A War Going On

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Interesting, I wonder if they get the same incentive to produce that stuff though.

You can't have a war without casualties. That's war and that's also why wars are bad. Nothing good can come out of so much killing, destruction and pain.

 

I beg to differ with that last sentiment, Caradhas. Certainly, the more suffering, the harder it is to see any good coming out, but I wouldn't say 'nothing good can come from it' ever. I'd guess there was a great deal more suffering and pain from WWI, but I think it can be argued that good came from it. Certainly in the case of WWII.

 

WWI not so much(the vindictive peace treaty directly let to the rise of Nazism), WWII a lot of good came from it, but that had more to do with how the aftermath was handled, the US helped rebuilding the axis powers (and the rest of Europe). If the same was actually done in Afghanistan and Iraq, the people of does nations would be a lot more willing to help us.

As had already been pointed out, if we want the opium farmers on our side and have them to stop growing opium, we have to give them an alternative. in reallity it could be anything, as long as we (the US and its Allies) vouch to buy it for the same or slightly more then the opium would get them. That way we win the farmers(and thereby the people) to our side and we remove the main money source from the talibans

 

I get what you're saying Cara. My feeling is that in fighting a small minority of the people, we've wiped out vast numbers of the majority. That's going to drive people over to groups like the Taliban. Yes, we've lost civs through suicide bombs and stuff but nowhere near that amount. I have friends from middle eastern countries and they all say that there is still a massive honour culture. Blood demands blood. Kinda like one of the reasons given to justify us going over there in the first place. Difference is, they aren't going to package it up in fancy words and holier than thou reasoning


(Hmmm, if this topic had been started from the point of view I'm taking, I'd be arguing the other way round )

 

That's a fallacy NOG. Nothing good came out of WW2 and let me remind you that in Europe we didn't have much of a choice with getting involved in that war (contrary to Americans). The Munich Agreement was an attempt to prevent a war for which we were not prepared and it went a long way to show that negotiations can only fail when dealing with power hungry dictators.

Anyway to cut a long story short, nothing good came out of WW2. I don't think that all the destruction (the American continent was spared that) and all the lives destroyed by that war were good things. I don't think that the partition of Europe, the Cold War, the horrors of the Holocaust or the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did serve a greater purpose than making the world a much more frightening place.

Sure, the world got rid of Hitler, but the elite who put him in power in Germany was still there ruling things like it did before. You can't argue that Nazism disappeared either, it only went underground. I fail to see anything good except of course avoiding being enslaved by the "Aryan master race" but of course half of continental Europe became part of Stalin's playground so that helps mitigating any possible sense of satisfaction that may have been associated with WW2.

Let's talk turkey, WW2 was really good for the US because it emerged from the war with world predominence and affluence. It had become the world's most powerful country. WW2 wasn't that good for the rest of the world though. Don't forget that before WWI the British and the French empire ruled over the world. WWI was the result of European powers like Germany being left out and unable to get what they wanted as their share of the pie. WW2 also accelerated decolonization (which was a good thing though but which resulted in many other wars like the Indochina war which lead to the Vietnam war) because colonies did take part in the war and fought to free Europe. That would lead me to the Suez Crisis of 1956 but I think that it would be largely off topic.

Don't forget that some "locals" (I'm not that fond of the term, sounds like "natives" to me) don't have a choice and are forced to fight. I've seen some interviews on TV of young men who tried to flee to Europe (mainly the UK and France) and got sent back to Afghanistan. They said they were afraid to go back because they would be forced to fight.

The point about the "honour culture" could apply to many cultures around the world too. Sometimes only part of a country have that specificity, sometimes it's more like folklore but sometimes it's also a way of life. Vendettas are part of this.

I wouldn't have argued differently. One of my friends is directly concerned by this since her boyfriend is in Afghanistan now. I know that she would be devastated if something happened to him. That doesn't change my opinion on war or the fact that in that situation and at that point there is probably not much that can be done by soldiers.

 

I don't know if I'd go so far as saying "vast numbers of the majority". I'd hazard to guess than 99% of all civilian Afghanis are still alive. The World Fact Book estimates the population of Afghanistan at 28.4 million. I seriously doubt the US military has killed 284,000 civilians...

