I know i'm gonna regret this, but I just can't help myself.

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TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

@ TELLDAVE The idea that the Vietnamese supported the government in the south is even more laughable.
They had their flaws, but millions of people did not flee the South Vietnamese government in tiny unseaworthy boats, or get put in re-education camps by them, or get massacred by them indiscriminately.

The North's Tet Offensive was predicated on their belief they had widespread support in the South. They expected the population to rise up against the SV gov't. But it didn't happen, and the VC were crushed. Their combined forces got their asses handed to them at Hue, but not before they massacred 6,000 civilians. Such tactics tended to make them unpopular.

Propaganda only goes so far. The Communists might have had some support early on, but by the Tet Offensive the Vietnamese people apparently had some idea of what Communism was going to be like, and it was far worse.
You know people do support brutal dictatorships all the time Americans cannot seem to understand that.\
Do you know what kind of governments S Korea and Taiwan had back then? Hint: they weren't very nice, but they weren't Communists. Look what they've become. That's what Vietnam and China could have looked like, had we stood up to the mass murderering Communists.

Europeans never seem to understand the perfect is the enemy of the good, or why we should support the lesser of evils.
Your argument amounts to my football team lost we should have nuked them.
We didn't lose, the Vietnamese lost. The U.S. won every major engagement, signed a peace treaty, and went home. The North then broke the treaty and took the South because Democrats said it shouldn't be our problem anymore, and not only announced we wouldn't defend them but cut off funding and military aid as well.
You do not give a shit about the Vietnamese.
You can tell yourself that if it makes you feel better, but I seem to have their interests more in mind than you.

m14
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Post by m14 »

TallDave wrote:
The idea that the Vietnamese supported the government in the south is even more laughable.
They had their flaws, but millions of people did not flee the South Vietnamese government in tiny unseaworthy boats, or get put in re-education camps by them, or get massacred by them indiscriminately.

The North's Tet Offensive was predicated on their belief they had widespread support in the South. They expected the population to rise up against the SV gov't. But it didn't happen, and the VC were crushed. Their combined forces got their asses handed to them at Hue, but not before they massacred 6,000 civilians. Such tactics tended to make them unpopular.

Propaganda only goes so far. The Communists might have had some support early on, but by the Tet Offensive the Vietnamese people apparently had some idea of what Communism was going to be like, and it was far worse.
Communist never claimed to be democratic. They were out to make a better world no matter the cost kind of like you. You are forgetting that people are animals it is our natural state.
You know people do support brutal dictatorships all the time Americans cannot seem to understand that.\
Do you know what kind of governments S Korea and Taiwan had back then? Hint: they weren't very nice, but they weren't Communists. Look what they've become. That's what Vietnam and China could have looked like, had we stood up to the mass murderering Communists.

Europeans never seem to understand the perfect is the enemy of the good, or why we should support the lesser of evils.

Look at the government of the USSR and look at it now. Communist governments can fail and are in fact likely to fail because of economic reasons. China is still around because Nixon opened up trade with them. They have moved away from communism. I would argue that a well-managed capitalist dictatorship is more likely to stand the test of time then a communist dictatorship. Look at the kings and queens of Europe.
Your argument amounts to my football team lost we should have nuked them.


We didn't lose, the Vietnamese lost. The U.S. won every major engagement, signed a peace treaty, and went home. The North then broke the treaty and took the South because Democrats said it shouldn't be our problem anymore, and not only announced we wouldn't defend them but cut off funding and military aid as well.
We lost you can rationalize this all you want.
You do not give a shit about the Vietnamese.
You can tell yourself that if it makes you feel better, but I seem to have their interests more in mind than you.
Ya you are a real caring individual. Seems to me you just want to impose your belief system onto people for their own good. You would fit right in with the communist.

TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

Freedom is not imposed, it is our natural state and natural right. Only the absence of freedom must be imposed. Rights must be taken away by an oppressor, they are not granted by a values system or even by an invading army that removes an oppressor. These rights always exist. Recognition of that fundamental truth is the foundation of Western civilization and its success.

The purpose of a government is to protect those rights. A government that does not protect the rights of the people is not a legitimate government. This is not merely Western values, this a truth of human existence. This is why liberal democracies become immortal at certain income levels across all cultures: they are the inevitable moral endpoint of all human civilizations.

