HMS CORNWALL

[Karl Heidenreich]

Marcelo:

Agree with you on both comments:
1. USA is losing because they must maintain the falacy that they could fight and win a war in a "democratic way". But war is war, it obeys no ideologies but only "natural" laws. If you go to war there is no other target than to achieve Total Victory. There is no way to blow "half a bridge" as once Truman ordered McArthur to do in Korea . If you go, you fight and do whatever to win. No choice there. If you choose some "new approach", as Truman in Korea, McNamara in Vietnam and Bush in Irak, then you lose.
2. Second. Irak was Bush´s personal vendetta against a vulgar dictator, nothing else. And he was stupid enough to believe he could stay and fight for CNN instead for real strategy.
At least he has no more than some 3,000 fatal casualties: more or less the amount of deaths during the first 12 hours of Overlord on June 6th, 1944.

I believe that if CNN would have existed at WW2 then Hitler would have won because the American public opinion would have cried out loud when the first American GI died in Africa or the Salomons.

WW2 was the last war the US had a proper war strategy, after that there have been so many "theories" from talking heads from Harvard or Berkley that couldn´t find the obvious: "In war there is no substitute to Victory" - Douglass McArthur. Five Star General of the Army.
Kind regards

[marcelo_malara]

USA is losing because they must maintain the falacy that they could fight and win a war in a "democratic way".

Hi Karl:

Even this is untrue. Remember that they have prisoners in Guantanamo, without trial or POW status. The only thing all this atract is hate against them. Sorry, but I personaly thing that Bush is as evil as those he try to fight.

[RF]

The USA as far as I am aware holds such weapons to keep the peace, to prevent modern day Hitlers, Idi Amins, Saddam Husseins and Gereral Tojos from starting wars of conquest.

You can´t say that for sure. US invaded Irak on alleged massive destroy weapons. You don´t know when a Hitler would take office just in the White House and start its own war of conquest. The day that the US would come the only atomic weapons owner we will all be at its mercy.

I think the real motive for Iraq invasion was regime change - one I fully agree with. As I have said in another thread, it was the current US President's father and British Prime Minister John Major who screwed up by failing to finish the job in 1991 when Kuwait was liberated. If they had finished the job we would probably not have the mess in Iraq we now have.

Is it really likely that a Hitler could be US President? President's have to be elected, the US is a two party political system with a bi-cameral parliament - I don't think so.

Possibly the nearest US politician to what Marcelo fears would have been George C. Wallace back in the 1960's and early 1970's - but he was rejected by the US electorate and even if he had won there would have been overwhelming opposition in the country. No I don't think the US political culture would allow for an American Third Riech, despite what even the Dead Kennedy's put into their song titles and lyrics.

[RF]

USA is losing because they must maintain the falacy that they could fight and win a war in a "democratic way".

Hi Karl:

Even this is untrue. Remember that they have prisoners in Guantanamo, without trial or POW status. The only thing all this atract is hate against them. Sorry, but I personaly thing that Bush is as evil as those he try to fight.

So who are these prisoners? Why are they there? Some of them were British who were released - and when they got home they had nothing to say about what they were doing in Afghanistan.

I would rather trust the US than its enemies.

[RF]

I believe that if CNN would have existed at WW2 then Hitler would have won because the American public opinion would have cried out loud when the first American GI died in Africa or the Salomons.

I think not.

The US was attacked by the Japanese and Hitler declared war on the USA.

The first American casualties were on American soil - Pearl Harbor.

[RF]

You can´t say that for sure. US invaded Irak on alleged massive destroy weapons.

I find this matter of Iraq's ''weapons of mass destruction'' - the chemical and biological weapons - rather curious.

We know they existed when Saddam Hussein used them against the Iranians and the Kurds. Yet they coulddn't be found by the Coalition forces.

There are perhaps three possibilities:

1) They don't exist. A good reason for not finding them. However unlike the sad cohorts of the ''Stop The War Coalition'' I don't take things at face value and I think this is unlikely.

2) They were there and they were moved out of Iraq. Well we know that most of the Iraqi Air Force decamped to Syria, why not these weapons as well?

3) They are there and haven't been publicly found. I think this is the most likely, particulary as Hans Blick was so spectaculary unsuccessful at finding anything. Remember the drums of ''a suspicous substance'' that was found by the US military that was placed in quarantine and a news blackout imposed without explanation....

[Gary]

Hi RF.

one I fully agree with. As I have said in another thread, it was the current US President's father and British Prime Minister John Major who screwed up by failing to finish the job in 1991 when Kuwait was liberated. If they had finished the job we would probably not have the mess in Iraq we now have.

I agree, they should have finished the job way back in 1991

[Karl Heidenreich]

Marcelo, RF and Gary:

First things first: OK. Irak´s war must have been won in 1991, not 2003. You can blame there not only to Bush´s daddy but Collin Powell, the worst general ever in US history: Even worse than Hooker or Lloyd Fredendall. If the war was won in 1991 I doubt all this fuss would had taken place.
Second: The prisioners at Guantanamo deserve to be there. They are not average citizens nor political persecution victims, they are terrorists: criminals that enjoy blowing inocent women and children in subways or jet liners.
Third: If we can extrapolate Pearl Harbor to 2003 and had WW2 nowadays I still believe the Axis should win because democracies today are so weak the cannot face a real enemy like jolly Adolf. First couple of thousand victims and CNN and democratic party "do gooders" would be crying something like "hands out Guadalcanal", "North Africa for Khadaffi" or "Leave Europe alone... Adolf knows best".
Once Stalin said something like this (I read it some years ago so I not remeber it literaly): "The US could not wage big wars. They believe they can solve everything with air power... but everyone knows you cannot win wars with air power alone! You need infantry! And they don´t have much infantry and the one they have is weak. Look at them in Korea: a couple of thousands killed and they are weeping. What will happen if they had casualities like ours in WW2? They will weep harder..." Something like that, more or less. I read in a book written by Michael Lind about Vietnam.

