Is War a Problem Solver?

[Kalevalatar]

LOL! What goes areound comes around right? Guess you never heard of the battle Tours and muslim raids into southern France, not to mention all of southern Europe, huh?

The battle of Tours was, what, 1000+ years ago? None of those affected are alive today. Those folks have been dead for centuries; why should I care about their bones?

Meanwhile, Christians have slaughtered each other in millions, in Tours, in Europe, in South America, in North America, in Africa...

 

[Verv]

War in itself does not solve anything. Like I said, it brings you back to the same negotiating table you were sitting round before the war, the balance of power may have changed but the problems remain, and have been added to by the destructive and blunt instrument that war is.

The fighting against the Japanese in WWII was just as destructive and divisive in Asia as the Japanese invasion and occupation would have been, in fact Japan managed to overrun a great deal of Asia before they were forced to surrender. Even after they had surrendered we had the same problems to solve as we had before the war, plus some new ones.

War was part of the solution.

Can we bring a hostile power to the negotiating table if they have the power? Asking the Japanese and Germans to politely stop their policies of imperialism was tried by folks like Neville Chamberlain with stunning results -- we watched Germany take the Sudetenland and were shocked when he invaded Poland on 1 Sep 1939, a year later.

Negotiating with radical ideologies bent on expansion is like casting pearls at pigs.

How would you have stopped German, Japanese, and Italian imperialism?

"Pretty, pretty please with a cherry on top?"

 

[ScottishJohn]

That is a generalization that is much overstated. Investors hate the extreme uncertainties and disruptions of war; contrary to interwar conspiracy theories, for example, London bankers did not want to see their country brought into the First World War. Investors love to see the government spend money on their goods (since it has lots of money to spend and generally overpays) but they would much rather see the government buying $50,000 hammers from them than $50,000 bullets.

Except last time I looked corporations like the Carlisle group didn't manufacture hammers. The kindof people you are talking about who prefer peace to war, are obviously not the kind of people who make a huge profit from war.

What stopped the problem of Hitler then?

Strictly speaking, he removed himself. Speaking more broadly it would be the rapid approach of the Soviet Army. Which may have put an end to Hitler, but in building the foundations of the cold war replaced one problem with another. War is rubbish at solving problems.

We can safely state that he was indeed a problem. What about the 7th century Arab invasion of Byzantine Asia Minor? That was a problem. How about the 3rd century wave of barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire? You can bet that was a problem. The answers, respectively, are the armies of the Allied Powers, the Byzantine Army of the Themes, and the Roman Legions. Yes, genocide, nomad raids, and barbarian invasions all existed afterward.

So the problem was not solved. The fact that Byzantine Asia minor was eventually conquered, and the Barbarians ultimately sacked Rome demonstrates exactly why war is not a good tool for problem solving.

The problems would have existed even if the respective armies had let Hitler, the Arabian nomads, and the German barbarian tribes do whatever they wanted. But where is the world a better place? A world where Hitler died in 1945 or a world where Hitler died of natural causes and is followed by one of his minions?

Or a world in which the post WWI peace treaty was conducted properly, a reasonable solution reached, and the Weimar republic does not suffer under crippling repayments, humiliating restrictions, and does not run headfirst into the arms of the first clever nutter who creates the opportunity for them to do so.

 

[k]

War was part of the solution.

Can we bring a hostile power to the negotiating table if they have the power? Asking the Japanese and Germans to politely stop their policies of imperialism was tried by folks like Neville Chamberlain with stunning results -- we watched Germany take the Sudetenland and were shocked when he invaded Poland on 1 Sep 1939, a year later.

Negotiating with radical ideologies bent on expansion is like casting pearls at pigs.

How would you have stopped German, Japanese, and Italian imperialism?

"Pretty, pretty please with a cherry on top?"

By cutting off their supplies necessary for waging their campaigns. Do you think the US would have invaded Iraq if those we got oil from threatened us with an embargo?

