No end in sight

[IndyBrit]

"For me though, I don't really care whether or not Saddam Hussein had WMDs. What gives any country the right to go and "pre-emptively" attack another?"

This is the crux of the matter (that, and, why does the U.S. attack Iraq in the name of defending security council resolutions without the support of that same security council).

If the Bush detractors had spent less time in debates over how bad of a guy Bush was (and that is a very charitable characterization of those communications), and more time focusing on the real issues such as these, it's possible that effective dissent could have been realized. More importantly, this lesson should be learned and carried forward.

Facts and specific actions can be effectively advocated. When people are personally attacked (including being labeled), rational thought ceases on both sides and the supporters on each side entrench. The opportunity for discussion and change in course are lost.

[Kaiser_von_Nuben]

@ Jonesk: No country has an abstract "right" to pre-emptively attack another. Rather, it's all about power. If one country is powerful enough to say: "We're going to attack you to protect ourselves," it has nothing to do with "right;" it has everything to do with brute power. In many cases, international law will provide a "contractual" basis for countries to resolve ills by warfare, but in the U.S. v. Iraq case, it was pure power. The U.S. had unlimited military power and no real adversary. It was bound by no treaty obligation (well, maybe the U.N. Charter, but Bush wasn't really up on all that reading stuff ), and it faced no real sanctions for acting as it did. The important point is that there is no transcendent principle guiding "right" and "wrong" in international power politics. If a country is strong and unchallenged, it will do what it wants (sounds cynical, but who can argue with it?) By the same token, a strong country might even criticize a country that acts exactly the same as it did (ie, U.S. criticizing Russia for invading Georgia for "self-defense" reasons). There is no consistency here. It is pure power. It's OK to be hypocritical if you have the AH-64 apaches, B-2 bombers and your opponents have no air defense.

Do you see African countries invoking "rights" to pre-emptive strikes when they attack their neighbors? No-- they just do it. And no one really cares because African conflict is irrelevant to Europe and the United States, provided that no precious metal mines are involved. It makes no sense to argue that there is some "right" involved in brute political force. There isn't, plain and simple.

[danno527]

^^
You could say "might makes right".

[rufio_eht]

[quote=""Kaiser_von_Nuben""][quote=""rufio_eht""][quote=""Kaiser_von_Nuben""]Rufio, I think the South truly believed it had a constitutional right to secede from the Union in 1860-1861. After all, the Constitution says nothing about a State's right to withdraw from the federal compact. In the most basic way, the Constitution is a contract. States agreed to give up some of their sovereign prerogatives in exchange for protection from an overreaching--though limited--federal sovereign. The Constitution explains what powers the new "federal sovereign" has, as well as the limitations on those powers. It also explains what States may and may not do under the "contract." But nowhere does it say a State may or or may not "leave the contract" if it feels the deal has gone wrong. It also says nothing about slavery, at least explicitly. When South Carolina moved to secede in 1860, it thought it was merely canceling a contract that was no longer working. It thought the federal sovereign was overreaching its authority by limiting slavery, so that gave each State a right to cancel the deal.

This may sound like a decent argument. But the Civil War proved that the Constitution is NOT a voidable contract. Once you're in, you're in. If you try to leave, the federal government will FORCE you back into line. Only a full-scale revolution can topple the current constitutional regime. And revolutions don't happen unless LOTS AND LOTS of people are VERY, VERY upset with their lives. We are not there yet

If only we had 1000 food, 1000 wood and 1000 coin...then maybe we could consider a revolution ::/[/quote]

So in the eyes of the south, the agreement had been voided by the federal government breaking the boundaries of the contract. If what you say is true, then the Civil War did not prove that the Constitution is not a voidable contract, it proved that the contract had been voided and a democratic dictatorship was better at using guns.[/quote]

That is one way to look at it. In contract law, the stronger party basically dictates what the contract means. If there is a dispute, the stronger party generally wins. Courts have a duty to be neutral intermediaries applying "neutral rules," but when the strong party writes the contract, the court can't do much to change the terms. When it comes to geopolitical "contracts," like the Constitution, even a party "technically correct" about an interpretation will lose if the stronger party says: "Nope, you can't get out of it. And if you keep on about it, I'll kill you and force your descendants to adhere to YOUR obligations."

In the Civil War example, the South had decent Constitutional arguments on its side. The South only ratified the Constitution after receiving tacit assurances that the new Federal government would not disturb the institution of slavery. When the Federal government started limiting--then attacking--slavery, the South reasonably believed that the Federal government was breaking the deal it made in 1787. True, there was nothing in the Constitution that addressed whether an aggrieved State could leave the Union, but the South felt that such a right was IMPLIED based on the unwritten assurances made in 1787. But again, the North forced its hand because it was the stronger party to the contract. No matter how correct the South may have been from a legal standpoint, guns always beat court rulings. Just ask the Cherokee. 8O[/quote]

Lol well stated.

