5 ms·

Ok this is very nice, but as someone who was also bullied but is from a country that's been invaded at least 5 times by various empires in the last 1000 years,

Ok this is very nice, but as someone who was also bullied but is from a country that's been invaded at least 5 times by various empires in the last 1000 years, every gun ever made that wasn't used to feed people - was also made so that my ancestors could defend themselves against some king or dictator who wanted to invade other countries. You can either defend yourself, and possibly survive, or you can die. That's generally the choice throughout history, because hardly any country has ever always been the aggressor. Violence is at the root of all human existence. To deny it is to live in a fantasy land. In the end violence is what rules, because if you are weak at some point someone stronger will rule over you. That doesn't mean a violent person will always rule, because 2 peaceful collaborators can usually take down a violent ruler, but it still means that at the root of it whoever can dominate the other in some way will win. And this isn't unique to humans of course, it's how it is in nature and most tribal animals.

gcheong 4y ago
He’s not saying no military expenditure should occur but it has to be in balance with other things. In the US, where our military more often than not is used imperialistically rather than purely defensively, while the poor are allowed to starve or work for less than living wages, homeless suffer on the streets from mental illness, people are allowed to drown in medical or school debt, and where we got caught with our pants down in a pandemic when we should have been the most ready nation on earth, suddenly spending ever increasing amounts to defend ourselves from some imagined future threat doesn’t make much sense.
- cloutchaser 4y ago
  Take it from someone who's non US and so isn't caught up in self guilt - the US is a much more passive military superpower than almost any superpower in history. I really don't think the US is imperialistic TBH. Just because a few countries got bombed for oil doesn't make you imperialistic. Read a bit of history about what empire building countries/kings/tyrants were actually like.
  - FpUser 4y ago
    >"Just because a few countries got bombed for oil doesn't make you imperialistic." If you bomb country for oil it makes you a fucking bandit and war criminal.
    - trevorboaconstr 4y ago
      Oh goodness, here we go. What country did the US bomb for oil? We went into Afghanistan because the Taliban harbored the organization that committed 9/11 and refused to turn them over. We went into Iraq primarily because a group of Neoconservatives were drunk on the unipolar moment and believed the US could spread democracy at the barrel of a gun and remake the Middle East. Haliburton definitely made money in Iraq, but we did not go in for oil. The invasion of Iraq was based on the fact that Bush and Cheney were neoconservatives, which means essentially liberal Trotskyites. They believed that human rights were universal and it was legitimate to uphold them by force. So in their logic, Saddam Hussein was a bad a guy and Iraq was a good candidate for showing that the US can start rolling into places and giving the people their freedom, just like that. The basic assumption was that stable democracies grow on their own once you get rid of the dictator. So show up to a country, get the dictator, rinse and repeat. Now you have nice democracies all throughout the world. In that view, not invading is immoral because it means you’re condemning millions of Iraqis to live under Saddam’s dictatorship. The basic lesson from this is that countries don’t act out of material self-interest as much as armchair cynics assume. Instead they’re frequently operated on an emotional or ideological basis.
      - FpUser 4y ago
        >"We went into Iraq primarily because a group of Neoconservatives were drunk on the unipolar moment and believed the US could spread democracy at the barrel of a gun and remake the Middle East" Ah sorry. All valid and noble reasons. No crime here. Dead, mutilated, starved, displaced and otherwise abused Iraqis salute you. Also message outlining your honorable goals should be directed to the parent to whom I was replying. Was not my claim that the US did it for oil.
rayiner 4y ago
> You can either defend yourself, and possibly survive, or you can die. That's generally the choice throughout history, because hardly any country has ever always been the aggressor. Absolutely. When my home country declared independence, Pakistan engaged in genocide to stop it. Having been disarmed the British, the independence fighters had to steal Pakistani weapons: https://www.thedailystar.net/backpage/bangladesh-liberation-war-1971-muktijuddho-guerrilla-fighter-arms-freedom-1511812 https://www.thedailystar.net/backpage/bangladesh-liberation-... > Most of the weapons used by the Mukti Bahini were taken from defeated soldiers. Then, there were homemade bombs, knives and even instances of the use of bows and arrows… > The better equipped Pakistani army used imported guns, automatic weapons, mortars, artillery trucks, armoured personnel carriers, tanks, airplanes, and ammunition. Eventually, Bengali regiments of the Pakistan military defected. Even then, independence wouldn’t have been possible without India joining the war against Pakistan.
sofixa 4y ago
> You can either defend yourself, and possibly survive, or you can die. That is just untrue. Historically, especially before the advent of nationalism, national hatred, ethnocentrism and ethnic cleansing ( so from mid to end 19th century to mid 20th century) conquest very rarely meant death. It was a different set of powerful and rich men on top, but the peasants were usually.. not really impacted that much. They were certainly more impacted when the war passed through their lands ( plunder, rape, etc.). Slaughtering the enemy civilians was rare and only done in specific cases ( like the Mongols, sone Vikings, earlier Anglo-Saxons).
- cloutchaser 4y ago
  What in the absolute world have you been reading? What about neighboring tribes? You think they always traded berries and had a happy life? Do you know anything about Native American tribe life before Europeans arrived? How about African tribes even recently? What are you even on about? Nationalism has nothing to do with violence when compared with any other system of organisation. But just take a look at chimps and how they treat someone from another tribe (hint: they literally tear them apart). Do chimps have nationalism? God this “everything was ok before western culture” crap is getting really tiring and ridiculous
  - sofixa 4y ago
    Slaughtering the conquered enemy was the exception, not the norm, at least throughout Eurasia with whose history I'm most familiar. Was that the norm in the Americas? Considering the negligible amounts of historical data preserved about many of civilisations there, can one even make such a sweeping conclusion? Even if that were the case, significantly more people lived in Eurasia so that would still be the exception for the generic human population. It has nothing to do "western culture", but with the evolution of warfare from the "Cabinet wars" to nationalistic "total wars". Colonial wars were often with brutal consequences, but again, massively slaughtering the native population was the exception, not the norm ( Herero and Namaqua genocide). The vast majority of humans conquered in the last few centuries weren't slaughtered en masse for the sake of it.

