World is Falling Apart Thread (Locked forever)

[Ack]

It is scary sometimes how differently things are presented to them (I remember during the Iraq war how much more press the civilian casualties got over here than in the states, and let's not even mention the NSA scandal).

I guess it should be noted that we were given daily updates on US casualty figures for most of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. Depending on which channel you watched and when in relation to the length of the war, this was sometimes presented as "Look how few we have lost" to "Look how many Americans pointlessly lost their lives." This steady coverage pretty much ended once Obama took the presidency and has been used as supporting evidence of media bias within the United States.

Also, those were our troops that died in the Iraq War, and it is understandable that the American people would be more interested in their well-being than the well-being of foreign civilians.

Yes and no. Depending on personal belief on the invasion of Iraq, some folks monitored civilian casualties closely and did report on them. And at some points these views were openly turned into propaganda for or against whatever view was being supported, though not always effectively.

My favorite was a photograph by the AFP from 2007 of an Iraqi woman holding two bullets she claimed US soldiers had fired at her house. The bullets had never been fired and were still sitting in their shell casings. Other photographs emerged of Iraqis holding bullets they claimed had hid their houses, but it was obvious that the rounds had never been fired.

[ZeroAX]

Yeah, and depending on the country or group, we still get a lot of flak internally and externally for propping up quite a few dictators and less-than-wholesome regimes around the world as part of our attempt to contain Soviet-Chinese expansion. We do try to argue in favor of our actions, but in a world still reeling from the longterm effects of it all, we'll likely be dealing with the fallout for decades.

Which reminds me, thank you for supporting our military junta back in the later 60s-early 70s, oh leaders of the free world

meh, it's ok you are forgiven

I guess it should be noted that we were given daily updates on US casualty figures for most of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. Depending on which channel you watched and when in relation to the length of the war, this was sometimes presented as "Look how few we have lost" to "Look how many Americans pointlessly lost their lives." This steady coverage pretty much ended once Obama took the presidency and has been used as supporting evidence of media bias within the United States.

As you understand since we were one of the handful of European countries that didn't join you at the time (

), our media focused more on the civilian casualties.


And in the NSA scandal there was a huge uproar about American firms using all that meta-data to gain a competitive advantage over European firms.

Also, those were our troops that died in the Iraq War, and it is understandable that the American people would be more interested in their well-being than the well-being of foreign civilians.

Now this line of thinking I don't like. Specially since not only did the local population suffer from Saddam, then they had to suffer from CoW troops, and now the taliban. Iraq was simply a war that wasn't justified, it recked your economy and it recked your appetite for intervention when it was actually needed.

My favorite was a photograph by the AFP from 2007 of an Iraqi woman holding two bullets she claimed US soldiers had fired at her house. The bullets had never been fired and were still sitting in their shell casings. Other photographs emerged of Iraqis holding bullets they claimed had hid their houses, but it was obvious that the rounds had never been fired.

Trying to make fools of Americans about guns. Poor Iraqi women trying to lie

[prfsnl_gmr]

Also, those were our troops that died in the Iraq War, and it is understandable that the American people would be more interested in their well-being than the well-being of foreign civilians.

Now this line of thinking I don't like. Specially since not only did the local population suffer from Saddam, then they had to suffer from CoW troops, and now the taliban. Iraq was simply a war that wasn't justified, it recked your economy and it recked your appetite for intervention when it was actually needed.

I am not debating the merits of the invasion. My point is only that many American people - myself included - know men and women serving in the U.S. armed forces personally. We generally do not know Iraqi civilians personally. Accordingly, news regarding the fates of our troops is more "local" to us than news regarding the fates of Iraqi civilians.

I am certain that, if the Greek army were involved in an armed conflict, Greek news agencies would be more likely to report on the fates of Greek soldiers than the fates of the people living in the foreign conflict zone since the fates of Greek soldiers would be more "local" to the Greek people.

[Ack]

Yeah, and depending on the country or group, we still get a lot of flak internally and externally for propping up quite a few dictators and less-than-wholesome regimes around the world as part of our attempt to contain Soviet-Chinese expansion. We do try to argue in favor of our actions, but in a world still reeling from the longterm effects of it all, we'll likely be dealing with the fallout for decades.

