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[Nadaka]

And? I wasn't talking about Operation Dropship. And you are vastly overestimating the casualties involved in that operation What the hell is wrong with making a plan for war against a hostile nation threatening allies? How is that immoral? War isn't two gentlemen dueling at 10 paces. Taking out the majority of your enemies industrial capability early on saves lives on both sides in the long run by preventing a protracted battle with armies grinding through cities.

RedKing: Hirahito "may" have been an unwilling bystander in his cult, but I am not convinced that wasn't done as propaganda. And >50 million dead Chinese and Philippine people would disagree that the Japanese army were not genocidal.

[Il Palazzo]

@Kogan Lolokham:
I really don't like your way of argumentation, Kogan. Of course, you were kind enough to dismiss my previous remarks with a *cough*, so I gather you don't care.
I'm surprised nobody else is having a problem with that, though.

In case you actually just didn't understand what I was aiming at, let me recap what's the problem:
Let's see, you're making the argument personal by equating disagreements with the policies of US government with attacks on its citizens* and trying to evoke emotional responses by gratuitious use of empathic language(it's all about killing your children and hating on Americans), making direct personal attacks (your main opponent in this discussion is not having a clue, failing to understand, bitching about random crap, having nothing of value to add).

You seem to be intentionally trying to steer the discussion towards "us vs them" rethoric, as if the arguments presented could not be addressed without pinpointing their point of origin first.

You're making argumentative posts and then trying to dissuade counter-responses by making statements like this:

I really shouldn't simplify things. Leaving out the 17 additional pages that I made explaining things in great detail will come back to haunt me as people claim I didn't know about xxx, or didn't take into account yyy, or how zzz is proof that we didn't in fact get dragged in but were in it for ulterior motives. But I like the analogies, and they fit with my twisted humor, and this is all Horribly offtopic and feeding the trolls anyway. It's easier to hate Americans than actually find solutions to the problems we are failing to solve.

So whomever responds must be a troll or US-hater and any possible hole in your argumentation is there just because you held back some details.

You're claiming your point of view to be the only valid one, yet you do not provide sources to back it up. Furthermore, you're using blatantly false statements to support your stand, like this one for example:

We usually make up the majority of any UN peacekeeping force.

Which is off by an order of magnitude at best(~5% on a good month), and easy to invalidate:
http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/resources/statistics/contributors.shtml
Similar with funding contributions:
http://www.unausa.org/Page.aspx?pid=847

Your general attitude seems very inflamatory, as you do not allow any room for discussion, despite using myths and speculations as if they were "truths" and "facts".
Just to be clear, I'm not terribly happy with webber's attitude either, but it's much better in my opinion than yours, not to mention that there seems to be a host of people ready to criticise him anyway.

So yeah. I'm pretty sure this could be discussed in a more appropriate manner, if you'd be so kind.

*this is probably due to your perception of civic responsibility for everything the government does, which by the way seems like a gross oversimplification of how nations work. By this line of reasoning, Tutsi were responsible for their government's actions, that is their own genocide, because they failed to do anything about it. Same with German Jews, I suppose.

[webber]

And? I wasn't talking about Operation Dropship. And you are vastly overestimating the casualties involved in that operation What the hell is wrong with making a plan for war against a hostile nation threatening allies? How is that immoral? War isn't two gentlemen dueling at 10 paces. Taking out the majority of your enemies industrial capability early on saves lives on both sides in the long run by preventing a protracted battle with armies grinding through cities.

Dropshot. And this is not a plan of war, it`s a plan of genocide. How do you imagine a nuclear attack on industrial objects? A bright flash, you duck, than stand up, see all your factories magically disappearing and say "oh crap, we cannot make tanks now, let`s surrender"? The plants are always situated near the cities. Destroying a plant with nuclear bomb will kill half of city`s population - and believe me, I know what I am talking about, my training includes losses calculation techniques. And if there is more then one plant? And if the attacker sends more nukes just to be sure? Or just "usual" bombers? By the way, 60 millions is not my estimation, it was counted by US military. And the Dropshot plan is available for reading, you can find the link below the article.
You proud that your governments have finished the Cold war, but it were your governments who started it, forcing the Soviets to participate in arms race! Here is another traitorous plan.

[Sheb]

Dude, it's a plan. Every military in the world got plan against everything. When you've got a massive totalitarian state taking over half of Europe, it's normal to plan for war against that state.

[RedKing]

What Sheb said. We have plans for invading Canada. Canada has plans for invading us. (I'd like to see those, actually...they must be damn inventive, or else involve a lot of crossed fingers and hoping).

And Dropshot and Unthinkable were plans of war against an enemy who had a 3-1 advantage in conventional forces. By the end of operations in 1945, the Red Army, at least on paper, was bigger than the UK and US armies combined. There was a great deal of reasonable fear that all those T-34s streaming into Berlin weren't going to stop until they hit the Atlantic. The Brits in particular were worried that the US was going to pull all its troops out for what could have been a lengthy, high-attrition war in the Pacific, leaving the UK to try and hold off the Soviet giant all by its self if Stalin chose to take advantage of the opportunity.

