International Day of Peace

[Kirobaito]

I should have done this early this morning and not waited until noon.

Every single day soldiers die on foreign shores, for causes that they're not privy to and for the egos of people too cowardly to stop it.

Every single day we hear news about the wars that not only the US, but other nations, are involved in. It is the top story of every news broadcast (well, besides Britney Spears).

Every single day is War Day.

Today, September 21st, is the International Day of Peace. There is a cause worth fighting for, one that all rational people can agree on, and that is peace.

Throw politics aside. Take this day to think about peace, and how it can be achieved. Think about what YOU can do to make this world peaceful and harmonious for future generations. I am absolutely convinced that if this world continues on the path that it is on, there will be little world left for our children to have. There is dissatisfaction in the world today, and society is at a point where that dissatisfaction opens the door for positive change. All it takes is enough people willing to do something about it.

"Peace will come, and let it begin with me." - Tom Paxton

[DevinFuture]

Word

[mqywaaah]

....

[Dirkadirkastan]

Well, it looks like today is War Day again. Get out your pitchforks, butcher knives, flamethrowers, Tec-9's, M4's, hand grenades, and whatever else you can find, and let's get it on!

[Evilmav2]

Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum

[DevinFuture]

Originally Posted by Evilmav2

Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum

"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war."
Albert Einstein

[ShaggyDirk]

For the most part, to no regard, most of the push into treacherous viceroy plagues becomes ever so slightly motionless. Like I have said before, this exactly defines what one may call towards seeing no theatrical endeavors nor effortless sentiments. Does this entitle preclusion or does it involve mostly parts of the anatomy inside countless closure sequences and add your favorite slogan only towards epic satire. Yeah, that is what I thought. Obviously, the more one decides over the inevitable, the more one sees the categorical partitions of foregoing arguments. Overall, this gives light to a new question. Why go where true demeanor and false pretenses embark the knowledge of man vs outer intrusions? You be the judge.

[Evilmav2]

Originally Posted by DevinFuture

"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war."
Albert Einstein

"You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you..."
-Leon Trotsky

[DevinFuture]

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.

~Alexis de Tocqueville

[Evilmav2]

"The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men."
-Samuel Adams

[DevinFuture]

"They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason."

Ernest Hemmingway

[Evilmav2]

"War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over"
-William Tecumseh Sherman

[DevinFuture]

"War does not determine who is right--only who is left."
Bertrand Russell

[Kirobaito]

If you support war so much, evilmav, what are you doing here? Go out and fight it.

"When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war." - Dwight Eisenhower

[Evilmav2]

Originally Posted by Kirobaito

If you support war so much, evilmav, what are you doing here? Go out and fight it.

"When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war." - Dwight Eisenhower

I sure as hell don't support war at all, 'kirobaito', and I truly wish that we all were lucky enough to live in a world in which no violent conflict ever occurred. That said, I believe that folks who seem to think that the freedoms they enjoy in this country weren't built upon the courage and sacrifices of generations of Americans who fought in the wars that our great nation has been forced to fight in years past, are not only noodle-headed douche-bags, but are actively, delusionally dangerous.

Self-righteous folks who buried their heads in the sand and jabbered platitudes about 'peace' didn't do much to stop German armored columns or human gassing/human-soap-making plants in the 1940's, and they sure as hell aren't going to stop suicide bombers or nuclear mullah's or expansionist Chinese today. An open-eyed, pragmatic application of American will and strength just might; and probably with a far cheaper cost both in blood and human suffering than any tragic application of the kind of purblind, isolationist, naive idiocies that folks behind things like this 'peace day' generally advocate...

[ShaggyDirk]

This pretty much sums things up..

For the most part, to no regard, most of the push into treacherous viceroy plagues becomes ever so slightly motionless. Like I have said before, this exactly defines what one may call towards seeing no theatrical endeavors nor effortless sentiments. Does this entitle preclusion or does it involve mostly parts of the anatomy inside countless closure sequences and add your favorite slogan only towards epic satire. Yeah, that is what I thought. Obviously, the more one decides over the inevitable, the more one sees the categorical partitions of foregoing arguments. Overall, this gives light to a new question. Why go where true demeanor and false pretenses embark the knowledge of man vs outer intrusions? You be the judge.

[Evilmav2]

Also, if any mods are hanging around this afternoon, I'd suggest that this thread might best be moved to the political section (where it probably should have been posted to begin with)...

[Kirobaito]

First off, International Day of Peace is a day created by the United Nations General Assembly. You know, that thing that the US is supposed to be committed to but ignores.

I sure as hell don't support war at all, 'kirobaito', and I truly wish that we all were lucky enough to live in a world in which no violent conflict ever occurred. That said, I believe that folks who seem to think that the freedoms they enjoy in this country weren't built upon the courage and sacrifices of generations of Americans who fought in the wars that our great nation has been forced to fight in years past, are not only noodle-headed douche-bags, but are actively, delusionally dangerous.

