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Military Strategists Have Known for 2,500 Years that Prolonged Wars Are Disastrous
2,500 hundred years ago, one of the greatest military strategists ever - Sun Tzu - said:
- "What is essential in war is victory, not prolonged operations."
- "No nation has ever benefited from a prolonged war."
- "Now,
when an army of one hundred thousand is raised and dispatched on a
distant campaign, the expenses borne by the people together with
disbursements of the treasury will amount to a thousand pieces of gold
daily. In addition, there will be continuous commotion both at home and
abroad, people will be exhausted by the corvee of transport, and the
farm work of seven hundred thousand households will be disrupted."
"A thousand pieces of gold" is a metaphorical, not set, amount. The costs of today's wars are actually much higher than a ton of gold per day.
Despite the talk of withdrawal, America is engaged in perpetual war in the Middle East (and see this, this, this, this, this and this).
America's political leaders haven't learned a 2,500-year-old lesson.
And see this.
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"War is the health of the State." - Randolph Bourne
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/warhealthstate1918.html
I think they have learned the lesson.. The wars are needed. An enemy is needed.. There may be a few naive politicians in Washington but the majority have a tacit understanding of what's going on.. They are traitors..
On the other hand, if you want cheap oil priced in relatively worthless dollars.....
Its all about the military industrial complex. I was watching some show on history channel or something one night and they showed a plant in Alabama I believe where they refit and rebuild tanks that have either been hit by RPG's in these wars or whatever. It showed the American workers , working on these implements of war, and never stopping to realize what they are in fact doing, much less caring one bit about it or so it would seem. For you see, they have mortgages to pay and children to feed and lives to lead and it is better to work for the military industrial complex and help it to exist while at the same time such activities in the long run, damage the very country you say you support. But you see. They have a short term time horizon and they simply don't care and they support the wars because it feeds their families and they go on with this dirty business, not stopping one minute to count the cost to the boys and girls that play in their homes , while they sit and eat and watch the television and yell support for their favorite football teams. Such is life. If one would go there one day, and stand outside their plant with a anti war sign, they would get mad. For you see, they are patriotic. Patriotism to them is having a job and being free to watch television and hunt innocent animals during the season. We have a long way to go grasshopper and much to do.
Now that's the just plain ugly truth.
But in the US wars, they DID learn from history:
1. Rape woman
2. Rape children
3. Kill citizens
4. Plunder from the poor
5. Act like God is on your side: GOD IST MIT UNS!
In all fairness, you could say that for any major empire in the past..
All is fair in love and war?
It's time we moved beyond Dr. Phil, imo.
Actually, you can say that for any war.
Push 18 y/o boys face to face with horror, give them no way out, and they do not behave well. The human psyche does not deal well with endless horror - it tends to break down.
We have heard a lot about America's greatest generation, but the dirty little secret is that all of the things you listed above, have been done before. This sort of activity was rampant in ww2 in Europe. Of course this little known fact has been brushed under the rug and many would hope that any information about such things never sees the light of day. Oh and one more thing, this sort of activity was also prevalent during the civil war in the south when such things were done to unarmed southern people who just got in the way of progress doncha know. One such sterling example of Northern armies and their benevolence, was in Sherman's march to the sea. If only the truth was ever known by many, would it matter at this late date? Probably not. But for the longest time, such things were remembered in the south but the generations have come and gone and time has gone by and Lincoln has a big statue in Washington DC to honor his glorious triumphs. Yeh sure. One thing is for sure. To the victor goes the spoils and to the victor goes the pleasure of creating lies instead of telling the real truth and these lies are called history.
Being a student of history I learned a few things. One was win at all costs. The winner gets to tell his story and winners are never tried for war crimes. That and most wars are total BS, some fabricated story fed to the public so they will give up their young to kill and die for the benefit of their overlords.
Not to mention the fact that Eisenhower himself committed terrible war crimes, one which was the systematic starving to death of 1.4 million German POW's at the end of the conflict. You can read about it, in the book, Other losses, where the heavily footnoted information as gleaned from (at that time of its writing) from the war records of the US Army. Some US soldiers at the time, risk life and limb to sneak into the POW compounds and toss food and water to the prisoners at the time, thereby allowing some of them to live. There was rampant rape and murder going on in Europe both during the war, and after the war, mostly by US troops. Of course the Russians were doing it too, but let us not forget. We also were in it up to our eyeballs. Of course nothing much was ever said about this. But you can read about it here and there on the poor man's Smithstonian, the internet.
