Falstaff

The recent chants in the boulevards of Berlin were almost indistinguishable from those heard—until recently--in downtown Baghdad. Europe’s culture of complaint, its enthusiasm for accusing America of every wickedness while assigning every virtue to itself, and its stunning lack of self-examination leave Americans bewildered. We thought you were adults, but, from across the Atlantic, you look like spoiled children. And your recent tantrums have convinced Big Daddy America to deposit you on the steps of the strategic orphanage. The damage done by the recent confrontation between The United States and those nations whose vocabularies collapsed to the single words “Nein!” or “Non!” will be repaired—on the surface. We shall continue to cooperate on matters of mutual interest. But, on a deeper level, the exuberantly dishonest attacks on America heard from France and Germany (Belgium simply doesn't count), along with the shameless grandstanding of Mr. Schroeder and Mr. Chirac, appear to even the most pragmatic Americans as grounds for divorce from our long marriage of convenience. The divorce is long overdue. Ignoring “Old Europe” on questions of grand strategy will liberate the United States, freeing us at last from the failed European model of diplomacy that has given the world so many hideous wars, dysfunctional borders and undisturbed dictators. The recent mischief wrought in Paris and Berlin has enabled Washington to escape a long thrall of enchantment, a slumber of sorts during which America allowed Europe’s ghost to haunt its decisions. Now you have awakened us, and we see that Europe’s influence was nothing but a legacy of nightmares. We shall no longer subscribe to your bloodsoaked, corrupt rules for the international system, but will forge our own. You will not like many of our new rules. But to paraphrase Frederick the Great’s remark about Maria Theresia, you will cry, but take your share of any available spoils. As a result of a series of remarkable strategic miscalculations, France and Germany have lost their international footing—not only with the USA, but with the world. You had your moment in the anti-American sun. High noon revealed you as powerless and inept. For Germany, this divorce will offer some advantages. American combat forces soon will begin to leave German soil permanently, followed in good time by our logistics facilities, which are simply more difficult to shift. This will be to Germany’s benefit practically and psychologically--and very much to the benefit of America’s armed forces, which have become nothing but a cash cow for greedy organizations ranging from your railways to your labor unions. NATO will survive, of course. Along with the European Union, it’s an indispensable employment agency for Europe’s excess bureaucrats. But other bilateral and multilateral military arrangements will take precedence in Washington’s strategic calculations. On the negative side, Germany will lose almost all of its diplomatic influence beyond continental Europe—and Berlin never had much, at least since 1945. The world will take your Euros, but will not take you seriously. You have asserted your independence from America. Now you have it. Good luck. We won our war, easily, despite your protests and without your help. And do not flatter yourself with rhetoric about refusing to be America’s vassals. No one in the United States questioned Germany’s right to decide for itself whether or not to support our efforts to depose Saddam Hussein. Germany had every right to decline to participate. But it was the way you did it that infuriated us. Bundeskanzler Schroeder astonished us. We long had recognized him as a political charlatan, but the extent of his demagogy and his amateurish inability to foresee the consequences of his ranting still came as a surprise to us. We see Mr. Schroeder as a man utterly without convictions—a man without qualities--a political animal so ebased that he resembles no one so much as he does European caricatures of small-time American politicians. His opportunistic anti-Americanism seemed all for effect, without substance or genuine belief. Yet, in other respects, Schroeder proved quintessentially European: He criticized, but failed to offer meaningful solutions of his own. He chose slogans over ideas, convenience over ethics, and portrayed small-minded selfishness as political heroism. What qualities might better describe 21st century Europe? Germany has come a long way downhill from Adenauer and Schmidt to Gerhard Schroeder. Most difficult of all for us to stomach were remarks from members of the German government comparing President Bush to Hitler. Now, does anyone reading this newspaper believe that’s an honest comparison? And was it fitting coming from a German official? One thinks not. Americans heard the echo of Joseph Goebbels. Then there were all the demonstrators waving signs equating the United States to the Nazi regime, as tasteless a display as Germany has managed since the last crematorium went cold. Once our tempers cooled, we realized that all these Nazi comparisons weren’t really about us. It was all about you, your guilt and your evasions. Perhaps the most revealing incident of the war came during a television interview with a young protester in Berlin after Baghdad had fallen. The reporter asked him what he thought of the images of Iraqis cheering U.S. Marines and toppling Saddam’s statue. The young German said the scenes “annoyed” him. Doubtless. Reality is annoying, indeed. Oh, we know how you see us. You never cease telling us. We are uncultured, because we cannot recall the date of the first performance of Das Rheingold. We are heartless, since our society favors opportunity over security. We are naïve, since we do not share your prejudices. We are warmongers, because we still believe some things are worth defending. And now we are Nazis, because we moved to depose a dictator who had slaughtered his own people as well as his neighbors, while harboring terrorists and pursuing weapons of mass destruction. Of course, you continue to buy our cultural products. Your brightest young people come to our shores to work. We Americans have moved beyond the racism that blights Germany and France (we look forward to meeting a German Colin Powell of Turkish ancestry in Berlin or an ethnic-Senegalese Condoleeza Rice in Paris), so we certainly do not share your prejudices. And after the events of September 11th, 2001, we will not wait to be attacked, but will strike pre-emptively wherever we believe it to be necessary—and we shall do so without ever again asking Europe’s permission. So we are, indeed, warmongers by European standards. But what about the charge that Americans are the new Nazis? I think I understand the sickness that afflicts you. I received my first insight as a young Army sergeant in a not-yet-reunified Germany a quarter-century ago. Although the event was ten years past, young Germans unfailingly brought up the My Lai massacre in Vietnam during our conversations. My Lai was one of two documented American atrocities in that war. Almost two hundred villagers were murdered. It was inexcusable, and we did not try to excuse it. But those young Germans grasped at the My Lai massacre with an alacrity that astonished me. To them, the two-hundred dead at My Lai canceled Auschwitz