War is not a pretty thing. You break stuff, you kill people. Often a LOT of stuff and a LOT of people. And frankly, the concern for "collateral damage" is a very late-20th century concern. Human history up until then had mostly not given a damn about the poor schmucks who got caught in the middle during wars.

[webber]

Dude, it's a plan. Every military in the world got plan against everything. When you've got a massive totalitarian state taking over half of Europe, it's normal to plan for war against that state.

Excuse me. This plan was developed when Soviet Union and Great Britain were still fighting fascism together. And Soviets had a huge part of their country literally destroyed, all male population capable of fighting in army and women and children working on factories and plowing the fields. How could British generals consider Soviet government maniacs saying "men, forget the ruined country, we order you to attack our allies now" and Soviet people mindless slaves saying "OK, will be done"? It is clearly a traitorous, offensive plan.

[PTTG??]

Sorry, but I really can't get very upset about a nuclearly-naive plan written by dead men to fight an unfought war with an enemy nation that no longer exists. You might as well protest American plans to sabotage British sailcloth in the late 1700s or something.

Anyway, we should be celebrating! Libya is now officially free. Now it is entirely in their hands as to what their nation becomes. I really hope it's at least partially secular- and I think there's good reason to hope so, since the general feeling there seems to be at least a grudging respect for the west.

[RedKing]

Dude, it's a plan. Every military in the world got plan against everything. When you've got a massive totalitarian state taking over half of Europe, it's normal to plan for war against that state.

Excuse me. This plan was developed when Soviet Union and Great Britain were still fighting fascism together. And Soviets had a huge part of their country literally destroyed, all male population capable of fighting in army and women and children working on factories and plowing the fields. How could British generals consider Soviet government maniacs saying "men, forget the ruined country, we order you to attack our allies now" and Soviet people mindless slaves saying "OK, will be done"? It is clearly a traitorous, offensive plan.

They were only allies because of a common enemy. Prior to 1938 or so, the West had feared the Soviet Union and the "global menace of Communism" more than they did fascists. It's reasonable for them to assume that with the fall of Germany and five million armed troops on the doorstep of a war-exhausted Western Europe, the Soviets might take their revolutionary zeal a bit further than Berlin. As you said, learn some goddamn history.


More to the point, if we're going to dicker about a 70-year old conflict that didn't happen, it needs to be broken out into a different thread.

[Il Palazzo]

How could British generals consider Soviet government maniacs saying "men, forget the ruined country, we order you to attack our allies now" and Soviet people mindless slaves saying "OK, will be done"?

You mean like they tried pulling off in 1919-20 despite the WWI and civil war devastation? So they actually were repelled by (tench-hut)Brave Polish Soliders[TM](at ease), but the goal was to spread the revolution to France and beyond. And yes, Stalin was there too.
Seriously, now you're going overboard with the agitation. You'd have to be living in a fantasyland not to at least worry about Soviets not stopping at Berlin in 1944.

edit:

More to the point, if we're going to dicker about a 70-year old conflict that didn't happen, it needs to be broken out into a different thread.

Yeah, seems like a good idea.

[Montague]

What Sheb said. We have plans for invading Canada. Canada has plans for invading us. (I'd like to see those, actually...they must be damn inventive, or else involve a lot of crossed fingers and hoping).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_Scheme_No._1

The Canadian plan was to launch a surprise counter-attack long enough to scorch-earth the infrastructure along the border, to slow down the inevitable long enough to rally allies and prepare for the long-haul or discourage the Americans from really trying too hard.

As the article sort of suggests, these contingency plans are not that serious in nature, they are basically plotted and designed for the purposes of training/ practice and evaluating the competence of generals and staff officers for their job of planning real wars. They do make the plans classified and keep them around "just in case", So yes, just about every country has plans for just about any sort of implausible war they might find themselves involved in.

I imagine "Operation Dropshot" was one such contingency plan invented along these lines in case it looked like the Soviets were deciding on taking the rest of Europe while they had the momentum.

[RedKing]

Huh. Admittedly in 1921, Canada could have given us a good fight. I love the bit about the guy going to Vermont as recon.

[Kogan Loloklam]

Moved Here

[palsch]

"1789, amended in 1815. The calligraphy is beautiful."

[Il Palazzo]

I'm going to make a new topic for anyone wishing to continue that line of discussion.

Hold on a sec...

There it is:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=95301.0

Anybody who wants to comment on any of the posts not directly related to the Arab Spring movement in general, or Lybia in particular, should go there instead.

[Kogan Loloklam]

So appearently there are Ugandans being trained on US soil in addition to us providing advisers.