughter every man woman and child? In one dramatic demonstration Gandhi lead the Indian people to walk just two at a time into a compound guarded by soldiers. The soldiers beat them, and carried them off. But they just kept coming. They didn't rush the soldiers as a mob, they just calmly walked two at a time into the front gate. They did this until the soldiers realized this is a bad thing to do and stopped.

Its hard for the soldiers to realize they are doing a bad thing if all they are doing is defending themselves and their citizens from terrorist attacks. The idea of passive resistance completely escapes the Palestinians. All they know is to kill their enemies, which include women and children and then get revenge for attacks against them which may mean killing more women and children.

It didn't matter how much force the soldiers used, the civilians did not obey. That completely undermined British authority, effectively they didn't rule. All done without armed revolution. There are a lot of details, but that's how India separated from the British empire; it worked.
In Vietnam they chose to fight. But they did so with simple guns, hand grenades, and dug tunnels barely large enough to crawl through on your belly. Drop all the bombs you want, they won't collapse the tunnels beyond a very short radius. Bunkers were dug so deep that explosives dropped by aircraft of the day couldn't collapse them. They weren't fancy high tech bunkers, just deep. Locals were too well dung in, literally. There was no way to win. The victors could not have won if the locals didn't want them to. Same reason, locals on both sides could dig in. America had no chance to win because the Vietnamese people didn't want them to win.

More fairly tales, we didn't win because the Democrats in Congress didn't want us to win, america losing suited them just fine, it is always easier to lose a war than to win one, and here we see them doing that one more time. First they criticise the Bush Administration for not winning, and they do everything they can to see to it that they don't win, and when they gain power, instead of offering alternative strategies to win the war, they just set things up so that we deliberately lose, and they call getting us out of a war an accomplishment. The enemy makes a big gain, and later one, he may be encouraged to challenge and attack us again, just so long as the "we must lose the War" dynamic goes on in one of the major parties. All they have to do is make sure the Party that wants to win the war becomes unpopular so that the unpatriotic other party takes over and loses the war, because that's the only thing they know how to do. This almost worked for the Confederate South by the way.

RobertDyck · 2006-11-18 11:13:14

A little military history:

The fighter aircraft kill ratio in Vietnam wasn't that good to start. The airforce and navy built schools, the navy one was called Fighter Weapons School, commonly nic-named Top Gun. As a result, by the end of the Vietnam War the kill ratio was 3:1, that means 3 enemy aircraft shot down for every American aircraft shot down. However, then the generals did some math: the American fighter aircraft of the day cost $30 million each, the Soviet Mig bought by North Vietnam cost $1 each. Hmm. In terms of dollars the kill ratio is 10:1 in favour of the enemy. Not good. Furthermore, American aircraft has a crew of 2; the Mig was a single seat. Both aircraft had parachutes, but if you assume recovery rate is about the same then an aircraft kill ratio of 3:1 becomes a pilot loss ratio of 3:2. This really isn't looking so good.

The military decided they needed a cheap, small, single-seat fighter. So they went to American fighter aircraft manufacturers and asked them to make one. Two manufacturers built fighters, they were called the YF-16 and YF-17. They had just finished developing the F-15 Eagle, one manufacturer was the same company. The two aircraft built had a fly-off to see which performs better. The one built by the same company that built the F-15 used the same engine, but while the F-15 used 2 engines, the YF-16 used just one. The YF-17 had a single seat but still had 2 engines. The YF-16 performed better. Using the same engine as the F-15 meant maintenance technicians only had to be trained for one model engine, and maintaining parts inventory became easier. So the YF-16 was selected; the "Y" prefix denotes a prototype, once it went into production the "Y" was dropped, becoming known as the F-16 Falcon.

The YF-17 never went into production so there never was an F-17. But the manufacturer had invested a lot of money into development, their share holders want to see return on investment. The navy may want a small, light, inexpensive fighter as well. They just finished developing the F-14 Tomcat, built as an interceptor. An interceptor is not the same as a fighter. The airforce F-15 Eagle is an air superiority fighter; agile, capable of high-g turns. An interceptor is designed to fly fast, long range radar capable if identifying an enemy from distance, carries a heavy load of long range weapons, and able to launch long range weapons at multiple targets. It isn't designed for high-g turns. The 10g turns you saw in the movie Top Gun are not what an F-14 is designed for. If you do that once the aircraft will be down for a lot of heavy maintenance. The F-14 has a radar that scans 90° either side for a total 180° coverage, and 45° up and down for total 90° vertical coverage. It can identify targets based on radar signature, automatically priorize targets on importance, and maintain a target lock on 10 enemy aircraft at once. The pilot can alter the list or just accept it and pull the trigger once for each target. But it isn't a high performance fighter, and it's a big plane. The manufacturer of the YF-17 thought the navy may want a dedicated fighter that was smaller so they could fit more aircraft into a carrier.

An airforce plane can't land on a carrier. The tail hook used to stop it would tear out of its belly. A catapult launch is stressful. And the ship pitches up and down on waves, landing aircraft have to come down at a steep angle so if the carrier pitches up they don't hit the bow, or if it pitches down they don't miss the deck and splash into the sea. Coming down at a steep angle means they hit the deck hard. All this means a navy aircraft has to be built very sturdy. The navy liked the idea of a small, light fighter, and they liked the fact that aircraft had two engines, but they also wanted two crew. All these changes were so extensive they aircraft was given a new designation. What had started as the YF-17 ended up becoming the YF-18. The navy bought it, it went into production so they dropped the "Y" becoming the F-18 Hornet.

