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Originally Posted by cardboard adolescent
what the **** country has threatened us or used force on us since pearl harbor? and if i recall correctly our response was to bomb the hell out of them.
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I am arguing that the wars we have fought since then have been just. I am just saying that in the wars the US does fight, we aren't doing it right. We aren't doing it to protect ourselves. We are doing it so that we can set up a new government or protect another country which our government has no responsibility for.
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No, I'd be glad to have this discussion with you because you pretty clearly don't know what you're talking about on this one. It just doesn't take paragraphs and paragraphs to counter your claim, is all. The purpose of war is to achieve a political objective, it is a means to an end and not an end in and of itself. Wars of attrition (what you're suggesting) are wasteful, unnecessarily violent and generally ineffective. Those in command of the military know this, and that is why they don't engage in wars of attrition. You are playing armchair general and exposing a complete naivety to the purpose of war and the ways they should be effectively fought. Completely destroying your enemy does not end a war, achieving the political objective you sought to achieve in the first place, does. The problem with the current war is that there was never a decisive political objective and the war is essentially endless. My comment was directed at your assumption that destroying the enemy is an inherent objective of war--it isn't. That is an immature and naive understanding of the institution and it has caused countless problems for the United States both now and in the past. The United States decimated the Viet-Cong during the Vietnam war, but the North Vietnamese won that war because they achieved their political goals. It has nothing to do with destroying your enemy.
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I am suggesting that the only goal of any just war is self-defense. Therefore, eliminating the threat is what should be done. The Vietnam war was for a completely different purpose and was a waste of time. That is a bad example.