Europe more dangerouse than USA? (gunshots vs terror threat)

[troy2000]

Originally Posted by mark775

Speaking German, to be sure, but whatever floats das boot.
Actually, the fact that we have maintained a huge military presence there has freed up their resources to be used for less pragmatic things. Yes, it was in our interest but it is not simply sentimentality that causes me to say it has been in Europe's interest, as well. Wud Europe have been safer/happier if the USSR had been able to outspend the USA? If so, I'll vote for Ron Paul or some other nationalistic homebody ad we'll just get our troops home.
Not an accident that they survived, no. Same can be argued for Australia and what a great partner Japan has worked out to be! Maybe one day, when we defeat Jihadism, our kids will say the same about the people of Iran...but it will not come before a defeat.

No, Germany was never going to rule the world. It repeated Napoleon's mistake, for one thing, and opened a second front against Russia - which just swallowed up its forces and sucked it dry. Germany was doomed in the long run, with or without us. Although it would certainly have taken longer without us.

[CatBuilder]

Originally Posted by mark775

We've got Cuba and Venezuela that have loony dictators envious of our way of life

Minor correction: If those dictators were envious of our way of life, they probably wouldn't have set up communist dictatorships as their form of government, would they?

Obviously they are not envious, but rather prefer the opposite type of life.

[Milan]

Originally Posted by troy2000

No, Germany was never going to rule the world. It repeated Napoleon's mistake, for one thing, and opened a second front against Russia - which just swallowed up its forces and sucked it dry. Germany was doomed in the long run, with or without us. Although it would certainly have taken longer without us.

Yes. 65 years after the end of WWII end 20 years after the end of the cold war, we can see some things more clearly and put those times in more objective and rational perspective.

Around 80 % of total number of German military casualties fell fighting in the East. German Allies also suffered huge losses there. Add to that fact that Germany sent all the best man and equipment they had to fight against Soviets. (On the Western front, they kept less experienced and equipped troops, often older man and teenagers).

So, I think Red Army deserves more credit from us for their role during the War. They did the heavy lifting. What happened later, is other story …

By the way, talking about little known Soviet exploits, there was an interesting episode early in the war, in 1939, on the Mongolian – Manchurian border. Red Army under command of at the time not yet well known Zhukov, inflicted crashing defeat on Japanese forces. Japanese suffered loses of such an magnitude that Imperial General Staff concluded that planned conquering of the Siberia all the way to the Lake Balkai, (favourite war plan of the Japanese Army), wasn’t possible. So they immediately signed peace agreement with Soviets and didn’t border them again. Instead, they turned against easier targets, South East Asia, Dutch East Indies, Pearl Harbour …

But it is all history now, neither Germany, Russia, Japan, or China are trying to conquer the world and certainly no one will try to invade US. Even in decline, US stays big military power. Europe is also more then adequately equipped to discourage anyone’s foolish plans.

As of Jihadists they are at least partly product and blow back from a cold war era, interference in the Afghanistan from both sides of the curtain. We should search a wiser ways...

Originally Posted by mark775

… Cuba and Venezuela ... loony dictators ….

Big part of that story is poverty. Capitalism didn’t work all that well for them, wealth didn’t trickle down to the people. There was no middle class there, only tiny layer of extremely rich and huge numbers of desperately poor. Proclaimed freedom doesn’t mean much to those left behind with empty stomachs. It was bound to explode.

I think we, (West in general and especially US), should finally claim peace dividend and concentrate more on improvement of quality of life of all our citizens and less on military interventions abroad.

[CatBuilder]

Originally Posted by Milan

I think we, (West in general and especially US), should finally claim peace dividend and concentrate more on improvement of quality of life of all its citizens and less on military interventions abroad.

I think we can all agree this is a great idea!

