Gaza mercy ship seized by Israel

ziggy wrote:

Cato wrote:

Stephanie wrote:Once they boarded the ship and learned it was only carrying humanitarian aid, what right did the Israeli government have to hijack the ship and kidnap and detain the passengers? What threat did any of them, including former Representative McKinney pose then?

I don't know if they posed any, other than aiding an enemy who has swore to remove Israel from the map. Be that as it may, it isn't our concern. Yes, we give aid to Israel and if you look at the Federal Budget we also give aid to the Palastinians. That is something we shouldn't do and I wise we didn't. This would be over and we wouldn't be having this discussion if we and the rest of world kept our noses out of the affair and let them settle it themselves.

By the way Stephanie, I'm neither pro Israel or pro Palastine. Both sides have done their share of atroscities, so neither is the innocent side. Speaking a "what if", if I had been the leader of Israel, I would have had the ship sunk, without regard to who was aboard. A message would have been sent tot he world that if they are going to aid the Palastinians they are going to face grave danger and it woudl have sent a message to the Palasitians that we mean business.

I'm a student of both the Roman art of war, General William Sherman, and Sun-Tzu. If you are going to fight, fight to accomplish two things, win quickly and decisively, and destory their will to desire to ever wage war again. That isn't accomplished by allowing busybodies to provide aid and comfort to your enemy.

By what legal and moral authority would you have sunk an unarmed ship regardless of who was aboard?

Since when do medical supplies and crayons for children constitute aid and comfort to the enemy?

The waging of war is not a moral or legal issue. Despite what many want to think war canot be fought in a sanitary manner. Innocent people get hurt and killed. In the heat of battle what is legal or moral is irrelevent. The only thing that matters is defeating one's enemy. You and those people like you want war to be more like a gentleman's game. The catch is that it isn't. As I said, if I were the leader of Israel, I would have sunk the ship since it was providing aid and comfort to my enemy.

The United States has entered a number of conflicts with no intention of fighting to win. Viet Nam was one, Korea another, then Iraq twice and Afganistan. We've allowed ourselves to fight a moral and clean war, whihc in the end has done little but get alot of Americans killed or wounded. This whole mess would have been over and done, had our leaders fought the thing to win with the goals to a quick decivie victory and the breaking of the enemy's will to fight.

Just wondering willie how much you have studied Sun-Tzu and Sherman.

What do you think Sherman would have done if he was Commander-in-Chief of the IDF after the June 67 war?

I think I know, but just wonder if we agree.

Your answer would be just peachy-keen if our government stayed the hell out of it, Cato. What the people aboard these mercy ships are doing is trying to draw attention to the plight of the innocent victims of Israeli oppression being financed and condoned by their governments.

You want to know why so many Muslims hate us? You think it's because the Koran tells them to hate Christians? You think it's because they fear their sons and daughters will be infected by the promiscuity of western culture? They don't hate us because we're free. They hate us because we've been sticking our nose in their business for 50 years.

The Taliban doesn't exist because of Christianity. Those young Jihadists from the Middle East aren't blowing themselves up because Madonna gyrates around in a teddy on MTV or because of the sexual revolution in America or because the Beatles sang, "no one will be watching us, why don't we do it in the road?" Mothers aren't willing to sacrafice their children because we have some remnants of liberty. They are doing these things because we have been actively engaged in telling them how to run their nations all the while spending billions of dollars arming and funding a theocracy that turned so many of their brothers and sisters into permanent refugees.

Cynthia McKinney has my respect and admiration because she has demonstrated unbelievable courage. I wish I were half as brave.

Cato wrote:The waging of war is not a moral or legal issue. Despite what many want to think war canot be fought in a sanitary manner. Innocent people get hurt and killed. In the heat of battle what is legal or moral is irrelevent. The only thing that matters is defeating one's enemy. You and those people like you want war to be more like a gentleman's game. The catch is that it isn't. As I said, if I were the leader of Israel, I would have sunk the ship since it was providing aid and comfort to my enemy.

The United States has entered a number of conflicts with no intention of fighting to win. Viet Nam was one, Korea another, then Iraq twice and Afganistan. We've allowed ourselves to fight a moral and clean war, whihc in the end has done little but get alot of Americans killed or wounded. This whole mess would have been over and done, had our leaders fought the thing to win with the goals to a quick decivie victory and the breaking of the enemy's will to fight.

Thh United States has agreed that are lines you don't cross in war Cato and one of them is you don't sink civilian supply boats, medical boats or ships carrying humitarian aid.

You're also wrong on the war's you mentioned. Harry Truman was responsible for getting us involved in both Korea and Vietnam and in both cases, his object was to thawrt the spread of communism across Asia.

Truman said as much.

