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The US is indeed a superpower. The only superpower left after the Soviets collapsed. It's not a big leap to predict how it's going to turn out in the long term
by znowi 13y ago
The US is indeed a superpower. The only superpower left after the Soviets collapsed. It's not a big leap to predict how it's going to turn out in the long term without checks and balanced imposed. This is the first step:
the Bush Doctrine that the United States has the right to launch preemptive wars
Unless the American citizenry, along with the western allies, oppose this militant attitude, it's not going to end well - whatever new term you call it.
- ordinary 13y agoThe George W. Bush administration was hardly the first to act according to that point of view. Just about every country that has held significant power has at some point fought wars of aggression.
- wreegab 13y agoI don't read anywhere that he said this was the first time. Why would you suggest he said that?
- redblacktree 13y agoIn the name of self defense?
- wreegab 13y agoAn argument which can be used by all sides. In the end, it's the civilians who get screwed.
- yetanotherphd 13y agoStatistically it's the people in the military who have it worse.
- ivanca 13y agoAbsolute bullshit, 50:1 is the ratio of civilians casualties in the Israeli conflict. http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2009/05/06/combatantcivilian-casualties-and-the-moral-hysteriahypocrisy-of-the-west/ http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2009/05/06/combatantcivilian... Your ignorance is middly acceptable because US media and other information reporters are biased or coerced into giving bad statistics about the issue: http://www.lawfareblog.com/wiki/the-lawfare-wiki-document-library/targeted-killing/controversy/ http://www.lawfareblog.com/wiki/the-lawfare-wiki-document-li...
- yetanotherphd 13y agoWhat I meant was that the death rate for soldiers was higher. Total civilian deaths are higher because there are more civilians. Israel-Palestine is a special case because it is so one sided. I'm not very sympathetic to Israel (did Nelson Mandela recognize the right of the Afrikaner people to exist, and affirm the existence of South Africa as an Afrikaner state? This is what the Israelis are always going on about right?) but that's not really relevant to whether being a soldier is in general more dangerous than being a civilian. Maybe I am addressing a different point to everyone else, but I think it's important given that deaths of soldiers are sometimes considered on a completely different moral plane to deaths of civilians, even though from a utilitarian perspective they are equally important.
- ivanca 13y agoNo they are not; military is more likely to kill civilians if they survive; so their "utilitarian value" can be considered a negative.
- yetanotherphd 13y agoso you wish, for example, that more soldiers on both sides had died during WWII?
- ivanca 13y agoThat's a way too-emotionally charged question for someone pretending to be "utilitarian". But the answer is: No, I wish there weren't any soldiers to begin with. Dead being just the most common way they disappear, plus is always a political assertion the prime causative, so to avoid refilling wars with youngsters it's more effective to stop that.
- jessaustin 13y agoStatistically it's the people in the military who have it worse. You really ought to read different history books. This is akin to saying "statistically the sky is usually magenta in color".
- rayiner 13y agoBush was just insensitive enough to say what everyone else believes. I can't think of any country that would willingly take preemptive strike off the table.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> the Bush Doctrine that the United States has the right to launch preemptive wars Strictly speaking, preemptive war is a universally understood prerogative of every nation -- "preemptive war" is proximate self-defense against a specific, real, imminent threat before the attacking blow lands. What Bush did is redefine preemption to include preventive war -- "self-defense" against a vague, general, nonspecific, distant potential threat that an enemy might, someday in the future, decide to attack (using capacities that do not even yet exist and which are themselves nonspecific, speculative, and distant potentials). Preemptive war is problematic in practice, but generally regarded as an essential corollary of the right to wage war defensively; the Bush Doctrine of preventive war, OTOH, is equivalent to allowing the "self-defense" as a defense to murder charges because the killer had a belief that the victim might, someday in the future, get a gun and kill them and so they needed to kill them before that occurred.