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This issue has to do with a question of priorities. I'm not debating our decision to enter into the Iraq war or the Vietnam war. My question is about where our priorities lie once that war has happened. Whether the democrats or republicans win this next election, we will not be immediately withdrawing from Iraq immediately. And we could very easily be entering humanitarian wars that I as a republican do not feel we should be obligated to police or occupy indefinitely.

Take the situation of the American soldier. Consider the supposed "social contract," spoken of by agnositc liberals and prominent philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes. What exactly is that contract? As I understand it, we all agree to abide by a law because it is in our collective interest to abide that law. Yet as Hobbes points out, if you are asked to die for your country, than your situation is worse than it was before you entered into the social contract? From an atheist/agnositc (this life is all there is) viewpoint, how could you argue otherwise?

Let's assume for the sake of argument that this situation exists without argument. A foreign empire is determined to destroy the United States and the people who live in it. I know many of you would argue that this is our own fault, but let's assume for the sake of argument that it's not. Let's assume that nothing we do in the future less than converting to Islam and submitting to Moslem theocratic rule would change that intention. Or maybe it's submitting to German fascism, Russian communism, or empereror Hirhohito. Let's use Nazi Germany as an example. I suppose you could use the Confederates in the American civil war to get the same effect. Let's say the Germans carried on a terrorist campaign after the war and basically lied about being civilians as a means to further the conflict after conventional military defeat. So while the U.S.A. is occupying Germany, we have 2-3000 soldiers picked off each year by these soldiers disguised as civilians. So lets look at a ratio based on the decision we have to make, US soldiers killed:German civilian lives saved. What should that ratio be? To me, if that ratio is any number higher than zero, how can we really tell the soldier who dies that we have upheld our end of the social contract?

How do we tell any U.S. family, we're sorry but as a country we've decided to forfeit x American soldiers to save x number of German civilians. Have we really upheld our end of the social contract to this family or this soldier? I suppose you could raise similar questions in law enforcment and what we judge as justifiable force, but I won't get into that completely in an effort to try to focus on the international issue. If we're not soldiers and we're not putting our own lives in the way of death or mayhem, what gives us the right to judge one who does. The same could be said for policemen. If we're not putting our own life in the way chasing violent criminals, what gives us the right to judge those who do. And yet, are not juries made up of civilians and not other police officers?

Next, have we not as a society basically decided if we follow Europes lead in gun control laws that our personal right to self protection and preservation should be sacrificed to a large extent so that fewer people, criminal and law biding will die. Why then do we allow Iraqi citizens to bear arms. Did we allow German citizens to bear arms when we occupied their country? Now granted, if I were an Iraqi, whether I was loyal to the U.S. occupiers or to some Moslem regime, I'd want to bear arms as well. But from the perspective of the U.S. soldier and his family, what are we really saying with this? Are we even loyal to each other as Americans? What rights do we have as individuals. And for those who don't like the job our military is doing, perhaps saying, we're too brutal, not willing enough to die to save a potentially peaceful civilian, shouldn't you be volunteering to do the job yourself? It's the same as people who complain about police officers or teachers. Why don't you become a teacher and make a difference? "Oh, I'd never do that." Well of course you wouldn't. You've set the rules in such a way to make it such a helpless position that you wouldn't even consider it.

And what value do we place on people in America? Is it worse to kill an American soldier or an American civilian? Is it worse to kill a civilian or a police officer. Why would it not be worse to kill an American soldier? Who is really more important to the country, the soldier or the civilian? Police officers and law men seem to do pretty well making sure they avenge their own and maybe that's how it has to be.

Good points, all. I can't argue with any of them.

Students of military history, strategy, and tactics understand the logistical rule of thumb that it takes at least ten years to raise a self-sustaining cadre of mid-level officers more loyal to the concept of constitution and state than to tribe or political faction.

Therefore, I understood from the git go that we would be in Iraq for a very long time if we were committed to doing what we said we would do and bring democracy to Iraq.

Now Turkey still has fits and starts, but if we can shepherd Iraq to that stage, then we have a string of democracies from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf. The lives and dollars are well-spent if this is the outcome and we are well on our way to achieving it.

