America says FUCK OFF to the United Nations

Qilikatal, the reason America lost in Vietnam was that we didn't have the might to hold onto the land we kept taking. American soldiers would take a city or emplacement and when they were called away to take another city or emplacement the Viet Cong would simply move back in. The South were supposed to help us with this occupation and they didn't, at least not to the extent that they had said they would. Lacking sufficient might, we did not possess the right to take the North's land. History has shown this. I haven't studied the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan but I'm going to make the guess that the Afghanistani tenaciously defended their homeland in the same fashion as the Vietnamese and eventually wore their opponent down.

Technically, we never declared war on North Vietnam and thus America has never lost a war in its history. The same scenario played itself out in Iraq during the Gulf War. American troops moved in, took over, and then left; Hussein subsequently filled the power vacuum that he was previously occupying. We never lost the war as war was never officially declared by Congress -- economic sanctions and occupation forces no longer add up to war in Congress's eyes.

The Prince talks about the right way to conquer a country and we did not go about it the right way in either case; Machiavelli says kill them all, replace their government with an identical one with rulers from your own country, or leave them their old rulers and make very slight governmental changes, but do so QUICKLY in any case. 'Nam dragged out for years and was deemed too costly to continue. The Gulf War was a half-assed attempt at killing them all. Machiavelli tells us that this is the worst kind of failure as it sows the seeds of hate and makes future conquests almost impossible as we are now finding out, much to our chagrin (and dumbfounded surprise).

 

No Chalupa, the specific occurences of our loses in Vietnam might go something like that, but the reasoning behind those occurences was that 70% of the South Koreans wanted to be communist.

Chalupa, we are a civilized nation. We no longer need to beat people to get what we want/need. So why do we need to do anything in terms of leaving the possibility for future conquests open? Why the fuck should we conquer the Middle East? Is there any REAL reason besides money? If Bush would simply give two shits about the economy, then we wouldn't be in the situation we are in. I've noticed that people who so belligerently want to simply wipe away all the possible threats to the U.S., usually aren't intelligent enough to think of any better alternatives.

 

Chulapa, the reason we lost Viet Nam was because our inteligence services lied to the military, the military lied to congress & the government lied to everybody. Every report was slanted. Every slanted report was exagerated. Each exageration was multiplied every time it passed through another set of hands. NVA batalions shrank to platoons. Our odds increased from poor to maginificent. The light at the end of the tunnel shone ever brighter. You simply cannot win a war if the intelingence you rely on is a fantasy.*

Look up that suit by General Westmorland against Time Inc. Or perhaps search the Time arcives for Gen. Westmorland.

*Does this sound like any war you know?

 

The Soviets had against them somewhere around 3000 mujahedin soldiers. When the soviets had a force of around 60000 soldiers in the country, yet they were kicked out. In other words the soviet had might, and they got kicked out.

I´m talking against what you said about might making it right. Because even though the us had a far supperior thecnological advantage they got kicked out of vietnam. You have a tecknological supperiorety in iraq now, yet that does not stop the population there from killing american soldiers.

 

the soviet got kicked out because the CIA was helping the mujahadein! donttry to act like the soviets were defeated because the mujahadein were somehow better tacticians or something. their idea of anti-aircraft was running out on the balcony and waving your ak-47 in the air before the CIA stepped in and gave them portable SAMs.

 

There are mitigating factors in most any conflict, but let me give you a simplified example. You live in a nice, big, rich house and you would like to take over the household of your faraway, poor neighbor. You have a nice gun collection and your neighbor has a bent butter knife and a fork that's missing a few prongs for weaponry. Now, you can certainly run over the couple of miles to your neighbor's house and boot him off of his land but unless you kill him or destroy his house you are going to have to stay there in order to make sure that it doesn't fall back into his hands. If you stay there, you will have to put up with the poverty unless you feel like going back to your own house for supplies on occasion. Also, you can't rest or your neighbor will return and slit your throat with that bent butter knife. Perhaps while you are out at the grocery store your neighbor will rig some clever booby trap involving the fork and a few rubber bands. So, you go and get some friends to back you up while your defenses are down and things devolve into a war of attrition. Your neighbor will steal your groceries while you're not looking and he will lurk in the yard until you leave. Short of killing your neighbor or destroying his house (defeating your own purpose), you WILL NOT be able to take his land from him.

This is essentially what went on with the aforementioned conflicts. America and Russia didn't want to enact another Holocaust and so they held back from killing everyone. If you make an enemy and you don't kill him then you will ALWAYS have to worry about him striking when you least expect it. The might that you have to exercise is increased many times because you have to maintain your front at all hours.

The surest way to go about things would be to find out where your neighbor works and then buy out the business and have him fired. Make sure he can't get relief and starve him to death. Then, you will be able to set up on his land and you will have made another few friends in the process (those brown-nosers in the business you just bought out). Sure, it's a bit of overkill but any route short of killing someone outright will be quite circuitous. The Hitler image is SO last century.