 

I wasn't speaking specifically about the potential or realized after-effects, but the direct effects of the war: stopping Germany and her allies. In WWI, the war was a standard international dispute, so it's difficult to say if it would be better or worse or the same had Germany won. In WWII, the war stopped Hitler from complete genocide of several racial groups, endless torture, massive oppression, etc.

I completely disagree with this. Stopping Hitler was good, by just about anyone's standard.

Sure you had a choice: you could have surrendered and died. You (quite reasonably) saw that fighting back and starting a war was a better choice. We saw one group relentlessly attacking another without provocation. Many of us wanted to step in and help then, but many more said it was none of our business. It wasn't until we were directly attacked ourselves (thus facing much the same decision you faced) that we got in. Personally, I think we should have gotten directly involved sooner, but hindsight and all.

The horrors of the Holocaust weren't a result of the war, but (in part) a cause. What I mean by that is that they would have happened whether the war happened or not. The war cut them short. Imagine how bad it would have been if Hitler hadn't been challenged by the allies.

This is a gross misinterpretation of History. The colonial age was ending long before WWI started. The US was becoming a major power before then, as well. Lastly, the cause of WWI was not German greed, it was the complex mesh of treaties that all of Europe signed. This led to a situation where two minor players like Serbia and Austria could ignite the lines of tension across all of Europe. In fact, the German kaiser sent a letter to the English crown before committing any troops that basically said, 'If you ignore your treaties, we'll ignore ours.' England didn't, so neither did Germany, or anyone else.

All in all, though, I see a terrible mis-assessment of how to judge the 'rightness' or 'goodness' of a war. The way to do this is not to ask 'Were the long-term consequences positive?', but rather to ask 'What would happen if no one had opposed the agressor?' In WWI, if no one had opposed the aggressor, Austria would have attacked Serbia, and that's it. The rest of the situation would have remained on course for the same end. In a slim sense, WWI was good simply because it set off that 'powder-keg' before nukes came into play. WWII, however, is much more clear cut. If no one had opposed the aggressor, Hitler would have stretched his tyrannical, genocidal rule over all of Europe, Africa (at least North Africa), and parts of Asia. Whether he would have survived the Russian winter with more forces or not is uncertain, but he would have at least erradicated the Jews, Pollocks, and any form of mental or physical retardation from all of Europe, with slow torture to boot. WWII was, without a doubt, better than the alternative of surrender to Germany.

 

That's not much of a choice. FYI we did surrender later on by the way (we didn't have much of a choice either).

It can be argued that the war acted as a catalyst. The "Final Solution" really got under way after the war had started, not before.

It's easy to post that what I've posted is a "gross misinterpretation of history." That's an interpretation which doesn't suit you (which is another matter altogether).

It can be disputed whether or not the US would enjoy the same position without having benefited from the world wars. I'm not getting into this debate, I'm just pointing out that the US did benefit from both wars.

You point at the Triple Alliance which was made of Germany, Austria–Hungary, and Italy. The thing that these countries had in common was mainly the fact that their colonial empires were tiny in comparison to those of the Triple Entente.

Do you realize that decolonization happened largely after WW2?

An historian doesn't deal with "what ifs." There is no solid ground for interpretation when dealing with what could have happened, that is just fiction. At least that was our take on history when I was at university. We didn't make wild assumptions about what could have happened if Napoleon had had a kipper for his breakfast before the battle of Waterloo. I'm not rewriting history and you won't get me to partake in such a useless activity.

There's nothing "clear cut" about what you've posted, that's just making up theories (largely unsubstantiated as they are presented in your post).

Furthermore I did underline the fact that we didn't have a choice back then but to try and fight the German army. The ontological nature of war being good or evil matter very little when your country's independance is at stake.

Hence after France surrendered (we were so badly prepared for the war and we had invested so much on the Ligne Maginot which proved useless) many got involved in the French Résistance (more collaborated with the occupier albeit unwillingly for most of them). Ironically enough, French "résistants" were labelled as terrorists by the German military.

You do realize that Jackson Pollock is a painter and that the word "Polack" is really derogatory and offensive...

That is really going off topic by the way.

