Fascist on 10/4/2007 at 00:55
F*ck wars. Who needs 'em?
Jonesy on 10/4/2007 at 01:32
As is the case with many of Stront's posts, you can get the gist of what he is saying but the way he goes about saying it is roundabout and offensive if you don't reread it several times.
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And secondly, cheap shot or not, I was offended that you can sit there and tell us all what a terrible thing war is when you more than anyone should understand how necessary it is.
Pretty sure he's simply stating that the Allied escalation of the war was necessary to remove Hitler from power, and not that Hitler had justification to invade the entirety of Europe.
You could argue that love can lead to war, it's called Jingoism- Extreme nationalism characterized especially by a belligerent foreign policy, nationalism being in its barest sense love and loyalty to one's nation state.
There's also the side note that wars generally lead to massive leaps in technology as a result from innovation and experimentation in the greatest of all testing ranges.
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I won't be told by people whose grandparents would have gassed me as soon as look at me that war is a bad thing.
It's the same exact thing, he's just putting it in the most ass backwards way.
"I won't have the people who gassed millions tell me that the Allied effort to stop said gassings was a bad thing."
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War can be a great and beautiful thing.
The spectacle of war can be a great and beautiful thing is what he's getting at, the artillery shells lancing through the air at night, the sheer surreal spectacle of buildings exploding and bombs bursting. It's any movie made about World War II and Vietnam in the past 30 years: surrealism at the beauty of the napalm bursting through the palm trees in the first minutes of Apocalypse Now and then the realization that those were probably people being bombed sets in. Having gone through the majority of flight and weapons training in the Air Force, the majority of pilots skim over the fact that the weapons they're firing at the empty husk of a T-55 will in fact contain people in reality. You're just in the cockpit reveling as your GAU shots blow the turret off and not thinking about the cooked sausage that was once the crew.
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He didn't say "killing people is great and beautiful", you strawmanned that one nicely.
GBM is definitely right on this one. While Stronts did do a fair job of digging his own hole as he usually does, half the people in this thread took his statements totally off what was actually implied.
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No offense Stronts, but I think the part of your brain that's missing must have been the part that dribbled down your daddy's leg.
And Dia, it would be nice if you were above initiating personal and vengeful attacks on people. As I'm sure that Daveh, and GBM have stated to others in the past, it is in no way helping the discussion.
BEAR on 10/4/2007 at 01:51
I had really given up on this thread until the last post.
Out of love for you all I was going to be forced to make war on this thread but Jonesy's diplomacy won the day.
fett on 10/4/2007 at 02:36
Quote Posted by Jonesy
All that stuff.
Post more.
Dia on 10/4/2007 at 02:48
You're absolutely right Jonesy - about the personal insults and attacks, that is. I humbly apologize for having lost my temper. StD managed to hit upon a very sore subject with me; one that strikes way too close to home as it were. No excuse however; I lost my temper and apologize for having done so.
But I still heartily disagree that 'The spectacle of war can be a great and beautiful thing'; maybe it's a result of having listened to and seen first hand what war can do to people you love. I don't see anything remotely beautiful about war; not 'the artillery shells lancing through the air at night, the sheer surreal spectacle of buildings exploding and bombs bursting' because my mind can't seem to separate those things from the fact that people are suffering and dying as a result of those artillery shells and bombs. There's just no way I can disassociate the word or concept of war from the fact that during war innocent people suffer and die.
'It's any movie made about World War II and Vietnam in the past 30 years'. War is not a movie, it's real life and real people get killed. I'm not saying I'm a total pacifist; I'm realistic enough to know that I have the capacity and ability to take the life of another human being, but I also know that if it came down to that it would be in self defense or the defense of an innocent and not cold blooded murder. I'm also realistic enough to understand that yes, there will be Hitlers and Husseins whose atrocities against mankind in general will most likely have to be met with force to remove them from the power that enables them to commit those atrocities. (Never mind that most of the time the ones that wage war against those villains are the very ones that helped put them in power in the first place.)
I find it terribly sad that war has been so glorified, especially through movies and and political propaganda. No, I find nothing beautiful or great about war; as far as I'm concerned it's an atrocity.
Mark Twain said it a whole lot better than I ever could:
Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out ... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for 'the universal brotherhood of man'—with his mouth.
