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Comment by mmjaa | Hacker News Reader

Neither of those stereotypes are truly responsible for the atrocities for which they are capable.

Wars only happen because peaceful citizens do not take responsibility for the war-mongers in their societies. We wouldn't have the wars we have, if we didn't elevate the war-making classes above the folds. We need to always be diligent and vigilant about keeping the war-machine in check - alas, none of us in the West really has a clean slate on this issue. Citizens are responsible for the actions of their governments; this means our militaries, too. The fact that we fail to take that responsibility, means atrocities continue to happen.

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Every time war heroes get applauded, I think we should really applaud those who refused to fight (and maybe died for it).

I wholeheartedly agree.

It is my personal belief that anyone who dedicates their lives to war-making is separated from the criminal classes only by a very, very thin line: the piece of paper authorising their use of deadly force against other humans, granted them by their government, and ultimately by us, the citizens.

The most honourable roles our societies have to offer are sadly under-acknowledged: teachers, nurses, doctors, builder of roads, takers of trash.

All of these are an echelon above the warrior, in my opinion.

I doubt that doctors and nurses and teachers are under acknowledged. They deserve a place above a brute warrior for sure, but the education and medical bureaucries are only moderately more humane than our military.

This is idealistic and completely incorrect. You should read a history book.

Wars will end when we have limitless energy or evolve beyond greed and the lust for power.

Here's a situation I'd like you to analyse briefly: The US pulls out of every military installation they have outside of US territory. What happens in global geopolitics over the next year? Hint: the answer is 5 letters long with one space.

This is a complete red herring. You should read the OP.

The poster said nothing about 'ending' war or a superpower instantly disrupting the balance of power.

The OP posited that wars can be prevented via internal power struggles between war-mongers and the rest. That is a notion one can certainly argue with, but saying "war is about limited resources", while true in an abstract sense, is not engaging with it in any meaningful way - it is simply non-responsive.

I don't actually know the answer to this riddle is. And US is present abroad because it wants to be and because it furthers their own interests, in a lot of places their presence is not actually welcome.

A war.

What happens: whatever the people, who are now in control of 'whatever superpowers the US left behind', decide.

Look, I know its hard for you to not feel right without insulting anyone, but I've actually read a metric fuck-ton of history, know a few words in a few languages, and am generally not an ignorant 'incorrect-oid'. There is no truly correct/incorrect point of view, when it comes to killing humans. Fact: we don't need to do it. We do it because we want to.

Here's a thought experiment for you, American. What would happen if, instead of putting your citizens in debt to the tune of $TRILLIONS of dollars, every year, while funding active warfare on multiple fronts around the globe, for the last 80 years, the good ol' folks of the USA had instead built massive super-weaponry that delivered schools, water-filtration, and medical facilities, with awesome overwhelming power, to the people who needed it.

Instead of, you know, dropping one bomb every twenty minutes for the last .. umm, lets just say, at least .. decade?

Hmm?

You think its so easy? Lets see that B1 bomber re-purposed to drop the write kind of supplies that makes war unnecessary, not "invetible", as your formidable culture seems to want the rest of us to think it is ..

We did build schools in Afghanistan and the Taliban blew them up. Evil exists; it’s childish to pretend it doesn’t. As long as there are people that think it’s ok to beat women for not wearing a burka, there will be a need for men and women willing to fight. You don’t placate evil, you destroy it. Does anyone out there actually believe that the Taliban could have been defeated with schools and wells? An incredibly naïve viewpoint. Until you actually spend some time in those places, you can have no idea of the evil that thrives in the hearts of men.

You might want to look up who build the Taliban in the first place...

What does Pakistan have to do with the person’s comment?

>...The Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence and military are widely alleged by the international community to have provided support to the Taliban during their founding and time in power, and of continuing to support the Taliban during the insurgency.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban

The US had nothing to do with creating the Taliban. If you are trying to argue that the US created the Afghan mujahideen rebels in the 1980s, you're still (mostly) wrong. Some Afghans were already rebelling against the Soviet aligned Democratic Republic of Afghanistan when the US decided to throw in with them. You could make the argument that the US had a hand in creating extremists in Afghanistan by aligning with them, but the USSR were the initial aggressors that created a rebel opposition group.

We're all aware that funding Osama bin Laden was part of that, that part isn't up for debate. What is up for debate is who built the Taliban and mujahideen.

It would be nice if things worked that way, but a tremendous amount of food aid and cash is diverted by the corrupt leaders of the places that need it the most. I would bet without bothering to look that the US also spends the most on foreign aid, in addition to military spending. A large part of the past decade in Iraq has been helping rebuild. Going into Iraq was a mistake. Probably Afghanistan too.

After WWII, the USA was the least affected nation and was tasked with the protection of West Germany and western europe by proxy, and also Japan. The US policy of containment may have been a mistake, and it caused an immense amount of damage and suffering. Hindsight is 20/20 and in the 60s and 70s, no one foresaw the collapse of the USSR in 1989. The US has overstepped its bounds many times since the end of WWII, but the game between the US and the Soviets was serious business. The US has tons of blood on its hands, I'm not blind to that.

Interactions between nation-states will always be messy because there isn't a higher authority that can impose its will unless the nation-states are both small enough.

Idealism is necessary for coming up with potential outcomes for the future, but realism is necessary to understand the problem.

btw: The answer to the above question I posed is either multiple serious regional conflicts (Europe and SEA, probably India v Pakistan) or WW III.

World War Three already started, 15 years ago, by the Coalition.

I read Cthulu_'s comment as stating that the emotion in the parent comment was one of the reasons we can go to war.

> It is just terrible to know that people like this exist.

Whether you're a communist, a capitalist or some other divisive label, you have to feel that way about some other group of people before you can go to war with them.

Not saying I totally agree with this stance, just offering my interpretation of his comment - hopefully Cthulu_ will tell me if I'm putting words in their mouth :)

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