It seems like some things don't need to be fought for, because they are inevitable. That the massive cost in life and treasure is not worth a mere hastening of what is surely to transpire in another 10-20 years anyway. Some of the examples that I can think of are the abolishment of slavery in the United States, which surely would have happened without the Civil War just as it happened in other countries. Or the war in Vietnam, seeing how the country eventually was going to move towards capitalism and democracy anyway. Or fighting a war against the USSR when it wasn't even able to feed its own people. Isn't Democracy and Capitalism in the Middle East inevitable? Haven't we seen both of these systems gain massive traction over the past 100 years? Wouldn't we see social change without speeding it up via violence?
Hind sight is 20/20. None of the things you mentioned were inevitable. The Middle East has been a theocracy for over a thousand years. It seems a betting man would put money on things not changing much.
I disagree. Look at ethical progress in a democracy. Abolishing slavery, equality for women, the erosion of bigotry... it is clear to me that future generations will allow the same rights for gay couples as straight ones. I also think that future generations will look back at our meat-eating culture and marvel at how we could seem so "modern" in some ways, but quite barbarous in others. The entire debate between Capitalism and Communism was that neither could last. If either side really believed their own rhetoric, why did they even fight? World democracies are growing exponentially. Eventually all governments will be decided by free people. Why rush it? And yes, the ME has not had a democracy for thousands of years. The same is true of all of the countries moving to Democracy, and yet... they are. I think the response to 9/11 should have been the moral indignation and shame that we heap on a child, still immature and unwise, and not the engagement of an enemy that we mistake for our contemporary. Is rushing natural progress worth thousands of lives lost and a trillion dollars?
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It's easy to look at something after the fact and say it was inevitable, but it's not true. On slavery, I agree, we'd have been better off not fighting the war and simply letting the economics of the situation allow slavery to die naturally. But authoritarian regimes have ruled humanity for thousands of years. I'd say, absent some outside force, they're a pretty stable form of government. Don't you remember the cold war? The Left was ready to surrender, they saw the triumph of communism as inevitable. Had the Soviet Union not been pushed to collapse when it did, had we not done all we could to contain it, it might have continued for some time. Furthermore, while it does seem that democracy and captitalism have momentum on their side, we also have those pushing us closer and closer towards one world government. And one world government would not be a government friendly to democracy and capitalism. Very few things are inevitable. It is important to fight for what is right. I think your ideas about determinism and free will are sneaking into your views on geopolitics. As Edmund Burke said, All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing.
the middle east is not theocratic it is autocratic with heavy religious overtones. A theocratic government would be ruled by the priests or a god-king.
Its not progress you can take for granted. You are taking for granted that countries becoming democracies are a given. If that were so everything would be a democracy by now as it started way back in ancient Greece. Rome never would have went from a democracy to a dictatorship to oblivion. Germany would not have gone from a democracy to a fascist police state under Hitler, by the way he almost took Europe right along with Germany in that direction.
Of course, but... before we go into an expensive war aren't we just as ignorant about the outcome? Does history really tell us that expensive wars bring about change that would have not otherwise come? Even WWII, one of the most-easily justifiable wars that I have studied, seems like an immense waste. Does anyone think that Germany could have ruled all of Europe for the next several hundred years? Or that Germany, Japan, and Italy could have carved up the world into thirds and ruled such a vast empire? They couldn't even win a crushing defeat when only the island of Britain was their lone foe. It seems to me, even as someone who has normally been for wars against oppressors, that the cost/benefit analysis has not been performed properly. That impatience, not caring, is the core of a revolution.
Now wait a minute, the reason Germany, Japan, and Italy wouldn't be able to hold on to a world empire, and the reason they had such a hard time defeating England was that people chose to stand up and FIGHT! If everyone sat back and said, "The defeat of evil is inevitable, no need to fight", the Nazis would have won in a cake walk. Or are you just saying America didn't need to get involved? We should have allowed our allies to be over run and wiped out by the Nazis? Suppose, without US intervention the Nazis had won. You say they couldn't hold on to a world empire? Imagine Hitler in control of europe and keeping all those German scientists that were so helpful in our development of the atomic bomb and rockets. Now imagine Hitler with nuclear tipped ICBM's. Imagine every Jew in Europe fed to the ovens. As I said, I think you're allowing your ideas on determinism to affect your views. As you yourself said, whether there is free will or not, acting as if there is results in better outcomes than acting as if there isn't. I'd say the same rule would apply to world events.
Yeah, I don't think the world would be any different had the United States not entered WWII. It just may have taken an extra 100 years or so for it to get like this. For one thing, the United States would never have been conquered. We were developing the nuke with or without direct involvement. A stand-off with Germany would have been less stressful than a stand-off with the U.S.S.R.. At least we would have known where Germany stood. The scientists that fled Europe would have come here no matter what. That was due to Germany's actions which we are assuming would have been the same. The Atlantic and Pacific would have done for us what the English Channel did for the British, but on a 1000X scale. The various "gobbled up" countries of Europe would have eventually been given their freedom just as the Soviet satellites would have been. Germany would have kept a little bit of land, but probably not as much as the Allies took after the war in various parts of the world. Millions of extra Jews would have died, and that would be a tragedy difficult to bear. But HUNDREDS of millions of others died in the fighting and among the bombed civilians. I think my point has a lot of merit. War is wasteful and does not change events, only the pace at which they occur.
Is war wasteful? Hell yes. But it certainly can make a difference, especially to an individual or even an entire race/culture. Consider Rome. How many nations were influenced heavily by having been conquered by Rome? It affected the language, the ethnic makeup of the population. For a nation majorly affected by war, look at Romania. They lost a war to Rome (Romania was called Dulcia or something like that back then) and were virtually wiped out by the Romans to the point they changed the name of the country to the land of Romans! Or consider the battle of Thermophylae portrayed in the recent movie 300. If not for those men holding up the Persians, Western civilization could have been wiped out by Persia! How about the Aztecs and the Incas? They were wiped out, their entire culture erased by a very small Spanish force. Had they fought more effectively (and united against the external threat rather than letting the Spanish play one group against the other), world history might be completely different. Then there's Hulagu's destruction of Baghdad. If the Caliph had either better defended the city or had the good sense to simply surrender immediately without pissing off the mongols (who had actually been ordered to not destroy the city.), Baghdad might not have been destroyed and, again, world history might have been completely different. How much did the complete destruction of what had been a world class city set back civilization in the middle east? You might even say that they haven't recovered from that set back to this very day!
Valid points, anthony, so you are suggesting that the hundreds of millions we murder and the trillions and trillions of dollars we spend are for the preservation of country names, accents within language, and relative occurrence of certain genes in the pool? My position is not eroding thus far...
Hmm. On the one hand you speak of the extermination of entire cultures/races as mere variations in the occurence of certain genes; and on the other you complain of the people who die in war. If genocide is insignificant to you, how can the death of the small percentage that dies in war mean anything at all? Furthermore, those names, accents, and genes are practically everything people hold dear. While you speak of genes, most people speak of their children, their friends, their family. Any man would fight to preserve those things and most men wouldn't care if the rest of the world went to hell so long as those he holds dear were protected. And the accents and names? Those things define our culture, everything we believe in. So, yes, those things are worth fighting, killing, or even dying for.
Authoritarian governments are great for capitalism. Democracy, not so much. Those men failed. What really pushed the Persians back was the Athenian navy.
They failed? They inflicted heavy losses on a far superior force, holding off the Persians for a week, which allowed the Greeks to organize a defense and, ultimately, to defeat the Persians by sea at the Battle of Salamis and on land at the Battle of Plataea.
