Is the game still in development?

[klauss]

Nor should you constantly believe everything published in a book, as you seem wont to do.

Well, I don't. Only when things make sense.
But in this case I don't have many options... it's not like I'm moving to Iraq to see how things are going there.

 

[Frosty]

That's a valid point... but I still think something has to be done to avoid that flagrant violation of civil rights.

Wait, what flagrant violation of civil rights?

 

[klauss]

The example I mentioned. It has happened (not with such a law, though).

 

[Master Wooky]

@LOAF

I do agree to everything you answered on my last post. Although there were some little miss understandings. As I said, because of my studies I'm interessted in a lot of small stuff. And there are some interesting new elements in US politics today. I never meant that they are going to change the political culture in the US, but they are worth to take a look at them and see how America deals with them.
I rejoined the discussion because there seemed to be alot of confusion about how a lot of people react on the US. All I tried was to offer a model to explain this which works for most similar situation in IA really well. Of course, which might explain some rejections in this thread, this is a model which works only on the macro level and was designed to make a prognosis on the macro level. As soon as you try to explain stuff on the micro level, it must fail.

 

[scheherazade]

just felt like making a tally of which wars/interventions since WWII the US was the aggressor/instigator.

means :
we attacked, rather than defended someone
we overthrew someone (coup included)
invasion
we armed someone to fight for us

not including :
broke up a civil war
we joined in after the fact (let us really shine in our intents)

(assasn = cia killed the leader)
(overthrow = us either invaded, or armed some group and supported their attack/coup)

i got :
1) iran (overthrow) 53'
2) congo (assasn) 61'
3) dominican republic (assasn) 61'
4) dominican republic [again](overthrow) (they didn't like the guy that replaced the previous one ~~~)
5) cuba 61' (bay of pigs anyone?)
6) iraq (assasn) 63'
7) ecuador (overthrow) 63'
8) brazil (overthrow) 64'
9) vietnam 64'
10) indonesia (overthrow) 65'
11) congo [again] (overthrow) 65'
12) ghana (overthrow) 66'
13) greece (overthrow) 67'
14) bolivia (assasn) 67' (poor che... why is he so popular? because he looks cool in his hat? i mean the dude failed to accomplish anything)
15) cambodia (decided they didn't like them either (nam), bombs away!) 68'
16) cambodia (overthrow) 70'
17) bolivia (overthrow) 71'
18) chile (overthrow) 73'
19) angola (attempt overthrow) 76' (here's some guns, you know what to do ;-D)
- ) [argentina (just crass behavior) 76' (helped argentina in the dirty war. gotta get those commies! this one really shouldn't be listed though. it wasn't the us' idea to start it. they just helped it happen)]
- ) [iran-iraq and iran contra aren't really applicable (though the would happen now in the list) because the us didn't *start* it, and didn't care to start it. this one and the last one i just threw in because they are cute.]
20) south korea (what do you call it?) 80' (people's uprising against military government. attempt to restore democracy. u.s. used its forces to suppress demonstrators. some say a few K died. isn't the nation the people? if the people want democracy, opposing them is opposing the nation, no? maybe not. f the people. i think it counts tho.)
21) seychelles (overthrow) 81'
22) grenada (overthrow) 83'
23) fiji (overthrow) 87'
24) panama (overthrow) 89' (since when is some marine getting killed on the street by panamanian civillians a just cause to invade a country (operation just cause)? oh wait! the marines were there to incite violence!, b-duh.)
25) desert storm (what was the point of this one? just because? (desert shield was over, they didn't plan on overthrowing uncle-saddy... why bother even attacking?) 91'
26) haiti (overthrow) 93'
27) iraq (random bombing campaign) 98' (not many overthrows goingon. i guess they were bored. remember all those "us bombed XXX radar station in iraq' news reports? funny blowing up someone's radar when you're not at war with them... unless... you got something planned )
28) afghanistan (bombing) 98' (clinton's attempts to kill osama)
29) sudan (bombing) 98' (more attempts to kill osama)
- ) [china<sorta'> (bombing) 99' (this one is funny... i'm sure it was an 'accident', u.s. planes bomb chinese embassy in serbia. whoops! that one made me laugh.) lets just not count this one]
30) afghanistan (invasion) 00' (well, even though we were the aggressors, i don't think anyone really minds this one (since religious freaks shouldn't be in power anywhere, including here <evangelicals : our taliban (and they would be if you gave em' the chance)>). although, IMHO, the taliban never attacked us. just just al-qaeda. since when does person A hitting you justify hitting back person A's friend? s'life.
31) venezuela (failed overthrow) 02' (did this one sneak by you? was pretty sneaky imho. no wonder mr chavez doesn't like us much . go chavez! haha. this guy is so funny. you should read some of his crap.)
32) haiti (overthrow) 04' (well, aristide did need to go. not like he was bad. but his office was over (was just hanging in there). dragging it out just dragged out the turmoil).
33) salvador (threats?) 04' (if you elect the commy candidate in your democratic election, we're coming for you. not physical intervention, but it definately put the leader out of the race.)
34) Equatorial Guinea (attempt overthrow) 04' (WHOOPS! did you catch us in the act before we were ready? my bad. (sneaky media coverage isn't it? all the overthrow attempts barely get coverage. aristide was the only recent success, and it got what? a couple comments in the course of 1 week? most of them just scrolling along the bottom of the screen. this is why i prefer watching the foreign tv news on the public station. they actaully talk about crap our media won't mention.)