"Minor correction: If those dictators were envious of our way of life, they probably wouldn't have set up communist dictatorships as their form of government, would they?" - What other form of government are they going to set up after killing the evil capitalist and driving out his cohorts? There is a circumstance named for this but the name escapes me. Two bit military dictators villanise the US to have an enemy. It's a kind of "us against them" strategy. If they were to simply have a coup and defeat the previous grand poobah, the people wud expect prosperity soon. But the dictators are needed this way. Chavez is one of the best examples. Venezuela had a tremendous standard of living and was bringing the poorest class, slowly, into prosperity. Now, the best and brightest of Venezuela live in Miami and Venezuela will have a hard time ever recovering, even swimming in oil. They have more oil than God and yet are price-freezing beans in the mercados and blaming corporate greed for making them hungry. The people of Cuba? Come on. They live in Miami, as well, the ones that could escape (and the undesirables that Castro let leave). There has never been a sorrier example of what communism can do to a country than in Cuba and the people know it. Castro even knows it now and recently STATED THAT FACT in an interview (and later retracted).
"...nor China are trying to conquer the world..." - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/wo...g.html?_r=2&hp
Key quote: “All militaries need a straw man, a perceived enemy, for solidarity,” said Huang Jing, a scholar of China’s military and leadership at the National University of Singapore. “And as a young officer or soldier, you always take the strongest of straw men to maximize the effect. Chinese military men, from the soldiers and platoon captains all the way up to the army commanders, were always taught that America would be their enemy.”

"I think we, (West in general and especially US), should finally claim peace dividend and concentrate more on improvement of quality of life of all our citizens and less on military interventions abroad." "I think we can all agree this is a great idea!" - No, not all. I see disaster beget of complacency. I suppose it is my fatherly instinct, with five kids, to look out for the bad things that can happen. I simply cannot bring myself to mount your unicorns. Ahhh... where would the world be without Utopians! Do you really feel that Akmadinajab agrees with you? Do you really feel that the young Egyptian male that went to Germany and got the best education, came home, ready to fix all the problems awaiting...but there were too few assets and resources available to him and his girl went to another man while he was in university (meanwhile watching on TV the trade center buildings collapsing and seeing everyone around him cheering)... do you think HE is wanting to sing kumbaya? No, he goes to a mosque to seek consolation and purpose and somebody there pounds it into his head that it is Germany's and the US.'s fault that they are in a barrio and it is their duty to die for Allah and then "everything will be wonderful", 79 virgins, and all that. (This is a specific scenario in no way indicative of everybody there for those ready to pounce.) Damn, I thot with the recent turns of events, you people wud start to be more pragmatic. I guess we'll just have to see how it goes. You'll continue to despise me for being a hawk and I'll continue to see you as misguided and overly optimistic.

[CatBuilder]

Interesting conversation. Comments in blue....

Originally Posted by mark775

"Minor correction: If those dictators were envious of our way of life, they probably wouldn't have set up communist dictatorships as their form of government, would they?" - What other form of government are they going to set up after killing the evil capitalist and driving out his cohorts? There is a circumstance named for this but the name escapes me. Two bit military dictators villanise the US to have an enemy. It's a kind of "us against them" strategy. If they were to simply have a coup and defeat the previous grand poobah, the people wud expect prosperity soon. But the dictators are needed this way. Chavez is one of the best examples. Venezuela had a tremendous standard of living and was bringing the poorest class, slowly, into prosperity. Now, the best and brightest of Venezuela live in Miami and Venezuela will have a hard time ever recovering, even swimming in oil. They have more oil than God and yet are price-freezing beans in the mercados and blaming corporate greed for making them hungry. The people of Cuba? Come on. They live in Miami, as well, the ones that could escape (and the undesirables that Castro let leave). There has never been a sorrier example of what communism can do to a country than in Cuba and the people know it. Castro even knows it now and recently STATED THAT FACT in an interview (and later retracted).
"...nor China are trying to conquer the world..." - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/wo...g.html?_r=2&hp
Key quote: “All militaries need a straw man, a perceived enemy, for solidarity,” said Huang Jing, a scholar of China’s military and leadership at the National University of Singapore. “And as a young officer or soldier, you always take the strongest of straw men to maximize the effect. Chinese military men, from the soldiers and platoon captains all the way up to the army commanders, were always taught that America would be their enemy.”

Actually, I'll concede this point. I stand corrected. Maybe they do have some kind of envy and wish to take something away from the USA. So the US is a straw man. Makes sense. We all have them. I guess our straw men are Bin Laden, Ahmadinejad, and whoever the leader of North Korea is. Makes sense to me.


