Armenians in Turkey.
Jews in Europe.
Political opponents in Cambodia.
Political opponents in Iraq.
etc.

Pacifism works great against a democracy. Can you name more than two pacifists in history who's social/political movements overturned a non-democratic social order? The only two I can think of are Jesus and the Bhudda.

Gandhi booted out the Brits, no?

__________________
'79 280SE
'87 560SEL
'83 280CE
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'83 911 turbo

That's not true. Check the 9/11 Commission Report, which exhaustively investigated this urban legend.

The Brits were/are a democratic society, nay?

Poland's "Solidarity" movement

Yes! That's one. Also, the popular deposing of all Warsaw Pact govs and most importantly, Soviet rule. I'd forgotten them. And they only too forty to seventy years. Why, a blink in the eye.

Botnst:

No pacificist here! I am only talking about military science, part of which deals with when you go to war and when you don't. Of course, according to proper application of military science (which all of our officers learn as I did) it has been unfortunately necessary for us to go to war, and no doubt it will happen again. But Iraq was not one of those times, according to my training as a military officer.

Now, back to similarities between the Bush administration and the Third Reich. I just watched an intererview with Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention on MSBC's Hardball program, and he stated that it was made known what would be expected of Bush for him to get the votes of this and similar religious groups. And he is following along quite well, thank you. But Land said "after all Bush is the Leader." Leadership in a religious or semi-religious movement is one of the hallmarks of Nazism. Sleep tight.

Thanks,
Richard

The national debt bothers me. It's less than Canada's percentage wise(today, lol) - but yes, still too high for comfort. You don't want it climbing higher than the GDP and my comfort zone would be no more than 50% of that. Still, we are in the middle of World War III in my o. We made it through and won the Cold War but now we are in the War on Terror whether we like it or not. That is increasing the debt. Our current administration is going to need to watch the needle carefully over the next four years. You are right about that.

I was a weenie little ol' enlisted kid 30-odd years ago, so I'm an expert.

IMO going to war is a political, not military decision. That was established by the CINC, George Washington. If you're an officer, you follow the govs orders, according to the rules of war. I do not think that it is up to an officer to decide whether the civil gov decision is right, is it?

Lets assume you're acdu and the civil gov declares war and you say, "Respectfully sir, I think this one ain't right." What is the duty and responsibility of the various parties?

In contrast, if you're given a lawful or direct order that you believe is illegal, it is your duty as a soldier to point that out. But that is a military order, not a civil gov policy. The military does not engage in civilian policy, by law and custom.

Am I wrong?

And you would be wise to do so. But lets add another feature to your analogy. Suppose the child that is known to be fair and honest is discovered biting the heads off of small animals and fabricating evidence to make it seem like the dead animals are the other child's doing. After you have already formed your opinion of the guilty party in the preceding incident. Does this new evidence make you reconsider your previous conclusion? Do you ignore it because it doesn't fit your understanding of how the world turns?

I think we have been down this road before. But just because America was founded by some very wise and bold thinkers, and we have spent the last two hundred plus years defining the right side of social and human rights arguments to the world does not make us immune to the same diseases that took hold of Germany in Hitler's era. Keeping America the model citizen of the world that it has been is a tough task. Every generation has to do its part. A tall order but being America has always meant finding a way to be solidly on the side of freedom, human rights and honesty. It is disturbing to hear excuses for bad decisions and failures to uphold our principles. Or arguments based on "It can't happen here" logic. As soon as we believe that it will. Jim

__________________
Own:
1986 Euro 190E 2.3-16 (291,000 miles),
1998 E300D TurboDiesel, 231,000 miles -purchased with 45,000,
1988 300E 5-speed 252,000 miles,
1983 240D 4-speed, purchased w/136,000, now with 222,000 miles.
2009 ML320CDI Bluetec, 89,000 miles

Owned:
1971 220D (250,000 miles plus, sold to father-in-law),
1975 240D (245,000 miles - died of body rot),
1991 350SD (176,560 miles, weakest Benz I have owned),
1999 C230 Sport (45,400 miles),
1982 240D (321,000 miles, put to sleep)

