Basically, he was a marxist. Che, Fidel and Raoul Castro planned the cuban revolution, overthrowing the pro U.S. Batista regime. Eventually moved to Bolivia, where the U.S. had been training and backing Bolivian soldiers. He was eventually captured and killed by Bolivian soldiers.
Kind of hard to judge Garfield on less than 6 months of office. He may have proven to be a strong president, but the assassins bullet made it a moot point.
The destruction of the Soviet empire and the threat it represented was more than worth the price in military spending required to do it. And I don't see that any future presidents are "forced" to maintain this level of spending, since military forces can be cut and equipment decommissioned. America is a very young, relative to other nations. Has any other nation ever become as strong as fast as the United States? Things change. Islamic nations of today aren't what most people would consider shining examples of peacefulness and tolerance. Predominantly Christian nations of today aren't the brutal theocracies that they were in the Middle Ages. Also, notice the irony of you glorifying Islam of the Middle Ages as peaceful and tolerant even as Muslims were invading and attempting to conquer Europe. Things change. In today's world, would a Christian living in Saudi Arabia or Iran enjoy the same rights, freedoms and safety as a Muslim living in Norway or America? I'm not religious and my knowledge of the Bible is limited, but I don't recall reading anything suggesting that Jesus ever was a wealthy man. Che Guevara was a communist, so that's all anyone should need to know about him. But since I never mentioned him as a great leader, I'm not worried about it. Because his cruelty to Odie showed his true colors.
Life is truly ironic -- long version but wait for the punch line. Uh, wrong and right. Historical sequence error. Britan did more than its share of bad shit. But it abolished slavery early in the 19th Century. By the time of the Civil War the Royal Navy was intercepting slave ships, sending the slaves home and throwing the captains in prison. The only way people could get more slaves was to encourage the slaves they already had to have children. Queen Victoria would absolutely have freed the slaves if the Confederacy rejoined the Commonwealth. That is indisputable. A sweeping generalization made from a typically short-sighted American perspective on history. The various waves of Mongol tribes (Finns, Tatars, Huns, Magyars, Moguls, Turks, they just kept on coming every couple of centuries) came close to wiping out Western civilization several times. Ask a Persian or a Greek who was the greatest threat! Then how about Hitler? The USSR had eighty years to fester its evil self. Look what Hitler managed to do in twenty! And, um, need I remind us all that there is only ONE country in the entire world that ever actually deployed NUCLEAR weapons in a war, and for god’s sake it deployed them against CIVILIAN targets, TWICE? I don’t know, it depends on how fussy you are about defining the “time frame.” No recession anywhere ever lasted more than a generation, except in countries like Bangla Desh that seem to have been founded on the principle of “Let’s see if we can create a country that is destined to be in an eternal depression.” And of course the real fuck-ups of cosmic proportions like the Mayas, who actually destroyed their surrounding environment and had to revert back to the Stone Age and wait for the Aztecs to arise and send out troops to conquer them. The U.S. economy reached its nadir in the early 1930s and was slowly rebounding. By 1950 things would probably have been about the same whether or not we had participated in Act II of the Great War. Yes. Argentina. In 1900 it had a higher standard of living than the US, and I’m fairly sure its independence came later than ours. Its total collapse in one century is a sobering lesson to us all. Islam arose 600 years later than Christianity and its development has paralleled the same time frame pretty well. First an energetic faith evangelized by zealots. Then the state religion of a large empire or two which spread it by the sword. Islam is just about at the point where people got really fed up with Christian dogma and had themselves an Enlightenment and a Renaissance. There are many Muslims in the more moderate, secular countries who seem more akin to Galileo than to the Archbishop of Seville. Perhaps in a few more centuries Islam will be where Christianity is today. Its two most recognizable symbols are Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. You say that like it makes it all OK. Setting the precedent of ignoring the Constitution and getting away with it merely emboldens one’s successors to do the same thing, ever more blatantly. The government has now taken over the education, charity, energy, finance, and transportation sectors, and for good measure institutionalized a system of racial quotas that would have astounded and dismayed Harriet Tubman, W.E.B. duBois, and Martin Luther King Jr. “You can never do just one thing.” Every politician should have that saying tatooed on the inside of his eyelids. Yes, in the short run FDR made quite a few people less poor. But in the long run he is largely responsible for just about all of the excesses in my previous list, except for Affirmative Discrimination. Oddly enough, the righteous goal of Equal Opportunity seemed to get twisted into its evil twin, Reverse Discrimination, during one of the Republican administrations. No. America became a Great Power after our astounding performance during WWI. We were admitted to all the gentleman’s clubs after the Treaty of Versailles. Well that’s getting pretty cosmic. You could say the same thing about every civilization which came before them. There were only seven peoples in all of history who actually developed civilization out of a Stone Age culture. The Chinese, the ancient Egyptians, the Mesopotamians, the Indians (some say the Harappans and the Hindus were two separate instances, but the evidence is pointing the other way), the Olmecs, the Incas, and Zimbabwe (a lost kingdom whose name has been recently coopted). Absolutely everyone else in the world is merely descended from barbarians who were CONQUERED by one of those civilizations and had civilization HANDED to them, often at spearpoint. The original “civilization” from which ours and all of Europe’s is descended is Mesopotamia. So if you want to bow toward the source of everything we are, you’re going to have to do it in the direction of the capital city of Mesopotamia: BAGHDAD! Isn’t life just so deliciously ironic?