"I think we, (West in general and especially US), should finally claim peace dividend and concentrate more on improvement of quality of life of all our citizens and less on military interventions abroad." "I think we can all agree this is a great idea!" - No, not all. I see disaster beget of complacency. I suppose it is my fatherly instinct, with five kids, to look out for the bad things that can happen. I simply cannot bring myself to mount your unicorns. Ahhh... where would the world be without Utopians! Do you really feel that Akmadinajab agrees with you? Do you really feel that the young Egyptian male that went to Germany and got the best education, came home, ready to fix all the problems awaiting...but there were too few assets and resources available to him and his girl went to another man while he was in university (meanwhile watching on TV the trade center buildings collapsing and seeing everyone around him cheering)... do you think HE is wanting to sing kumbaya? No, he goes to a mosque to seek consolation and purpose and somebody there pounds it into his head that it is Germany's and the US.'s fault that they are in a barrio and it is their duty to die for Allah and then "everything will be wonderful", 79 virgins, and all that. (This is a specific scenario in no way indicative of everybody there for those ready to pounce.) Damn, I thot with the recent turns of events, you people wud start to be more pragmatic. I guess we'll just have to see how it goes. You'll continue to despise me for being a hawk and I'll continue to see you as misguided and overly optimistic.

Your hot headed approach is not going to work either, you know. If you continue to spend, spend spend your way out of a war with an entire other culture, you inevitably end up gutting our own country. We have a lot of people out of work right here who are pissed off and eventually, they will join your friend at the mosque and start blowing up stuff here. All the wasteful military spending (and I am not saying it's all wasted, you need some) could have been used for small business loans, projects at home, etc... This is what Milan and I are saying. We squandered away a large percentage of our GDP on useless wars (Iraq, etc...) with little to no return on investment. That money would have been better spent funding education, research, business in our own country.

A lot of our own people are not well off. They are angry. They see that the baby boomers got everything handed to them on a silver platter. They got incredible jobs just by showing up without even having to go to college. Everyone younger is pissed that our country has been destroyed and are rightfully pissed. Their futures never happened because everything was wasted/outsourced/spent before they came of age.

If you continue the short sighted path of war, waste and neglecting the people and infrastructure out of fear of some random guy with a bomb, you will end up having a lot more random guys blowing things up here or overthrowing the government, robbing banks, etc...

Milan and I are saying that resources should be brought home where they can make a country stronger, not wasted on pointless wars with nobody.

You don't have to worry about attacks on the USA ever. Why? Nuclear weapons. Everybody know we'd let one off as a last resort, so nobody will attack. (Hey, did you realize that those bombs are around as a result of our spending on education and things inside our country? The scientists in the Mahattan Project were all top university physicists.) As scary as those bombs are, they have actually ushered in a great peace. We can use that peace dividend to improve and strengthen our country. Well, hopefully... if there is anything left of it.

[wardd]

Originally Posted by troy2000

No, Germany was never going to rule the world. It repeated Napoleon's mistake, for one thing, and opened a second front against Russia - which just swallowed up its forces and sucked it dry. Germany was doomed in the long run, with or without us. Although it would certainly have taken longer without us.

hitler really didn't have plans to conquer the world just russia, most of europe and some other colonies.

but lucky for us we had hitler on our side

Wickedperson, You are bizarre.
"A lot of our own people are not well off. They are angry. They see that the baby boomers got everything handed to them on a silver platter. They got incredible jobs just by showing up without even having to go to college. Everyone younger is pissed that our country has been destroyed and are rightfully pissed. Their futures never happened because everything was wasted/outsourced/spent before they came of age." - One can tell a progressive a mile away. Those were the good times, you ninny! That's how it works...everybody prospers but then it got too good and we allowed our politicians to think they were gods rather than employees and we started killing the goose that lays the golden egg (taxing corporations to the point of discouragement. We went off the gold standard so that the money supply cud be increased so that more cud be spent and have the future pay for it insiduously thu devalued currency, we lost all of the things that made this country great, we...ahh, never mind. I suppose you think Gov. Christie is a joke, as well. You're from the Northeast, you must ahve an opinion there.
"You don't have to worry about attacks on the USA ever. Why? Nuclear weapons. Everybody know we'd let one off as a last resort, so nobody will attack." - I'm not saying now that the oil platform disaster wasfrom an attack - but it cud have been. A bomb cud be brought into a port of entry and who wud we hit back at? The Mideast? Get real, the weapons were for mutually assured destruction with A SANE opponent and even then, it got sketchy a couple of times. How do you beat up an INSANE opponent when the people surrounding him may not be? Drone strikes, cruise missiles in his bathroom window, etc. those ICBMs will never be used - if they are, something really bad has happened and we won't survive to talk a bout it.
Also, don't you realize that to certain fanatics, to die in combat with the Great Satan wud be the most glorious thing that cud happen? I thot you were a dyed-in-the-wool liberal at first. Now I realize that you are just a child. When you get a little older, you'll scorn the people who spent too much - not the ones who made too much.
Wad, you are bizarre...er.

