America

All three of us whould get together and make a thread on some Empire of Antiquity.

How so? With Britain specifically.

I don’t know if I’d say the’re really well read on american history but even less so the rest of the world.
I’d blame the time contraints the classes have rather then the ability of the teachers to teach.
They always seemed a notch below amazment at how much I “knew”, which is a bit sad because I didn’t believe I “knew” that much which means the average kid must of “known” even less.
I’d say this quote rings true,
“War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.
Ambrose Bierce”
It seems that the majority of the time when we learned about another part of the world was when our forefathers were fighting a war there.
Perhaps this changes in the higher grades, seeing as how I never made it passed 10th grade my sophmore year (but I doubt it).

I also have a great interest in historry, I’d say my fascination with the military and war is a part of that. This quote sums it it up very well for me.
“War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading.
-Thomas Hardy”

To be honest though this barely scratches the surface, direct actions where we massacred unarmed people under our rule are gruesome reading.

guardian.co.uk/books/2005/dec/27/eu.turkey

Colonialism was a brutal business. The Dutch for example gave a gift of blankets infected with yellow fever to American natives, which wiped out hundreds of thousands of people. Honestly the Europeans have seen some utterly abysmal conduct. Whitewashed by the victor.

We came we saw we conquered, and then brutally repressed entire indigenous people to keep the trade flowing home.

I’ll leave you with this quote from Mark Curtis, a Historian.

Those seem like oddly brutal reprisals.

Wasteful in the extreme.

I’ll make sure to research into it.

Yeah I remember history though containing a lot of world history up until the age of 14 where I ditched it for classical history. Not getting at the US, but I don’t think world history as you say interests America beyond Geography in bellicose form.

There lies the truth, but then Thomas Hardy is not alive now. War now makes rattling little effect on anyone these days in the developed nations, unless it’s to drain resources, stifle science and serve no ultimate purpose. War can be a force for good, especially in defence, seldom are such campaigns any more though (you only need to look at American wars since the late 40s); when we insinuate ourselves in countries where we probably don’t belong, for reasons we probably have forgotten the price for, and for a cost we can little afford it seems like we’re doing more damage to ourselves. I don’t want to sound like a hypocrite, war is an extremely interesting historical subject, but that’s the point, wars are so intensive and yet achieve so little that they are becoming economic embarrassments and somewhat obsolete, at least in the Western world.

Maybe we the people can’t afford it but Exxon Mobils profits have gone up 200 billions dollars more a year.
Bastards.

I’m not saying thats the only reason that there was a War in Iraq but it is certainly one of the main reasons.

Then again that war is technically over so now the focus is in Afghanistan, which is a war I support for the most part.

Cynical but true.

And yeah I support Afghanistan, although the methodology by which they went about the task did seem a little about face.

I support the Afghanistan war too.

I mean, what kind of a pussy country gets invaded and doesn’t retaliate? I hope they kill many invaders (and this, Stoic, is what worries me the most about you wanting to join the army… I would be a shame to lose you to some guy who was right to kill you in the first place. Not very kathartic…)

The “right” to kill is an interesting topic in itself but I’ll postpone that for now.

Who has the right to kill me? The Taliban, oh yeah their fighting for “their” country, fighting for a cruel dilluded idea of a caliphate.

I’m glad we allied with the Northern alliance boys, one of the few …clans I guess youd call it, that have any sense of decency.
You ever read about ,Ahmad Shah Massoud a true leader of the people, Taliban and al-Qaeda tried for years to kill him and eventually they succeeded and it largely believed that his assasination was in connection with attacks on the World Trade Center tower.

If I die, I die oh well I’m just one man I don’t care if billions of misinformed or uniformed people believe I died for “nothin” or for “rich old men” all those old sob stories. Or if I was an tyrannically oppressive Drone or whatever the propaganda is.

I don’t agree with a lot of things in U.S. foreign policy or how the war is always conducted.