Certainly doesn't make us immune, that's for sure. But much as we enjoy deriding and demeaning the american electorate, it does a fair job of ignoring punditry, hero worship, extremism of any sort and opinions of foreigners in general. Thus, I doubt that any president could fool enough people for long enough to effect a fundamental change in gov, much as I'd like that (if it went my way). If you look at our history, we survived some real *********s like Jackson, Harding, LB Johnson, and Nixon despite their darkest ambitions. part of the reason is the one I alluded to earlier, the "canary in the coalmine" singing dissidents. Some faction or other is always seeing some conspiracy or other to take over gov. the chances of a plot succeeding, given the constant surveillance by professional paranoiacs, is very slim. But it is not immunity. I completely agree that 'it can't happen here' is an invitation to dictatorship. It nearly happened once before. In the 1860's. Under Lincoln. he claimed suspending civil law was justifed and it wasn't overturned for years afterword. In the meanwhile, he jailed many newspapermen, politicians (even deporting a House member), and others without trial or habeas corpus. Now we (most of us) revere the man. Go figure.

Concerning your modification of my analogy, I cannot imagine a scenario as you indicated happening, given the level of attention that I pay to my kids. Eternal vigilence, being the price of freedom.

Of course I wouldn't, because then we'd be talking about my homeland But if North Korea had the power and the motive to take us out, well, there wouldn't be much I could say to stop it!

This is why I added that caveat that I'm not arguing morality or rightness, I'm just answering that question of'who gave you the right?'

In any case, I think there is room for idealism in this country, but that it should not be dictated or even swayed by what everyone else in the world thinks we as a country should do. Our decisionmaking isn't happening in a democracy in which every other nation out there has a vote. Internally, I think we've become so tied up with partisan bickering and finger-pointing that we have for the moment forgotten about even the possibility of developing some sort of national consensus or moral code that we can use to guide our decisions, and that is unfortunate.

Leaving aside the fact that morality is unlikely to ever be a major consideration when it comes to career politicians making international-policy decisions (see? my internal cynic simply will not shut up!), I'd like to see people and politicians discuss the circumstances under which waging war is acceptable to us. Genocide? Political oppression? Murder of dissidents? Our own financial interests? Defense against violent actions? Defense against the threat of violent actions? Defense against the capability of another nation to threaten violent actions? Which causes suffice, and which do not?

My internal cynic asks, if this conversation hasn't been had by now, why and how would it happen now?

Geez Bot, I wasn't supposing even your analogy was feasible with your kids. I was supposing the whole thing was fabricated. I know mine will blame each other for the same infractions, but I don't suspect any of them of any really devious stuff like killing little animals and shoplifting or worse. But I will admit to being mislead by my daughter for years and assuming she was being truthful when she wasn't while I was ready to assume my sons were not. I was not one to make a decision of guilt on feelings though, and my policy was they were all guilty unless I saw the act myself. Now that they are older they actually enjoy telling me how they had me fooled. And I see the side of my daughter I never could before. Makes me feel better about my policy of "all guilty unless Dad witnesses the crime" now. Jim

__________________
Own:
1986 Euro 190E 2.3-16 (291,000 miles),
1998 E300D TurboDiesel, 231,000 miles -purchased with 45,000,
1988 300E 5-speed 252,000 miles,
1983 240D 4-speed, purchased w/136,000, now with 222,000 miles.
2009 ML320CDI Bluetec, 89,000 miles

Owned:
1971 220D (250,000 miles plus, sold to father-in-law),
1975 240D (245,000 miles - died of body rot),
1991 350SD (176,560 miles, weakest Benz I have owned),
1999 C230 Sport (45,400 miles),
1982 240D (321,000 miles, put to sleep)

Well, that's the problem as wellas the value of argument by analogy. We choose a circumstance that fits our argument and then disown the argument when a real-life exception arises. So, I'm dumping that argument.

What I'm searching for is an illustration of how additional knowledge plays a vital role when several lines of evidence point in a non-coincident directions.

Say for example there's a man in a box without windows. He suddenly finds himself thrown against the floor with great violence. After a time, he adjusts and it seems that stability is reached. Then suddenly he starts floating upward and suddenly he careens toward the ceiling. He finds himself flattend against the ceiling and then slowly struggles to his feet.

The hapless man things that maybe there is a machine outside of his box, like a giant magnet, pulling him this way or that. Or maybe somebody has his box on a bungie.

How can this man know the truth of his circumstances without having special knowledge of what's going-on outside of his closed box?

Botnst:

You state that "going to war is a political, not a military decision." Well, it was this time, and it was in Vietnam, but that is not the way it is supposed to be. When the decision to go to war is political and not military, the result has always been disaster. After all, that's the way the Third Reich did it.

Richard