[troy2000]

Originally Posted by wardd

hitler really didn't have plans to conquer the world just russia, most of europe and some other colonies.

but lucky for us we had hitler on our side

I assume you mean we had Stalin 'on our side,' not Hitler.

But Germany couldn't have conquered Russia and held it, especially on top of trying to hold Europe and Scandinavia. Do you realize that for most of the war, the Soviets were drafting half a million men per month?

And those soldiers may have been untrained, but they weren't cowards. It ws partially the arrogance of the Germans, and their contempt for 'inferior' Slavs, that contributed to their defeat.

To quote Wikipedia,

The Germans treated Soviet prisoners brutally and showed cruelty to overrun Soviet populations. This treatment instilled a deep hatred in the hearts and minds of the Soviet citizens. Hatred of the Germans enabled the Soviet government to extract a level of sacrifice from the Soviet population unheard of in Western nations.

The Germans underestimated the Soviet people as well. The German High Command viewed Soviet soldiers as incompetent and considered the average citizen as an inferior human being. German soldiers were stunned by the ferocity with which the Red Army fought. German planners were amazed at the level of suffering the Soviet citizens could endure and still work and fight.

[troy2000]

Originally Posted by mark775

Wickedperson, You are bizarre.
"A lot of our own people are not well off. They are angry. They see that the baby boomers got everything handed to them on a silver platter. They got incredible jobs just by showing up without even having to go to college. Everyone younger is pissed that our country has been destroyed and are rightfully pissed. Their futures never happened because everything was wasted/outsourced/spent before they came of age." - One can tell a progressive a mile away. Those were the good times, you ninny! That's how it works...everybody prospers but then it got too good and we allowed our politicians to think they were gods rather than employees and we started killing the goose that lays the golden egg (taxing corporations to the point of discouragement. We went off the gold standard so that the money supply cud be increased so that more cud be spent and have the future pay for it insiduously thu devalued currency, we lost all of the things that made this country great, we...ahh, never mind. I suppose you think Gov. Christie is a joke, as well. You're from the Northeast, you must ahve an opinion there.
"You don't have to worry about attacks on the USA ever. Why? Nuclear weapons. Everybody know we'd let one off as a last resort, so nobody will attack." - I'm not saying now that the oil platform disaster wasfrom an attack - but it cud have been. A bomb cud be brought into a port of entry and who wud we hit back at? The Mideast? Get real, the weapons were for mutually assured destruction with A SANE opponent and even then, it got sketchy a couple of times. How do you beat up an INSANE opponent when the people surrounding him may not be? Drone strikes, cruise missiles in his bathroom window, etc. those ICBMs will never be used - if they are, something really bad has happened and we won't survive to talk a bout it.
Also, don't you realize that to certain fanatics, to die in combat with the Great Satan wud be the most glorious thing that cud happen? I thot you were a dyed-in-the-wool liberal at first. Now I realize that you are just a child. When you get a little older, you'll scorn the people who spent too much - not the ones who made too much.
Wad, you are bizarre...er.

Ooh....this is gonna be fun. Mark just called a fellow conservative wingnut a 'progressive." where's an 'eating popcorn' smilie when you really need one?

[wardd]

Originally Posted by troy2000

Ooh....this is gonna be fun. Mark just called a fellow conservative wingnut a 'progressive." where's an 'eating popcorn' smilie when you really need one?

there are no consertives just wingnuts that call themselves consertive

[troy2000]

Originally Posted by wardd

there are no consertives just wingnuts that call themselves consertive

OK, let's not get dogmatic and stupid the other direction, either.

There are plenty of people in my immediate circle of friends, family, co-workers, neighbors and acquaintances I would classify as conservative, with no insult intended at all.

[troy2000]

And yet another thread descends into political gibberish....

edit: although I can't complain about the blondes who somehow sneaked into the discussion....

[CatBuilder]

Yeah, you're right Troy. I was a little bored today, so my post wasn't all that great. ha ha ha

No more political gibberish from me. Promise.

[hoytedow]

Originally Posted by wardd

hitler really didn't have plans to conquer the world just russia, most of europe and some other colonies.

but lucky for us we had hitler on our side Huh?

You are wrong again. Hitler said "Heute Europa, Morgen die Welt" (Today Europe, Tomorrow the World.)