To resist or remove such imposition of nonfreedom is not "forcing" anything on the people, it is precisely the opposite: it removes the forcing of beliefs and allows people to believe whatever they like. Did we force freedom on blacks during the Civil War?
We lost you can rationalize this all you want.
Shrug. Name the military battle we lost that defeated us. There isn't one. When we left, there was a peace treaty. That's all fact, not rationalization. The US military was not defeated in Vietnam, S Vietnam was defeated because the Democrats refused to support them when N Vietnam broke the treaty. You may call this a "loss" for the U.S. if you like, but the greatest loss was suffered by the Vietnamese.

Rationalization is what leftists have been doing ever since. Oh, the SV gov't was corrupt. Oh, the war was unwinnable. We didn't belong there. We were making it worse. John Kerry argued Communism would be better than capitalism for the Vietnamese. But the facts say otherwise.

What might China look like today if it had followed Taiwan's path instead of losing 50 million people and hundreds of trillions in GDP to a bankrupt ideology? What technological achievements might a free China have gifted the world with? How much better off would we all be due to the expanded trade and competition? Losing China alone probably set humanity back decades. Had we contained Communism entirely within Russia we might have cured all known diseases and be looking at building a Dyson sphere around the sun by now.

How many billions of people might have had freedom of expression and free elections had we been less timid?

It's sad people in free countries don't appreciate freedom, and tragic what we allowed to happen. All that evil needs to prosper is for good men to do nothing. Too often nothing is exactly what good men have done.

m14
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Post by m14 »

TallDave wrote:Freedom is not imposed, it is our natural state and natural right. Only the absence of freedom must be imposed. Rights must be taken away by an oppressor, they are not granted by a values system or even by an invading army that removes an oppressor. These rights always exist. Recognition of that fundamental truth is the foundation of Western civilization and its success.

The purpose of a government is to protect those rights. A government that does not protect the rights of the people is not a legitimate government. This is not merely Western values, this a truth of human existence. This is why liberal democracies become immortal at certain income levels across all cultures: they are the inevitable moral endpoint of all human civilizations.

To resist or remove such imposition of nonfreedom is not "forcing" anything on the people, it is precisely the opposite: it removes the forcing of beliefs and allows people to believe whatever they like. Did we force freedom on blacks during the Civil War?
You sound like you think that you are free. You are not. You are only given the rights that your government deciders you can have. Go join the military and see how free you are. Or more hilariously go smoke some pot on the street corner. You are just another animal in a cage, which I am glad for.

You are also having a case of double talk here as well. You are not talking about freedom for the Vietnamese you are talking about imposing a capitalist dictatorship in order to stop the spread of communism. You still do not really care about the Vietnamese.

We lost you can rationalize this all you want.
Shrug. Name the military battle we lost that defeated us. There isn't one. When we left, there was a peace treaty. That's all fact, not rationalization. The US military was not defeated in Vietnam, S Vietnam was defeated because the Democrats refused to support them when N Vietnam broke the treaty. You may call this a "loss" for the U.S. if you like, but the greatest loss was suffered by the Vietnamese.

Rationalization is what leftists have been doing ever since. Oh, the SV gov't was corrupt. Oh, the war was unwinnable. We didn't belong there. We were making it worse. John Kerry argued Communism would be better than capitalism for the Vietnamese. But the facts say otherwise.

What might China look like today if it had followed Taiwan's path instead of losing 50 million people and hundreds of trillions in GDP to a bankrupt ideology? What technological achievements might a free China have gifted the world with? How much better off would we all be due to the expanded trade and competition? Losing China alone probably set humanity back decades. Had we contained the disease of Communism entirely within Russia we might be looking at building a Dyson sphere around the sun by now.

How many billions of people might have had freedom of expression and free elections had we been less timid?

It's sad people in free countries don't appreciate freedom, and tragic what we allowed to happen. All that evil needs to prosper is for good men to do nothing. Too often nothing is exactly what good men have done.
For the third time it is like talking to an 8 year old. If the strategy is right but the tactics wrong, battles will be lost but the war will be won. To make this simpler for you if the tactics are right but the strategy is wrong battles will be won but the war will be lost.

Your already implying that I am a liberal well ok I will imply that you are a fascist apologetic. hum that did not seem to have a lot of sting I wonder why?

I like to pick wars that are easy to win. You have to think like a predator picking out the weakest. Most people in the military agree with this. We thought gulf war 2 would be a cakewalk.

As far as your glorious future, for yourself I might add, orbiting the sun, likely built on the back of slave laboring Vietnamese working for the South Vietnamese government. Who the hell cares?

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

m14,

Some one pointed out to General Giap that he had never won a battle. He thought for a while and said, "It didn't matter".

And why didn't it matter? Because the real battle was not in Viet Nam. It was in America.

Lefties and other Utopians convinced Americans that liberty was no longer worth fighting for. Or that those brown and yellow folks couldn't handle liberty. Or that capitalism was pure exploitation.