[IndyBrit]

Kaiser,
Your points are true, but they are suggestive that all political power is the same. The United States did not take Iraq's oil, and they did not intend to colonialize Iraq or even stay very long. They at least thought (however misguided) that real interests were at stake. On the other hand, Saddam intended to take Kuwait and it's assets, which is what got him into this mess to begin with.

It's possible that political power could become more than naked exercises of power lacking a consistent internal structure. As a fellow cynic, I believe this would have to be generated from enlightened self-interest. Nations exercising raw political power against other nations generally suffer consequences, whether direct or indirect, and perhaps that realization will be ingrained into the political structure of all of the powers in the world.

[Blackadderthe4th]

[quote=""Kaiser_von_Nuben""]Ooof! Another double post, but again, this thread is getting far too interesting, even for me



Russia did most of the grunt work in WWII; without the Russian contribution, America would not have had a place to put all its tanks and planes on European soil. Most German casualties in WWII occurred in the East. The Western Front was always secondary to the monumental struggle in Russia. Just look at the numbers: The Russians lost 25 million people (roughly 15 million civilian). The Germans lost about 4 million.
(mostly military). The Americans basically stepped in and finished the work the Russians began., and the British/Canadians/French tagged along for the ride... and some territory in West Germany after the war, not to mention seats on the Nuremberg tribunal from which they could pour righteous accusations on hated Nazi thugs, then hang 'em high.

[/quote]

This may be going back a bit but I can't let you get away with this. Without the Russians there still would have been European ground to step foot on - Britain. This was proved when air superiority over our skies in the Battle of Britain was secured. It was a close run thing but we made it once the Germans switched to bombing cities giving the RAF respite. We already had naval superiority and with air superiority we had secured Britain from invasion. History has shown that land might means nothing when trying to invade Britain. Just look at the Spanish Armada or Trafalgar denying Napoleon his chance to invade.
Germany wasn't on the edge of victory then got bored and started its offensive against Russia. They were losing the Battle for Britain and it was becoming apparent that invasion of Britain wasn't feasible. Hitler abandoned his plans for operation Sea Lion in October 1940. Even if the attention wasn't turned towards the Russians and he focused on invading Britain. It just wasn't feasible. How long did D-day take to plan and carry out? Years? Its the same thing, imagine D-day in reverse but without Naval or Air superiority. Britain was safe. It may not have prospered or won the war but safe from invasion it certainly was.

Also Britain had more casualties then America including 67,000 civilian deaths(as it happens an unexploded German bomb was found in my university campus yesterday) so I think saying we 'tagged along for the ride' is not fair.

Apologies for the long post and back tracking but I just had to post this.

[danno527]

^
Very true Chris.

Oh and while we are backtracking I dont think Canada was "along for the ride" either. A nation of 16 million people had, by the end of the war over 1 million troops. We also had the second largest Navy in the world at the conclusion of World War 2. Im not sure whether Britain's navy or the USA's was largest. Sure our role in the war was not as huge as Russia, Britain or the USA, but for a country our size we more than did our part.

[Soccerman771]

[quote=""Blackadderthe4th""][quote=""Kaiser_von_Nuben""]Ooof! Another double post, but again, this thread is getting far too interesting, even for me



Russia did most of the grunt work in WWII; without the Russian contribution, America would not have had a place to put all its tanks and planes on European soil. Most German casualties in WWII occurred in the East. The Western Front was always secondary to the monumental struggle in Russia. Just look at the numbers: The Russians lost 25 million people (roughly 15 million civilian). The Germans lost about 4 million.
(mostly military). The Americans basically stepped in and finished the work the Russians began., and the British/Canadians/French tagged along for the ride... and some territory in West Germany after the war, not to mention seats on the Nuremberg tribunal from which they could pour righteous accusations on hated Nazi thugs, then hang 'em high.

[/quote]

This may be going back a bit but I can't let you get away with this. Without the Russians there still would have been European ground to step foot on - Britain. This was proved when air superiority over our skies in the Battle of Britain was secured. It was a close run thing but we made it once the Germans switched to bombing cities giving the RAF respite. We already had naval superiority and with air superiority we had secured Britain from invasion. History has shown that land might means nothing when trying to invade Britain. Just look at the Spanish Armada or Trafalgar denying Napoleon his chance to invade.
Germany wasn't on the edge of victory then got bored and started its offensive against Russia. They were losing the Battle for Britain and it was becoming apparent that invasion of Britain wasn't feasible. Hitler abandoned his plans for operation Sea Lion in October 1940. Even if the attention wasn't turned towards the Russians and he focused on invading Britain. It just wasn't feasible. How long did D-day take to plan and carry out? Years? Its the same thing, imagine D-day in reverse but without Naval or Air superiority. Britain was safe. It may not have prospered or won the war but safe from invasion it certainly was.