gcheong 4y ago

He’s not saying no military expenditure should occur but it has to be in balance with other things. In the US, where our military more often than not is used imperialistically rather than purely defensively, while the poor are allowed to starve or work for less than living wages, homeless suffer on the streets from mental illness, people are allowed to drown in medical or school debt, and where we got caught with our pants down in a pandemic when we should have been the most ready nation on earth, suddenly spending ever increasing amounts to defend ourselves from some imagined future threat doesn’t make much sense.

cloutchaser 4y ago
Take it from someone who's non US and so isn't caught up in self guilt - the US is a much more passive military superpower than almost any superpower in history. I really don't think the US is imperialistic TBH. Just because a few countries got bombed for oil doesn't make you imperialistic. Read a bit of history about what empire building countries/kings/tyrants were actually like.
- FpUser 4y ago
  >"Just because a few countries got bombed for oil doesn't make you imperialistic." If you bomb country for oil it makes you a fucking bandit and war criminal.
  - trevorboaconstr 4y ago
    Oh goodness, here we go. What country did the US bomb for oil? We went into Afghanistan because the Taliban harbored the organization that committed 9/11 and refused to turn them over. We went into Iraq primarily because a group of Neoconservatives were drunk on the unipolar moment and believed the US could spread democracy at the barrel of a gun and remake the Middle East. Haliburton definitely made money in Iraq, but we did not go in for oil. The invasion of Iraq was based on the fact that Bush and Cheney were neoconservatives, which means essentially liberal Trotskyites. They believed that human rights were universal and it was legitimate to uphold them by force. So in their logic, Saddam Hussein was a bad a guy and Iraq was a good candidate for showing that the US can start rolling into places and giving the people their freedom, just like that. The basic assumption was that stable democracies grow on their own once you get rid of the dictator. So show up to a country, get the dictator, rinse and repeat. Now you have nice democracies all throughout the world. In that view, not invading is immoral because it means you’re condemning millions of Iraqis to live under Saddam’s dictatorship. The basic lesson from this is that countries don’t act out of material self-interest as much as armchair cynics assume. Instead they’re frequently operated on an emotional or ideological basis.
    - FpUser 4y ago
      >"We went into Iraq primarily because a group of Neoconservatives were drunk on the unipolar moment and believed the US could spread democracy at the barrel of a gun and remake the Middle East" Ah sorry. All valid and noble reasons. No crime here. Dead, mutilated, starved, displaced and otherwise abused Iraqis salute you. Also message outlining your honorable goals should be directed to the parent to whom I was replying. Was not my claim that the US did it for oil.

rayiner 4y ago

> You can either defend yourself, and possibly survive, or you can die. That's generally the choice throughout history, because hardly any country has ever always been the aggressor. Absolutely. When my home country declared independence, Pakistan engaged in genocide to stop it. Having been disarmed the British, the independence fighters had to steal Pakistani weapons: https://www.thedailystar.net/backpage/bangladesh-liberation-war-1971-muktijuddho-guerrilla-fighter-arms-freedom-1511812 https://www.thedailystar.net/backpage/bangladesh-liberation-... > Most of the weapons used by the Mukti Bahini were taken from defeated soldiers. Then, there were homemade bombs, knives and even instances of the use of bows and arrows… > The better equipped Pakistani army used imported guns, automatic weapons, mortars, artillery trucks, armoured personnel carriers, tanks, airplanes, and ammunition. Eventually, Bengali regiments of the Pakistan military defected. Even then, independence wouldn’t have been possible without India joining the war against Pakistan.

sofixa 4y ago

> You can either defend yourself, and possibly survive, or you can die. That is just untrue. Historically, especially before the advent of nationalism, national hatred, ethnocentrism and ethnic cleansing ( so from mid to end 19th century to mid 20th century) conquest very rarely meant death. It was a different set of powerful and rich men on top, but the peasants were usually.. not really impacted that much. They were certainly more impacted when the war passed through their lands ( plunder, rape, etc.). Slaughtering the enemy civilians was rare and only done in specific cases ( like the Mongols, sone Vikings, earlier Anglo-Saxons).

cloutchaser 4y ago
What in the absolute world have you been reading? What about neighboring tribes? You think they always traded berries and had a happy life? Do you know anything about Native American tribe life before Europeans arrived? How about African tribes even recently? What are you even on about? Nationalism has nothing to do with violence when compared with any other system of organisation. But just take a look at chimps and how they treat someone from another tribe (hint: they literally tear them apart). Do chimps have nationalism? God this “everything was ok before western culture” crap is getting really tiring and ridiculous
- sofixa 4y ago
  Slaughtering the conquered enemy was the exception, not the norm, at least throughout Eurasia with whose history I'm most familiar. Was that the norm in the Americas? Considering the negligible amounts of historical data preserved about many of civilisations there, can one even make such a sweeping conclusion? Even if that were the case, significantly more people lived in Eurasia so that would still be the exception for the generic human population. It has nothing to do "western culture", but with the evolution of warfare from the "Cabinet wars" to nationalistic "total wars". Colonial wars were often with brutal consequences, but again, massively slaughtering the native population was the exception, not the norm ( Herero and Namaqua genocide). The vast majority of humans conquered in the last few centuries weren't slaughtered en masse for the sake of it.