 

Then I'm sorry, Carad, but I'd say that those historians are improperly analyzing things. I do not think that you can ignore analyzing the root decision about whether one goes to war or not when analyzing whether the war was "good" or "bad". From my PoV, it's a given that all the death and destruction is a bad thing. Making the analysis based on comparing the cost of the D&D against the "benefits" of the outcome is like looking at half the picture. You also need to look at what might have happened if a war hadn't started (presuming that that was even possible, of course). Yes, it's speculation. Get over it.

I think that looking at the serious alternatives (which do not include what Napoleon had for breakfast before Waterloo) is an entirely rational exercise when trying to evaluate a war.

This IS a key point, Carad. When you are attacked by an aggressor nation, you have little choice...

It's also worth factoring in that WW2 was started by some massively aggressive nations. The Allies really didn't have much choice in the matter. For them, it was either fight or be conquered. And from their perspective, on a most basic level, I think that one can say that the outcome of the war was at least minimally good in that the allies retained their independence.

Of course, the question is probably better put to the aggressor nations that started WW2. Was it a "good thing" for them? And it's hard to imagine any answer except for "no". The "problem" I see here is that I'm not sure if it was at all likely that Nazi Germany, Italy, and/or Japan would NOT have gone to war at that time, given their leadership. It's easy enough to say that they'd have been better off not going to war (and getting utterly defeated in the end). But was not going to war really an alternative in their minds at that time? I can't really say, but I tend to think not.

Not that static defenses were likely to be useful in the 1940's, but frankly one of the Maginot Line's biggest faults was that it wasn't extended all the way to the sea. It could have been the most impregnable defensive structure in the history of mankind, but by not building it all the way to the sea, it only encouraged the Nazis to go around it, thru Belgium.

 

No, it's not, but it was the alternative.

The "Final Solution" was, yes, but the killing was already happening. Had no one stopped it, all those people would have died anyway, plus millions more.

Yes, but primarily because the colonial nations could no longer support the massive output required to keep those colonies stable and subdued. Again, the colonization age was ending before that. It just took a long time to die. the World Wars hastened that, sure, but didn't cause it.

Historians don't, but then historians also don't (or shouldn't) judge wars as moral or not, good or evil. They just report on what happened, and maybe why. The people deciding on whether to go to war, and whether to sustain a war, however, most certainly do entertain "what ifs". That's a large portion of how they make their judgements. Remember, we're primarily talking about the judgement of whether the war in Afghanastan can have any good come out of it.

You're saying that you think it's plausable that, had Hitler been given all of Europe, he would have stopped massacring the Jews?

On the contrary, that's the very nature of the arguement. Despite all other disagreements on good or evil, we universally judge our own survival and continued existence as good and anything that threatens it as evil. Most cultures extend that to the survival of their friends and neighbors as well. If someone attacks you, they are wrong for doing so and defending yourself is the good and just thing to do. If someone attacks your neighbor (without justification), they are wrong for doing so and your neighbor defending himself is the just and good thing to do. You helping is also a good thing, though less directly necessary. You say there's no choice, but there is a very real choice. War isn't something that happens to you. If it were, we wouldn't be arguing about the good or evil of engaging in it. War is something you do. Like dancing, it takes two. There are times, however, when it is the better alternative.

For a more detailed explanation of this arguement, I suggest you read C. S. Lewis's Why I'm Not a Pacifist. It's very well written.

Actually, no, I didn't realize either. My brother's best friend in HS was a ... Pole? several generations removed and he constantly told 'polack' jokes (including the word), so I just took it as the term. Sorry.

 

That's not the way I've been taught to study history. The American way is probably different. Over here we don't get into speculation because that is just groundless... If I wanted speculation I'd read The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick.

Good or bad is probably more of a philosophical debate and I stand by my points that war is certainly not good and at best a necessary evil.

Food poisoning can be lethal.

I think we agree on that point.

That paragraph is a perfect example of why speculation is not an effective way to study history. Are you actually considering that the Axis forces were undecided about going to war? Are you saying that they would have been better off without going to war?

Building it was far too expensive and at that time it was (wrongfully) assumed that the German army would never invade Belgium.