On Saturday 24 June 1950, US Secretary of State Dean Acheson telephonically informed President Harry S. Truman, “Mr. President, I have very serious news. The North Koreans have invaded South Korea.” Truman and Acheson discussed a US invasion response with defence department principals, who agreed that the United States was obligated to repel military aggression, paralleling it with Adolf Hitler's 1930s aggressions, and said that the mistake of appeasement must not be repeated. President Truman acknowledged that fighting the invasion was pertinent to the American global containment of communism:

"Communism was acting in Korea, just as Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese had ten, fifteen, and twenty years earlier. I felt certain that if South Korea was allowed to fall Communist leaders would be emboldened to override nations closer to our own shores. If the Communists were permitted to force their way into the Republic of Korea without opposition from the free world, no small nation would have the courage to resist threat and aggression by stronger Communist neighbors."

President Truman announced that the US would counter "unprovoked aggression" and "vigorously support the effort of the [UN] security council to terminate this serious breach of peace." In Congress, the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Gen. Omar Bradley warned against appeasement, saying that Korea was the place "for drawing the line" against communist expansion. In August 1950, the President and the Secretary of State easily persuaded the Congress to appropriate $12 billion to pay for the additional Asian military expenses essential to the goals of National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68), the American global containment of communism.

After years of conflict in Korea and Truman's threat of using atomic weapons and years of war in Europe and Asia, Ike was determined to bring peace to American forces so he signed India's proposed Koran War Armistice on behalf to the US and the ROK.

In Vietnam, after the battle of la Drang, President Johnson sent Sec of Defense McNamara to Vietnam to interview the primary leaders and to come back with a recommendation of what the US should do.

When McNamara came back, he told Johnson that the US could not win in Vietnam and there was 2 choices. Either pull out of Vietnam or increase troops for an indefinate time and live with the losses, projected to be 1000 per month until a stalemate could be reached as in Korea.

Fearing that pulling out would send the wrong message to cold war allies and embolden communist leaders in Asia, Johnson chose to increase troops and escalated the war.

In both cases, the ONLY way we could have “fought the thing to win with the goals to a quick decisive victory and the breaking of the enemy's will to fight” would have been to drop nuclear weapons, at which point we would have faced retaliation strikes from the Soviet Union.

In both Korea and Vietnam, the primary objective was to thwart the spread of communism and in both cases, that primary result was achieved.

In Desert Storm, Bush I built a coalition to drive Iraq out of Kuwait and that's exactly what he did. Upon completion of that mission, he withdrew American troops as he said he would.

Aaron wrote:
Thh United States has agreed that are lines you don't cross in war Cato and one of them is you don't sink civilian supply boats, medical boats or ships carrying humitarian aid.

I have spoke on what I would do, which is playing armchair general and that is easy.

That being said, I am a student of Sun-Tzu, the Romans, and Genernal William T. Sherman. I bleieve that when one fights an enemy, there should be no mercy, and all in one's power should be brought to bear to accomplish to things, 1.) a QUICK and DECISIVE victory, and 2.) Break the enemy's will to ever wage war again. The second really being the m ost important.

War is not a gentleman's sport, with rules and it should never be fought that way. War cannot be fought or even thought of in a manner of being sanitary. All that accomplishes is prolonging a war, along with the suffering it causes. War cannot be fought by just killing the bad guy, either. War is going to cause collateral damage and death. That fact needs to be faced.

We've seen, during the Bush Adminsitration, the result of fighting a war where we've tried to keep blood off our hands. We've been at war for 8 years and are no further ahead than the day we began, other than giving the Jihadists a propaganda weapon that they have used quite effectively.

Though we can only guess at how this would have turned out, but imagine if Bush had waded into Afganistan, with one goal, the death of bin Laden and his associates, no matter haw many civilians were killed along with them. what about the Arab world's reaction to Bush using all the means at his disposal to accomplish his goal. I wonder if we would still be facing the Jihadists today, if they and the nations that support them were aware and had seen swift and horrible retaliation for acts of terror. We'll never know. What we do know is what we have do thus far as only drug out fighting that now appears it well never end.

Aaron wrote:

You're also wrong on the war's you mentioned. Harry Truman was responsible for getting us involved in both Korea and Vietnam and in both cases, his object was to thawrt the spread of communism across Asia.

Truman said as much.

And I didn't say otherwise. The point was and still is that it doesn't appear we went in to to accomplish the tiems I point to earlier, decisisve and quick victory and breaking their will to wage war.

sodbuster wrote:Just wondering willie how much you have studied Sun-Tzu and Sherman.

What do you think Sherman would have done if he was Commander-in-Chief of the IDF after the June 67 war?

I think I know, but just wonder if we agree.

I have read Sun-Tzu's book "The Art of War" and I agree with much of what he says. Especially, when he says the best way to win a war is to avoid fighting it. That is howscome, Sherman, I argue as I do for unrestricted warfare. War cannot ever be made or allowed to be considered an acceptable method of policy. War has to be made so horrible and distructive that it is never ever considered a viable alternative of foreign policy, not even by the most evil of leaders.

Based on a statement he made when asked about his march through Georgia, I think he would have destoryed as much of Syria, Jordan, and Egypt as possible. Gen. Sherman made the statement that he did what he did because he didn't want to have to do it again in a few years. His purpose was to break the South's will to wage war. He was quite successful at it.