and Treblinka, six million murdered Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and dissenters. The message was, “See! You Americans are just as bad as we Germans were—maybe worse.” I did not find the comparison convincing. Now, with Germany’s Jews long since slaughtered or driven out (to America’s great benefit, thank you), you attack Israel at every opportunity, hanging on every Palestinian claim, no matter how absurd, and inventing Israeli atrocities. Americans see Israelis as fighting for their existence against those who want to exterminate them. You view Israelis as a reproach to your past deeds, and you lash out at them. Clausewitz is no longer a guide to your national behavior. Today, we need to consult Sigmund Freud. A Jew, of course. The Israelis, too, have been called Nazis by your elected politicians—indeed, “Nazi” seems to be your favorite insult. At times it sounds to us as though everyone who isn’t a German is now a Nazi. Unless, of course, we are talking of Arabs who murder Jews, in which case a good German speaks of freedom fighters. Here in America, Holocaust survivors live among us, as do those aging G.I.s who opened the gates to Dachau. They have been our fathers, our teachers and our neighbors. Is it any wonder that we find your rhetoric repulsive? Hitler, at least, was honest about his bigotry. And now we must endure the ludicrous schizophrenia of your present society, in which you alternate between insisting that German guilt must have an end and indulging in revisionist history that equates the allied bombing campaign against your cities or the sinking of ships ferrying submarine crews with Nazi evils. Your attempts to excuse the inexcusable merely remind us that Germany deserved every bomb dropped upon its soil. Bush the equivalent of Hitler? Show us the American death camps, please. As a lifelong admirer of German culture, you leave me in despair. Your chancellor has transformed the worthy old maxim “Be more than you appear to be” into “Appear to be more than you are.” Goethe’s timeless query, “Germany…but where is it?” has been answered with “Between France and Russia, duped by Chirac and cooly manipulated by Putin.” And Faust has been outed as Professor Unrat. Auf wiedersehen, Lili Marleen. It was great while it lasted.
And Marianne? Since no one took Germany seriously to begin with, Berlin had less to lose in l’affaire Iraq than Paris. France gambled with Dostoevskian abandon in the strategic casino and ended up bankrupt in the morning light. President Chirac and his sorcerer’s apprentice, Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, emerged as one of the most incompetent combinations in diplomatic history, two drunkards behind the steering wheel of policy. It astonishes us that the French actually believed that Paris could dictate terms to Washington. Sorry. Gaul does not give orders to Rome. We understood that Chirac was playing to the Arab world as well as to his domestic electorate. But the succession of French refusals to negotiate seriously or even to consider compromises at the United Nations, climaxed by France’s announcement, in advance, that it would veto any further resolutions introduced by the United States or Britain, seemed suicidal to us. And it was suicidal. The legacy of Charles de Gaulle perished in the Security Council. The tradition of permitting France a greater voice in trans-Atlantic decision-making than its place, power or contributions merited is over, as dead as Jean-Paul Sartre or his idol, Josef Stalin. The Gallic cock crowed so loudly it fell off the fence and broke its neck. Washington will no longer entertain the views of Paris on vital international issues. Nor will we risk another French veto on a matter we view as critical to our national security. And we will feed the United Nations the crumbs of strategy. Far from expanding its influence, France has forced its collapse. A quick round of applause in Algeria is hardly worth the loss of America’s ear. Briefly the champion of all the anti-American forces in the world, from Libya to North Korea, France is left unable to resolve the civil strife in Ivory Coast. And Paris will not be given a significant role in rebuilding Iraq. France long has seemed to Americans to be the apotheosis of European hypocrisy. While defending Saddam Hussein from “American aggression,” Mr. Chirac hosted Robert Mugabe in Paris in a pathetic attempt to expand French influence into Anglophone Africa. But I was in Zimbabwe when the visit occurred and the degree of fury the people of that country felt toward France for hosting Mugabe—whom they have nicknamed “Robodan Mugabevich”—guaranteed that the French will never be welcome between the Zambezi and the Limpopo. France seems to us an aging whore desperate to attract even the most diseased customers. But, above all, it is French naivete that leaves us shaking our heads. How could they so misjudge the situation? Aren’t the French supposed to be terribly clever and devious? How could they be so clumsy, and on such a grand scale? The short answer is that, like Arabs, they believed their own fantasies. In addition to the forlorn illusion that France is still a great power, Mr. Chirac and Mr. de Villepin utterly misjudged George Bush. They had called him a cowboy for so long that they came to believe there was nothing to the man. And they were wrong. I did not vote for President Bush. But, after 9/11/01, I was glad he was our president. Had Al Gore been in the White House, we would have done the European thing and formed a committee to ask how we had brought disaster upon ourselves. President Bush led a galvanized nation into a series of deliberate, carefully-considered actions that have broken the back of one terrorist organization after another while removing a brutal, backward theocracy from one country and a blood-encrusted dictatorship from another. And America is not finished. We will no longer subscribe to the European system in which dictators may do as they wish with impunity within their own borders—your insistence on respect for national sovereignty simply means that Hitler would have been perfectly acceptable had he only killed German Jews. And we will not follow the traditions of kings and kaisers in which heads of state are exempt from personal punishment, no matter their crimes. We will go after the truly guilty, not the masses. And no amount of insults hurled from beneath the Brandenburg Gate or from the Place de la Concorde will deter us. We are finished with your delight in weeping over past holocausts while you remain unwilling to act to prevent or interrupt new holocausts. Srebrenica is the European model. Baghdad is ours. President Bush is a Texan, as Europeans never fail to remind us. But the intelligence services of France and Germany seem to have failed to understand the character of Texans. They don’t speak artfully, but they act resolutely. They aren’t relativists. Texans believe there is a difference between right and wrong. And when you insult a Texan to his face while betraying his trust, he is not going to take it kindly. Confronting a Texan in public is always ill-advised, unless you intend to fight it out to the end—and have the means to do so. Texans don’t even care where Europe is on the map. We Americans are all Texans now. You have left us no choice.