so, 34 that I count where we invited ourselves to get involved on the aggressive side of things.

since 48.
it's 05 now.
so that's 57 years.
57/38 = an average of 1 [invasion/intervention/overthrow/assasination] every 1.5 years.

pentagon is a busy place

so sure, most of it was littel stuff. i dont much care if we replace a government.
the only real us-aggression wars were :
vietnam
grenada
panama
desert storm
[afghanistan, if you cout the taliban = al-qaeda. which it isn't... but still, some may not care] << edit
operation get rid of saddy

so 5 in 57 years, that's only 11.4 years beteen starting a real war.
no biggy. but definately more than other countries are up to.

now take into account that most countries (at least the ~12 or so i've been in) don't have nearly as short of a political memory as americans do (on to the next scandal, forget the last one), and their media doens't downplay what the u.s. does as much as ours, it's not really surprising that the u.s. is seen as a bully.

don't get me wrong, though, so long as i live here i'm glad i'm on the giving side rather than the taking side. go usa! (keeping prices cheap since 1898)

-scheherazade

 

[Master Wooky]

I always thought desert storm had UN support?

 

[scheherazade]

desert shield had un support (repel iraqi forces from kuwait)

desert storm came right after without delay (attack iraq).
some support pretty much came with it by inheritance.
it was an unnecessary but 'pretty much everyone was ok with it' beat down of iraqi forces when they went back home.
there was no attempt to change anything by committing desert storm (no UN plan to make things different). mostly just "hey,we're here, we got guns... we're on a roll... lets just blow more shit up".

edit : well, i should really say: what it *did* accomplish was a softer iraq. which in turn means less chance of them disturbing our oil flow again and making prices annoyingly high, lesser chance of iraq choosing not to sell oil to us (you sell cheap or ay-kaachoo-mang'), and it also means a slightly weaker aopec. and a soft iraq also means it's easier to later on replace who's in charge. (there are numerous other reasons, but none of which seem as important to me from a consumer perspective)

the reason i listed desert storm was because it was purely an attacking move (no longer a defense issue at all), and it was *by choice*.

-scheherazade

 

[klauss]

Wow, scheherazade...
...that list is even bigger than I expected.

And the little things count on the minds of the countries involved... and they're many.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I won't get into this matter, it would turn easily into a flaming war. But... I'll gather some books, written by Americans themselves, showing what it's like now on Iraq, and how, by whatever reason, the people don't love them at any rate.

We have a very strong freedom of the press in the United States -- and we learned the hard way long about fifty years ago that everything in print isn't true... (G)

Hehe... yes, we're not very bright economically speaking.
Anyway, that proposal was certain death for our economy. I doubt Bush's advisors are that incompetent as not to see that. Rather, I have to assume they didn't care.
That doesn't speak bad for them... it's not their country or their people, the don't have to care. We were just worried that our own president wouldn't either have the guts to reject the proposal (for, in fact, the US has us by the balls due to all that FMI-thing), or just be incompetent enough not to realize of the danger in accepting it (it wouldn't be the first time).

So, the leader of the free world bothered to come down to your country that hasn't been able to run its own economy and tell you what he thinks... and *he* doesn't care? Is there anything the American executive could do that would show *more* of an interest in Argentina's economy than actually going there to talk about it? Because I can't think of anything.

He's not the President of Argentina, you know - what you're angry about is that the US doesn't have a magic solution to your problems, not that they're trying to insult you.

That would be silly... the US would have never leaved the Pacific to the Japanese, it would have been an invitation for an invasion on US territory.

It was certainly silly in retrospect, but we look at it rather differently today.

