Well, I didn't actually mention any of those countries, only the Middle East.
In fact I don't think that it's only oil that brings the US into a conflict - it's anything that affects it's interests. As I said before, that's fine - just don't play the "good guy" all the time. It's all very calculated and pragmatic in my opinion.
Don't get me wrong though, if it wasn't for America's eventual intervention in WW2 who knows what the world would be like now.
In a similar way, the wars in Vietnam and Korea were wars against communism which were all part of a long cold war that the west finally "won" - without those unpopular conflicts it is possible that the Reds would have expanded their sphere of influence so much that a nuclear confrontation between NATO and the Soviets would have been a real possibility.
As for Bosnia - when Clinton finally decided to do something it was all too late - he really, really did not want to get involved.
Afghanistan is obviously a way of doing something against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Iraq - I actually think it was a good strategic move for the US to go into Iraq, I think regime change was a red herring to sell it to the public after the WMD fiasco. I think it was basically meant to be a lesson to any other country that might want to throw it's weight around and threaten US interests, i.e. oil. The message being "Mess with us and we will seriously fuck your country"
As for the other little places - I don't know the reasons but I'm damn sure that they were not altruistic.

If you want to look in the history books then why not take it back further, say 2,000 or more years, at which point the problem was, and still is tribal groups that on closer inspection are religious groups.

Unfortunately without nuking the whole area the problem wont go away as both religious groups are claiming ownership of the same patch of ground, and one openly saying they will kill the other group (they have a religious mandate that says that they must), and the other using extreme force whenever the first group tries to do so.

This is the main underlying problem, and without adressing this you may as well not bother at all.

Getting these two groups to live together in peace is as easy as a blind man trying to herd 50 cats, it simply wont happen. Therefore, the area either needs to be split up giving both groups equal (but seperate) access to that area of barren rock and sand, or only one group gets access to all of it.

The latter is what happened after the end of WW2, that obviously has not worked out very well.

The choices that I see that are left, are to simply nuke the area, so no-one can live there for the next thousand years, split Israel in half and give it to the Palestinians (with a huge wall in-between), but any attempt to do so will result in a war (probably with nukes), reconciliation is largely impossible - 2,000 years have resulted in nothing more than violence, so whats left.???

Leave the borders as they are, and try to make the situation less violent, and problematic, the only way of doing that easily is to kick the terrorists out of government in Palestine, then force Israel to stop being arseholes to the general population of Palestine, and simply keep the 2 sides seperate as much as possible.



Korea and Vietnam to some degree were caused by a total mistrust of Russia, China, and Communism, as well as of course the start of the war, and various nations getting involved on one side or the other.

Is this the "Philippine" war you are talking about.?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine ... erican_War

Grenada was a show of brute force by America simply because of Communism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Grenada

Panama was more interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Sta ... _of_Panama

Bosnia was essentially a fallout from the second world war where several nations wre grouped together and told "You are now Yugoslavia", that was never going to end well, and many are surprised it lasted as long as it did. No problems with the Americans getting involved there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_War

Lebanon, do you mean this, where America was not involved.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Lebanon_War

Or this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Unite ... sy_bombing

And we all know about Afghanistan, so there is little point in me adding anything there.

So to summarise them all in one go, we have fallout from WW2, communism and terrorism, only the last 2 on the list can be associated with terrorism. And overall there is only one that stands out as America being "good" for no financial, religious, ideological or political reason and that is Bosnia/Yugoslavia - well done America (this is not to say that I would deem America's involvement as un-necessary in some cases, just that there is very often an underlying reason why America was involved, and it is nearly always self interest of some kind).

A White Knight America is not, a self-interested powerful nation America is, and can easily be compared to many others throughout history, all of which were overwhelmingly self-serving just like America, the difference is that america "claims" to be a White Knight, some can see through the charade, others can't.


Andy

PS: Whilst having a little read of those wiki articles I learned some things that I didnt know anything about previously, its worthwhile to read some yourself as history is interesting - especially when it can be avoided in the future.

But people of different faiths have lived and prospered together in the past, in a lot of places, and in the middle east. Religion is not the fundamental problem.