__________________

bluelight

Well lets just be realistic about this shall we.....I will answer more thoroughly later...


The world has...in the long run ..no intention to be ruled ...from Texas.In fact...the world does not care about Texas at all and if Texas feels sorry for itself.


And when Texas goes to Paris ...and in ...Paris explains...that Texas can not ...forgive.....Paris..for not having followed dictates from Texas then Texas is just plain riciculous ...in the eyes of the world.


Bluelight

Falstaff

Is a spoiled child

__________________

bluelight

Something that verifys my assumption that republican Americans take it for granted that they shouyld lead...and command the world as do a parent its child.


Well welcome to reality.It does not work that way.

It did not work in Vietnam.It did not work for Russia in Poland.....and it will not work for Usa anywhere in the long run either.




Bluelight

Falstaff

The effort that the U.S. put into keeping communism at bay, struggling against a foe that had just as much ambition as we did influencing the politics of the world. But the economy of the free world became tethered to success of the United States, remeber Margeret Thatcher and Pres. Carter, she made some tough decisions and turned Englands economy around. It took Reagen and his posture with the former soviet uniion. Eventually, the wall fell, and We took our rightful place with England as powerful political, economic, and military powers, It isn't arrogance, it is a fact, but we aren't telling the French what to do, we always ask first, then question their motives, and through diplomacy find a solution. But Chirac want to win more political support at home, as well as Schroeder, now we see they are coming around, they still disagree with us, but are willing to make concessions as well we have to rebuild IRAQ.