You have to remember something that most Americans don't, which was that Hawaii wasn't a state in 1941.

Hawaii was a US posession, but it wasn't part of the country. If Hawaii were 'given away' tomorrow, we'd be shocked... in 1941 it was just territory that we'd annexed. Islands in the Pacific were traded among the western powers -- the Philipines, for instance, were given to the United States following the Spanish-American War, and were let go after World War II with little fanfare. The only thing that 'shocks' us today about the idea of giving up the Pacific is that Hawaii is *now* an American state. From the perspective of the Japanese in 1941, the United States giving up Hawaii wasn't unlikely.

There's many reasons why the Japanese plan didn't work. The obvious one is that the attack was a failure in the sense that they'd have liked to knock out the Pacific Fleet. Japan failed to sink the carriers and so we'll never know how America would have reacted had they actually lost their offensive capability on the first day of the war.

The other one is that Americans don't react well to being attacked. This sounds silly today, because it's almost a universal among governments... but in the past a military attack followed by negotiations was a legitimate way to gain concessions from another country. Japan didn't understand the United States, though, which has a history of unifying in the face of such attacks. The Alamo, the Maine, Fort Sumter -- it's part of the American character. As the slogan for one of our very earliest foreign conflicts went, "millions for defense, sir, but not one penny for tribute".

I thought that was the reason for attacking even when it was certain to draw the US into the war: they were already going to anyway.
But perhaps, as with many things, it was just an excuse.

The United States was preparing to go to war with *Germany*. Again, there was not a unified Axis war machine -- just a mutual defense treaty.

That's a valid point... but I still think something has to be done to avoid that flagrant violation of civil rights.

Well, that depends what you mean by flagrant violation of civil rights. Flagrant means 'obvious' -- and I've seen a lot more internet-talk about how people are sure their civil rights *will* be violated than I've ever actually heard of anyones civil rights being violated.

Wow, scheherazade...
...that list is even bigger than I expected.

And the little things count on the minds of the countries involved... and they're many.

Scheherazade's list isn't worth the paper it isn't printed on -- it's a mass of snarky comments, instances of the United States selling weapons to other countries and assasinations that the CIA may have agreed with. Having the United States' support for a cause and having the United States go to war are two very, very different things.

Here's a formal list of times the United States military has been used abroad. Heck, compare some of the times they actually overlap with Scheherazade's make believe world -- you have things like American transport planes being loaned to a country as examples he's cited of the US going to war.

 

[klauss]

He's not the President of Argentina, you know - what you're angry about is that the US doesn't have a magic solution to your problems, not that they're trying to insult you.

Ok... this is tiresome. I'll say this one more time only. I'm not angry about it... I don't even think it's wrong... it's only the way I think it is... not right or wrong. Wrong would be for my own president not to care.

PS: Yes... I thought there was something fishy with that list... too many assasinations, I was wondering what those items came from. Although, the only thing I can confirm, the part about Argentina is entirely true.
PS2: The link doesn't work.

 

[Nomad Terror]

The link works fine for me.

 

[klauss]

Well... must be some kind of DNS problem in my country, because I can't resolve the address.
I've tried several times, just in case it was a temporary problem.

 

[scheherazade]

loaf <<
i'd pretty much equate the us sending forces, to the us equipping and funding someone else to do it.

either way, there's always more involvement than the formal.

also, I don't think it's that bad a thing. just pointing out instances where we've left an impression. there's a difference between 'something happens' and someone judging it bad or good. lots of people take offense to those actions, others think good was done. i guess to summ it up, enough take offense all over the world to leave a negative impression. and enough don't care a bit about so that for the most part no real cry of foul is heard.

-scheherazade

 

[Superhannes]

At first i´ve to apologize, that i use my first post here and not within a more WC like topic. Anyway:

Here you can something learn about the bombing terror in WW2 and before. Very helpful to fight against the factoids here.

http://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Zusatz/Luftwaffe/Bombenkrieg.htm

There's many reasons why the Japanese plan didn't work. The obvious one is that the attack was a failure in the sense that they'd have liked to knock out the Pacific Fleet. Japan failed to sink the carriers and so we'll never know how America would have reacted had they actually lost their offensive capability on the first day of the war

It wouldn´t change that much. The u.s. already build more carriers, than the japanese did and so they could replace their loss more easely than the japanese could.

Having the United States' support for a cause and having the United States go to war are two very, very different things.

Actually not, since countries which were equipped by the u.s. (Afghanistan, Iraq etc.) usually were attacked by them later.