Everyone but Israel and US supports a two state settlement. If Israel would stop the occupation (which they will if the US stops paying for it) then I think the arab world would normalize its relations with Israel. But Israel doesn't want peace. It wants expansion. That has nothing to do with religion.

This is not a measure of wealth. GDP per capita is a better measure. But if you want to measure wealth as how much a country owns, you should take assets into account.

Not really. Problem is insurgents and you can target their organizations, as the US has done quite successfully in some other countries. Not completely and there have been failures, e.g. escapes of key personnel reviving Al Qaeda in Yemen. There have been mistakes in Iraq, e.g. not using and building existing security infrastructure fast enough (I hear). Without them things would have gone better.

It is not win or lose. You can establish a more or less secure government. It would not be democratic by western standards.

America's main interest is global security, which allows a prosperous global economy. As the most powerful nation it works to secure this, and it takes a disproportionate share of the burden. America acts in its own interest, but to the benefit of those with similar interests and to the benefit of the world economy as a whole, by and large. In some sense wars are the failures; the military successes are when threat of war is enough.

Good luck trying to prove that last part........ No really, you actually need to come up with something special to prove that.



Well of course, both have a vested interest.



When you say "occupation", you will have to spell out "where" because this is a point that has been argued about for a very long time. Would the Arab world really normalise its relations with Israel.? Some of them will, infact some of them already have simply because it is in the interest of every nation in that region to have lasting peace.



I have no doubt some fundamentalists (some also in government) dont, but the vast majority do.



Where to exactly.?



Are you serious.? There are people on both sides that are not fighting for land, money or power, they are fighting because the other is the sworn enemy, and they have been brought up (brainwashed) to kill the enemy (the other religion), generally speaking this is mostly one sided, but has been perpetuated for decades by both sides. If religion was not a major force for evil in that small part of the world, we wouldnt even be having this discussion or agreeing that the only way they can get along is if they are seperate - seperation is no way to make friends, therefore this continues.


Andy

Clean wars don't exist, there are no morally pure wars and innocent people will suffer from the wars. That has been, that is and that will be. Innocent people die in wars. There are commited attorcities and murders during wars. That is why General Sherman said: War is hell.

However you cannot win war, unless you get people of the land siding you or unless you completely and utterly difeat their will of fighting and break their moral. However latter version does include countless dead civilians.

Question is: These days its not about winning war, its about winning media. IMHO media is biased and usually it reports way that sells most. And USA/European forces killing civilians sells more than suicide bombers and terrorist doing that same thing in same area.

Taleban, Hamas, Hizbollah have made art using human shields, child fighter's and using media against their enemies. You may win war with them but you will always loose media war with them.

Vic, with all due respect, I advice more source critisicm. Think what Mankell said: 1st he said: Only weapon on board in Turkish ship was my raizor. 2nd he said: Israeli troops shot sleeping activists. 3rd he said he wasn't even onboard the turkish ship where violence occurred.

I know Swedes trust their political activist and popular writer than Mankell, especially news love them, but they are hardly worthy wittnesses as Mankell was never on board that turkish ship, yet he commented like he saw what happened.

Whole incidence was nothin' but provocation from IHH, which admits that what happened was best thing could have happened and they are grateful for Israeli government. So this is not about humanitarian aid, just pure politics dressed in the clothes of humanitarian aid.

I even heard Hamas turned the AID trucks back from the borderline, declined by saying: We do not need those, we do not have shortage of supplies or medicines. Go figures. News are to least say mixed.

IHH says one, IDF one, ISrael one, Hamas one and world screams with snow ball effect thought they do not even know anymore where to trust. Too much disinformation, changed information, propaganda and lies and not enough hard evidences and all evidences can be denied so there's nothing left, except where you choose to believe. Story of Middle-East. No facts just opinions.

I agree that religion has a part in it, but I think religion is being used, rather than being at fault itself. I think religion is neutral but it can be used as a weapon.
My point is that we should not fight religion itself.


You assume I side with the people on the boats? I don't take sides really, I just observe mostly. I'm sure some people on those boats wanted this. And I agree to some extent. It takes a few human lives to draw attention to crimes that largely are ignored or distorted in the main stream press.