Even Obama realizes this and is lying to you when he says otherwise. He's just riding on the coattails of the Bush success which has been the Democrat's plan all along. It's easy to call for a reduction in troops when the previous admin has done all the work.

Do you think democracy in the middle east will mean peace. Perhaps your point on Turkey is a good one. Part of me is not sure that it will matter whether it's a dictatorship or democracy. Most Iraquis, Arabs, etc. are Moslem, and I suspect most of them are more radical than political correctness would like us to know or believe. What are the chances that an Iraqui, Palestinian, or Iranian democracy will end up with the same objectives as the dictator, namely, "Death to America and anyone who doesn't hate the Jews."

I still say that if we are to be truly united as a country, our first obligation should be to each other rather than an abstract idea like the Constitution. What was the purpose of the Constitution anyway? I think the Constitution was ratitified as a social contract to make the lives of the governed as good as possible, along with being fair to each other.

What is more important than the life of a soldier or a fellow American citizen? And yet it seems to me that we've placed the lives of the people in an enemy nation above our military men and women. That seems like a bad deal to me. Where's the fairness in that contract? And if it's not fair, than as far as I'm concerned it's inadequate. Maybe it's good for a lot of people, but if you're the one that it screws over, what good is that to you? I don't rejoice in civilian casualties, and I can see that war can put men through hardships that fosters a desire for vengeance to the point that they become, "bloodthirsty."

But when soldier after soldier is picked off by soldiers disguised as civilians, American civilians really have no right to judge our military men as shooting too soon or being too brutal, unless they would like to go and do the job themselves.

Good thread, Ajax. Let me see if I can add my $0.02 to it here.

ajax18 wrote:This issue has to do with a question of priorities. I'm not debating our decision to enter into the Iraq war or the Vietnam war. My question is about where our priorities lie once that war has happened.

Really depends on the justifications and scope of the war, the overall strategic objectives, social and political climate, etc. Later in this thread you try to use WWII Germany as an example and then Iraq, but the two really can't be compared because of the vast differences in scope of the conflict, political and social views between then and now, and operational vs strategic objectives.

For example, during WWII it was considered perfectly acceptable to use unrestricted strategic bombing against cities, causing massive collaterial damage among civilians in order to "hopefully" remove a handful of key strategic targets. A large factor in why we could do that was the speed of communications was such that the average citizen in the US didn't really have any idea of the scale of damage allied bombing campiagns we causing. Another is that back then our country had massive public support for the war effort, we had clear enemies, and we had a lot of motivation to destroy them. Also, it really wasn't until after WWII ended that this nation started seeing a massive rise in people recieving higher education, so we were a lot dumber of a society (combined with slow communications and easy control of information, this made for a very easilly controlled society).

Today, in the times of precision guided munitions, instant global communications, and accessible learning, our government couldn't get away with unrestricted warfare due to massive public outcry (all the damned hippies would feel butthurt if we did and the resulting fall out would mean political death for whoever ordered such actions).

ajax18 wrote:Whether the democrats or republicans win this next election, we will not be immediately withdrawing from Iraq immediately.

It really doesn't matter if we end up with a Democrat or a Republican at this point. We're stuck in Iraq for a long time to come and there are a lot of political and strategic concerns that will see to us being in Iraq for the foreseeable future. Also, one of the things that every Administration since Carter has taught me is that it really doesn't matter if we have a Republican President backed by a Republican house and senate, or a Democrat President with a Democrat house and senate, or any mix between. It'll be business as usual on Capitol Hill.

ajax18 wrote:And we could very easily be entering humanitarian wars that I as a republican do not feel we should be obligated to police or occupy indefinitely.

Depends on the region and aims of the "humanitarian" or "peace keeping" mission, Ajax. See, some of those missions serve our national interests, for example, when we entered into the Balkans in the 1990s. We have a lot of interests in Europe and were starting to develope closer tiues with Russia, so having a good size conflict in the same region that ended up providing the catalyst for WWI would be bad for business. So going in there and containing the conflict served a purpose for ourselves and at the same time boosted our status internationally for being the nation everyone looked to for keeping the peace. Dubya shoot that all to hell, but that's another rant entirely.