 

This is where I disagree. I don't think there is any such thing as a 'necessary evil'. Necessary suffering, yes. Necessary risk, yes. Necessary loss, and even death, yes. But not evil. If it's necessary, you don't have any choice, and thus it is neither good nor evil. One can only debate the morality of a thing where people had a choice over it. If it's truely necessary, it can't be good or evil. If it's 'functionally necessary' (i.e. fighting for your life), then morality is entirely determined by comparing the outcome of doing so with the outcome (hypothetical as it may be) of not doing so.

 

The Tyrannical Taliban ... the Awful Al Qaeda, the Irritating Iranians, the Irate Irish, the Pusillanimous Pakistanis, the German Germans, the Brave British - and the Awesome Americans ...

What is known here as 'the Taliban' is a diverse group of Pashtun ethnicity that settle in Pakistan's semi independent tribal area and Afghanistan. From Juan Cole:

So who are they fighting against now? One group? All of them? And the Taliban and Al Qaeda are one and the same? It appears to be somewhat ... more complex than that. So Mullah Omar pressed Bin Laden to not attack the US? Curious, he's supposed to be a villain!

The Afghan government forces fighting with the US and for Kharzai are iirc Tajiks and Uzbeks from the north, ethnic minority groups struggling for power in Afghanistan. The US have to be careful not to take sides in an ethnic power struggle against the Pashtuns, the world's largest and Afghanistan's traditionally dominant tribe with some 60 million people, are fighting to retain their traditional dominant position.
That would be a very rational motive, and the often invoked 'Holy War' might just be the tool of choice to rally the troops, especially in light of the narrative that that was what brought down the Soviets, much like the Tea Partiers try to connect with a glorious past by invoking the Founding Fathers (who as educated men would probably recoil in horror from their sincere ignorance) but, not even halfway through my post, I apparently start to digress already.

Now, the other point is that I seriously doubt that in every Afghan there is an American or Westerner waiting to break free. Yes, woman rights are all nice and that, but probably the sobering reality is that people in that corner of the world do treat their woman in medieval ways, and are happy with it. Yes, exiles who speak English well and woman and human rights organisations decry that, rightfully, but alas, people are what they are. The Afghans like themselves. We are likely not going to change that, whether we like it or not. And it is probably to stay that way, unless we're willing to move Americans or Europeans to Afghanistan and change the locals through leadership by example and cure them from their backward ways. Any volunteers?

Point is, the Russians did just that, simply ordered doctors, teachers and engineers to Afghanistan to develop the country, fight illiteracy, and even had a degree of success, but they're gone now and the fruit of their efforts was largely undone in the following twenty years. Inertia and reaction are apparently strong currents in Afghanistan, and that's a formidable obstacle.

So, I wish that the fighting accomplishes something, and that the sacrifice will not be in vain. If it paves the way for a withdrawal, all the better.

 

You do realize that pogroms have been going on for ages? What the Nazis did was on a totally different scale. I'm not getting into speculations about what could have happened if there had been no war.

If you had read my post on the previous page you would have noticed that I did post the same argument.

When I posted that nothing good comes out of wars I was not referring to a specific war but to war in general (which is more of a philosophical debate).

Historians who only report and don't look for the "why" don't deserve to be called historians (they wouldn't even be decent journalists either).

When you're playing a wargame you're not pretending that there is a valuable lesson to be derived from your game. I doubt that strategists make wild speculations either (like trying to figure out what would the world be like if there had been no world wars). They certainly try to substantiate what they're trying to prove (be it with proofs of the existence of WMDs or satellite imagery).

I was pointing out that there is absolutely no method in the way you make wild assumptions about what could have happened and that such guesses don't have much relevance to history.

That's an ideological debate. I don't think that good or evil has much relevance when it comes to defending your home. Take the American Civil War for instance. Most people consider the South to be the bad side because of slavery but was it morally wrong for a Southerner to fight for the South? Moral issues are complex by nature.

Furthermore there are times when survival is not the "good" way. Think about Rommel who committed suicide to save his family the indignity of a trial.

Good or evil doesn't hinge on the existence or the absence of choice. If you are forced to do something that is wrong the fact that you don't have a choice doesn't make it any less wrong. If you have to kill someone to save your life it doesn't make killing less evil (I'm not talking about legal issues but about moral issues here).