Also Britain had more casualties then America including 67,000 civilian deaths(as it happens an unexploded German bomb was found in my university campus yesterday) so I think saying we 'tagged along for the ride' is not fair.

Apologies for the long post and back tracking but I just had to post this.[/quote]

You do know that the thing you have written that I bolded was actually accomplished by the Celts about 1000 years before D-Day - right?

[IndyBrit]

[quote=""danno527""]^
Very true Chris.

Oh and while we are backtracking I dont think Canada was "along for the ride" either. A nation of 16 million people had, by the end of the war over 1 million troops. We also had the second largest Navy in the world at the conclusion of World War 2. Im not sure whether Britain's navy or the USA's was largest. Sure our role in the war was not as huge as Russia, Britain or the USA, but for a country our size we more than did our part.[/quote]

The US navy was the largest. In fact, I'm pretty sure the US navy had more military vessels than all other nations combined by the end of WW 2, but I'm going to have to try to find the data for that.

[IndyBrit]

This might be reliable, anyone care to parse it out and see what the world looked like at the end of the war?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_ships

[jonesk]

@ Jonesk: No country has an abstract "right" to pre-emptively attack another. Rather, it's all about power. If one country is powerful enough to say: "We're going to attack you to protect ourselves," it has nothing to do with "right;" it has everything to do with brute power. In many cases, international law will provide a "contractual" basis for countries to resolve ills by warfare, but in the U.S. v. Iraq case, it was pure power. The U.S. had unlimited military power and no real adversary. It was bound by no treaty obligation (well, maybe the U.N. Charter, but Bush wasn't really up on all that reading stuff ), and it faced no real sanctions for acting as it did. The important point is that there is no transcendent principle guiding "right" and "wrong" in international power politics. If a country is strong and unchallenged, it will do what it wants (sounds cynical, but who can argue with it?) By the same token, a strong country might even criticize a country that acts exactly the same as it did (ie, U.S. criticizing Russia for invading Georgia for "self-defense" reasons). There is no consistency here. It is pure power. It's OK to be hypocritical if you have the AH-64 apaches, B-2 bombers and your opponents have no air defense.

Completely agree.

"War does not determine who is right - only who is left"

[Blackadderthe4th]

[quote=""Soccerman771""][quote=""Blackadderthe4th""][quote=""Kaiser_von_Nuben""]Ooof! Another double post, but again, this thread is getting far too interesting, even for me



Russia did most of the grunt work in WWII; without the Russian contribution, America would not have had a place to put all its tanks and planes on European soil. Most German casualties in WWII occurred in the East. The Western Front was always secondary to the monumental struggle in Russia. Just look at the numbers: The Russians lost 25 million people (roughly 15 million civilian). The Germans lost about 4 million.
(mostly military). The Americans basically stepped in and finished the work the Russians began., and the British/Canadians/French tagged along for the ride... and some territory in West Germany after the war, not to mention seats on the Nuremberg tribunal from which they could pour righteous accusations on hated Nazi thugs, then hang 'em high.

[/quote]

This may be going back a bit but I can't let you get away with this. Without the Russians there still would have been European ground to step foot on - Britain. This was proved when air superiority over our skies in the Battle of Britain was secured. It was a close run thing but we made it once the Germans switched to bombing cities giving the RAF respite. We already had naval superiority and with air superiority we had secured Britain from invasion. History has shown that land might means nothing when trying to invade Britain. Just look at the Spanish Armada or Trafalgar denying Napoleon his chance to invade.
Germany wasn't on the edge of victory then got bored and started its offensive against Russia. They were losing the Battle for Britain and it was becoming apparent that invasion of Britain wasn't feasible. Hitler abandoned his plans for operation Sea Lion in October 1940. Even if the attention wasn't turned towards the Russians and he focused on invading Britain. It just wasn't feasible. How long did D-day take to plan and carry out? Years? Its the same thing, imagine D-day in reverse but without Naval or Air superiority. Britain was safe. It may not have prospered or won the war but safe from invasion it certainly was.

Also Britain had more casualties then America including 67,000 civilian deaths(as it happens an unexploded German bomb was found in my university campus yesterday) so I think saying we 'tagged along for the ride' is not fair.

Apologies for the long post and back tracking but I just had to post this.[/quote]

You do know that the thing you have written that I bolded was actually accomplished by the Celts about 1000 years before D-Day - right?[/quote]

Celts no. Normans yes. And they did it without big steel warships too, though to be fair they weren't being dive bombed at the time either...