 

[Agrippa]

By cutting off their supplies necessary for waging their campaigns. Do you think the US would have invaded Iraq if those we got oil from threatened us with an embargo?

That's what the US did to Japan in the summer of 1941. The result was Pearl Harbor.

Who was Germany's largest trading partner in 1939? France. Yet, when France and Britain threatened war on September 1st, after the German invasion of Poland, Hitler wasn't deterred.

During the War of 1812, the British blockaded American ports, ruining the economy of New England. Despite New England's demands to end the war, the war went on for several more months.

 

[Agrippa]

Since this discussion is starting to develop some tangents, I'll restate my position just so it's clear.

1) Greed and hatred are fundamental aspects of human existence. Some people are more afflicted with those traits than others.

2) Since those aspects exist, some humans will be driven to attack their fellow man.

3) Some may be deterred through threat of the law, but others will carry through regardless of the consequences. Those men can at times only be stopped by violence. That violence won't stop the problems of greed, hatred, etc, but it will stop the immediate threat of the invader.

4) The near destruction of the tribal system of government has vastly decreased the need for violent confrontation; we are in a much better position to solve our difference diplomatically.

5) There are many cases of unnecessary wars and wars solely for aggrandizement; these greatly outnumber the necessary wars.

I disagree with this analogy entirely.

Hitler himself was not the main problem and certainly not the only problem - he was a symptom of many problems in Germany, humiliation as a result of our failure to reach a workable peace treaty at the end of WWI, a crippled German economy as a result of the same treaty which he revived by turning it into a war economy, anti semitism was firmly established Hitler just used existing sentiments and built on them, the idea of the Aryan master-race appealed to a people who considered themselves downtrodden, cheated, humiliated and destined to rise again. In fighting the war we pushed the situation to the point where hitler committed suicide. That did not solve the problems which he rode to power on, nor did it remove his followers. We still had to try and round them up, we still had to come to an acceptable peace. In fact we botched that, because of the instability that war brings we handed half of Europe over to Stalin because he was already occupying it, and we had no way of stopping him - this leads to a 40 odd year cold war and countless atrocities. War is rubbish at solving problems, especially if you don't even bother to identify the problems in the first place. The war didn't stop anti semitism, didn't resolve the issue of german nationalism, or bring us a united and peaceful Europe. It got rid of one man who had used all of these issues...

Strictly speaking, he removed himself. Speaking more broadly it would be the rapid approach of the Soviet Army. Which may have put an end to Hitler, but in building the foundations of the cold war replaced one problem with another. War is rubbish at solving problems.

Yes, WWII resulted in the Cold War. But how are you going to stop Hitler in 1939? Let's look at the people who could have impacted the situation in 1939. Where were they in 1919, the period of Versailles? Churchill was a disgraced member of the British government; after Gallipoli, no one was going to listen to him. FDR was the Assistant Secretary of the Navy whose superior, Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, fully supported Wilson; FDR had very little ability to effect the situation. Stalin was a minor revolutionary in a nation that was in the midst of civil war. (I don't know where Chamberlain or Daldier were, so I'm unfortunately going to ignore them, let me know if one of them was a major player in 1919.) These men were thus confronted with a situation they could do little to change; they couldn't turn back the clock. They had to act within the framework they are given. And in that framework, Hitler had to be stopped. They couldn't have known that the Cold War would result from their actions.

So the problem was not solved. The fact that Byzantine Asia minor was eventually conquered, and the Barbarians ultimately sacked Rome demonstrates exactly why war is not a good tool for problem solving.

The problem was solved for several generations of people. I ask you how else were the Romans and the Byzantines to preserve their security? What did the Germans, Arabs, and Turks want? Easy wealth that can be obtained from plundering peasants. The only way to stop it is to be as poor as the nomads. That is how the Britons managed to stop the raids of the Scots, Irish, and Picts before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons, they was simply nothing left for the barbarians to plunder.