One thing is certain, those things can't be changed by fighting wars (otherwise it would have been done by now). Money tend to work though.

 

Wow, this has become a long discussion.

I don't know if the Nazis would have chosen to kill off the Jews or just use them as slave labor-either case is still a bad thing though and there was certainly a willingness on the part of the Nazis to embrace the death of people who weren't useful.

Even philosophically I think the question could be does more good come than evil? There are some upsides for the various wars, the remaining question is if it is worth it.

I totally agree. However I would also point out that historians sometimes come to a point where they say the why could be part of a list of reasons that they cannot prove or disprove (together or individually) at this time.

Historians have to struggle with limits of their knowledge.

Most people aren't. But sometimes something is come across during a war that reenforces the claims for or against one side of the war.

Errrr, there is figuring out the previously mentioned why.

Also it is human to wonder/speculate and we can sometimes judge the value of said guesswork by what we do know.

This may be the comment that actually motivated me to make a comment. I understand that many Southerners thought they were fighting for their rights and homes. But I argue they started the US Civil War. Though it wasn't an official war many proslavery Southerners went to Kansas to cause trouble in the years prior to the war (this is where "Bleeding Kansas" refers to).

The nature of the US Civil War was such that during the war the North was the one invading, occupying, and holding territory but the South was just as willing to pillage during the few invasions/attacks that went northward (during at least one of these the invading Confederates enslaved most of the black people they came across under the assumption they were escaped slaves).

And technically the South is said to have fired the first shots of the War. I have a hard time saying ____ is fighting for his home when that is the side that started the war. One way around this is saying ____ attacked the forces massing for an invasion (thus war was already coming and the defenders reacted to what others were already doing by attacking) but that isn't what happened with the South.

You have a point that people can have goals other than just living.

Morally I think some people would disagree. If you kill to save your life that is less evil than plotting out the death of someone you don't like or want to steal from (in the case where the murder would make stealing easier).

I'm not saying it is a good thing to end a life and even if it was a in defense I generally wouldn't want to end someone's life (prefer a nonfatal means of defense). But there is an understandable moral (not just legal) difference as many would see it.

You're right in that those things will not by changed directly by fighting the war. But if the Taliban isn't fought that means that there may be less of a chance for a woman's rights group to come about.

Also (going back to the Civil War and WWII) there are times when wars cause changes in government and/or society in unforeseen ways and one of these (for these particular wars) was increasing the employment opportunities for women. Full equality didn't happen right after either war but each resulted in women gaining more opportunity than before and in the long run may have helped get the ball rolling towards full equality for women.

 

I disagree. Just because one doesn't know with total certainty what would have happened otherwise, I don't think that it's invalid to examine the serious alternatives.

And for the record, I don't look at this as "studying history". It's about evaluating wars and the decisions leading up to them, looking at what alternatives might have existed and what the potential outcomes of those alternatives might have been. It can help one understand why leaders made the decisions that they did make, and if they were "good" decisions or not, etc.

As a matter of fact, no, I said no such thing. I was only looking at the alternatives (in hindsight, of course). I seriously doubt that the Axis were undecided at all.

But as for whether they'd have been "better off" not going to war, I suppose it depends on which "they" one is referring to.

It would seem obvious that Hitler and Mussolini would have been better off not starting WW2, since their chances of being alive after 1945 would seem to be have been much greater.

Would the Axis countries have been better off had not WW2 started? Well, an awful lot of Germans, Italians, and Japanese might not have died. Their countries wouldn't have suffered incredible devastation. OTOH, had the Axis not started their actions at the times they did, this is no guarantee that they still wouldn't have started a war later on. Also, in Germany in particular, what would things have been like had they not gone to war? Would the "Final Solution" have killed even more people, without a defeat in WW2 to have stopped it?

Frankly, I think that it's hard to imagine that the Axis powers wouldn't have started a major war at some point. It just seems like the nature of those leaders and their followers and the confluence of events was such that war may have been tragically inevitable.

I don't know if it was "far too expensive" or not. I'm not familiar enough with it to know. That said, the fact that it failed spectacularly in its purpose (to prevent the Germans from invading France) does, I suppose, mean that it was a terrible amount of money wasted.