If US and their allies want to achieve victory in Asia nowadays and put an end to terrorism they must fight a convencional war. And to do that they must escalate the actual conflict in order to win it. If they continue a "low intensity" conflict they are gonna lose as Truman did in Korea and MacNamara at Vietnam. The only way to fight is by conventional way deploying every available means with conquering spirit and unleashing them with unlimited violence.
It´s awfull but it´s History and as Moltke the Elder said: In peacetime the only way to study warfare is thru History. Of course, that was Moltke, not Bush or Powell...

[marcelo_malara]

The prisioners at Guantanamo deserve to be there. They are not average citizens nor political persecution victims, they are terrorists: criminals that enjoy blowing inocent women and children in subways or jet liners.

Any time you have people detained without trial you have a possible inocent jailed. My country has quiet an experience with that, as you may all know. And the worst thing you can do is believe in the "they did something to be there" story.

[Karl Heidenreich]

Today 95 years ago...
A Night To Remember...

[RF]

Marcello,

All countries will have prisoners held without trial.

In Britain we have thousands of remand prisoners, all awaiting trial because of the slow pace of our judicial system. Yes, some will eventually be acquited, but the UK system generally ''bangs up'' the guilty. This was certainly the experience in Northern Ireland , when internment and the Diplock Courts were in operation.

I don't think the US is very different - most people held are guilty.

[marcelo_malara]

I ment people jailed without trial indefinitely.

[RF]

I ment people jailed without trial indefinitely.

In Northern Ireland we had indefinate internment without trial of alleged members of the Irish Republican Army and of its various offshoot factions, also members of the Ulster Freedom Fighters, Ulster Defence Association, Ulster Volunteer Force and other Loyalist groups. Why?
Because these people went around planting bombs indicriminately, were involved in racketering, sectarian shootings, ''punishment beatings'' not just in Northern Ireland but also in the mainland UK. The detention without trial stopped a lot of this terrorism and also avoided witness and jury intimidation as no trials were held. The fact that the right people were ''banged up'' is perhaps the best justification for this, although I am of the view as a general rule that there should be no imprisonment without trial.

The situation in Argentina was different - here imprisonment without trial or pretext was undertaken by a military junta for the purposes of protecting the junta not the people, so I can understand Marcello's view.
Apart from Uruguay I think that all South American countries have experienced periods of military dictatorship and indeed in Europe we have seen military rule since WW2 in Greece. The main problem here is that there is no accountability on the part of the military until after the dictatorship has ceased, when the ''disappeared'' come to light.

In the USA the military is accountable and there is a civilian government.
You cannot treat George W. Bush in the same light as Galtieri or Pinochet and I think you will find that most of the people in the USA support the internment of the Al Qaeda suspects. Yes, I think they should all be tried - they haven't been, some have been released, but overall I think the World is a safer place for their detention. Otherwise - why do you think they are there?

[marcelo_malara]

Apart from Uruguay I think that all South American countries have experienced periods of military dictatorship

Even Uruguay had a military dictatorship back in the 70´s.

The problem with the internment as you describe, is that first active combatants will be detained. Then supporters. Then sympathizers. And finally those that don´t agree with the government. It is a powerfull pressure to avoid people opposing a government that may be, was put but the invading country.
I personally don´t trust in the US goverment to decide who will go to jail or who not. All the South Americans dictatorships were actively instigated and supported by the US, they had perfect knowledge of all the people killed by Pinochet in Chile in 1973. One you enter this way, you are not much different than the hated Cuba.

[RF]

Marcelo,

I think the situation you describe in the last paragraph of your last post goes back to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, the ''Pax Americana'' of US hegenemy over Latin America, which is resented in most Latin American countries as being a form of ''gringo imperialism.''

The US above all else is out to protect its own interests. It has supported military rule in Latin America as it feared the alternative might be commumism - look at the US experience in the late 1950's in supporting Fidel Castro in Cuba against the corruption of Batista, only to see Castro in power declare himself to be a marxist-leninist, followed by the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Cuba Missiles crisis. The Reagon administration had similar fears over Nicaragua, in its support of the ''contra's.''

I personally disapprove of military rule as it is the job of the army to defend the country and not run the country. As I have said the US has a civilian government and president which is elected and I would rather trust the Americans than their enemies.

With respect to Chile in the 1970's, Allende bankrupted the country and to an extent it could have gone the way of Cuba. But Pinochet and the military had the support of the ''middle classes'' and business community and whilst the imposition of military rule featured the deaths of thousands of Allende's supporters, Pinochet did achieve a stable economy and had inflation under control so that the majority of the population did benefit.

I was in high school at this time and one of the teachers at school was a refugee from Chile. He claimed that he had come to Britain because he would have been killed back home in Chile, because he was a trade union member. In Britain he had become a member of the British Socialist Workers Party, and when I had put it to him that Chile's economy was much better off under Pinochet than under Allende, his only response was to ask me if I was a member of the National Front. I told him I wasn't and that the National Front was irrelevant to the argument, his reponse was to claim that the National Front was a nazi organisation and that its members were harrassing him because of his socialist views. Given his political position it wouldn't surprise me if he was being criticised, he never gave me any reason to like Allende, in fact his views made me (at the time) pro-Pinochet.