Full Comment Forum: Time for the US to take its ball and go home?
The U.S. desperately needs to cut spending to balance its books and save the social services Americans most value. One proposal raised at Monday’s debate of Republican candidates was an end to the notion of the U.S. as the world’s policeman. Trillions of dollars go into military resources across the globe, and to what affect? It hasn’t made the slightest difference in Iran or Syria or Pakistan, and U.S. involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya bring little gain and much grief. Why not just pull back and let the world take care of itself?
Kevin Libin in Calgary: There’s always been a persistent isolationist streak in American politics. Trouble is, they always get shaken out of it. Washington was sitting out the Second World War for the most part, till 350 Japanese warplanes turned up one morning in Hawaii. Clinton seemed fine letting the UN take the lead on Mideast tyranny and then al Qaeda got their hands on some planes in the U.S. I touched on this last week: the belief in American exceptionalism—a large part of which involves “making the world better” — is one of the largest pillars of American patriotism. If I had to play pop sociologist, I’d reckon it probably comes from a missionary tradition, or at least from the widely accepted quasi-Christian precept that “with great power comes great responsibility,” which is pretty hard to exempt yourself from when you’re the world’s sole superpower. From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli are considered “our country’s battles,” Stateside.
Has it helped? Hard to say. But empires can be pretty profitable operations. The last couple of decades haven’t quite been an unfettered streak of successes, I guess. But if we tally up the spread of influence of American control throughout the Pacific, helping to rescue Europe from Hitler and America’s primary role in containing Soviet Communism and eventually wearing it down, I figure that Washington’s interventionist policy has still probably paid more dividends than its cost.
Barbara Kay in Toronto for a few days: The U.S. is exceptional for many reasons. In this context it is exceptional in that it has the might of an imperial power, but because it began as a colony, it has never wanted its own empire. Of course, nobody believes it, because everyone hates the U.S. for its enormous wealth and power, even though the U.S. has never colonized a single country it has vanquished, including Iraq.
World War I Casualties - News
The potential for an even greater spread of regional conflict could well provoke a World War III scenario, drawing in tenuous nations like Syria, Lebanon, Iran or even Saudi Arabia, according to Tarpley. For his part, President Obama has brushed off
Washington was sitting out the Second World War for the most part, till 350 Japanese warplanes turned up one morning in Hawaii. Clinton seemed fine letting the UN take the lead on Mideast tyranny and then al Qaeda got their hands on some planes in the
Holland M. “Howlin' Mad” Smith (a recipient of France's Croix de Guerre for his actions during the battle of Belleau Wood in World War I), begin hitting the beaches on Saipan, a Japanese territorial island in the Marianas chain.
TO mark their move into a dedicated work space at the Linskill Community Centre, the Tynemouth World War One Commemoration Project held an informal reception and 'drop in' session for people to learn about the project. Those present were able to see
A veteran of World War II, Gerald Stewart helped ferry wounded soldiers from Normandy on D-Day. A memorial service is scheduled for July 1 for Gerald Stewart, a retired top executive at Kaiser Permanente recently inducted into the French Legion of
Truth, the First Casualty of War: Friendly Fire, FUBAR, SNAFU, 9 ...
Nine years ago this month, Pat Tillman walked away from a multimillion dollar NFL contract with the Arizona Cardinals. During his college and professional football career, he was known as an undersized but over achieving strong safety, and in 2002 he quit football to join the US Army, eventually becoming an Army Ranger. His life ended on April 22, 2004 in the desolate mountains of Afghanistan, another victim, but one of the more celebrated victims, of “friendly fire” fratricide, that happens all too commonly in every war.
Pat Tillman was killed by a member of his own platoon and the event was massively lied about by the Pentagon, the press and the Cheney/Bush White House. The killing was covered up as vigorously as was the celebration of Tillman’s “patriotism” for joining up to “serve his country” after 9/11/01. Unfortunately for Tillman, he had not understood the later-to-be-revealed truths about 9/11 nor was he aware of what were the meanings of the military acronyms “FUBAR*” and “SNAFU*” and how fatal those realities were destined to be for him.
(* FUBAR and SNAFU are unflattering military slang terms describing the messed-up realities of military operations - and military life in general - meaning “F….. Up Beyond All Recognition” and “Situation Normal, All F….. Up.”)
“In war, truth is the first casualty”
Tillman, a philosophy major in college, was also an atheist who considered himself a freethinking individual, and yet he somehow had not doubted, prior to his enlistment, the provably false White House conspiracy theory that an alleged group of 19 Saudi Arabian amateur pilots-in-training (6 of whom were later proven by the BBC to be alive and well in the Middle East) could hijack four passenger jets, evade the best air defense system in the history of the world (NORAD) and then fly two of the planes, at 500 miles per hour, into two non-flammable steel-reinforced, concrete skyscrapers (World Trade Center towers 1 & 2) and pulverize them into fine dust because of low-temperature fires which had burned out within minutes of the crashes. Some have described the events of 9/11as a Keystone Cops-type operation because of all of the snafus and the multiple pieces of evidence left behind proving that the operation was orchestrated, and then covered-up, by people and agencies that had access to towers 1, 2 # 7 for weeks before the demolitions.
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World War I Casualties, Hamilton Road Cemetery, Deal, Kent. , Ottoman Casualties of World War I, Arabic Attack, Bryan Desmond Hughes
World War I Casualties, World War I, Thankful Villages, Turkish-Armenian War, Armenian-Azerbaijani War, Georgian-Armenian War 1918, World War II Casualties
African American World War II casualties and decorations in the Navy, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine, a comprehensive record
World War II Casualties, World War Ii Casualties, the Holocaust in Latvia, Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust
American War and Military Operations Casualties: Lists and Statistics
Provides tables indicating the number of casualties among Amer. military personnel serving in principal wars and combat actions.Daily Report Directory
World War II casualties - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
World War II was the deadliest military conflict in history. ... I China. Sources for total Chinese war dead range from 10 to 20 million as detailed below. ...
World War I casualties - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I, was around 37.5 million. ... Estimates of casualty numbers for World War I vary to a great extent; ...
World War II casualties - WarWiki
The casualties of World War II were suffered disproportionately by the various ... 26. ^ Hve margir Íslendingar dóu í seinni heimsstyrjöldinni? ...
World War 2 Casualties - Worldwar-2.net
Casualties suffered by each nation, as well as a complete World War 2 Timeline, detailing every event, day by day from 1939 through to 1945.
World War I casualties - VisWiki
World War I casualties - War Office, Spanish flu, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Merchant Navy, Allies of World War I - VisWiki