Another interest we have in all those humanitarian and peace keeping efforts is that they give us a valid excuse for spending as much as we do on our military. Now, why should we have shuch a large military anymore, especially since the primary reason for why we built it up, the USSR, is no more?

Once again, back to our national interests. One of the side effects of us playing in real life Team America: World Police is that it justifies our massive military so that we can do those missions. This in turn makes other nations feel that they don't have to spend as much on their militaries since they can sit back and let us do the work. What that means is that while we spend more money on our military then the European Union, Russia, and the People's Republic of China combined, it means that none of them are spending enough money to present a serious military threat to our interests (or at least nothing that we can't handle).

This is why I roll my eyes and resist the urge to punch people in the neck when I hear some moron whine about how we should downsize our military. We did that under the Clinton Administration and today we see the results in things like massive wear and tear on equipement thanks to our opertations in iraq and Afganistan, along with absurdly bloated pie-ion-the-sky procurment programs like the US Army's Future Combat Systems (Want to see me go off? Ask me why I think FCS is the biggest waste of tax dollars in World Military History...), all of which contribute to weaken our national strategic footing vs other nations (not enough to really matter as of yet, but given enough time this could seriously harm our interests).

TL;DR Version: Sometimes those humanitarian missions serve a strategic purpose.

ajax18 wrote:Take the situation of the American soldier.

Sure thing, buddy...

ajax18 wrote:Consider the supposed "social contract," spoken of by agnositc liberals and prominent philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes. What exactly is that contract? As I understand it, we all agree to abide by a law because it is in our collective interest to abide that law. Yet as Hobbes points out, if you are asked to die for your country, than your situation is worse than it was before you entered into the social contract? From an atheist/agnositc (this life is all there is) viewpoint, how could you argue otherwise?

The difference between the "social contract" between citizen and government vs soldier and government is that the citizen gives up certain things (freedoms, money, property, etc) to the government in exchange for the social stability provided by government and the services that government provides, while the soldier/government contract is one of a citizen taking it upon themselves to serve the interests of the government and by extension the interests of the citizens.

The issue of "is it worth lives and money to do Action X" is really a matter of what "Action X" is and how it serves the interests of the citizens/government. The social contract would only come into play if "Action X" is beneficial or harmful to those interests. If beneficial then the social contract is intact for the good of all. If harmful then the social contract has been broken to a certain extent and the citizens may take what actions are available to them to address their grievances (in our case that could range from elect someone else next election cycle to open rebellion depending on how big of a problem it is).


Ok, the rest of that first post is a lot of hypotheticals that I don't have the time right now to get into (have an 8:30 tee time to get going too). I'll try and get into that later.

We could have gotten into war with Russia for overthrowing their slavic cousins the Serbs. We talk about us, as if we were one nation. Yet we're not really a nation anymore. The USA is a state, a set of rules, an idea, but not a people of common genetics, but rather an enormous number of factions. Most other countries are a nation as well as a state, except maybe European ones.

I guess that's the difference. When an Iraqi man goes to war, he's fighting for his people, his own blood. When a U.S. soldier goes to war, he's fighting for an idea, and what looks more and more like a world government/empire, but not at all his own people. To me this partly explains our view that the military men are expendable and have forfeited their interests to life and liberty to the state (taxpayers or even welfare recipients) in exchange for what I would call a very meager living.

Maybe there are problems with being tribal, but there are some things we've lost that I felt a lot better about.

ajax18 wrote:We could have gotten into war with Russia for overthrowing their slavic cousins the Serbs.

Thing is, after WWII ended and the USSR started claiming the areas it had taken from the Germans and setting them up as satellite republics, we didn't really have any interests in those areas. Western Europe we had interests in, but not so much Eastern Europe. Combine that with having been fighting a very costly war in europe for the previous four years (officially just form Dec 7, 1941, but unofficially we were at a war footing back in 1939), and still having a costly war in progress in the Pacific, fighting with the Russians over backwaters in Eastern Europe simply wasn't in our best interests as a nation.

ajax18 wrote:We talk about us, as if we were one nation. Yet we're not really a nation anymore. The USA is a state, a set of rules, an idea, but not a people of common genetics, but rather an enormous number of factions.