__________________

bluelight

Here`s some writings from an American conservative...capable of seeing that a is a and b is b no matter if it is interpreted by Wolfwitz or someone else.




Bachevic


The letter from Bachevic


Qoute from the end of thge document


“In the new world that we have entered,” George W. Bush writes, “the only path
to peace and security is the path of action.” So we must press on, with vigor and
determination. Following our president, we must charge down that path until we
drop from exhaustion or fling ourselves off the precipice fashioned of our own
arrogance.





Well...he is...obviously ..an american.He is also obviously conservative...yet...he sees what i see...so i figure im not all wrong ...especially from where i am....in one of the parts of the world that Bush wants to run.



Bluelight

Falstaff

Quote:

The Bush administration’s grand strategy reeks of hubris. Yet one may also detect in its saber-rattling occasional notes of desperation. America today is, by any measure, the most powerful nation on earth, enjoying a level of mastery that may exceed that of any great power or any previous empire in all of history. Yet to judge by this extraordinary document, we can not rest easy, we can guarantee our freedom or our prosperity until we have solved every problem everywhere, relying chiefly on armed force to do so. In the end, we have little real choice -- as the similarities between this new strategy and the Clinton strategy that Republicans once denounced with such gusto attest. In truth, whatever their party affiliation or ideological disposition, members of the so-called foreign policy elite cannot conceive of an alternative to “global leadership” – the preferred euphemism for global empire. “In the new world that we have entered,” George W. Bush writes, “the only path to peace and security is the path of action.” So we must press on, with vigor and determination. Following our president, we must charge down that path until we drop from exhaustion or fling ourselves off the precipice fashioned of our own arrogance.

Oh yeh, we know this one.....often quoted as an indictment...however...I think it can be seen as an endorsement...

__________________

bluelight

Well if your wiew is the common wiew in Usa...then...you go your way and we will go ours. I figure that would be best.Because the whining......will be unbearable for both parts.



You are making comnments about European manifestators resembling Bush with Hitler etc etc etc....

I will not make a list of all the things ....exactly the same.....that has been flooding over the Atlantic ocean these last months from "Your side"...but ..i can tell you...the shit you have sent here isnt any cleaner than the shit we have recieved here



No...forgiveness ....dont come easy....as Powell said.....

And i will not forget the scam against the UN that you government did this time.

Not in a long time.


Your government has explicitly decided to run things.

They do.

And its not gonna work.

That way...of doing things have always failed..and it has always been carried out by parties far out to the left...or to the right.




Bluelight

bluelight

One of the first things that had anything whatsoever with politics to do that i encountered as young was my parents telling me about WW2 the concentration camps and how Usa and Great Britain managed to beat Hitler.


The next thing was seeing the B 52`s over Vietnam on TV and how the South Vietnamese chief of police executed a Vietcong? soldier in front of the camera.How Usa continued boming a small poor nation for years and years

I was something like 7-8 or 9......Since then...i dont believe in any sort of divined eternal goodness.....in any nation..and i do not believe that any nation does ..anything for tne good of another without having its own best at first hand...


Not even Usa.


Bluelight

Falstaff

That Pres. Kennedy was a hero and Thomas McNamarra was a genius, boy have I learned alot. I cannot deny the twisted and slippery path that the United States has taken to remain intact, we could have used Nukes, could have had another civil war perhaps, could have had race riots and chaos, but through legitimate and not so legitimate means, we have remained intact. For better or worse, we are stronger and more flexible now that we ever were...Your country has had what, 500 or so years to get it together, we just started our third century not too long ago, I would like to think we would last longer than the Roman Empire, and this Pax Americana will become something bigger and better, but that is idealism, imagine no wars for a hundred years...can you imagine the progress we will make...

__________________

merry

What about the "preemptive strikes" then?

As for Pax whatever-ana, hm, where's the Roman Empire now, Jeff?

And the Zealotes, they didn't look that bad in the Bible... how about now?

