the USA will not win another world war...

[latefordinner]

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Can we also NOT pretend that The US doesn't have legitimate strategic concerns in the region and that all the "beefs" are not necesarily one sided affairs?

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No one ever said the US didn't have strategic concerns. I think the terrorists generally disagree on their legitimacy. Of course it makes sense to have a large military in a region that has such a large concentration of an extremely valuable commodity. I'm just waiting for the Venezuela war talk sometime in the next decade.

[JOHNY CA$H]

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because rock music and rap music has made its young men hate its government and they lack patriotism for their country, and they will not be willing to storm any beaches because everyone saw the dozens of world war II films and they dont want to get slaughtered like that... therefore the USA will have to resort to nuclear warfare (unsurprisingly).

America is [censored].

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I opened this post expecting to see a thorough analysis of present-day geopolitics. Boy, was I disappointed.

[natedogg]

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LOL the only thing you got right is, if every country in the world wanted the USA gone it would be over in a few days.

Mack

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Sorry but you are completely mistaken.

Count the number of active commissioned aircraft carriers in the world and then count how many are not owned by the USA.

natedogg

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Major conventional wars can be controlled by air and by sea, but they can't be won without many boots on the ground for an extended period of time. The U.S. military just doesn't have the manpower to really control large land areas overseas.

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Absolutely true . But that occupying large land areas is not the question. The OP says the US can't win a world war and the reason is that not enough soldiers will volunteer to storm beaches. That the US would have to resort to nuclear warfare, and that the US is screwed.

He's wrong.

natedogg

[John Kilduff]

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It's essentially a list of most everything America's foreign policy has done, with the negative consequences of those actions. It's not like it says "here's a list of every bad action America has taken". These actions have led to a lot of people overseas being angry at us.

But please inform us, what is the reason so many non-Americans hate us?

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Have you ever considered the possibility that many of the terrorists (or Islamic jihadists, or whatever) hate us because they have been taught to hate us?

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And why would they teach their children such things? Certainly it's not because they were bored one day and decided to hate someone. I'm not trying to justify the hate that some may teach their children or the methods they use to express such hate, but let's not pretend that no one in the Middle East, past or present, has a legitimate beef with American foreign policy for the past century.

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I'm not pretending that no one in the Middle East has any legitimate beefs with the U.S. What I'm saying is that that isn't nearly the whole story.

You ask why would they teach their children to hate? Well, let me ask you a question: why do KKK-ers teach their children to hate??? Is it because blacks did something to them? No...there must be other reasons, right?

The Islamic world has long taught hatred or contempt of Christians, Jews and infidels. That's not to say that there aren't aggravating factors as well, but it is important to realize that things such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are widely taught as FACT across much of the Muslim world.

You don't have to be at fault for someone to hate you, do you? People can hate you for other reasons too, such as: jealousy, or a scapegoat for their own shortcomings, or a psychological need to compensate for feelings of inferiority, or a need to redress a wounded sense of pride - or because they have been raised that way, as were their parents before them.

Hatred of the Other has existed in various forms throughout mankind's mostly tribally inclined history. It isn't always because the Other did something wrong, and even if the Other makes sure to do nothing wrong or cause no offense, that is no guarantee that the hatred will stop.

It is my belief that if the U.S. and other Western countries completely left the Middle East alone, that hatred towards us would not nearly abate fully. Islamic tradition and teaching has long been very "against" anyone and anything non-Islamic. That isn't going to disappear even if the Other might choose to change and make no conceivable offense. Actually, anything non-Islamic is regarded as a sort of offense or insult against Allah, so it is also an unsolvable problem in a sense.

I'm not trying to minimize the effect Western interference in the Middle East has had (althoughh Western interaction with the Middle East has brought good things as well as bad for the indigenous inhabitants). I'm just trying to point out that the answer to "why they hate us" isn't ONLY due to things the West has done.

Just as KKK-ers will hate even if blacks have not done anything bad to them, and will teach their children to hate, so too will much of the Middle Eastern world will continue teaching its children that Jews and the West are evil and all things non-Islamic are evil. This is largely institutionalized by this point, with Wahhabism and the Pakistani madrassas and the mullahs and the imams who consistently preach against Jews and America and the West and against everything non-Islamic.

Hatred and contempt are being taught pervasively throughout the Middle East. Just imagine KKK-style teachings but on much vaster scale, and based upon a religious rather than racial qualifier, and you might begin to see what we are up against. Again, I'm not discounting aggravating factors which do exist, but reaction to the aggravating factors is far from comprising the entire picture.

As always, thanks for reading and thanks for responding to my posts.

[BCPVP]

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You ask why would they teach their children to hate? Well, let me ask you a question: why do KKK-ers teach their children to hate??? Is it because blacks did something to them? No...there must be other reasons, right?

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Remember, I'm not saying that every muslim that teaches hate to their kids does so because they were personally wronged. But you cannot honestly say that the amount of hate would be the same if the U.S. hadn't interferred in the geopolitics of the region. You don't see many attacks by muslim terrorists against the Irish, Mexicans, or Italians, even though many of them are devoutly Christian. I think if you remove the source of the legitimate gripes, the illegitimate ones such as intolerance of another religion become far weaker.

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It is my belief that if the U.S. and other Western countries completely left the Middle East alone, that hatred towards us would not nearly abate fully.

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I hope you realize that we're in agreement on this point. I just think that our foreign policy fans the flames of what hate already exists. Otherwise, there's no more reason to hate the U.S. then there is to hate any other country that isn't predominantly Islamic.