That's been the concept since the framers first signed and ratified the US Constitution, Ajax. We always have been a collection of individual member states underr a central national government working together as a unit. At least that's how it should work under the sort of federalist system we have. Under a confederate scheme like they have in the EU or even like the southern states tried briefly before getting their treacherous asses kicked it's a collection of individual member states loosely joined by a weak central authority and pretty much every man for themselves.

And you know what? That federalist Republic has worked out pretty good for us these last 232 years.

ajax18 wrote:I guess that's the difference. When an Iraqi man goes to war, he's fighting for his people, his own blood. When a U.S. soldier goes to war, he's fighting for an idea, and what looks more and more like a world government/empire, but not at all his own people.

Anyone that tells you that an American soldier goes to war over "ideals" and such is a romantic fool. Going back to that social contract your brought up earlier, in order for the Government to hold up it's end of that contract it has to work for the interests of the state and by extension the citizens. That is the purpose of the military, to serve as the enforcement arm of that national will by the government to exert its power to protect its interests. Really, the more I think about it, the concept of the "social contract" doesn't even apply to the soldier, as they've given up their ability to benifit from that relationship by serving to sustain the contract itself.

ajax18 wrote: To me this partly explains our view that the military men are expendable and have forfeited their interests to life and liberty to the state (taxpayers or even welfare recipients) in exchange for what I would call a very meager living.

Of course soldiers are expendable. As callous as that may sound, it is fact. See, when a nation's interests are at risk, for what ever reason or whatever the risk might be, a cost/benifit analysis tells that nation that "National Interest A is worth $X, the amount of money to protect National Interest A is worth $Y". If $X is a significantly larger number then $Y (and by significant I mean it's a large enough figure to justify the cost in money, manpower, and political risk) then the nation will act to protect that interest. At that level of politics, soldiers are no different then bullets and beans. Just another resource to be allocated and expended.

Of course soldiers are expendable. As callous as that may sound, it is fact. See, when a nation's interests are at risk, for what ever reason or whatever the risk might be, a cost/benifit analysis tells that nation that "National Interest A is worth $X, the amount of money to protect National Interest A is worth $Y". If $X is a significantly larger number then $Y (and by significant I mean it's a large enough figure to justify the cost in money, manpower, and political risk) then the nation will act to protect that interest. At that level of politics, soldiers are no different then bullets and beans. Just another resource to be allocated and expended.

I guess that's what it comes down to, and that's the way it is. I just don't think it should be.

ajax18 wrote:

Of course soldiers are expendable. As callous as that may sound, it is fact. See, when a nation's interests are at risk, for what ever reason or whatever the risk might be, a cost/benifit analysis tells that nation that "National Interest A is worth $X, the amount of money to protect National Interest A is worth $Y". If $X is a significantly larger number then $Y (and by significant I mean it's a large enough figure to justify the cost in money, manpower, and political risk) then the nation will act to protect that interest. At that level of politics, soldiers are no different then bullets and beans. Just another resource to be allocated and expended.

I guess that's what it comes down to, and that's the way it is. I just don't think it should be.

I agree with you personally that it really sucks that things work that way. You also have to keep in mind that I'm looking at this from the view of maximal realism, which not all counties subscribe to in their decision making, and in fact the US doesn't really adhere to it much either lately. We used to live by that thinking uncder presidents like Reagan, but not so much these days.

Angus I think you're right on the money on this one. In a way I wish we still had the draft and everybody had to fight, not just people who ended up on the bottom economically.

Normally I would agree with fighting a war under the terms of the Geneva convention. I normally don't even agree with capital punishment (another instance where I disagree with many Republicans). When I look at what they did to Daniel Pearl, I have to think, if that were my brother (which as a fellow American he should be considered as such) I would stop at nothing to prevent that from happening. So torchering the enemy to find out where they were hiding him wouldn't bother me too much. I'd hope that my fellow Americans would do the same for me. Granted, Daniel Pearl was foolish to ever be there in the first place, but what if he were just an American POW like Jessica Lynch. I'd be doing everything I could to free him/her. As long as they're going to treat our captured soldiers like that, as far as I'm concerned, the Geneva convention goes out the window.