The question is not are we perfectly free (as if that will ever happen - there are humans involved). The question is: can the lack of freedom in various areas be corrected given the political will? So far in America the answer is still yes.

As always comparing anything real to Utopia is a mugs game. Nothing real will ever come close.

The more free the country the richer the poor people. But also the much, much, richer the rich. I don't mind living in a country where the rich are insanely rich and the poor people are fat. Where all but the poorest of the poor can afford an automobile.
"Concentration of wealth is a natural result of concentration of ability, and recurs in history. The rate of concentration varies (other factors being equal) with the economic freedom permitted by morals and the law... democracy, allowing the most liberty, accelerates it. -- Will and Ariel Durant
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

m14
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Post by m14 »

Well we were not fighting for liberty in Vietnam we were fighting to keep communism at bay. We did not care who we supported look at the shah etc.

You cannot fight a decade long pointless war and expect the population to go along with you. If not for Vietnam, we could have changed the world so much more effectively in other places. Winning battles does not matter. When you're a gorilla force with unlimited manpower. You have to make it no longer worth the bother of your opponent. Vietnam was never meant to be anything more than a sideshow. It ended up destroying our innocents and wasting our freedom.

Kind of hard to win the hearts and minds when your actions speak louder than words, you cannot have very effective pro American propaganda either. At least we did one thing right in Iraq we did not support a dictator. This was a hard-learned lesson from Vietnam. I am willing to fight for freedom and I hope I did but I do not like being a pawn.

MSimon I hear that there is still fighting in Laos and Cambodia. I think you should but your money where your mouth is and join up. The operation is run by the same guys you seem to be so fond of. Or at least support them financially. Just a warming you will probably wind up in GITMO if they catch you. Some ex-special forces were busted a few years back.

The answer is no I believe that America is lost. Its idealism destroyed without idealism America will likely slowly become more and more totalitarian. It makes me depressed. Everything is totally useless and has just reinforced my utter despair in humanity. Therefore, I am going to sign off this forum for good. I just do not see the goodness in people anymore. I have really come to despise people.

Betruger
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Post by Betruger »

bye

TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

You sound like you think that you are free. You are not.
I am freer than 99% of the people who have lived on the Earth. I am incredibly blessed by any reasonable standard.
You are only given the rights that your government deciders you can have.
Wrong, the government only exists at my suffrance, only as long as I feel it protects my rights. If it becomes objectionable it can be overthrown and replaced -- or simply voted out.
Go join the military and see how free you are.
Poor logic. Joining the military is voluntary. Military discipline is therefore a choice.
Or more hilariously go smoke some pot on the street corner.
You can't get drunk publicly either. This is the entirely healthy tension between my right to smoke/drink and others' rights to not be inconvenienced or endangered by publicly intoxicated people.
You are also having a case of double talk here as well. You are not talking about freedom for the Vietnamese you are talking about imposing a capitalist dictatorship in order to stop the spread of communism.
First off, a capitalist dictatorship is far freer than a Communist dictatorship (lesser of evils again) so that makes perfect sense (that is, for instance, basically the difference between China now and China under Mao). Secondly, like S Korea or Taiwan, under U.S. influence the SV would have liberalized and would probably look a lot like S Korea today.
You still do not really care about the Vietnamese.
You keep saying that, but I seem to care about them a lot more than you. I want them to be free and prosperous. You seem happy to have them in virtual slavery and abject poverty.
For the third time it is like talking to an 8 year old. If the strategy is right but the tactics wrong, battles will be lost but the war will be won.
I think even an 8 year old would understand the difference between losing a soccer game and deciding not to show up for it, which you seem unable to grasp. Try to follow the sequence of events: we signed a treaty, we went home, the North broke the treaty and invaded. Did we lose in Vietnam? Did the French lose? Did the South Koreans, who were some of the fiercest combatants by many accounts, lose in Vietnam? No, all three had gone home, as per the treaty. You might as well argue the U.S. lost France and Poland to Germany in WW II, since we weren't there either. Not getting involved is not a strategy, it is the absence of a strategy.

Vietnam was lost to Communism, but it's hard to say we lost the war when we weren't even fighting it.

Of course, that's the problem in liberal democracies: rich, free citizens don't particularly care whether people thousands of miles away are oppressed and are happy to rationalize such oppression away as "agrarian reform" or "their culture." That's why we didn't remove Saddam Hussein in 1991 and save ourselves and Iraqis 15 years of sanctions, bombings, and oppression.