During the 1950s Canada built an aircraft to intercept Russian Bear bombers. It was the CF-105 Arrow, built by the Avro company. It was the most advanced aircraft of it's day. Due to various reasons I won't get into here, it was cancelled. The Canadian airforce limped along with inferior aircraft, but in 1977 they decided they needed a descent aircraft that could intercept a Bear bomber without a suicide mission. The Arrow exceeded Canadian airforce requirements, but the airforce hauled out the original requirements to see if there was a modern aircraft that could meet them. The Arrow was started in 1953, cancelled in 1959, but in 1977 there wasn't any. The F-18 Hornet was close, with some modifications it almost met Canadian requirements. One requirement was to fly at mach 2.0, another was to fly a 2g turn with a full weapons load and full fuel tanks at mach 2.0 at 50,000 feet. The Arrow could do all that, notice a 2g turn isn't very tight, an interceptor is a different beast than a fighter. The F-16 Falcon can pull a 9g turn. Actually the Arrow can pull a much tighter turn than 2g, and the Arrow mark 3 could supercruise at mach 2.0, and with afterburner fighting manoeuvres at mach 2.5+. With modifications to the F-18 Hornet, the CF-18 was bigger, heavier and higher performance. It could fly at mach 1.8; not meeting the mach 2.0 requirement, but close enough.

Of course the US Navy didn't like that. The Canadian Hornet was bigger and better than theirs! Of course the US Navy had an F-14 Tomcat that was much bigger, much better, and much more expensive, but that didn't matter. The Canadian F-18 was bigger and better! Oh no! So they contracted an F-18 Hornet that was still bigger, and could carry an even heavier weapons load. The result was the F/A-18 Super Hornet. The "A" designates attack, meaning air-to-ground attack. Of course an aircraft that big meant they didn't have room on the carrier for F-14 Tomcats. Remember the point of an F-18 was to be small, light, and inexpensive. The Super Hornet violated that purpose. I know a couple US Navy carrier sailors who still think abandoning the F-14 was a very bad idea.

So this comes back to the Vietnam 3:1 kill ratio. Doing the math based on dollars, who really won the air battle?

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-11-18 11:58:32

We did, cause we had more dollars to start out with, it is worth spending more to save a pilot's life. Since we fought the Vietnam war for ten years, we could have fought it for another ten. Firefighters and police also die every year, the trick is to accept the losses on our side while making the enemy's losses too high and too unacceptable for them to sustain. Judging from the casuality rates of the enemy, it appears they could not sustian such losses over a multi-decade span of time. We were killing millions of them, and they were killing only tens of thousands of us, a 100:1 ratio. North Vietnam didn't have 100 times our population, so victory on our side would have been inevitable if only we stayed the course until the North no longer had soldiers to throw at us. Perhaps the Chinese would have moved in afterwards, well that is an invasion then. It would be easier to get the South Vietnames to fight the Chinese since they don't even speak their language.

DonPanic · 2006-11-18 16:12:39

with DDT. If people are resistant to malaria, its also possible to vaccinate against it.

Vaccination against malaria still doesn't exist ! You are scientifically wrong.
There are peoples with natural immunities as variants in a population genetic pool, with natural selection, they become the most numerous in the population.

Its not a theory, communism is an iseology that is designed to spread, and indeed here I see you are trying to perpetuate it.

I'm not trying to spread anything, as some kind of a non violent anarchist, communists would eliminate me among their first ennemies.
Im' just explaining that communist ideology can fit with some populations traditionnal way of life, ancient Inca empire was a communist type of society.

North Vietnam started the war, it invaded the South. the United States did not start the Vietnam War, we were only trying to defend the South from the North.

Nonsense !
The Vietcongs were nationalist and bouddhist south vietnameses which rebelled against the south vietnamese regime set first by the Frenches, then supported by the US, as Vietcong were reinforced by northern troops.
Vietnameses are home in all Vietnam, my sister was born in hanoi, i was born in Nhatrang, were aren't strangers at each other by some arbitrary fronteer, should France and USA had understood that fact, they wouldn't have supported any camp and let things go on.
Same with USA for which southern secession was a rebellion, is that too difficult to understand ?
The only difference is that the so-called rebels won, anyways, when emperor Bao Dai took exile to France, he was replaced by Diem which had not any legitimacy.

More fairly tales, we didn't win because the Democrats in Congress didn't want us to win,

Napalm over vietnamese villages isn't fairy tales, and when foreigners come to kill women and children, whatever their reasons are, they have yet morally lost the war, that's what you don't want to see, and then there is no more support for the warmongers in your own country.

In a foreign country where you don't know who and where your ennemies are, you don't know if the smiling local guy is friendly or will shoot at you as soon as you turn back, killing innocent peoples is unavoidable, therefore soon or latter you are the bad guy even if you claim that your intentions are good.
You can win only by carnage, then the whole world points at you as the monster.
Same with Iraq.

RobertDyck · 2006-11-19 01:31:34

Communism has a top down authority structure, the people at the top give the orders and the people down below follow them or they go to the gulag.

That's not how I understand it. I was taught that communism as laid out by Karl Marx would run itself. Any central authority would be a temporary measure between the monarchy of the Tzars of Russian and a "true" communist system. That each community would run itself. However, Russia underwent two revolutions, first by the communists, then by the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks weren't interested in communism or benefiting the people, they wanted to pervert the communist system to support their own power. So Trotsky was pushed out and Stalin came to power. I tried to find a quote from the "Communist Manifesto" by Karl Marx, but that thing rambles on and is damn hard to read! Let's just say that utopian communism as described by Karl Marx was supposed to be run by working people, not any sort of "top down authority structure". The "top down" political system is an oligarchy, that means rule by a small group of people. That isn't what Karl Marx intended, but is what Russia became under Lennon and Stalin. The "top down authority structure" is a feature of an oligarchy, not communism.

Rxke · 2006-11-19 05:34:12

Lennon and Stalin. .

Let it be, heehee...

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