Quite simply, nothing is permanent. The best you can hope to accomplish is to preserve the best standard of living and the best security for your people as long as possible. After the Arab nomads swept through the Middle East, the Byzantines managed to provide three centuries of peace for Asia Minor and seven centuries of peace for the people of Constantinople and western Asia Minor.

If you think it is possible to remove greed and hate from the human mind, I applaud you and wish you the best of success. I just don't think its possible. As long as those two factors exist, there will exist people who can only be stopped with brute force.

Or a world in which the post WWI peace treaty was conducted properly, a reasonable solution reached, and the Weimar republic does not suffer under crippling repayments, humiliating restrictions, and does not run headfirst into the arms of the first clever nutter who creates the opportunity for them to do so.

As I mentioned before, the people in charge in 1939 had very little impact on the situation of 1919. Clearly, the world would have been better off without the way Japan was abruptly pulled into the modern world, without the Great Depression that propelled Hitler to power, and if the Entente had demolished the German General Staff. But in 1939, the best option was to stop Hitler.

 

[PastorMikeJ]

yes cuz it controls the population of our youth...and takes our minds and eyes from our other problems

 

[Blackguard_]

The major importance of it was that it allowed the Soviets to concentrate its production on war material and not spend resources on replacing worn locomotives.

oh ok. That's about what I thougt, I knew the Soviets churned out tanks and artillery and such.

The battle of Tours was, what, 1000+ years ago? None of those affected are alive today. Those folks have been dead for centuries; why should I care about their bones?

Events hundreds of years ago have no affect on people today? Is that why Alexandria is a major center of Christian thought? Is that why the walls of Constantinople are holding back the Turk?

You should care because events of the past can have a direct effect on the world today, and those events can easily be far beyond living memory.

A quick glance at legal history will show this. Our legal system has things in at that go back to the Danelaw and the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

As I hinted ealier, the muslim Kosovars of today are the result of the Ottoman expansion into the Balkans in the 14th and 15th centuries. So events hundreds of years ago affect people today.

*noticing your country flag* Iraqis are muslim directly becasue of 7th and 8th century events, and the Shia-Sunni split in Iraq is a direct result of a schism in Islam from before the time of Tours.

Why don't you tell the Shias to forget about who killed Ali and Hussein in the 7th century?

Or, why should I care about the bones of the living? In 100 years when they're in the grave you will tell me to forget about their grievances.

What happens when the last person who remebers the French and British empire dies? Will you say the jihadists still fighting who were born decades after the empires lay down their arms and make peace with the west since no one directly affected is alive, never mind that the vast majority of the Jihadis of today were born after the British and French empires?

Meanwhile, Christians have slaughtered each other in millions, in Tours, in Europe, in South America, in North America, in Africa...

And Islamdom has been a peacefull place free of intra-muslim strife?

 

[ScottishJohn]

Since this discussion is starting to develop some tangents, I'll restate my position just so it's clear.

1) Greed and hatred are fundamental aspects of human existence. Some people are more afflicted with those traits than others.

Agreed.

2) Since those aspects exist, some humans will be driven to attack their fellow man.

Agreed.

3) Some may be deterred through threat of the law, but others will carry through regardless of the consequences. Those men can at times only be stopped by violence. That violence won't stop the problems of greed, hatred, etc, but it will stop the immediate threat of the invader.

In some cases, in others it may fail, the invader may be victorious, or it may only be a partial victory, you may fend off the invader, only for them to reappear next week, next year, next decade etc. Unless the underlying issues are addressed.

4) The near destruction of the tribal system of government has vastly decreased the need for violent confrontation; we are in a much better position to solve our difference diplomatically.

Agreed. It is the development along this path which renders war more and more futile. It is a poor method of solving differences. Defense may be necessary in some cases, but whether it is justified or not, violence never fails to raise more problems than it can solve.

5) There are many cases of unnecessary wars and wars solely for aggrandizement; these greatly outnumber the necessary wars.

Agreed.