I'm affraid a lot of people see things this way, your way. You are ready to speak for your government, and your rethoric confuses individuals with countries - "We thought you were adults, but, from across the Atlantic, you look like spoiled children", now who was this for, Jeff? I take it you didn't aim this personally at nobody who actually read it, but you didn't expect Chirac to read your post, right? so it looks like you meant Europeans in general, the ones in this forum in particular. Can I be an Anti-American... Or should I think it's just a risky style, that you're not that kind of person anyway, and in any case, you were speaking for yourself, in spite of all the "we"s and "America"s.

And the Zealotes, who cares what they think?

__________________
There is a war between the ones who say there is a war
and the ones who say there isn't.
~~Leonard Cohen

Falstaff

A cynical view about cynical europeans, and equally cynical americans, that see the narrow view. There is not finely polished lense to see history from, even if you get it first hand from a veteran or a victem. History is written by the victors, we don't dissect events that happened more than 20 years ago because it often does not fit into our ethos. To properly illuminate the truth contained within the popular versions of battles won and lost during the last 200 years of american military history, would be bright enough to reveal the half truths and lies. We accept the truths that fit comfortably into the history we write, we grudgingly accept our sacrifices, choke on our defeats and compartmentalize what we cannot accept, store it away, bury it or refuse to admit it whatever.
The reality is that many americans believe that we have made so many sacrifices in the interests of preserving peace and fighting wars, that countries that benefited from our efforts to liberate them should not be so quick to refuse to take action when we deem it necessary in the interest of liberating another country. But then if you place another american in that position, we often balk and demand a more persuasive argument before we take action. It took Pearl Harbor, and massive losses in Allied shipping before we would begin to grind the wheels of industry here. Roosevelt could see with his fine political lense that German military power could have achieved an incredible victory had we not stepped in and began supplying the british, our prescence there in England held Hitler and Goering at bay long enough to redouble allied efforts. The failure of England to hold France was just poor planning pure and simple, they knew it was coming eventually, but that is when diplomacy was in the hands of amatuers. We laud the efforts of the allies at D-Day, but does anyone remember Dieppe? Another faliure that was turn into some sort of martyrdom for the allies, to test the strength of the German defences...hardly.
Pearl harbor? had we taken action on secret intelligence when it was timely? could have changed things remarkably, but it polarized american sentiment to get into a war...and 9/11 did the same I suppose.
My point is that Americans with a memory, refuse to accept the decision by many European nations to stand fast and remain patient while the U.N. spins the wheels in its machine to inact measures to limit the power of Saddam Hussien, we could see that it wasn't working. Pres. Bush wasn't intoxicated with hubris when he decided to raise the stakes and chase terrorists into northern Afghanistan, it was a message and europe seemed to be behind us. But when we want to remove Saddam Hussien because he refused to take action on demands for almost 12 years, those remaining months he was in power didn't change the situation, he didn't comply, he faced his own consquences, and many think he was set up by us for a fall since 1991, and that might be true to a limited extent, but he was a madman, and not particulerly bright as well.
To be fair, much sentiment has been wasted on the journalistic bias and hype tha accompanies pro war and anti war, a person can get lost in it, and much of its just that and nothing more. I was deeply cynical about our involvement in the first gulf war, since we didn't remove Hussien, but in retrospect, it was going to happen eventually. I dismissed the french and german postions as more reactionary than anything else, and predicted that we would all be back into bed together soon anyway....and you know what...we are, regardless of what the newspapers say...they can spin it anyway they want, we came, we saw and we conquered a government of criminals. What I can't understand is why we didn't spend those months preparing a police force to exercise control when we leave...I just can't believe it.

The pax americana remark is pure cynicism, we go to other countries and lay our template of freedom upon the oppressed peoples of the middle east, ignoring the centuries old religious traditions and their value systems. It is inefficient. We should get the heck out of IRAQ once they get pointed in the right direction, but that is too idealistic I suppose.

European and middle eastern governments may see us as Warmongers and assassins, bent on pre emptive and destructive campaigns to make geo-political changes, and perhaps that has always been true. We tread where no one will go, with the flag of freedom we are called hypocrites and thieves when we liberate, and we have supported shallow regimes that served our interests when communism was our greatest threat. I remember the Bay of Pigs and those lessons were learned the hard way. We have spent over 40 years trying to reduce casualties to ourselves and to the people who live in the countries where we take action, only to face warlike cultures and tribal rivalrys older than the United States, yeh were way over our heads in that respect. But every 4 years, someone else usually comes along with a different idea, different way of looking at the situation and different advisers keenly interested in improving our odds the next time.
Will we invade another country again? Will we go to war again to protect our interests in foriegn lands...
probably, The more powerful we get, the more we are at risk from more insidious forms of aggression. A fifth column if you will, composed of the very americans and allies that were our brothers and friends through history.
England was a mighty Oak and France a Mighty maple tree before they grew too tall. Will america be a mighty california redwood and grow so tall that we cast a long shadow upon the world, and not see the worms in our bark....so tall that one person with a sharp axe or saw can cut us down...that is what I fear..

