MrRodgers
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quote:
ORIGINAL: NorthernGent
quote:
ORIGINAL: MrRodgers
But I go beyond mere politics to the profiteering which many historians will argue is the first and most consistent 'benefit' and the root cause...of all wars.
Years back I studied history at university. I'm no historian these days, haven't been for a long old time, but I would disagree with your summation of the views of historians.
The root of cause of every war I can think of is ideology. There will always be competing interests in any venture: missionaries, idealists, profiteers, out-and-out lunatics who need a killing fix and others. But, the root cause of all wars is to compel your opponents to become like you.
But, waltzing in a stealing a few quid in the short-term is not as profitable as manipulating people into agreeing with you thereby guaranteeing decades of trade.
The Americans tend to build a Starbucks around people when they're looking the other way, and these people become pseudo-Americans with a pronounced appetite for American ideas and merchandise.
In my opinion it is only in the last resort where the US government resorts to invasion, that is naturally hostile places such as Iraq and Russia which need an altogether different level of persuasion.
Ultimately, though, the goal remained the same in Iraq : destroy the prevailing institutions and replace them with institutions to the liking of the US.
These people running countries such as the US aren't stupid, far from it. In a country of 300 and odd million people it stands to reason that there are some bright people behind the scenes running the show and they're not thinking short-term money grabs, they're looking 30/50/100 years ahead and managing that future international political landscape.
Plausible and I wish it were at least partially true and in the long term you hit on the neocon's goals. But starting with the Spanish American war, we simply didn't need that war. It was and it is true...a matter of conquest but yet, only to lose the Philippines and have to go back and later, Cuba. That was at a time when we actually paid our military men and not just the war suppliers.
WWI saw us deliberately get into yet another war we didn't need but learned jingoism and stopped paying those who did the fighting and dying ($30/month 1/2 of which was deducted for various nefarious reasons) and instead gave them medals (the living anyway) and called them heroes as we do now. But we paid the suppliers and for million$ in material that never even made it to France. And lending billion$ in taxpayer money to Europe to spend here that was never going to be repaid.
Then in Vietnam we concocted a phony attack by the north (Gulf of Tonkin) to again use jingoism to start a 10 years war that was never supposed to end as exemplified by the US telling the NVA that no anti-aircraft artillery would be attacked unless operational and there would be no pursuing the enemy into the north or outside VN. This was also after LBJ mysteriously lifted a trade embargo on the USSR so they could in full swing...arm N. Vietnam.
Then there is W & Co. with two more wars financed by a tax cut ? More hegemony, 10-12 more years of war profits. And all to prove Kant correct, in so many words...The powerful and their armies coming upon countries as if they belong...to nobody. Pursued at their behest while they basque in their palaces with their brandies suffering not at all, shows history will always be...written in blood.
< Message edited by MrRodgers -- 8/12/2014 12:17:07 PM >
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RE: Frontline: How the US lost IRAQ - 
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