Yes, WWII resulted in the Cold War. But how are you going to stop Hitler in 1939? Let's look at the people who could have impacted the situation in 1939. Where were they in 1919, the period of Versailles? Churchill was a disgraced member of the British government; after Gallipoli, no one was going to listen to him. FDR was the Assistant Secretary of the Navy whose superior, Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, fully supported Wilson; FDR had very little ability to effect the situation. Stalin was a minor revolutionary in a nation that was in the midst of civil war. (I don't know where Chamberlain or Daldier were, so I'm unfortunately going to ignore them, let me know if one of them was a major player in 1919.) These men were thus confronted with a situation they could do little to change; they couldn't turn back the clock. They had to act within the framework they are given. And in that framework, Hitler had to be stopped. They couldn't have known that the Cold War would result from their actions.

The whole point is that WWI was a stupid war fought for no good reasons. Again and again opportunities were lost. Austria for example. Instead of treating the assasination as the act of terrorism it was, decided to issue a series of impossible ultimatums to the Serbian government, they actually agreed to two of them, but not the third, which they wanted to send to arbitration. There were plenty of other options, but Austria declared war anyway, and this was the action which catapulted all the alliances into activity, and ultimately brought us the war.

In the aftermath of all of this, rather than recognising the futility of the war, the allies chose to punish Germany. Wilson was against this, and favoured a more equitable solution. He didn't get it. The underlying problems of nationalism, complicated alliances, military rivalry, colonial and economic rivalries were all still there. Europe was shattered, but none of these problems had been addressed or dealt with, and in many cases had been added to. In adition there were many other problems. I'm not saying that any of the players you mention in WWII were there, or could have changed course in 1919, or even before the war, but the fact remains that the war solved nothing, and poor decisions were taken both before and after the war. Trying to stop Hitler in 1939 was a problem. Stopping the situation in 1919 or even pre WWI which gifted him his rise to power would have been exceedingly simple.

The problem was solved for several generations of people. I ask you how else were the Romans and the Byzantines to preserve their security? What did the Germans, Arabs, and Turks want? Easy wealth that can be obtained from plundering peasants. The only way to stop it is to be as poor as the nomads. That is how the Britons managed to stop the raids of the Scots, Irish, and Picts before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons, they was simply nothing left for the barbarians to plunder.

I think there is a problem comparing the tribal society and its lack of stability to modern warfare. That said, none of the fighting you mentioned provided a solution to any of the problems, they merely postponed the next chapter. Negotiation, which in those circumstances was pretty much impossible, is now the best tool we have. War has always been a blunt instrument, and a poor way of settling differences. However it used to be the only practical way. It no longer is.

Quite simply, nothing is permanent. The best you can hope to accomplish is to preserve the best standard of living and the best security for your people as long as possible. After the Arab nomads swept through the Middle East, the Byzantines managed to provide three centuries of peace for Asia Minor and seven centuries of peace for the people of Constantinople and western Asia Minor.

That may well be the best you can provide in the middle ages, and previously. However we can do a great deal better than that now: we can settle age old disputes, and avoid making new ones. We can do both of these with ease. We do not.

If you think it is possible to remove greed and hate from the human mind, I applaud you and wish you the best of success. I just don't think its possible. As long as those two factors exist, there will exist people who can only be stopped with brute force.

We will never irradicate it, but we have lessened those instincts over the last 1000 years, and we can lessen their impact on the world still further.

As I mentioned before, the people in charge in 1939 had very little impact on the situation of 1919.

I don't see why this is the tack you want to take. The people in 1919 could have had a huge impact on the face of Europe and the world by making better decisions. You may say that this is hindsight, but seriously, where did they think the Versaille treaty was going to lead? Did they think all the pre war problems were just going to 'go away'? This kind of approach we see now. We have spent the last 50 years stirring the middle east with a big stick. The recent escapade is going to cause us trouble for at least another 50 years. That was an obvious outcome. Afghanistan. The same mistakes made by the British twice in the 19th century, once by the Soviets in the 20th century, were repeated by the US and UK - namely we marched in, scattered the opposition, made the mistake of thinking we had won, took our eye off the ball, and now we are sending in more troops to try and fix all the problems we have made SINCE the invasion, never mind the ones which predate it. We need to think before we act, and be a bit less keen to get out our guns.