Johnson's reasoning was that if he pulled out of Vietnam, communist leaders in other countries would see America as weak and indecisive and go after other countries.

I've always said that Vietnam was nothing more then a proxy war that could have just as easily been fought in several countries in Europe but that would have led to full scale war between the USSR and the US.

And I agree with what Cato is saying about waging war but in both Korea and Vietnam, the primary objective, as Truman said, was to thwart the spread of communism.

As for dropping nukes, that was the only way we were going to win decisively as Cato described in either place, after Truman, that wasn't acceptable to American leaders as they knew it would lead to retaliatory strikes.

Cato wrote:
That being said, I am a student of Sun-Tzu, the Romans, and Genernal William T. Sherman. I bleieve that when one fights an enemy, there should be no mercy, and all in one's power should be brought to bear to accomplish to things, 1.) a QUICK and DECISIVE victory, and 2.) Break the enemy's will to ever wage war again. The second really being the m ost important.

War is not a gentleman's sport, with rules and it should never be fought that way. War cannot be fought or even thought of in a manner of being sanitary. All that accomplishes is prolonging a war, along with the suffering it causes. War cannot be fought by just killing the bad guy, either. War is going to cause collateral damage and death. That fact needs to be faced.

We've seen, during the Bush Adminsitration, the result of fighting a war where we've tried to keep blood off our hands. We've been at war for 8 years and are no further ahead than the day we began, other than giving the Jihadists a propaganda weapon that they have used quite effectively.

Though we can only guess at how this would have turned out, but imagine if Bush had waded into Afganistan, with one goal, the death of bin Laden and his associates, no matter haw many civilians were killed along with them. what about the Arab world's reaction to Bush using all the means at his disposal to accomplish his goal. I wonder if we would still be facing the Jihadists today, if they and the nations that support them were aware and had seen swift and horrible retaliation for acts of terror. We'll never know. What we do know is what we have do thus far as only drug out fighting that now appears it well never end.

I agree on how we should fight a war and what we should do. But that's not going to happen and the reason is simple. The face of war changed with TV. We didn't see it much in Korea but we did in Vietnam. Had there been daily reports from the WW1 or 2 or from Sherman's march to Savannah, those back home would have lost the stomach to fight the war, just as they did in Iraq and would have pressured out leaders to end the mindless bloodshed.

I also agree that we should have sent 3/4's of our military into Afghanistan and not come out until we had Bin Laden and then brought every one of our troops home.

Of course, if we hadn't been meddling around in the Middle East since the end of WW2, none of this would have happened to begin with.

But of course our meddling in the Middle East was preceded by our meddling in Europe. Had we never went to war in 1917, that wouldn’t have led to us going to war in 41 and we as a nation would have been much better off.

Now I understand that's all water under the bridge and we can't go back and change it. But we can change how we act in the future and one of the things we as a nation should stop doing is playing both sides of the fence as we are doing with Israel and Palestine

If we're going to recognize Israel as a nation state, then we should recognize Palestine as a free and sovereign state as well and we certainly shouldn't be giving either side the money and support to kill each other that we do. We need to but out and let them resolve their own conflicts, which predated America by about 4000 years.

Personally, I think it's time we pull our troops home and let the rest of the world police themselves but that’s just me.

Aaron wrote:Personally, I think it's time we pull our troops home and let the rest of the world police themselves but that’s just me.

And I wholeheartedly agree with you.

Cato

The lefty pacifists who don’t think the US should get involved in the “warring problems” in or between other countries sure are quick at expressing a different opinion if it involves something like an Ebola outbreak in Africa.

Ah, must be why you tolerate me so well, Sammy. I don't believe the US government should be using US taxpayer dollars to save Africans from Ebola or to buy crayons for the children of Gaza. I do, however, firmly believe this nation has the right to defend herself from acts of violence.

I'm not sure it's a "feminine attribute". I know plenty of women who disagree with me and plenty of men who agree. For myself, I have priorities.

It seems to me I'm paying very close attention to the long term national effect by learning from the past.

That being said, I am a student of Sun-Tzu, the Romans, and Genernal William T. Sherman. I bleieve that when one fights an enemy, there should be no mercy, and all in one's power should be brought to bear to accomplish to things, 1.) a QUICK and DECISIVE victory, and 2.) Break the enemy's will to ever wage war again. The second really being the most important.

And which countries at war should fight it this way- only the ones whose political purpose in making war you agree with, or all of them?

Nations have been fighting wars this way for thousands of years. If what you are saying is realistic, wars would have disappeared from human civilization long ago- because the will of waring nations' to make war would have been broken.

and 2.) Break the enemy's will to ever wage war again. The second really being the most important.

So how do we define "the enemy"? It is easy to declare this or that our "enemy". It is something else again to muster the resources to accomplish a "QUICK and DECISIVE victory" over a declared "enemy" that already has more will and other resources (hardware or human) to survive and be victorious than its declared foes have.

And so the circle of war goes 'round and 'round.