"Jeff Rigby" wrote in message
...

"Len" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 07 Nov 2005 14:22:17 -0500, Harry Krause
wrote:

It is immoral to sit safe in your house while you urge that the sons and
daughters of other families be sent off to foreign lands to fight and
die in a war based on a president's incompetency, stupidity, and deceit.

Perhaps, due to the way the present America was taken by force from
the original inhabitants, war is in the cultural heritage of the us
somewhat seen as a legitimate and effective means to an end, much more
than in europe.

There was a vacumn here as 80% of the origional indians in the eastern and
south easteren continental US were killed by dieases brought in by spanish
explorers. When the english and dutch sought to colonize this country
there
were many unclaimed lands. For the most part, settlers encroached on
indian
lands, were attacked by indians and then the indians were wiped out by the
culturally more advanced settlers.

As to war being a cultural trait, quite the opposite.

Isn't that the truth........most of my ancestors immigrated to escape the
ongoing conflicts in Europe.

Our presidents have
had to resort to many schemes to get us to go to war, even to the point of
letting ourselves be attacked. FYI when we were attacked by Japan (WWII)
our troops were drilling with wooden guns, our navy was a joke, our
torpedoes would not detonate upon impact and we lost many planes, ships
and
men in the opening days of the war. We were not prepared! Our military
was
so shocked by that they have forever demanded that we be prepared.

Our cultural heritage is older, with much more experience in the field of
losing and of what happens if a country is
defeated but also humiliated (ww1, Germany). All european countries
have had their serious defeats and the history books tell all about
it. In europe I grew up (10 years after ww2) with a notion of "war is
hell. It must be prevented as much as possible".

Which is why WWII happened the way it did.


We were shocked again by 9/11, the result is what we have now. Iraq in
large part is necessary as a forward support base for the middle east. We
can not support troops from 2000 or more miles away. In the opening days
of
the Afganistan war we couldn't get support from countries in the region
without threatening them.

But I respect that sometimes not acting is even worse than acting.
When the acting is based on lies, all legitemacy is lost up front.
Retreat is another matter, you will have to take into account what
situation will arise after that. After all you're responsible as a
world-leading nation that has started the war unilaterally.


What lies??? Poor intelligence yes, another reason for invading Iraq is
the
intel missions that are now being staged out of Iraq into neighboring
countries. We now have a feel for the region that wasn't possible before.

One of the reasons that there was such a push to get Saddam to either
allow
inspections or for us to invade was that our troops couldn't fight with
poison gas protective gear on during the summer months. Saddam knew if he
stalled another 4 weeks we would have to cancel an invasion util the next
year.

Regards, Len.