The freedoms that we give up more and more because of war? Everyone knows the Franklin quote that goes, "Those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." We're giving up our rights to privacy, freedom of speech, and a host of other things because the state has declared that we are under attack. Giving up liberty for security is one of the first roots of fascism.

It all goes back to the myth that these freedoms are actively under attack, which they're not. The wars that we are currently involved in are not defensive wars to defend our freedoms, as much as state demands that we believe. They're offensive wars, under the guise that we didn't start them through imperialistic policies (e.g., planting bases all over the Middle East).

America is not its government. America is the land and the people. We've come to the point that we've put the government above the land and its people, which is not democracy.

And it's the people that since they were young were taught that this murder in uniform is honorable are the actively and delusionally dangerous. We glorify soldiers who die for supposed ideals, though we should be pitying them - they are murdering each other because their leaders are too cowardly to fight themselves. That shouldn't have to happen.

Plato says that peace isn't realistically possible, and I'm not going to doubt that. But that doesn't mean it's not worth striving for. If we give up on the fact that peace is possible (and this is not a peace gained through war, which negates the point), then we condemn this world to destruction.

Self-righteous folks who buried their heads in the sand and jabbered platitudes about 'peace' didn't do much to stop German armored columns or human gassing/human-soap-making plants in the 1940's, and they sure as hell aren't going to stop suicide bombers or nuclear mullah's or expansionist Chinese today. An open-eyed, pragmatic application of American will and strength just might; and probably with a far cheaper cost both in blood and human suffering than any tragic application of the kind of purblind, isolationist, naive idiocies that folks behind things like this 'peace day' generally advocate...

And why did World War 2 happen? It's because of what happened at the end of the First World War. Versailles punished Germany, made them pay for starting the war, and it led to economic collapse in Germany that gave way to a fascist rise. Major war had not occurred in Europe for basically a hundred years, and that was the Napoleonic Wars. How were the Napoleonic wars resolved? The Congress of Vienna did not punish France for starting them. Instead, it made the commitment for Europe to collectively rebuild itself, and that made the way for a peace unseen on that continent. People so caught up in their own thymas ignored that precedent at Versailles, and it gave way to a much darker day than the war that was "bound to end all wars."

I'm sorry, but anybody who thinks that we're fighting for our freedoms in the Middle East is sorely misinformed. We are fighting for economic expansion and political might over the rest of the world, which was the LAST THING that the founding fathers wanted for this country (see Washington's farewell address).

Also, if any mods are hanging around this afternoon, I'd suggest that this thread might best be moved to the political section (where it probably should have been posted to begin with)...

I fought with myself where to post it, but eventually decided that war vs. peace is not a political question, but a human question. Perhaps that was misguided in terms of practicality.

[Evilmav2]

Also, if any mods are hanging around this afternoon, I'd suggest that this thread might best be moved to the political section (where it probably should have been posted to begin with)...

[ShaggyDirk]

I was also thinking along these lines.

For the most part, to no regard, most of the push into treacherous viceroy plagues becomes ever so slightly motionless. Like I have said before, this exactly defines what one may call towards seeing no theatrical endeavors nor effortless sentiments. Does this entitle preclusion or does it involve mostly parts of the anatomy inside countless closure sequences and add your favorite slogan only towards epic satire. Yeah, that is what I thought. Obviously, the more one decides over the inevitable, the more one sees the categorical partitions of foregoing arguments. Overall, this gives light to a new question. Why go where true demeanor and false pretenses embark the knowledge of man vs outer intrusions? You be the judge.

[Evilmav2]

Originally Posted by ShaggyDirk

I was also thinking along these lines.

For the most part, to no regard, most of the push into treacherous viceroy plagues becomes ever so slightly motionless. Like I have said before, this exactly defines what one may call towards seeing no theatrical endeavors nor effortless sentiments. Does this entitle preclusion or does it involve mostly parts of the anatomy inside countless closure sequences and add your favorite slogan only towards epic satire. Yeah, that is what I thought. Obviously, the more one decides over the inevitable, the more one sees the categorical partitions of foregoing arguments. Overall, this gives light to a new question. Why go where true demeanor and false pretenses embark the knowledge of man vs outer intrusions? You be the judge.

Your last two posts are kind of making me think along those lines too...


BWWWWWEEEETttttthhhhh.... Bwwweppp... Plop...

[MavsX]

this thread should be moved to the garbage, ohhhhhh burn

[purplefrog]

One of my favorite war quotes is from Boris Yeltsin:

"You can build a throne with bayonets, but you can't sit on it for long".

It is the visual imagery here that captures my imagination.

[Nemesis]

How about coming up with you own quotes for or against war?