Which reminds me, thank you for supporting our military junta back in the later 60s-early 70s, oh leaders of the free world

meh, it's ok you are forgiven

Thanks! I mean, come on, aside from all the torture and everything, you guys still got the movie Helga!

I guess it should be noted that we were given daily updates on US casualty figures for most of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. Depending on which channel you watched and when in relation to the length of the war, this was sometimes presented as "Look how few we have lost" to "Look how many Americans pointlessly lost their lives." This steady coverage pretty much ended once Obama took the presidency and has been used as supporting evidence of media bias within the United States.

As you understand since we were one of the handful of European countries that didn't join you at the time, our media focused more on the civilian casualties.


And in the NSA scandal there was a huge uproar about American firms using all that meta-data to gain a competitive advantage over European firms.

Yeah, the NSA scandal is humiliating for our country internationally(Don't say was, as there are more revelations being hinted at. This scandal isn't over yet), but also domestically.

Also, those were our troops that died in the Iraq War, and it is understandable that the American people would be more interested in their well-being than the well-being of foreign civilians.

Now this line of thinking I don't like. Specially since not only did the local population suffer from Saddam, then they had to suffer from CoW troops, and now the taliban. Iraq was simply a war that wasn't justified, it recked your economy and it recked your appetite for intervention when it was actually needed.

Well, actually, there was evidence that Iraq had violated UN Resolution 687(amongst others). UN Resolution 1441, the 2002 resolution announced by George W. Bush which tied in Iraq to Al Qeada and claimed Iraq was producing weapons of mass destruction, also pointed out human rights violations from a 2001 report by the UN Commission of Human Rights, violations of UN weapon inspection programs, the continued failure of Iraq to compensate Kuwait for the earlier invasion, and allegations of abuse and corruption in the Oil for Food program to purchase arms which were banned in the supposedly demilitarized Iraq. So there was actually some amount of justification. Unfortunately these tend to get glossed over because the most outrageous claims(terrorists and WMDs) ended up being largely bogus, depending upon who you ask(conspiracy theories claim Iraq shipped their WMDs off to Syria...as in the Syria allied with Iran, Iraq's greatest enemy in the region). But Iraq was in violation, and it should be noted that in response to these violations in the 1990s, Bill Clinton had authorized missile strikes on suspected Iraqi munitions facilities, with no discernable effect beyond claims the US was targeting civilians.

But does that rectify the highly successful invasion with the highly problematic occupation? I'd say at this point, most Americans would say no. I personally view the invasion as separate from the occupation, as we handled the actual military portion quite well but completely fumbled on the years long "police action" that followed in which we utterly failed to build a viable Iraqi government, something we should have been considering and planning even before the invasion was launched. And this is where the prolonged suffering of the Iraqi people occurred.

My favorite was a photograph by the AFP from 2007 of an Iraqi woman holding two bullets she claimed US soldiers had fired at her house. The bullets had never been fired and were still sitting in their shell casings. Other photographs emerged of Iraqis holding bullets they claimed had hid their houses, but it was obvious that the rounds had never been fired.

Trying to make fools of Americans about guns. Poor Iraqi women trying to lie

Actually the disturbing question is whether the Iraqi woman or the Agence France-Presse were attempting to lie intentionally about the American invasion. France had made it a point to voice their concerns with the invasion of Iraq, but I always found their intentions questionable at best, as Iraq had also been a market for French munitions and military equipment, particularly during the Iraq-Iran War. France was one of the three largest arms supplier for Iraq, along with Russia and China.

Thanks to purchases originating in the 1980s with the Iraq-Iran war, most of the Iraqi air force fighter planes were Dassault Mirage F1EQs armed with R.550 Magic 2 missiles. Iraqi military used Aerospatiale Gazelle helicopters to supplement their Mil-24 Hind helicopters from the Soviet Union, and while only 20 were estimated still in use by Iraq in 2000, US intel agencies claimed France was supplying parts for them via third-party trading consortiums(France denied this). Iraq also purchased numerous Roland missiles from France, initially during the Iraq-Iran War, though US army claims it found Roland-2s in 2003 with evidence of production as late as 2002. Other arms and equipment include trucks, night sights, and even rocket-propelled grenades produced by France. As of 2003, Iraq was suspected of owing France $4 billion for arms and infrastructure projects. There was also evidence of blank French passports found in Iraqi state agencies, leading US officials to conclude that France had helped Iraqi war criminals flee the country.