18) chile (overthrow) 73'

Yes, September, 11. was a very bad day for the world.

 

[Halman]

That doesn't make any sense at all.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

It wouldn´t change that much. The u.s. already build more carriers, than the japanese did and so they could replace their loss more easely than the japanese could.

When the war started the United States had seven aircraft carriers in total -- that is, seven aircraft carriers between *both* theaters. Japan started the war with *eleven* carriers and a Naval doctrine that knew how to use them effectively (something the United States didn't have). Their hope was that they would be able to knock out the American ability to pursue a war in the Pacific just as the country was getting ready to enter the conflict in Europe. The belief was that the United States wouldn't be able to fight both wars and would have to cede its Pacific islands to avoid an extended conflict with Japan.

Japan *knew* it couldn't fight a war of attrition with the United States -- which was why it did exactly what we've been talking about, a quick series of attacks across the Pacific aimed at forcing the US to sue for peace immediately.

Actually not, since countries which were equipped by the u.s. (Afghanistan, Iraq etc.) usually were attacked by them later.

I'm not sure you're clear on what "usually" means, since at this point pretty much every military in the world is using and buying American made weapons to some extent. The fact that someone in a war torn country can buy a bunch of F-5s doesn't mean the United States is going to war or even necessarily supporting that group's ideology.

If the rest of the world is blaming the US for its own stupid conflicts because the US invents all the good weapons, they don't deserve our consideration -- we're not sitting around complaining that the Civil War is France's fault because the French invented the minie ball.

 

[Superhannes]

If the rest of the world is blaming the US for its own stupid conflicts because the US invents all the good weapons, they don't deserve our consideration

Who has trained the Taliban to fight against the russian occupying force? Who armed Saddam Hussein, so that he was able to attack the Iran?

'm not sure you're clear on what "usually" means, since at this point pretty much every military in the world is using and buying American made weapons to some extent.

Okay, equipped was the wrong word. I meant supported instead and i meant it this way as you wrote it, here:

. Having the United States' support for a cause and having the United States go to war are two very, very different things

So, the leader of the free world bothered to come down to your country

The leader of the free world? How can a free world have a leader?

 

[ChrisReid]

Who has trained the Taliban to fight against the russian occupying force? Who armed Saddam Hussein, so that he was able to attack the Iran?

And who armed a hundred other countries that didn't later get attacked by the US? You can't try to make silly points that LOAF just refuted.

The leader of the free world? How can a free world have a leader?

Since this is your first day, maybe you weren't aware, but inane and disingenuous political statements don't fly here.

 

[Superhannes]

Inane and disingenuous? A strange and nearly impossible mix. But anyway, i just asked a little question, since (as far as i know) a goverments mission is to represent its people and not to lead them.

And who armed a hundred other countries that didn't later get attacked by the US?

At least, not now.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Who has trained the Taliban to fight against the russian occupying force? Who armed Saddam Hussein, so that he was able to attack the Iran?

I'm not sure how two of the... what, hundred and fifty countries the United States sells weapons to constitutes a majority, but if you think you can even get these two past any sort of analysis then you've thought wrong.

Afghanistan -- the United States was *wrong* to provide weapons for the government of a country to fight off a foreign invasion? Even ignoring that particular fact, the situation is very, very clearly an example of the proxy war/selective aid policy the allied nations used during the Cold War to keep Europe from glowing.

Afghanistan was exactly what the entire Cold War was about -- preventing the Soviet Union from expanding its influence. It's not even some subtle, morally vauge example where the two sides where assasinating each others puppet governments to decide communism vs. democracy -- it's the Soviets actually invading a country and being fought off by American weapons. We should all be proud of that.

And Iraq invading Iran with American weapons. Well, you've got me there -- there's *nothing* the country could have done to the *evil* United States that would have caused them to respond by supporting Iran's enemies. Oh, wait, the 1979 hostage crisis? Maybe the open support for international terrorism? The destruction of an American airliner? Never mind, then - Iran in 1980 wasn't some innocent bystandard, the United States by all rights should have gone much further in responding to its crimes at the time. The fact that all we did was sell guns to one of its enemies is an incredibly measured response.

Lastly, these complaints are idiotic because they imply something that should in fact be entirely offensive to your generic America-hating internet core -- that the United States is some how smart enough to see many decades into the future, and should then use this amazing power to avoid responding to what were clearly the political necessities of the moment.

The leader of the free world? How can a free world have a leader?

The phrase "leader of the free world" has been used to refer to the President of the United States for roughly fifty years now. I'm not editorializing by using it, it's a legitimate usage.