__________________

SH4President

fallang_jeff???

Are you a veteran??
Or should I say are you a babykiller??

bluelight

A somewhat moronic post.

Try use your brain if you intend to attack anyone here with a different political wiew.

Babykiller....




Bluelight

JavaFox

I won't tolerate such namecalling, especially towards an esteemed former member of our armed forces. You've been warned before, SH -- don't do it again.

Falstaff

I proudly served our country, and I come from a family of military intelligence people.

I speak three languages fluently, and some four languages feebly.

but have a chest full of medals that remain in a cedar box under my bed.

I have been sober for three years...two ex wives, two grown teenagers, two ex girlfriends, and a wheelbarrow full of debt, but I have been fortunate.

I gave up a long time ago, trying to calculate the number of people that I am directly responsible for killing on the platforms that I served on, it was just to morbid.

I gave unto Ceaser, what was Ceasers, but my soul is intact.

Do you remember Peter Arnett falling on his face while a tomohawk missle flew over his head on it's way to Bagdad.......our first strike package, while we sat in the Persian Gulf, I draw some satisfaction from that...

I dont march in parades, I carry the american flag in my heart. I spend my time helping people that were maimed by accidents or born with orthopaedic defects. I help them heal, and I am in turn healed. My goal is to get handicapped people connect to the internet via WiFi before I leave this earth. I believe that it will bridge the gap between the world and people capable of communicating...look at Steven Hawkins!!

I am not a warmonger, but I know how to fight, and better yet, I know when to fight..
I believe some battles are not worth fighting...
I draw inspiration from accepting the things that I cannot change...
having the courage to change the things that I can (aren't many you know)
And grateful for the wisdom to know the difference.

SH4president, I have seen the face of death, it is cold, and it waits for all of us. If there is one thing I would like you to know, is that you should make peace with your higher power, if you have one....Embrace your fear, and use it fuel your courage. Try holding yourself to the same standard that you hold others up to....

I am not offended by your question, I have heard it before, many times from people that I respected in my personal life. One cannot answer this question without some personal inventory, if one must engage other human beings in combat, especially if it is done with the flip of a switch....you have to accept the fact that people will die....You cannot hesitate at the moment of truth and perform your mission efficiently. Human beings are reduced to statistics, numbers, and even dismissed as artifacts on a screen.
But I have seen smoking human flesh, smelled burned diesel and oil, tasted sweat, blood and fear, and I was not intoxicated...

I have learned to compartmentalize these feelings without pretending that I felt them. I read the strike reports and was shocked at how many Tomohawks missed...I watched 16 inch rounds land on bunkers and watched human beings tossed into the air from the camera on a drone..I also sat in fear, while two silkworm missles made their way from hidden postions in Kuwait towards our battle group...I watched grown men fill their pants with urine and excrement as the range closed upon us. I sighed relief when a british ship shot both of them down.

I can understand why you might feel that all military people are somehow responsible for successfully fighting engagements and inflicting losses at any price, but that just isn't true. Those men and women, that must continue to fire weapons at retreating IRAQI's, that must unload heavy weapons into vehicles that might contain civilians to protect their fellow soldiers from suicide attack, that must fight and die in battle and take the same risks to fight the peace, are no better or worse than you...

I would ask that you might understand that most of us that serve in our armed forces take an oath, we pledge to obey orders, to serve honoraby, to protect our nation from all threats both foriegn and domestic, and if necessary, to die in action to successfuly fulfill our obligation to our nation, to our chain of command, and to ourselves....

that same honor, the same driving force that kept men and women running up flights of steps when the elevators failed in the two towers, knowing full well that they might not return to the bottom, because they were commited, they were brave, they understood the risks and still they kept going until the buildings fell.

