Let's Be Clear: The Last Time the United States Military did Anything to Actually Defend this Country was in World War II.

Depends on if you count the Gulf War, weren't we heroes to the Kuwati for rescuing them from a brutal dictactor?

How was that any different than what we did for the French in WWII?

That was an oil war.

Except France wasn't part of Germany until they were forced apart by the British, like Kuwait was.

That was WW2, and Kuwait was taken over because of Iraq's greed for oil.... well mostly Saddam's greed for oil, which then gave Bush the opportunity to hide his own agenda for oil.

That leaves out the War of 1812 and the Civil War so not the "only" time, and the USA was more in danger during the Civil War than any time in it's history

It was the US which declared war on the British in 1812 because it wanted to expand westward into the Native American territories, something the British were against so as to protect the Native Americans. The Civil War pitted Americans against Americans.

The Confederacy abandoned the USA and they were no longer Americans, so the USA had to defend against invaders from the South. The British did the same since it was in the USA that they attacked, not England

See how slippery that argument is? You can justify all of the wars that way if you want to, only some of them or none of them depending on how strict your definition of what constitutes a proper defense of the country.

They used similar arguments in every war, with competing sets of facts just like we've done. Does it matter to all those that were lost?

+^d.

He doesn't appreciate the powers of the imperial presidency -on the record.

+^d

Hitler and Mussolini did declare war on the US http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/11/newsid_3532000/3532...

As for using nukes on Japan - Japan had already agreed to surrender, these nukes didn't cut down the loss of any US troops.

Like I said by the narrow terms of the defense argument it's a slippery slope.

Hitler and Mussolini might've declared war but they didn't attack, they probably would've but they didn't get that far.

Some in Japan might've wanted to surrender before the nukes but they couldn't convince the rest since they were still fighting right up until the end.

Japan had stopped fighting before the nukes were dropped. Furthermore, Japan had offered to surrender months before, but the US refused their terms, yet the final terms of surrender which the US asked of Japan were exactly the same ones Japan had proposed months before.

Japan had lost the ability to launch a significant attack outside it's borders prior to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That is not the same thing as surrendering. Indeed, they made no concrete moves toward surrender until after the second bomb proved Hiroshima wasn't a one-off. Even then, forces inside the Japanese government attempted a coup in order to continue the war.

You are sorely mistaken - see http://tinyurl.com/3wkb4hc (no time for me to find more links right now, I have to get ready to go to an important meeting).

Succinctly put, Japan offered to surrender. However, the Allies rejected it because they wanted the Emperor tried for war crimes, which the Japanese refused to accept.

Bizarrely, after the nuclear attacks on Japan, the Allies accepted the exact same terms of surrender the Japanese had previously offered anyway.

Another way of looking at it is:

Japan: "We want to surrender"

US: "No way. We have a nifty new super weapon to try out"

BOOM!

US: "Whoa! Look at that!...Okay, we'll accept your surrender now."

Japan asked if they could stop fighting and go home. If they could keep their military and government structure intact, they would stop fighting. That isn't surrender. That's asking for a do over.

That is not what Japan proposed. In fact, every point in their surrender proposal which was refused months before was accepted after the nuclear bombing, practically verbatim.

I am somewhat of a history buff, and that information is completely contrary to anything I have ever heard. I would really appreciate it if you could point me in a direction for further reading for that theory.

It is not a theory, it is a sad fact. I don't have the time to do research for you, I am extremely busy nowadays. When I do have some time, I'll try to find more info for you. Of course, it is not in the American history books as it casts a dark light on the USA.

I'm not asking you to do my research for me. I'm just saying that youKve dropped your own little bomb of information here, and at least a suggestion of a source for such a revelation isn't out of line. Unless that source is also from the Quibbler like the link you posted above. Because then it would be easy to tell how you had become so misformed.

My original source was my parents, many decades ago. My father was a Major in the British Intelligence Corps during WWII, my mother was a civilian officer in British Intelligence during WWII, and both were outraged by the totally unnecessary and criminal nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as both knew of the Japanese offer of surrender and its terms which were refused by the US and the Allies, and the fact that after that bombing, the surrender which was signed in September 1945 contained all the exact terms that the Japanese had originally offered. The link I provided is one I found during a quick search.

I can see now why I've not run across that particular source of information. Instead, I'm left reading declassified American intelligence reports that claim Japan was seeking Russian aid to secure conditional surrender in terms favorable to the Japanese government.

Possibly the reports your parents were privy to will be released at some point in the future. Until then I'm sure you'll forgive me for my skepticism.

The point is that the terms in the Japanese proposal they made via Russia and which were initially vehemently refused by the US are the exact same terms in the surrender agreement signed after the nuclear bombings of Japan. Many people know this and have known this for years.

I do not believe there is credible evidence (at least publicly available evidence) that supports your claim. The evidence available regarding the Russian negotiations shows that Japan was still seeking a conditional surrender. They were not holding out the protection of the emperor as their only necessary condition, that was one of many conditions they felt could be negotiated.

It is possible that secret talks took place, but available evidence indicates Russia never fully entered into talks with Japan, as Russia had designs on seizing Japanese territories for itself and needed to enter the war with Japan to gain a bargaining position with the US.

However, if these secret talks DID take place, they remain classified information, available only to you, your relations, and the ever present "people who know."

I disagree with some of the things the writer of this article says. But i agree with the general premise. Not a single war has been justified since WW2. The war in afghanistan was justified until it turned into nation building. It makes me sick seeing how much of an empire weve turned into.

The conversation isnt wether or not we should intervene. The conversation is when how and where we should intervene. Both democrats and republicans think this way.

Curious way you think it's over the top? What part is inaccurate?

Afghanistan did not attack the US, a small group of people did. The more reasonable response would have been police work rather than a full out military assault on a nation that happens to be in a region some extraction companies want some pipelines.

I think we are basically on the same page on this. +^d

Youre right it was al qaeda who attacked us and they were based in afghanistan. Our main goal should have been to just go after them. But instead we got distracted with nation building..

Without breaking the text down,.....its more the entirety of the "anti-military" drift of the piece,....rather than a focus on DEMOCRATIC oversight and responsibility.

The emphasis is simply not on where I would put it,...and the tone is overly irate.

WE did it. And some of what is at issue in this editorial, is simply a "war is wrong" ethical statement,...and it is,.....but if these wars are "MORE wrong than MOST",....well, harder case to make, and not really made here in this writ I don't think.

Perhaps you do ?

p.s. to be clear -I am well aware of the cancerous nature of the military industrial complex and the media/governmental propaganda machine.

agreed. We should have had congress just issued Letters of Marque and Reprisal.

Agreed. We could have had Congress just issued Letters of Marque and Reprisal.Congressman Ron Paul proposed that the attacks were as acts of "air piracy" and introduced the Marque and Reprisal Act of 2001.