To the United States of America...

[Icefiddell]

Abramul of course we can charm the points off people were British :P it's just a gift i guess.

 

I think James Bond is probably are best example, he's the 'GOOD' guy and always beats the bad guy and even always gets an average of two girls a movie!!!

[Pack Rat]

even always gets an average of two girls a movie!!!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I think it's the car that does the trick... Or maybe the way he says 'shaken, not stirred'

[Peregrine]

You can wage war on Iraq and get away with it, but... it's true, you have a more powerful army than China, and than every other state in Europe - as there is no European Army yet. But you know you wouldn't survive your "victory".

 

Oh, we would, if for some reason we decided to attack people we know are mostly on our side anyway. Europe doesn't have the numbers to repel an American attack. But that's not an issue at all, since despite what the politicians might say at times, we're on the same side.

 

As for China, their population and army size make occupation suicide, but we could absolutely crush them if we wanted to. But again, there's no advantage to bombing them flat, and a heavy political price.

 

Technology can give you a very strong advantage, that is as long as you dont meet guerilla-based armies... (Vietnam, Cuba, Korea )

 

And it still gives an advantage then. Those wars were failures because domestic politics prevented use of the best military solutions. We had to fight the war on their terms, because nobody in our government had the courage to do otherwise and lose their election.

[Adrian Laguna]

Well the Premiership, the English top division for (real) football is apparently labelled the  "best in the world" -- which is arguable -- but does this mean it should change its name to "The World Series" because of it?

 

BS.

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I know, it is BS to call it the World Series. I'm just saying, that is the excuse the Americans use to justify it.

 

And it still gives an advantage then. Those wars were failures because domestic politics prevented use of the best military solutions. We had to fight the war on their terms, because nobody in our government had the courage to do otherwise and lose their election.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Yes, the beauty of politics. Every time politicians try to manage a war, even when they are doing it with the best of intentions (Pres. Johnson, Vietnam war), the results tend to be disastrous. I'm not saying that politics should stay entirely out of the war. Afterall, negotiations are part of war, I'm merely saying that the politicians stay out of the actual desicion making. After all they wouldn't want the military to interfere in the negotiations table, so why interfere on the battlefield?

Stupid politics.

Edited December 15, 2004 by Adrian Laguna

[Gabbemaster]

This tread are crazy, it started with a joke, contninued to football, then politics, and now football again... what the f*ck is happening here? :blink:

[Adrian Laguna]

That is the way conversations flow, vering to and away from the main topic into side things that are related, if only vaguely.

 

This tread are crazy

No, this thread is crazy.

[Abramul]

Your new prime minister (The Right Honourable Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections.

3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn't that hard. English accents are not limited to Cockney, upper-class twit or Mancunian (Daphne in Frasier).

That's odd, my idea of a British accent was derived originally from Jeeves and Wooster (and I can't believe that some people don't know that's where the Ask.com butler is from!), and more recently from BBC broadcasters (We DO get that on this side of the pond, you know!)

What good is a big army when all the countries worth taking over have enough nukes to blow up the world?  :rolleyes:

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Rebuttal on the way!

EDIT: REBUTTAL INBOUND!

2.4E32 J, which is the absolute minimum requirement for destroying an Earth-like planet based on its gravitational binding energy. Base Delta Zero analysis

1 MTon (TNT) = 4.2*10^15 Joules, Nuclear arsenal = 10^4 MTon

Astronomy 210, homework set 6(University of Illinois, Urbana-Champlaign

 

Therefore, the nuclear arsenal contains ~ 4.2*10^19 Joules, and it would take 2.4*10^32 Joules to "blow up" Earth.

Edited December 17, 2004 by Abramul

[cactoblasta]

And it still gives an advantage then. Those wars were failures because domestic politics prevented use of the best military solutions. We had to fight the war on their terms, because nobody in our government had the courage to do otherwise and lose their election.

 

Perhaps that's true, but what's the point of capturing a territory when to hold it you had to exterminate the entire population? I can't imagine there would have been many US citizens willing to move to a barren wasteland that was once called Vietnam so it could be held against the Chinese and the possible arrival of communism. It took courage and brains to pull out. It took stupidity to go in.

[Peregrine]

And it still gives an advantage then. Those wars were failures because domestic politics prevented use of the best military solutions. We had to fight the war on their terms, because nobody in our government had the courage to do otherwise and lose their election.

 

Perhaps that's true, but what's the point of capturing a territory when to hold it you had to exterminate the entire population? I can't imagine there would have been many US citizens willing to move to a barren wasteland that was once called Vietnam so it could be held against the Chinese and the possible arrival of communism. It took courage and brains to pull out. It took stupidity to go in.

 

That's not what I meant. We had the chance to support a pro-US leader but rejected him because he was a communist (which would be political suicide to accept). So instead, he went to the Soviets for support and started a war. Really brilliant tactics there....

 

And once we were in the war, we were limited in what we could do. Limited attacks on North Vietnam, and all their bases on the wrong side of the border are off limits, etc. It's not a surprise they could win when politics was keeping us from doing what we had to do.

[cactoblasta]

We had the chance to support a pro-US leader but rejected him because he was a communist (which would be political suicide to accept). So instead, he went to the Soviets for support and started a war. Really brilliant tactics there....

 

Yes, especially seeing as how the US had supported communists in the past, for example the Khmer Rouge. Apart from using French communists as political proxies (As you're probably aware Ho Chi Minh was a founding member of the French Communist Party) I don't think there was any way for the US to both involve itself in Vietnam and maintain full control. And even then it wouldn't have been easy to control the Frenchies.

 

And once we were in the war, we were limited in what we could do. Limited attacks on North Vietnam, and all their bases on the wrong side of the border are off limits, etc. It's not a surprise they could win when politics was keeping us from doing what we had to do.

 

This isn't strictly true. Apart from nuclear arms the historical record shows there were few practical limits to US actions. The US bombed neutral countries like Cambodia, flattened North Vietnamese cities, poisoned rainforests and water supplies, held civilian populations captive in giant enclosures or simply wiped them out etc.

 

The limits were purely those of firepower rather than any political restraint. It was only with nuclear arms that Vietnam could have been completely cleansed of opposition to the South Vietnamese President; perhaps had he been replaced with someone less corrupt there would have been fewer problems, but apparently this was not possible at the time.

 

In any event I think we'll have to wait another 20 years or so for the 50-year sealed documents to come out before we can make any definitive statements on failures and successes in Vietnam. There's just too many variables to work it out now.