BTW, in a very real sense, one might say that the Maginot Line "failed" in the same way that the Nazi defenses at Calais failed to prevent the Allied invasion of France in 1944. That is, if you build up static defenses in one location that are strong enough to prevent an attack there, you may only end up encouraging your enemy to attack you elsewhere... probably an "elsewhere" where you don't have anywhere near the level of defenses that you have in the heavily fortified location. Of course, I suppose that it can be a "damned if you do, and damned if you don't" scenario.

 

Yes, like driving them out to a soccer field and shooting them in the head in public because they get out of line.

Ragusa - You are being unkind to the Middle Ages by comparing it to the Taliban.

While America is very conservative it is not as bad as the Taliban, or Iran, or even Saudi. And although we do not allow gays to get married it is far thing from hanging them in public for being gay. Also, we may pay women less and some may want to force them to have babies, (and have been unsuccessful too, I will point out), but that is far thing from stoning them, shooting them, or beating them in public with sticks, because they "morally misbehave."

We are not talking small, trival abuses, regarding the Taliban, but massive injuries to liberty that were carried out under their tyrannical, despotic regime.

 

Chandos,
I don't say the Taliban are great or nice. They are what they are, and they represent a segment of Afghan society and tradition, and are as such a reality.

America is a western nation, with a western philosophical tradition. Woman are allowed to vote in America only since 1913, America has had its last public hanging on August 14, 1936, spousal rape beecame a crime in America first in South Dakota in 1975 and last in North Carolina in 1993 - and arguably America has been at the forefront of civil liberties for over two hundred years.

Such a tradition is alien in most of the Middle East and in particular in the mountainous backwater that is Afghanistan. That's a reality, too. You want to change the attitude of a billion people by the righteous use of the force of arms? I doubt that's feasible. The enterprise can only end in frustration and exhaustion, never mind the temporary satisfaction hitting the despotic tyrant de jour may give.

If you only want you won't run out of enemies. Just look to the east of Afghanistan - in India woman are sold into marriage or serfdom, and woman that yield insufficient dowry still frequently are being horribly burned, and that still has castes. And don't mention their treatment of religious minorities. Also bad things, yet India is a US ally.

 

Professional historians rarely speculate, even here in the US. However, most historians usually have a theory of history (I know I'm wording this poorly). For instance, if I use the heroic view of history, or what is sometimes called the "Great Man Theory," and I had to defend it, I might ask, "Would WW2 have happened without Hilter?" And then build an historical case on the sources and events to show that the right person, at the right place, and the right time caused WW2. Yet, someone with an opposing view, (like in the French Annales), may say, "given the long range of economic and social forces that built up over time, WW2 was inevitible regardless of if there had been a Hitler or not." So in a sense, some historians can began with a speculative question and then attempt to answer it, and build an historical narrative based on the sources and events that best answers the starting question.

There is a fantastic book titled, Inventing the Middle Ages, which deals only with how different speculations about the MA have been "invented" over the years, using different narratives about what the MA was really like. Over the years, different narratives win out over others, but it isn't really that cut and dry as people believe. It is really a bit unsettling, because any history, from almost anytime can have such a different viewpoint, and even though one may appear more sound, or reasonable than another, there is always that feeling that you may be making the wrong choices, or even that they all may be flawed.

But to say if, "Hitler had done X,Y & Z and if Chruchill had done A,B, & C, and the result would have been some other outcome," that would not very good history, but more like fiction, as you suggest. And you are right history is not usually just a "who, what, where and when," as in Journalism 101. That would not be very helpful either.

I understand your point, Ragusa, and I tend to agree that America cannot police the liberty of the entire world (nor is the world asking us to). But we did not choose the enemies in this instance - they chose us.

 

In this case, that's not entirely accurate. The Taliban didn't choose us. Al Qaida did. As Ragusa rightly points out, recently declassified United States State Department documents suggest that the Taliban regime led by Mullah Mohammad Omar had actually imposed strict isolation on Osama bin Laden after 1998 to prevent him from carrying out any plots against the United States. That isn't exactly the behavior I'd expect from someone that wants to be our enemy.