[mcsluggo]

Originally Posted by Evilmav2

I sure as hell don't support war at all, 'kirobaito', and I truly wish that we all were lucky enough to live in a world in which no violent conflict ever occurred. That said, I believe that folks who seem to think that the freedoms they enjoy in this country weren't built upon the courage and sacrifices of generations of Americans who fought in the wars that our great nation has been forced to fight in years past, are not only noodle-headed douche-bags, but are actively, delusionally dangerous.

Self-righteous folks who buried their heads in the sand and jabbered platitudes about 'peace' didn't do much to stop German armored columns or human gassing/human-soap-making plants in the 1940's, and they sure as hell aren't going to stop suicide bombers or nuclear mullah's or expansionist Chinese today. An open-eyed, pragmatic application of American will and strength just might; and probably with a far cheaper cost both in blood and human suffering than any tragic application of the kind of purblind, isolationist, naive idiocies that folks behind things like this 'peace day' generally advocate...

Yeah... unfortunate, no?

Another unfortunate thing is that response to aggression, and internal "readiness" to bone-up for the fighting of a war is not a complete random event, it is dependent upon history, and RECENT history particularly.

People like Chamberlain et al. ruled the roost in the late 1930s BECAUSE of the loss of faith in the military and civilian leaders to justly and inteligently fight a war in those countries. THe world WITNESSED the attrocities of WWI... leaders on both sides needlessly tossing away the lives of the cream of a generation on a conflict that was essentially based on a series of relatively minor mis-understandings and the stupid posturing that surrounded them. THEN the continued aggression that followed the war (financial aggression by the victors against the losers) both set the scene enabling a second world war in Germany WHILE SIMULTANEUSLY further robbing the allies with the fortitude to stand firm when needed. Before WWI and after WWII faith in the military and in leaders in gereral to be simultaneusly just and strong in the face of conflict was very high... in the interum? not so much.

Unfornately (once again) these conditions seem to show cyclicality and have repeated a few times. Faith in the military and our leaders was high at the begining of Vietnam... and very low at the end. And we (and our military particularly) suffered through some lean years of mistrust (again). THen the success of the first gulf war and a whole bunch of 50th anniversary cellebrations of WWII achievements salved alot of open sores, restored lot of trust -- in BOTH directions, as vietnam vets also finally began to feel the love and honor that they as individuals that had served the country deserved.

9-11 occured at a point when faith and trust and patriotism were already high, and those events pushed all of those even higher ... and then we get to the point where we disagree about the skill/wisdom/whatever of the current administration's action's of the last 6-ish years. BUt WHATEVER you think of the justness/intelligence/necessity of entering into this conflict there needs to at least be aggreement that there has been one additional (and predictable) cost of this war, the will of the people will lag in the face of protracted figthing. Period. This weakens our ability to adress the NEXT problem. Period. War fatigue is an easily predictable fact, and a very real cost of entering into conflict.... now the bills are piling up in the mailbox. It shouldn't be surprising to anyone.

BUT, there is also a "good" side to these lulls in support. Just as a recession forces firms to come to grips with any extravgnt investments it may have made during "boom times", patriotic down-times force governments to re-assess the moves they made in headier "rah-rah" days, and reprioritize/focus foreign policy objectives. Its frankly a GOOD thing that waging war is taxing on the populace, the alternative is much worse.

[Evilmav2]

So, I guess American armed involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq was predicated by some kind of cycle between deluded jingoism and enlightened malaise on the part of the American people? Funny, I thought it had a bit more to do with the burning, suffocating, and desperate deaths of nearly 3000 innocent Americans who were guilty of no crime worse than showing up for work or to check into their early morning flight, on one terrible September morning a few years back.

Well, that said, I guess it's just too bad for our country that the Mohammaden's decided to kill lots of Americans, 'at a point when faith and trust and patriotism were already high', because if only we had been a little less naively patriotic and trusting in our government (or in a state of 'patriotic down-time' as you referred to it) we might have avoided all of those expensive bills that you are carping about, "piling up in our mailbox". Indeed, if only we had responded to 9-11 the way we responded to the Cole bombing, for example, our federal government would have that much more money to take care of the truly important challenges that this country faces, like the need for a national health care plan, more prescription drugs for the old and aging, and maybe the establishment of a federal national smoking ban regulatory agency.

And I'm sure all of the angry, murder-minded Islamists around the world- folks who in the past have been driven by bad American foreign policy decisions to blow up embassies and ships and nightclubs, and fly planes into American buildings- would have eventually settled down, after realizing that our 'patriotically-down-timed' America really, truly didn't mean them, and their enlightened, woman-stoning, suicide-bombing, burqa-chaining cultures and representative governments any harm... And surely, we'd all be better off today (and maybe gas would be cheaper to)...

[mcsluggo]

I'm glad you understand

[Evilmav2]

Yup. Unfortunately...