But what I have read into their is great justification for what the U.S. and other coalition forces are doing in Afghanistan, whether or not justice is the prime motivation or not.

Just sayin’, if the last words you ever hear are “Allah Akbar,” you probably had it coming.

If I did’nt have proper military equipment, you better bet your imperialist ass that I would blow myself up along with you, your pals, and anybody standing next to y’all.

Honestly, sometimes I wish the US would invade Venezuela just so I could do some cruel shit to unwitting putty patrolers.

How so?

Why?

Pride is a dangerous thing, rarely beneficial.

Your country is too small to make a actual determined resistance. We would just clamp down on the coastal areas, and fortify the freeways. We wouldn’t have to worry about nation rebuilding as the oil is in the ocean. Coast Guard and Navy can make the spice flow. And the bombs… well, unfortunately over the last 8 years our vehicles and body armor has evolved at such a rate that it’s overcoming most of the effects outside of limb wounds to soldiers… out vehicles can take some massive explosions and keep on truck’in, thanks to the Iranians and the Syrians… which I am sure annoys the living daylights out of them given the Arab Spring backlash against them… it’s their main means to resist, and now their most likely enemies, the arab states, have up armored hand me downs from the US capable of driving from one end of the middle east to the next enjoying the scenic route, noting in their diaries everytime the bomb goes off underneath them, while returning fire with ease. We’re rapidly approaching a paradigm shift in terms of military power, the Arabs have a severe advantage due to the emphasis on the use of guerrilla tactics. It’s become not as useful anymore for the time being.

You would have better luck selling liquor and hookers to the invaders, and forcing them into debt, and having them would and kill one another off to pay their debts off, as well as that of your enemies, while feigning general allegiance to them. They will likely even let you set up a shop inside of their main base, selling bullshit local drinks that taste like pisswater to the soldiers, who are told to be nice to you, and the officers can keep telling command your a intel threat cause your listenign to everyone, but that shit doesn’t matter, because you’ve taken the persona of Captian Jack, and even drew the logo on the side of your fucking shit water cafe, above you fucking hookah and bong, and someone like me once your finally kicked off the base can find your ass somehow smuggled back inside of the base in the middle of the powerplant, sitting on a bucket chatting up a bunch of locals, and you can smile at me, and I can contemplate how long my prison sentence would be for just offing you. If only you were not the son of some local Sheikh… errr, I mean, like some cocoa producer or something.

This is not based off a true story, I swear. This isn’t a cry out for help.

Fucking A.

You really think the reason people fight back is “Pride”?

You know what is less beneficial?

Deluded ambition.

Right from the get go I would not have a chance of winning, the hummers were just a plus. I’ll make do with a couple of distracted henchmen.

A large part of the time yes.

I’m sure even those who succeeded in fulfilling there ambitions were at one point told they were deluded, it is the nature of the pessimist to dismiss the Dreamer mostly out of a sense of self loathing.

But I’m immune to such psychological attacks.

It is only an attack because it threatens you. Coherent ambition requires potential. What potential do you have? Do you have any money? men? influence? above-textbook intelligence or rhetoric?

Look at equal2u. You are both the same, except his idea is both less realistic and more original (yet the same amount of not-happening).

  • Also, his idea doesn’t include killing or getting killed by people you have no business with.

It doesn’t threaten me, you think I’ve never thought of whether or not I simply have delusions of Grandeur? Of course I have.

I’m not a man of pure passions anyhow, so even if all my ambitions crumbled around me that wouldn’t really affect me much.

What are my ideas? And which people do I have no business with?

It’s immature to want to die for a cause, it’s not to be willing to.

What are equal2u’s aspirations? I haven’t read much from him in a while.

Your basic classical/idealistic duality that has shunned empiricism altogether.

:laughing:

O pray thee, tell me my faults so that I may correct them. :neutral_face:

In my opinion, your fault is the system you use to justify your particular brand of knowledge research and processing. It is outdated, it did not pass the test of natural selection.