[quote]smh_23 wrote:
The existence of thermonuclear weapons alone makes the 30’s Germany parallel essentially useless. This on top of the other million things that make the situations incomparable.
[/quote]
Agree[/quote]
The greatest peacekeeper there has ever been and the only reason we haven’t had world war 3… at least yet. Just wait until the technology and industry become easily available for any yahoo rogue state run by a psychotic. But that’s another potential thread. [/quote]
That’s a Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons thread. Would be interesting.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
The existence of thermonuclear weapons alone makes the 30’s Germany parallel essentially useless. This on top of the other million things that make the situations incomparable.
[/quote]
Agree[/quote]
Disagree.[/quote]
You know who else often disagreed with people? Hitler.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
The existence of thermonuclear weapons alone makes the 30’s Germany parallel essentially useless. This on top of the other million things that make the situations incomparable.
[/quote]
Agree[/quote]
Disagree.[/quote]
You know who else often disagreed with people? Hitler.[/quote]
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
The existence of thermonuclear weapons alone makes the 30’s Germany parallel essentially useless. This on top of the other million things that make the situations incomparable.
[/quote]
Agree[/quote]
Disagree.[/quote]
You know who else often disagreed with people? Hitler.[/quote]
Mr. Godwin is awaiting his monthly royalty check from you. Are you tardy?
[/quote]
Surely Mr. Godwin will grant me a reprieve, given the nobility of my cause.
But, on the issue: How could the existence of thermonuclear weapons not weaken the comparison? They changed power politics, right? So in what possible universe could they not affect this? And in what way do the millions of political differences between Europe 1930s and Europe 2014 not weaken the comparison? And in what way does the fact that the aggression, in the present case, is taking place in a world with a clear hegemon–in what way could that not weaken the comparison?
And, if all of those things do weaken the comparison–which they do–then why not just discard the comparison?
The cliffs notes being: All analogies limp, and most of them lead to simplistic or weak thought. My shoe is like the sun, in a great many ways.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
The existence of thermonuclear weapons alone makes the 30’s Germany parallel essentially useless. This on top of the other million things that make the situations incomparable.
[/quote]
Agree[/quote]
Disagree.[/quote]
Ukraine is wishing they hadn’t voluntarily relinquished their nuclear weapons upon the dissolution of the USSR right now. The Russian Federation is quite familiar with strategic deterrence.
[/quote]
Oh I agree.
I disagreed with smh’s assertion because the existence of thermonuclear weapons certainly did not prevent the invasions of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan.
[/quote]
But neither of those is Germany 1930s, which is specifically and explicitly what I was talking about.
We haven’t had a World War since the nuke so more peace than there was since the first half of the 20th century at least. The 2nd world war was only 20 years after the first. Can you imagine if the entire century had a world war about every 20 years? While the 2nd half of the century is bloody, it could have been much worse.
Instead of the Cold War, we would have had WW3. Then the consequences of that might have led to WW4 after things simmered for couple decades and so on. But admittedly, that much is speculation.
The point about Pakistan, North Korea, and Iran(?), are good ones. But none of them to our knowledge have good delivery systems or have nukes mass produced but as technology become cheaper and proliferates that may become a distinct reality. Very scary shit indeed.
And I’m sure there will be a nuclear detonation either as part of a war or as a terrorist act in my life time. I just hope there’s nothing that leads to a new dark ages.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
The existence of thermonuclear weapons alone makes the 30’s Germany parallel essentially useless. This on top of the other million things that make the situations incomparable.
[/quote]
This is correct however many Americans have been led to believe that military intervention should be the rule and not the exception. You see the language all the time “we look weak or Putin has us where he wants us.”
The Germany comparisons are to scare people into asking the question of “what if we don’t intervene?” We have the biggest and by far the most expensive military on the planet and it is important for some people that we constantly use it (after all this continues making certain companies a lot of money).
Somehow we are operating under the assumption that we look like a pussy if we don’t run in everywhere with guns blazing and to earn international respect we must go in all the time. Somehow “supporting our troops” has become let’s put them in harms way as often as possible. If we don’t flex our muscles as often they won’t go away, but for some reason a lot of people think they will.
How well did we better invade just in case work out for us recently? And why do I feel weird for my support for our military men and women being let’s keep them home unless we absolutely have to do something?
For the record, i never said the situations and threats were similar.
I said that today’s panslavic arguments were equivalent to 1938 pangermanist ones.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
The existence of thermonuclear weapons alone makes the 30’s Germany parallel essentially useless. This on top of the other million things that make the situations incomparable.
[/quote]
Agree[/quote]
Disagree.[/quote]
You know who else often disagreed with people? Hitler.[/quote]
LOL, oh man, rimshot[/quote]
…here’s another rimshot.
if the current liberal media didn’t insert 17th century Roman Inquisition tactics perhaps we would hear scientists on a regular basis speak against man made global warming and the almighty theory turned truth of evolution.
i guess it would be a lot easier if there were not hitler like tactics that occur on a daily basis in leftist media decisions, without a “smidgeon” of evidence to the contrary.
some of you think you live in a free society. free men. laffo.
between the irs, your government and your “media journalists” you have no clue as to how close you are to the ukrainians.
and all along i couldn’t find better mentors because those that disagree are morons. laffo. how silly of me to not recognize i once had a tail.
Like a simple parlor trick, the networks are able to make skeptical scientists vanish, at least from the eyes of their viewers.