Also I hope you realize that I'm not saying we should cut off all ties with the Middle East. That would be economic masochism. I'm saying we need to stop doing things like propping up dictators (The Saudi Royals, Saddam in the 80's, the Shah before that), unquestioningly siding with Israel, and participating in wars in the ME. Certainly those actions aren't doing anything to mitigate those who truly hate Christians and Jews, but serves to bolster their cause by giving them ammunition with which to recruit.

[John Kilduff]

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You ask why would they teach their children to hate? Well, let me ask you a question: why do KKK-ers teach their children to hate??? Is it because blacks did something to them? No...there must be other reasons, right?

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Remember, I'm not saying that every muslim that teaches hate to their kids does so because they were personally wronged. But you cannot honestly say that the amount of hate would be the same if the U.S. hadn't interferred in the geopolitics of the region. You don't see many attacks by muslim terrorists against the Irish, Mexicans, or Italians, even though many of them are devoutly Christian. I think if you remove the source of the legitimate gripes, the illegitimate ones such as intolerance of another religion become far weaker.

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I DIDN'T say that the amount of hate would be the same if the source of legitimate gripes were to be removed. I'm disputing the assertion that removing those gripes would eliminate the hatred. It would reduce the hatred, but it wouldn't even come close to eliminating it.

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It is my belief that if the U.S. and other Western countries completely left the Middle East alone, that hatred towards us would not nearly abate fully.

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I hope you realize that we're in agreement on this point. I just think that our foreign policy fans the flames of what hate already exists. Otherwise, there's no more reason to hate the U.S. then there is to hate any other country that isn't predominantly Islamic.

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Hm, not quite that simple, I'd imagine. A larger country has more opportunities to be hated, and attracts more jealousy and resentment, and the U.S. embodies much culturally that is the antithesis of traditional Islam.

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Also I hope you realize that I'm not saying we should cut off all ties with the Middle East. That would be economic masochism. I'm saying we need to stop doing things like propping up dictators (The Saudi Royals, Saddam in the 80's, the Shah before that), unquestioningly siding with Israel, and participating in wars in the ME. Certainly those actions aren't doing anything to mitigate those who truly hate Christians and Jews, but serves to bolster their cause by giving them ammunition with which to recruit.

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I agree that many of those things give ammunition to the haters in the Middle East, but again, much of that hate would still exist if those factors were removed. In many ways (I believe) those factors are more of an excuse to hate than a root cause.

[BCPVP]

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I'm disputing the assertion that removing those gripes would eliminate the hatred.

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Then I don't know who you're arguing with because no one here has made that assertion.

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Hm, not quite that simple, I'd imagine. A larger country has more opportunities to be hated, and attracts more jealousy and resentment, and the U.S. embodies much culturally that is the antithesis of traditional Islam.

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Compared to a country like China? There are certainly less religious/less Islamic countries than the U.S.

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I agree that many of those things give ammunition to the haters in the Middle East, but again, much of that hate would still exist if those factors were removed. In many ways (I believe) those factors are more of an excuse to hate than a root cause.

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Of course they're excuses. That's why they're helpful in fueling the fires. I remember seeing a poll that indicated that the majority of those under 30 in Iran do not really support the theocratic mullahs or were "pro-U.S" to an extent. It's probably much easier to recruit people if you can point to particular policy or bombing and say "See what those Americans do!" than it is to go just by the fact that most are a different religion.

Perhaps you could illuminate what about American foreign policy has been at all helpful in decreasing the hate that exists?

[mr_whomp]

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Also China has not tried to expand past its historic borders for the past 2-3 thousand years and is not about to now. Let them have tibet/taiwan back and they will happily remain content just controlling the land within the 4 seas like always have been.

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I believe that a few months ago on this board, a poster claimed the same thing you are claiming about China, and was promptly rebutted by another poster who provided multiple historical examples of China doing just the oppposite of what you are claiming, and these acts of attempted aggressive expansion happened in the last two centuries. Sorry but I can't remember the details; maybe someone else can.

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I'm fairly certain that even if in those situations china was expanding past what we consider their borders, they were still going after what they considered part of traditional china.

For instance, we would not consider south korea to be part of traditional china's borders, however the chinese think that a portion of south korea is their land.

The whole chinese mindset is completely different then that of the US/european. We went through the history of chinese thought in our chinese philosophy course this semester and they just aren't expansionistic.

[inside??]

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because rock music and rap music has made its young men hate its government and they lack patriotism for their country, and they will not be willing to storm any beaches because everyone saw the dozens of world war II films and they dont want to get slaughtered like that... therefore the USA will have to resort to nuclear warfare (unsurprisingly).

America is [censored].

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Maybe it is because men nowadays are smarter and lot as likely to fall for the propaganda the armed services dish out.

Pick a service, pick a challenge, set your self apart.

Gimme a FN break!

[Dane S]

I don't see how any of this has much effect on military strength. I do think there will be some pretty drastic political consequences down the line. I have no real basis for this beyond my feeling, but I think that the younger generation has become in many ways a dissident generation. But since it isn't being expressed like it was during the Vietnam era, there's a feeling of powerlessness against the state machine, so a lot of the dissident feeling is just getting bottled up, but it will come out politically at some point in the future, this massive disillusionment, and I think the effects could be pretty profound, hopefully in a positive way. Those neocons are really playing with fire ideologically, in a way I don't know if they can really understand. There will be a backlash caused by the widespread discrediting of their "noble myths". It is currently only in its earliest stages.

Something like this could indirectly have a pretty strong effect on US military capacity, but in the long term, not short term.