Come to think of it though, I once saw an ant war in my back yard. The ants on the east side of the septic tank were attacked by the ants on the west side; both were the same species of ant. It was extremely brutal and went on for over an hour, at the end of which the west-side ants had totally decimated the east side ants - I'm talkin' about absolutely no survivors from the east side. So I guess we're not the only species that wages war after all, just the only animal.
dj_ivocha on 10/4/2007 at 03:54
I've never seen an ant war. :(
Gingerbread Man on 10/4/2007 at 04:09
Ant wars are craaaaaazy shit.
Kolya on 10/4/2007 at 04:55
That ain't diplomacy Jonesy. It's euphemism for an idiot's rant that's been going on and on. It's not like SD didn't have the chance to correct himself or that he wasn't capable to do so. I've only ever read well thought out and eloquent political statements by him before. Why do you think he needs an interpreter now?
Quote Posted by Jonesy
...and not that Hitler had justification to invade the entirety of Europe.
Thanks for clearing that up. I thought SD was all for it.
Quote Posted by Jonesy
You could argue that love can lead to war, it's called Jingoism- Extreme nationalism
No you can't. We were talking about the physical act of love ("make love"), not some abstract concept of love.
Quote Posted by Jonesy
"I won't have the people who gassed millions tell me that the Allied effort to stop said gassings was a bad thing."
If SD gets such a generous interpretation why not look at what I said too? Did I utter the wish that Nazi Germany should have won the war or Jews be gassed? Hell no! Because it's a horrible idea for me as well. But SD simply read the worst he could think of from me endorsing an old hippie slogan. And then he used that as a base to attack me and tell me which opinion I am entitled to in his book.
I have no idea how that came into your mind SD, but I won't let you use me as a punching bag for your fears and aggressions just because I happen to be born here.
And about the beauty of war: War is organized mass murdering. And you can't separate it into the nice romanticized part and the other part that you rather not think about.
I wish everyone who likes to hear the sound of artillery in the night and believes that war is such a great drive for innovations and whatnot would get shot to some far off planet and fight there. Go and kill yourselves if you think it's so great, just leave me out of your stupid game.
Ko0K on 10/4/2007 at 05:07
I agree that there was much knowledge gained from WWII, but was it worth fighting? I have no idea. Let's ask the dead and deformed.
Anyway, I was just thinking that Strontium Dog doesn't seem like a guy who needs an interpreter to avoid misrepresentation, although I admit that amounts to nothing but an assumption. All I know is that I'm not a mind-reader.
scumble on 10/4/2007 at 08:19
Quote Posted by Strontium Dog
War can be a great and beautiful thing. Which is why I have no truck with pacifists, people who are ideologically opposed to the use of war in all circumstances. It disappoints me to see some people are pacifists when they know from experience that war can be a good thing. THAT IS ALL.
You see, I said you were starting to sound
like a neocon, not that this describes your political orientation.
It is actually possible to not be a pacifist and at the same time see wars as unnecessary, or at least in the sense that the most likely aren't necessary for the preservation of "freedom".
It seems like you've fallen into the trap of forgetting that although it might have been necessary to enter into an extremely costly war to prevent the Nazis going further than they did, it is silly to go on this "War is beautiful and gave me my freedom" track without thinking about what happened in the 50 years beforehand. If the allies hadn't been so cack-handed after the first world war in dealing with Germany, the Nazis may not have got the support they needed to take power. So is war necessary or just simply what governments are forced into after making some epic mistakes?
I mean, the second world war is hardly squeaky clean in terms of motivation. Churchill, I understand, was partially motivated by irrational hatred of the German people, and a wish to see the British Empire restored to its Victorian glory. Possibly he thought he could get the Americans in to do the job for him, but we ended up broke and the USA took over in the "new world order".
Did war bring us "freedom" or lumber us with military-industrial complexes and lots of costly adventures across the globe? What about the arms trade with favoured dictators to soak up the surplus production in "peacetime"?
I don't think I'm just being a silly pacifist, I'm just suggesting that war is the result of dodgy motvations and arsebrained foreign policy, even in the case of wars that are conventionally called "victories for freedom". The fighting isn't necessary if the conditions aren't created in the first place.
All I'm asking for is a bit more than stuff that sounds like reductionist political rhetoric.
I think I just used Paz's favourite word