then understand, please if you can, the young marine that charges into withering fire, screaming at the top of his lungs, yard by yard until he achieves his objective, eliminating threats, providing accurate fire into hostile forces, sweeping the area, and then providing medical attention to his fellow marines and his injured foes..
and the next day...doing it all over again....for a paultry sum, a crappy retirement, and perhaps even a medal on his chest, a footnote in his unit history...
there is no glory in any of this really.....but there is honor...
they are not baby killers man......
and niether am I...
but I would fight to the death if necessary to protect your right to ask that question and to disagree with me...that is freedom...and that is what I believe in.
I pray for the day that men and women all over the world can just sit down and bitch about their problems and work them out without trying to kill each other...but I am not going to hold my breath..
I believe that our military actions in IRAQ served may purposes, many of them are useful and productive, and regardless of the loss of lives, save hundreds of thousands of IRAQ people the fate of those that lie in shallow graves in the desert, if just for that one thing, it was all worth it to me..

__________________

bluelight

Tis is the internet.....

The internet....respects Jeff but It doesnt care much for ....any armed forces....

So moderating a post with the armed forces makes mre wonder...where am i??

It doesnt seem to me...that this site is financed by the US defense departement.....




Bluelight

JavaFox

I really don't understand what you're trying to say.

One does not have to be a member of the Department of Defense or the military to have respect for someone who served. What I said to SH was that I would not tolerate name-calling, especially towards someone who faced death in order to liberate a nation. Jeff is a hero, and I don't want anybody treating him otherwise.

That said, this is no double-standard, as we at Driverheaven do not tolerate name-calling of any kind. And while I harbor a deep respect for members of our armed forces, that is not the reason I warned SH. The reason I warned SH is simple: we don't allow name-calling in this forum.

SH4President

How can it be namecalling if fallang_jeff actually killed babies???

Read his post above.

"I gave up a long time ago, trying to calculate the number of people that I am directly responsible for killing on the platforms that I served on, it was just to morbid."

" I read the strike reports and was shocked at how many Tomohawks missed."

You say Jeff is a hero. You think the mother of a dead child think Jeff is a hero too? That is if she survieved!

bluelight

I am saying that refering to "The armed forces" when adressing a warning seems ..."way out on the balcony" to me.

Unless the "Armed forces" are running this site.

Jeff ..is enough


Bluelight

bluelight

So Jeff has been a military in combat.

Big deal and totally useless to focus on.SO has hundreds of thousand s of others only in Usa alone.

That...is not the problem.

I would see a problem if he or anyone else was propagaing for warcrimes.

They dont.

They speak their legit ideas of how things are to be run.


Like ithe ideas or not but dont jab on people personally.

There is very little point.

Bluelight

JavaFox

Given that SH4President was warned before, and that he continued to slander one of our good members in a deeply disrespectful and insulting way after he had been asked to stop, he will be banned for a length of time yet to be decided.

We have no interesting in silencing dissent in this forum, but, really, let's try to keep it cordial, respectful, and civil.

bluelight

?


Bluelight

bluelight

Considering i have been threatend to death and several times been accused of being mental ill at this board by "American patriots" and nobody has had any bigger problems with that...and the persons responsable...were never ever in for a ban....

Well....


Bluelight

JavaFox

If you have any problems with any members of this board, bluelight, please let one of the moderators, myself, or Wyre know and we will take the appropriate steps. I for one have personally warned an "American patriot" or two not to harass you; we all want everybody to have a positive experience in DH. If anyone is making your experience less than enjoyable, I'd like to know.

bluelight

Ok ..we all best cool down a couple of degrees...Im not gonna defenmd SH ..i didnt like the "childkiller" stuff.

Ugly....but he to has been taken lot of garbage.....which he i turn has sent back..

So if we all try and think ..twice...before we push the "post" button.

I have taken it as a habit to edit my posts for "real garbage" before i post and i find that it makes life much easier.

Sometimes sarcasms that can be taken as insults slips through...but i think it is generally good to consider every post twice...

Its human to fail now and then and to let off some steam ...but as i said...it does make things easier.