Then again, French president Jacques Chirac also considered Saddam Hussein a personal friend, so...yeah. Either way, it's plausible to consider the French military-industrial complex opposed to the 2003 invasion of Iraq because of the loss of a valuable market. Hilarity ensues. It's also disturbing considering the continued proliferation of arms worldwide from just about everybody.

[RCBH928]

I completely disagree. While the USA has done many "evil things" in some of its interventions abroad (and much good too, when it went where it was asked to go), at least they had to disguise those evil things with lies and propaganda, because when the truth got out their populace got angry at their politicians/army/special agencies.

Yeah, and depending on the country or group, we still get a lot of flak internally and externally for propping up quite a few dictators and less-than-wholesome regimes around the world as part of our attempt to contain Soviet-Chinese expansion. We do try to argue in favor of our actions, but in a world still reeling from the longterm effects of it all, we'll likely be dealing with the fallout for decades.

So you rather some one come up and ask to use your phone and run away with it, and when you see him the next day he says "it fell in the sewers" over someone who would just tell you I am here to steal you phone. The intentions and results are the same, sugar-coated or not.

[Ack]

So you rather some one come up and ask to use your phone and run away with it, and when you see him the next day he says "it fell in the sewers" over someone who would just tell you I am here to steal you phone. The intentions and results are the same, sugar-coated or not.

No, we saw it more as a difference between the guy who would steal your phone versus the guy who would steal your phone, and then your neighbor's, and then your neighbor's neighbor's, and then your neighbor's neighbor's neighbor's, so on and so forth.

But when you're a group of people in a nation under a dictator, it's sometimes hard to believe it when the country that helps keep the dictator in power says "You would be worse off if these other guys were in charge" or when that country is keeping the dictator in one country to keep a different dictator or group out of a different country. Greece is a perfect example of this: the US helped support the military junta because we thought it would be better than them becoming Communist, both for them and for us. But the military junta committed a lot of murders and torture, and also forced the public to listen to a lot of patriotic military marches on the radio(and that just sucks).

So telling the Greeks "You were better off with the military junta" is not something that they want to hear, especially because we cannot offer proof that living under a Communist government would have been worse since there never was a Communist government for them to live under. We have no idea if a Communist government in Greece would have treated the Greeks any better or worse than the military junta, and we'll never know. We can only speculate.

[ZeroAX]

Oh don't worry, with so many former communist countries around us, I know it would have been worst. Specially to the economy. Collapsed Greece (lost 25% of GDP in 5 years) is still richer per head than most warsaw pact countries (though the crisis has created greater inequality, but unfortunately that's a global phenomenon).

But that still didn't make the junta better. It's like today's Syria. The lesser of two evils is sometimes the only thing you can do.

But that doesn't stop the people affected from the end result from hating what happened and who supported it. That's why Greece is still so polarized to this day. Those who suffered from communists during the civil war vs the ones who suffered under the junta, and persecution of communists in general (even during democratic times).

[RCBH928]

Well,

I can tell you this, living under a kingdom style country works best at least around here. Maybe your freedom is limited to a certain extent and maybe you don't like who is in power but you do not have to deal with crap like uprisings and militia. I have heard during the King's era in Iraq, each citizen is given a piece of land to build his home upon it. Look at Iraq now. Similar is the situation in Egypt. I heard Cairo used to live in such a high standard that streets used to be washed with soap. You can switch on tv and see how Cairo looks today. I think even the air is highly polluted. Even worse than downgraded living standards is the constant killing and battles for power.

Democracy works, but not all the time. I am not sure how Europe and USA can keep a stable democracy but I know for sure many other countries only "look" democratic but its not.

[MrPopo]

I am not sure how Europe and USA can keep a stable democracy

Lots of TV.

[ZeroAX]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27000700

Anyone needing more proof that Russia must be punished economically HARD? Putin got Crimea with basically ZERO real sanctions, and now he's preparing a more violent takeover.

Compare this with Maidan where the protesters didn't have weapons, they never threatened journalists, and they numbered in the 10s or even 100s of thousands, compared to this minority + Russian agents which at best number 1000.

Looking forward to Germany sucking up on Putin again, and the UK trembling at the thought of losing Russian business for the city.