I supported the war in Afghanistan, because it needed to happen. War is a poor problem solver, but sometimes it is the only option left. In this case we failed to solve the problems even with war, and created several more.

Clearly, the world would have been better off without the way Japan was abruptly pulled into the modern world, without the Great Depression that propelled Hitler to power, and if the Entente had demolished the German General Staff. But in 1939, the best option was to stop Hitler.

Only because of previous use of war as a problem solving tool.

War may be necessary at times, but I repeat, it doesn't solve problems, it only has the power to postpone them. Problem solving has to be done alongside and in the aftermath of any acts of violence which are deemed to be necessary.

Recent examples of this would include the end of the cold war, and IRA decomissioning.

 

[ScottishJohn]

War was part of the solution.

Can we bring a hostile power to the negotiating table if they have the power? Asking the Japanese and Germans to politely stop their policies of imperialism was tried by folks like Neville Chamberlain with stunning results -- we watched Germany take the Sudetenland and were shocked when he invaded Poland on 1 Sep 1939, a year later.

Negotiating with radical ideologies bent on expansion is like casting pearls at pigs.

How would you have stopped German, Japanese, and Italian imperialism?

"Pretty, pretty please with a cherry on top?"

Thats the whole point - Hitler wouldn't have been there if we had not tried settling the differences in Europe with war in 1914. If the UK and France along with many other European nations and to some extent the US had not been engaged in their own imperialism and had actually defended the rights of third party countries as oppose to squabbling over who got to exploit them then the majority of wars in the 19th and early 20th century would have been avoided. Why did Japan embark on their imperialist romp? I think if you look at it you will see that the answer lies in our imperialism and its effects on Japan, and their need to defend themselves from what they saw as an insatiable western apetite for colonies, as well the fact that we treated them with the same degree of racism that we treated the majority of the non western countries (potential colonies of barbarians) and they saw having their own colonies as one way of earning the respect of the west, as well as our fear.

The war was not part of the solution, it was part of the problem. Ultimately we ended up round the same table talking about the same problems with a whole load of new ones added in.

 

[neverforsaken]

I know its been said a million times probably (maybe, I didnt read the whole thread) but here are some examples.

Problem: Nazis. war fixed that.
Problem: Slavery. War fixed that too.
Problem: King George. War fixed that.

I could go on and on but that would take too long. The simple fact that has been proven throughout history is that force has solved more problems than any other means.

 

[ScottishJohn]

I know its been said a million times probably (maybe, I didnt read the whole thread) but here are some examples.

Problem: Nazis. war fixed that.

Nazis were not the problem, they were a symptom. The problem was the way in which a previous, pointless, war had been settled. WWII didn't solve that, nor did it fix the german economy, put an end to anti semitism, or any of the other underlying problems. It also set the battleground for the cold war.

Problem: Slavery. War fixed that too.

Do you think? Slavery was a problem, but also a manifestation of the racism which the war did nothing to fix. In any case the war didn't fix the problem of slave trade or ownership, the change in the law did. The war just forced some people to obey, albeit reluctantly, but it also drove those racist feelings deep down into a lot of people, and generations later they are still being dealt with.

Problem: King George. War fixed that.

lol, I thought the problem was taxation without representation - you just swapped heads of state. Instead of the King you have the President. Government is now more intrusive, taxes are higher, accountability just as elusive. The war solved nothing.

I could go on and on but that would take too long. The simple fact that has been proven throughout history is that force has solved more problems than any other means.

Not true. Force doesn't solve problems. It can postpone them, but ultimately they will rear their heads again if they are not dealt with.

 

[Verv]

By cutting off their supplies necessary for waging their campaigns. Do you think the US would have invaded Iraq if those we got oil from threatened us with an embargo?