Bluelight

Falstaff

I lived in Japan for six years and faced remarks like "baby killer" from younger japanese socialists, they often argue how much stronger Japan would have been if the Americans never bombed japan, how much different if the japanese government and it's culture would have evolved if allowed to surrender without occupation. I heard the stories of B-29 crews that parachuted into hostile countryside, and what the local people did to them, some were fortunate at first, but later, after the fire bombings it became worse. many poeple don't know this but the fire bombing campaigns by General Curtis Lemay were more destructive than both atomic detonations.
In yokohama, at the local hobby store, I used to buy airplane kits from a twisted little man across the street from a large temple. Outside this temple sat a vertical stone with names written and upon it, and a simple eulogy for the dead. I asked the old man about it and later that evening before the sun went down I approached it with my my old CANON camera, I postioned my tripod and mounted the camera body and composed my shot. I was surprised by the sweep of a bamboo cane across my tripod and legs and I lost my balance. An elderly man wielding the cane shook his fist and choked on some obscenities before he began to push me across the gray stones of the temple walkway....I dumped my filters and lenses on the ground and recoiled from another blow to my back, a little softer this time. I covered my exposed neck and curled into the fetal position hoping someone would see me and help me. I stared at the horizontal landscape and searched around as the bamboo cane fell upon my back and just lay there against my shoulder, I could hear the man weeping, and looked up to see his tear filled eyes....he was weakened by the experience I suppose and I rolled over gathering my stuff into my camera bag, I collapsed my tripod into my bag and stood up, well beyond the edge of the temple...people just walked by paying no attention....
The man tapped the surface of the carved stone lightly with his bamboo and I turned and walked away....
He still stood there regarding me coldly, breathing deeply and poised like a guardian...
At the hobby store I asked the proprieter about the experience.....He told me no one takes pictures of this place, this shrine..to the souls of those killed during WW2, and whose bodies were never recovered, they presumably, on fire, leapt into the river adjacent to the place where I stood...I was on holy ground, and I violated their laws. I told him I have never had this kind of Anti-American experience before, he looked at me surprised and leaned in close to my face, and told me he would have done the same thing...It didn't matter whether I was american or not...no one takes pictures there...it honors the souls of the dead...all victems of B-29 bombing, and he said the old man wasn't anti-american, but it was his duty to guard this shrine until he passes away.....
My anger and frustration turned to sadness, here was a chance for me to bridge the gap between my world and the terrible legacy here...I asked the man what should I do? Apologise?...he told me it was enough that I just let him do what he did, and I did not resist.....He gave me a piece of rice paper and asked me to write an apology on it in english, I just asked forgiveness for trespassing and not seeing any sign. The proprieter just looked at it and then in Kanji made bold beautiful strokes in black ink below it...
Wow he translated that fast I thought, I asked him what it said, he told me that I offered a prayer of forgiveness to the souls that are rememberd and honored there, no more no less....I reached for it to take it across the street....He pulled back and looked at me coldly for a moment and then with a smile, he told me that this one was for him.......I never returned there....embarrassed and humiliated, my experience was an eye opener for me...Here in one of the most modern cities in the world, people never forget, but have learned to adapt to these situations....learned to cope....but have never forgot the men, women and children and whole families that perished instantly in firestorms here in this place.....I learned humility.

__________________

bluelight

All "large scale" wars sem to pass a limit where they become irrational and actions against civilians become the main issue.

Same thing was true for WW2 Germany where 80 percent of that wars total bombload dropped over Germany was dropped the last 6 months of the war.

That might seem rational at first ..but when you realise that the vast majority of that was dropped over civilian targets...citys many of the military free zones ...then you start wondering about the mechanisms.


The american writer Kurt Vonnegut has written a good book about this.

He was a p.o.w in the city of Dresden when the allies bombed that city to ashes and killed one hundred thousand peole in one single night...with ...fire.Civilians..of course.

The name of the book is Slaughterhose 5


This ..was also...during the very last period of the war..and it was a deed...totally useless to the outcome of the war.

Similar things happend all over Germany.

And...a fact is...unlike ..."the history of the winner".

All Germans were not nazi`s.

All Germans were not concentration camp guards.

So one wonders why they had to be butchered like this...totally useless...





Bluelight

Falstaff

much of the rampant destruction of Germany by Townsends bombers from england were in fact some sort of act of retribution for earler bombings of England, it didn't shorten the war, and only enflamed the military...young luftwaffe pilots were willing ram british and american bombers rather than pepper formations with machinegun and cannon fire. I cannot account for the young NAZI movements of today though..

__________________

Reuter

Hi fallinf_jeff,

I see you are making some extra commotion

The history of the bombings in Europe is at least what could be called a "weird" one.
In 1940 Hitler did forbit any bombing on English citys, but during the Battle of Britain some German bombers lost their way and suddenly saw some military targets beneeth them and without knowing bombed a ship yard or some docks in London.
The next night some hundred RAF planes bombed Berlin on purpose, and the retaliations from both sides started....