"...when scholars do the necessary research, they will find Mr. Bacque's work to be worse than worthless. It is seriously - nay, spectacularly - flawed in its most fundamental aspects. Mr. Bacque misuses documents; he misreads documents; he ignores contrary evidence; his statistical methodology is hopelessly compromised; he makes no attempt to look at comparative contexts; he puts words into the mouth of his principal source; he ignores a readily available and absolutely critical source that decisively deals with his central accusation; and, as a consequence of these and and other shortcomings, he reaches conclusions and makes charges that are demonstrably absurd..." Stephen Ambrose
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/b/bacque-james/ambrose-001.html
What purpose do you serve when you promote this darling of the neo-Nazis, this vile propagandist, James Bacque? What does your belief in his misrepresentations and distortions say about your own scholarship?
This is what has happened to you and this country:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlpODYhnPEo
http://thefinalphaseforum.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=44
Now new evidence is making it clear that Ambrose, the historian pop star, was indeed a full-fledged fraud, raising the question, “Who are these guys?” And why should we trust them?
http://ethicsalarms.com/2010/04/27/history-lesson-stephen-ambrose/
It seems I recollect reading something about this guy Ambrose a long time ago. Now I must confirm. This man was a liar, a fraud and a plagiarist. He was a boot licker and a ww2 groupie who wrote about things he never experienced and perhaps wished he did in some sorry way I suppose. Who knows now. The man is dead now. But taking his word for anything is strictly out of the picture. You will have to do a lot better to disprove my statements. I submit there were probably even more than 1.4 million German soldiers who died in these awful American camps.
A US prison guard remembers.
http://www.fpp.co.uk/History/General/Bacque/Brech2002.html
in this blog posting is this by Pat Buchanan in 1990.
"Conclusion: the U.S. Army killed ten times as many Germans in POW camps as we did on battlefields from Normandy to V.E. day. (German POWs) had their rations cut below survival level until they were dying at rates up to 30% of exposure, starvation and neglect... Red Cross food trains were turned back and U.S. food shipments sat on the docks...One French officer said the U.S. camps reminded him of Dachau and Buchenwald...The book blames Eisenhower. 'The German is a beast,' Ike had written...But that was not how the Canadians and British felt, who treated their prisoners justly...It was not the view of General Mark Clark, nor of Patton...Ignoring the book is not enough."
Fortunately every once in a while Pat gets something right.
Pat is a formidable historian.
Regarding court stenographers such as Stephen Ambrose and his ilk, I'm reminded of this quote:
"The nationalist is by definition an ignoramus."
- Danilo Kis
Oh I get it. The apologist for dear old Ike are here now. Good. Let us begin.
That nasty bit about starving the German POWs was spot on, except it wasn't Eisenhower, it was Douglas Haig and Ferdinand Foch. And it wasn't WW II, it was WW I.
No, it was ww2 and the pow's were in the American camps in France under American control. Read the book , Other Losses. Eisenhower was directly involved in this situation. It was at his insistence that this happen. I am sure there is much more to this than meets the eye, but I will not go there at this time.
http://www.rense.com/general46/germ.htm
Eisenhower , was a average student at West Point. He got out. Somehow he came into contact with FDR's daughter and got married to her. In the space of 4 years, he went from a Second Lieutenant to a 4 star general. He became the Allied Armies commander with absolutely no battle experience whatsoever. His ineptness and his lack of experience cost the lives of many American soldiers. But I digress. I don't know why you would say this was ww1 with all of the information out there now. Perhaps you should do some research.
Ike and Patton bulldozed, gassed and burned Bonus Army Camps in DC in 1932 under McArthur by order of Hoover and Attorney General Mitchell with deaths of veterans, wives, children and babies in violation of posse comitatus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act
Posse Comitatus does not apply to Washington, DC. Also, please substantiate your claim that "veterans, wives, children and babies" were killed in the event of the eviction of the Bonus Army from Washington, DC. It is true that two Bonus marchers were killed when they were among a mob that cornered DC police in a building, but claims that fatalities were inflicted on the protesters are unproven (perhaps because they didn't occur?).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlpODYhnPEohttp:
//thefinalphaseforum.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=44