It's hard to imagine the U.S. in the 1940s deciding to "contain" Japan and Germany rather than invade and change the regimes. It often takes an existential threat to rouse liberal democracies from their happy slumber.
Last edited by TallDave on Fri Jun 26, 2009 7:10 pm, edited 4 times in total.

ravingdave
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Post by ravingdave »

Helius wrote:
ravingdave wrote:And Now, just for everyone's amusement... I present


Spiders on Drugs !


Image

hee hee

David
Interesting. The Canadian Wildlife Foundation did a similar study but came up with slightly different results: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc


That video was great !


David

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

m14 wrote: MSimon I hear that there is still fighting in Laos and Cambodia. I think you should but your money where your mouth is and join up. The operation is run by the same guys you seem to be so fond of. Or at least support them financially. Just a warming you will probably wind up in GITMO if they catch you. Some ex-special forces were busted a few years back.

The answer is no I believe that America is lost. Its idealism destroyed without idealism America will likely slowly become more and more totalitarian. It makes me depressed. Everything is totally useless and has just reinforced my utter despair in humanity. Therefore, I am going to sign off this forum for good. I just do not see the goodness in people anymore. I have really come to despise people.
I already did my time. US Navy. Nuclear trained. And I was involved in Vietnam. Yankee Station. Three months of combat pay.

===

I believe Sam Adams had a few words for your kind:
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom—go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!" Samuel Adams
But I get it. You are of the "true humanitarian" class. You love humanity and hate people. It is a wonder you even like yourself. In fact your self hatred shows. Good luck in Utopia or where ever you wind up.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

ravingdave wrote:
Helius wrote:
ravingdave wrote:And Now, just for everyone's amusement... I present


Spiders on Drugs !


Image

hee hee

David
Interesting. The Canadian Wildlife Foundation did a similar study but came up with slightly different results: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc


That video was great !


David
/agree, it's brilliant. I almost didn't listen past the first minute.

djolds1
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Post by djolds1 »

TallDave wrote:
djolds1 wrote:The reason >99% of the Japanese people did not die turns on the actions of one man. Hirohito. It is not an artifact of American mercy. Our grandparents were not going to be merciful to the Japanese. We don't know why Hirohito decided to finally surrender, and we never will.
We don't know why? How about "we've lost the war?" He didn't have a lot of good options: surrender to us, surrender to Russia, subject the Japanese people to near extinction. They surrendered to us for the same reason the remnants of the German armies fled into our arms in Europe: they knew the Russians would be worse, and mass suicide is rarely considered the best option.
The Germans were sane. The Japanese were not. It took six days after Nagasaki, nine after Hiroshima, for Hirohito to fold. The Japanese High Command knew they were finished for well over a year before Hiroshima, and yet continued to fight with the fanaticism, ferocity, and ruthlessness characteristic of Imperial Japan.

One possibility is a back channel off the books negotiation that was never recorded and has never been made public. For all that we insisted on an "unconditional" surrender, the Japanese surrender has all the indicators of surrender on terms, not the least being the Emperor's survival and liberty. Think the Cuban Missile Crisis deal, but even "quieter."
TallDave wrote:Rewriting their constitution to enshrine basic freedoms and rebuilding the country into the world's second-largest economy while defending them from the Soviets and Chinese is the measure of American mercy.
None of which would have happened had the Japanese refused to fold. The zealotry of the Imperial Japanese puts the Jews at Masada to shame. Iwo Jima loss rates for Japanese military & civilian personnel, projected onto a population of 70 million.
Vae Victis

TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

The Japanese resistance was not irrational. It was predicated on the belief they could wear us down and force us to negotiate better terms than "unconditional surrender." They continued this policy as long as it seemed viable.

Information traveled more slowly in the 1940s; it probably took them a good week to fully understand what had happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and process what that meant strategically. Heck, our own military planning overlooked the fact Europe had hedgerows that could stop our light tanks.

Allowing a full-scale invasion of Japan, complete with nukes, would have been irrational.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

On the question of Marijuana supplies in the Netherlands.

http://www.nrc.nl/international/article ... _in_Europe
The committee is also recommending experimenting with legalised production of cannabis in order to decriminalise the supply chain of the coffee shops. It is not a new idea. But UN and EU rules only allow cannabis production for scientific or medicinal use, or in small quantities for personal use.

The Dutch government ordered a study in 2005 to look into the legal possibility of allowing small-scale cannabis production for the coffee shops. The answer was crystal clear: EU law doesn't allow for it. Solutions like these require a political consensus at the European level. It requires an answer to the question whether cannabis use for adults is socially acceptable. The questions is too large for the Netherlands to be able to answer it on its own.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

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