U.s. policy of "striking first"

About the cold war... yeah, everything you said is 100% true. Just 1 big ####hole neither side wanted to be in.

WWI: Lusitania was the British liner carrying US citizens (128) and was destroyed as were a lot of other British liners on their coasts. US got mad... after another one gets shot down (the Sussex), and due to American protests.. Germany issues the Sussex pledge (not to shot merchant ships without proper warning). Note, German violations of international laws of the seas were equally shared by allied nations (mostly on the part by Britain, but who controls the news back to America now?). I think Britain publicly announced a while back that they knew about German intentions to sink the Lucitania before it happenend... (they wanted the US in the war). Not certain about that... could just be something else.

The US didn't enter the war on that basis alone however. Although there were protestors against the war, there was a considerable amount of British propaganda (if I failed to say it enough times :biggrin: ). Belgium being overrun didn't help the German case either... or that Zimmerman Telegraph.

Civil War: I thought indentured servents ceased to exist by 1860 ??? . Wern't they the people who paid British merchants/middle class by "servitude" for a free ride over to the new world in the 1500's and 1600's?

As for slavery, I suggest you refresh your memory on it. When the Confederacy seceeded, Missisouri, West Virginia, Maryland, and Kentucky all stayed in the Union (all of which were slave states).

WWII: Don't make me get out my encyclopedia again... rarely do allied troops know of the battles between their commading officers. The US was helping Russia because they were allied at the time, and needed Russia's help to take down Hitler... after that was all said and done, it was time to get down to the real war. Look at an old map sometime and note where the USSR had control and where it didn't... it's sphere of influence stops right at Berlin. That wasn't really a bad secondary cause for fighting the war (and really was low priority until it was obvious that Hitler was finished). BTW, while I'm at it, that was another reason the US used the a-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki instead of a direct invasion. Bulstering US might on the Russian's back door was intended to scare them out of US vs. USSR confrentation... and so they stepped up their efforts to build a bomb themselves. Anyways... I type too much.

On Iraq: Yeah, underground silos and airfields you have no proof of... and yet doesn't the US have all these satilites looking down on the Earth right now? How long has the US been running spy planes over his territory? And yet not so much as a rumor of these underground silos? I think you're giving the man way too much credit. And who are these allies of which you speak? I don't see any nations boldly stepping out and supporting Saddam's cause right now. If you're reffering to terrorists, he's probably gonna do just that because the US is acting so aggressivly.

And lastly... Saddam's not "so harmless", he's just harmless to the US because he's way the hell over there and has no long range capabilitys of nailing any of the US's great trading buddies. Thus the entire reason the US is willing to stop this terrorist supplier and not the one in North Korea.



Edited By 2000warrior on Feb. 01 2003 at 22:24