In some cases, the broadcast networks have failed to include such scientists for years, while including alarmist scientists within the past six months. ABC, CBS and NBC’s lengthy omission of scientists critical of global warming alarmism propped up the myth of a scientific consensus, despite the fact that many scientists and thousands of peer-reviewed studies disagree.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
The existence of thermonuclear weapons alone makes the 30’s Germany parallel essentially useless. This on top of the other million things that make the situations incomparable.
[/quote]
Agree[/quote]
Disagree.[/quote]
Ukraine is wishing they hadn’t voluntarily relinquished their nuclear weapons upon the dissolution of the USSR right now. The Russian Federation is quite familiar with strategic deterrence.
[/quote]
Oh I agree.
I disagreed with smh’s assertion because the existence of thermonuclear weapons certainly did not prevent the invasions of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan.
[/quote]
But neither of those is Germany 1930s, which is specifically and explicitly what I was talking about.[/quote]
Both cases were exemplary of a clear aggressor nation using ye ol’ “We must quell the civil unrest, it is our solemn duty…we’re just a benevolent bunch…why are we misunderstood?..we don’t care if we’re misunderstood…it’s the ‘right’ thing to do…now watch the gore emerge from beneath the treads of our tanks.”[/quote]
This is true, but the '30s ultimately turned out very differently, and this is because there is little legitimate comparison between politics before Trinity and politics post. (Among other reasons.)
There’s nothing wrong with learning, and applying, your history lessons.[/quote]
By the way, I of course agree with this. Completely. I simply think it’s important to keep in mind the weakness built into historical/political analogy. And any analogy between the nuclear and the pre-nuclear age is particularly so.
Edit: There is serious danger in allowing the tough business of learning about the complexities of an international situation unfolding in real time to be subbed out in favor of a cheap and easy appeal to the bullet points of high school history class.
I am not accusing anybody in this thread of this, because the discussion seems uncharacteristically open and contemplative on all sides. I am simply making a point that I like to make whenever I can. Historical analogy has led many otherwise smart people up their own asses.
For the record, i never said the situations and threats were similar.
I said that today’s panslavic arguments were equivalent to 1938 pangermanist ones.
[/quote]
I actually wasn’t following the thread earlier and hadn’t even seen this comparison. I was responding to things I read just a page ago.
In many ways, pananything will be similar to paneverything else.
[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
People can take it as they like, but I don’t consider this to be a win/lose us vs. them type of thing. He’s taking care of business in his neck of the woods the way that they do it in that neck of the woods. Cultural relativism if you will.
Future world leaders could learn a lot from Putin as far as when to step in and when to stay out. He showed great restraint and judgement in not turning the Ukrainian uprising into an absolute blood bath by letting it calm down before rolling in and great timing for when he stepped in on that debacle that was Syria.
It seems like these past few months make it really clear (to me) that a lot of American people get all caught up in emotion and want to jump in and save the world when what we really need to do is let the rest of world sort it self out and we try to save our own asses.
As a country we’re about as fit to jump into another war as Biggie Smalls is to run a marathon. (which is to say that we are a bullet ridden bloated corps with a bunch of fucked up priorities)
[/quote]
Well said.
[/quote]
I agree and it was Skyz’ post that prompted my previous one.
Then again, after I thought about it a bit history reminded me how much you, Skyz and I sound like Joe American Citizen Blow circa 1935. And that bothers me a little. Is there a reason why it shouldn’t?[/quote]
There probably aren’t any reasons why it shouldn’t at least a little…
[/quote]
I wonder how many others will answer my question.[/quote]
Push, that has been my thought while catching up on this thread. We’ve tried isolationism before.
[quote]H factor wrote:
I think some people believe the US should always intervene and ironically some of those people say they are small government. [/quote]
And how many of them are willing to pick up a gun and go? [/quote]
Much easier to complain about Obama and how “weak” he is making us look from a keyboard than a uniform? [/quote]
That moron Ted Nugent suggested we nuke Iraq and Afghanistan, because he is a badass, but it turns out he is a draft dodger. But as long as he “looks” the part (shooting deer is apparently as badass as shooting people…who shoot back) he is looked to as being “strong” while a democrat (even one who went to Vietnam, like Gore) is seen as being weak. How a party full of draft dodgers managed to convince its followers they were the Dirty Dozen or Magnificent Seven is beyond me. [/quote]
Lol. Like the Dems don’t have a shitload of draft dodgers too. Jeez. Your partisanship is showing.
So, Russia. About the Ukraine thing yeah?[/quote]
Ahhhh, but you missed the point in a quest to be clever. It’s not the Dems who are trying to portray an image of being like John Wayne to the NASCAR crowd.
So getting back to Russia: why do we have to look tough? Why do political questions end up revolving around appearances and concepts like losing face? These discussions always end up using wild west terminology. It ends up being about how we look at the end of the day vs resolving the issue or maybe, better still, letting them settle their differences by themselves.
[quote]zecarlo wrote:
So getting back to Russia: why do we have to look tough? Why do political questions end up revolving around appearances and concepts like losing face? These discussions always end up using wild west terminology. It ends up being about how we look at the end of the day vs resolving the issue or maybe, better still, letting them settle their differences by themselves. [/quote]
If our goal is stop violence from occurring do you think we have a better chance of achieving said goal if we look weak or if we look tough?