One of the main motivating reasons for the attack on Pearl Harbor was BECAUSE of an embargo we had on the Japanese due to the sacking of Manchuria. Their economy was being strangled and they reacted as a predictably aggressive, imperialist state would:

Bide their time, find a good opportunity, then attack us.

Sometimes embargoes work with minimal success -- it has kept North Korea at bay for 50+ years... But think of this: if we would finish up, millions would not die in famine over the years.

Sometimes embargoes entirely fail, such as in the case of Imperial Japan.

An embargo is a situational application that does not always expereince full success.

 

[Verv]

Thats the whole point - Hitler wouldn't have been there if we had not tried settling the differences in Europe with war in 1914. If the UK and France along with many other European nations and to some extent the US had not been engaged in their own imperialism and had actually defended the rights of third party countries as oppose to squabbling over who got to exploit them then the majority of wars in the 19th and early 20th century would have been avoided. Why did Japan embark on their imperialist romp? I think if you look at it you will see that the answer lies in our imperialism and its effects on Japan, and their need to defend themselves from what they saw as an insatiable western apetite for colonies, as well the fact that we treated them with the same degree of racism that we treated the majority of the non western countries (potential colonies of barbarians) and they saw having their own colonies as one way of earning the respect of the west, as well as our fear.

The war was not part of the solution, it was part of the problem. Ultimately we ended up round the same table talking about the same problems with a whole load of new ones added in.

No, it is not true that it was European actions that pushed Japan to imperialism. Japan has had a rich heritage of invading Korea -- why? For the simple reason of greed, as another poster notes, for the sheer reason that other nations have something that they want, so they try to take it.

Ideally, we could solve our problems at negotiating tables and there would never be subsequent wars -- theoretically a group of Etruscan tribes in 6th century BC Italy could have created a Rome that was a loose, federation of amazing, great, super-pacifist hippie nations...

But we do not live in Narnia.

How would you ever successfully negotiate something like the Israeli-Palestinian situation? How would you determine proper reparations to please all parties at Versailles? These things are impossible, and someone is going to see great unjustice in your action no matter what.

Diplomacy is a method to deal with things... But often times your diplomacy becomes Neville Chamberlain and the politicians of Europe handing over the Sudetenland to Adolf Hitler, then acting surprised when he invades Poland for similar reasons.

 

[neverforsaken]

Nazis were not the problem, they were a symptom. The problem was the way in which a previous, pointless, war had been settled. WWII didn't solve that, nor did it fix the german economy, put an end to anti semitism, or any of the other underlying problems. It also set the battleground for the cold war.

You really are lost. War stopped nazi expansion as well as the holocaust. There may still be anti semitism, yet Germany was stripped of its ability to take away the lives of millions of innocent people THANKS TO WAR.

Do you think? Slavery was a problem, but also a manifestation of the racism which the war did nothing to fix. In any case the war didn't fix the problem of slave trade or ownership, the change in the law did. The war just forced some people to obey, albeit reluctantly, but it also drove those racist feelings deep down into a lot of people, and generations later they are still being dealt with.

Law is NOTHING if not enforced. The south refused to submit and the result was the splitting of the union. The war reunited the states and enforced the ban on slavery. Without the war, that law you spoke of would not mean a thing. And you think that racism was increased thanks to the war? The very idea of racism is bad enough and existed before the war. The difference was that after the war, no matter how racist you were, YOU COULD NOT OWN SLAVES.

lol, I thought the problem was taxation without representation - you just swapped heads of state. Instead of the King you have the President. Government is now more intrusive, taxes are higher, accountability just as elusive. The war solved nothing.