[IndyBrit]

So,
the naval data ported to excel surprisingly well, so I just poked around a bit. Some very interesting things. First, a number of caveats:
1) This is wikipedia data (although I'm guessing very good data. I checked a few odd ships for a random sampling, and they showed up accurately reported)
2) There are about 30 vessels flagged UK at the end of the war that were actually USA vessels, and some further unknown number of USA vessels that were flagged UK when they sunk. I didn't parse that out, and I'm not sure what to do with it if I did.
3) There is a Japan carrier with no tonnage listed of unknown fate. These were typically 7,000 to 14,000 tons, but as you'll see from the raw numbers, that doesn't matter much. You can speculate about that ship as you please.
4) I haven't evaluated Germany yet, which was the last major player not listed (Brazil, Netherlands, France, Argentina, and Norway are all pretty significant too, but a number of complications such as transfers etc. occurred, so I left them out). Germany has literally hundreds of submarines with no fate listed, so I didn't know what to do with that.
5) the threshold for this data was 1,000 tons, so there are numerous (at least hundreds) ships that don't make it here. These are major ships only.
6) Apologies to our European friends, we use commas here.

KK - here are the major players. Data columns are: total ships, ships lost, unknown, and ending ships; total tonnage, tonnage lost, unknown, ending tonnage (tonnage is 1/1,000)

UK: 229, 73, 6, 150; 2,272, 602, 51, 1,619
US: 107, 25, 0, 82; 1,847, 267, 0, 1,580
JP: 92, 77, 4, 11; 1,382, 1,242, 17, 123
CN: 7, 1, 0, 6; 17, 2, 0, 15

Sorry, Canada.
UK edges the USA by flagged tonnage at the end of the war. Again, not sure the effects of those 30 or so ships. You can see Japan was just devastated.

Roughly speaking, Germany is around 1,100 on total tonnage with about 60% losses, so on the order of Japan except not nearly the same devastation. However, German ship count is quite high from 1600 ton U-boat spammage. Also, the amount of wild speculation on ship fates caused me to just leave it off.

OK, go impress your friends. :roll:

[cheesehat]

I swear this started as something completely unrelated...

[Soccerman771]

[quote=""Blackadderthe4th""][quote=""Soccerman771""][quote=""Blackadderthe4th""][quote=""Kaiser_von_Nuben""]Ooof! Another double post, but again, this thread is getting far too interesting, even for me



Russia did most of the grunt work in WWII; without the Russian contribution, America would not have had a place to put all its tanks and planes on European soil. Most German casualties in WWII occurred in the East. The Western Front was always secondary to the monumental struggle in Russia. Just look at the numbers: The Russians lost 25 million people (roughly 15 million civilian). The Germans lost about 4 million.
(mostly military). The Americans basically stepped in and finished the work the Russians began., and the British/Canadians/French tagged along for the ride... and some territory in West Germany after the war, not to mention seats on the Nuremberg tribunal from which they could pour righteous accusations on hated Nazi thugs, then hang 'em high.

[/quote]

This may be going back a bit but I can't let you get away with this. Without the Russians there still would have been European ground to step foot on - Britain. This was proved when air superiority over our skies in the Battle of Britain was secured. It was a close run thing but we made it once the Germans switched to bombing cities giving the RAF respite. We already had naval superiority and with air superiority we had secured Britain from invasion. History has shown that land might means nothing when trying to invade Britain. Just look at the Spanish Armada or Trafalgar denying Napoleon his chance to invade.
Germany wasn't on the edge of victory then got bored and started its offensive against Russia. They were losing the Battle for Britain and it was becoming apparent that invasion of Britain wasn't feasible. Hitler abandoned his plans for operation Sea Lion in October 1940. Even if the attention wasn't turned towards the Russians and he focused on invading Britain. It just wasn't feasible. How long did D-day take to plan and carry out? Years? Its the same thing, imagine D-day in reverse but without Naval or Air superiority. Britain was safe. It may not have prospered or won the war but safe from invasion it certainly was.

Also Britain had more casualties then America including 67,000 civilian deaths(as it happens an unexploded German bomb was found in my university campus yesterday) so I think saying we 'tagged along for the ride' is not fair.

Apologies for the long post and back tracking but I just had to post this.[/quote]

You do know that the thing you have written that I bolded was actually accomplished by the Celts about 1000 years before D-Day - right?[/quote]

Celts no. Normans yes. And they did it without big steel warships too, though to be fair they weren't being dive bombed at the time either...[/quote]

My source: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Who-We ... 083/?itm=8

What is yours?

very good quick read by the way...