I don't follow swedish media much so I don't know about this Mankell dude. Democracy Now! and Slashdot are my daily news mostly.

I'm a little confused here... Is it that the US is concerned with wars for oil?



Or is is the US has a number of different reasons?



Pick one and get back to me. Then we will actually have a discussion rather than you randomly picking new topics to spin your threads out of control on.

I do apologize for making quick assumptions. I offer my humblest apologizes.

Well you are from Finland after all, so you are forgiven.

I appareciate your kindness

I was having a buuble - quoting myself from the last page.





Direct responce to this.



I wont deny that this has strayed far off topic and I am partly to blame for that, but this is how it often goes in forums, someone says something to mock the others views, then the other deflects, and now we are talking about a totally different subject.



No thanks, I would rather stray back on topic, than further off topic.

On topic would be something like this.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8674104.stm

I cant find the news story that I was actually looking for, but I will give you the brief outline. The UN is having problems understanding why US drones are killing so many innocent civilians in its "precise" strikes. I am sure there was more to the news story than that, I only read the title and the subtext, but not the whole artice, now I cant find it. Now for the UN to say anything of the like this must actually be deemed a serious problem.


Andy

Actually I read an interesting article on something similar, on why the CIA is the combative Air Force in Afghanistan and the US Air Force is running counter-intelligence operations via it's Cyber Warfare command.

And like you, I'll be damned if I can find it.

The one question I always ask is if these were actually innocent civilians? Did you know them personally to be innocent? Did the UN know them irrefutably to be innocent?

Found it...

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/06 ... ice-versa/

The one question I always ask is if these were actually guilty terrorists?



Did you know them personally to be guilty?



Did the US know them irrefutably to be guilty?

Questions like those are so easy a child could reverse them like I have.

Evidence is the one and only answer to such questions for the general public, most of the general public never get to see anything that the powers that be dont want them to view, which is why I watched (to my horror) the vidieo I posted a link to right at the start of this post.

I never meant to make enemies of friends or friends of enemies, I simply wanted to illustrate what really does happen, that the powers that be dont want you to ever witness.

As far as I am concerned I have succeeded if I have opened a single persons eye to what really happens in warzones when things are not perfect/go wrong/go bad. As someone has already pointed out "War is Hell", but how do we really" know without being there.?

Most people will never say, a friend of mine will tell me some of his experiences, but nearly punched someone on the spot when asked "have you ever shot someone", he was restraned, walked away, and was never asked again, no-one wants to ask again. The reaction says everything, his was bad, some might say morbid. My grandad's reaction was much better, he escaped the tank that he was repairing when a Leopard came over the hill, his entire crew escaped into the brush, the Leopard left - others were not so lucky.

War is Hell, no one deny's that, what people really dislike is lies, and that is essentially the root of this entire post. The US, the UK, and others involved in modern warfare in such situations always try to declare a great victory with prescision weapons and advanced technology, and specifically a "small number of civillian casualties". We know this is not the case, partly because of poor intelligence, partly because of the use of human shields and partly because some people are trigger happy and simply dont have any consequences except their conscience to worry about (which might be nothing at all).

All I ask is that people open their eyes and minds to this subject.


Andy

Its trial by drone, if you're not guilty it wont actually hurt you...Just like witches trials back in Salem.

Never been to salem, its a shame because its supposed to be a nice place, but the hangup aboutt witches is obvious bolocks. I would like to go there when they are having their witch festival.

Beyond anecdotes, you might want to explain the meaning to us non-natives that might mis-understand your local sayings and ways


Andy

Good point. Here we learn about trial by fire/water in ~4th grade. (unless of course your school is in Texas...then its just referred to as gods true test)

What's important is to open out minds to hard data, strategic arguments, views and questions of international security. Including (quantified) problems of war including collateral damage and loss of life. Anything less than that is so much noise and impedes serious thought.

Eventually truth seems to be as subjective as is person who see's things. Facts are far less subjective. It is shame that modern media game is more about versions of truth's that actual, objectively announced news that are based on cold hard facts.

They say first casualty of war is the truth.

Here is the article I was looking for.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/us_and ... 219962.stm


Andy