The right to bare arms, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, the abolition of cruel and unusual punishment, religious freedom, imminent domain, right to a speedy trial, right to an attorney, the right to vote, and so on. If you cant tell the difference between a president and a king, you are truely sorry. And before you go off and say that there is no difference, consider the congress. Recently, president Bush decided that he would veto any attempt to stop the dubai port deal. The people would not stand for it and as a result, the deal was killed. The same thing happened when Bush tried to get his friend into the supreme court. He figured that he could do what he wanted because of the support he had, but it didnt work.
As for the taxes, they aren't that high. In fact, it is the upper class that pays most of the taxes in America. (that wont last though if Bush keeps spending so much)

Not true. Force doesn't solve problems. It can postpone them, but ultimately they will rear their heads again if they are not dealt with.

Ok, lets try this nice and slow. Lets say a man breaks into my house with the intent to harm me and my family. I see him before he sees me and I shoot him dead. Tell me, will his ghost return to kill me and my family? Simple fact, dead men cant retalliate. Besides, its been a good while since storm troopers marched down virginia street. Oh wait, they never did. Thanks to.....WAR. However, I suspect that they will one day because the nazis will return and kill us all. HAHAHA

 

[Blackguard_]

Problem: Slavery. War fixed that too.

LOL. Slavery existed in many more places then the Old South and still exists today in many places.

lol, I thought the problem was taxation without representation

Double jeopardy was a big issue too, as smugglers were often tried twice to get a convictions. but what really kicked it off was the English disbanding colonial assemblies.

If you cant tell the difference between a president and a king, you are truely sorry.

If you can't tell the difference between a French and English king I'm sorry. Not all kings are absolute monarchs anymore than all presidents are figureheads of a republic. The connotations of "el Presidente" should show you that.

The rights the colonists fought for were the traditional rights of Englishmen and the privleges they had enjoyed as coloninists, such as the right to vote and have their own assemblies. It was a conservative movement, it wasn't a French Revolution. The Senate is the House of Lords and the House of Representatives is the House of Commons. Englishmen voted for reps in Commons and the House of lords were hereditary nobles. Americans vote for representatives in the House and orignially Senators were appointed. Senators weren't elected until the 20th century.

As for the taxes, they aren't that high.

Nope. The taxes of the 18th century Colonial America were pocket change compared to today. And even during the Townsend/Intolerable Acts Americans paid less taxes then Englishmen on the island.

 

[Fallschirmjägergewehr]

Anyone who clings to the historically untrue - and thoroughly immoral - doctrine 'that violence never settles anything' I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedom.

War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing... but controlled and purposeful violence.

I'm surprised that no one posted either of those, yet.

 

[Kalevalatar]

You should care because events of the past can have a direct effect on the world today, and those events can easily be far beyond living memory.

No. I should not care about the past; I should only care about the future, and so should my neighbours.

Obsessing about some presumed injustice between people long dead whom I never even knew and when times were entirely different, about some battle lost or won centuries ago, about some piece of dirt lost or won centuries ago, about some man murdered centuries ago, is flat out unhealthy. Not that I'm terribly surprised how far back in the history some folks are willing to go to find an animosity on which to hang themselves over and over again. Some people have not yet learned. That's why wars are still alive and well and doing profitable business all over the world.

*noticing your country flag* Iraqis are muslim directly becasue of 7th and 8th century events, and the Shia-Sunni split in Iraq is a direct result of a schism in Islam from before the time of Tours.

Why don't you tell the Shias to forget about who killed Ali and Hussein in the 7th century?

No, I'm not an Iraqi; if anything, we all are Iraqis today. And as so many peoples and nations before, Iraqis are again digging up old grudges over which to shed some more blood. And it will do them as much good as clinging to the skeletons has ever done to anyone, which is no good at all.

 

[Blackguard_]

I'm surprised that no one posted either of those, yet.

Probably because the second quote is essentially a rephrasing of Clausewitze's "war is an extension of politics by other means", which doesn't exactly make war look good.

 

[Fallschirmjägergewehr]

Probably because the second quote is essentially a rephrasing of Clausewitze's "war is an extension of politics by other means", which doesn't exactly make war look good.

He does have a point though. It's just...a fact of life.