Re: Life is truly ironic -- long version but wait for the punch line. The various waves of Mongol tribes were a threat to the Western World specifically. The Soviet Union was a threat to the world in general, regardless of geographic location or cultural identity. There's that German efficiency. Instead of comparing two decades of Hitler to eight decades of Soviet tyranny, we should compare two decades of Hitler to two decades of Stalin. What would have been the death toll of both Americans and Japanese had we decided to invade and occupy? Argentina gained its independence from Spain in 1816. In 1900 Argentina had a higher standard of living than America. By the end of the World War I America was among the most powerful countries in the world and by the end of World War II our status as world superpower was indisputable. At what point was Argentina the most powerful country on earth? I never claimed that Islamic countries will never be peaceful and tolerant, but only that they aren't peaceful and tolerant right now. Had Islam destroyed Christian Europe we could all very well be living under a regime similar to the Taliban.
Galt, you can ignore Fraggle Rocker... he is one of those American flag burning people that loves to see Americans die.
Ataturk- freed a people founded a nation Hitler- inspired a nation, revitalised Germany, took over mainland Europe. Granted he was a complete asshole. Lizzy I- her manoeuvring to avoid taking a husband, the way she steered a middle road between catholicism and protestantism. She kept a balanced budget. Was a super smart chick. Reagan didn't kill communism, communism was already failing, in fact Reagan thought so himself.
Re: Life is truly ironic -- long version but wait for the punch line. Funny a Navy composed of slaves stoping slavery. Ironic isint it? England still did slavery. It just did it economically. Forced people to not industrialize only make cash crops. Its even worse then slavery because the pesant has no value to the motherland.
Here we go....if you're not with us, you want to destroy us. No shades of gray.... Yeah, definitely one of the more interesting historical figures. Name a single president after Reagan who hasn't spent as much or more on the military than he did. Then have a look at what was spent on the military before he took office. Live fast, die young. The brightest burning candle is the first to die out. Notice how the largest stars are also the first to implode. Metaphors! I think in the 15th or 16th century Spain was in the same position we were, probably the most powerful country in the world, what with their armada, then one poorly commanded battle and that was it. Spain became the neutral territory it is today. Such a thing must have been inconcievable to the spaniards at the time! On your first point, I agree. It's probably the Brits fault, they really shifted everything around in the middle east after WW1... On your second point I also agree. My dates may be incorrect, but I believe Pope Urban II declared the crusade against Islam two hundred years before the Battle of Tours (the battle that stopped the Muslim Invasion). Plus, the Europeans were attempting to conquer each other anyway. On that account, of the whole conquer-and-kill thing, I believe both the Muslims and the Christians were in the same boat. They both conquered. BUT--look at how far Islam got. Now look at how far Christianity got. Christianity has been spread predominantly across several continents, while Islam has, more or less, a bit of Asia, most of the Middle East, and some of Indonesia. That's it. True. But in the middle ages, would a Muslim enjoy the same freedoms in France or Austria? I think that the Middle Ages lasted a bit longer than our modern age (which probably begins at the Industrial Revolution). So the Muslims have the Christians beat--they've been nicer for longer, even if they aren't that nice any more. Alright, but isn't it harder to give up your wealth when you already have it? Jesus may have always been poor--but Mohammed was poor at first, then became rich, then, when he began preaching, gave it all up to get his message across. That's proof enough for me that the man believed in what he was teaching. I wonder what would have been better...whoever Batista named as his heir...or Fidel... But with a lunatic president at the helm and half the nation supporting him, don't you think the United States, now significantly more powerful than the Soviets ever were, is a much greater threat? The Japanese would have given up. They were brainwashed by Hirohito, but they would have given up. Anything was better than dropping two goddamn atomic bombs.
Well we have been using the military in the past 10 years. We obviously need it other wise when ingnore the world things like Rwanda happen. The Romans stood for over 1,000 years and they had the entire known world. Absolutly wrong the crusades were done after the Islamic empire was divided. The Battle of Tours was done while the Islamic empire was still unified. The is more then a couple 400 years in the diffrence of the dates. Don't even try and compare Bush to Stalin. It makes you look like a fool. Stalin had killed more people then Hitler. Then why did we have to drop them? The fire bombing killed alot more people then the atomic bombs did.
We were "using the military" before then tooPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image! How does this debate my point? The Romans took a lot longer to rise to power than we did. This I will get to later, I have to go soon. I know that. I wasn't comparing Bush to Stalin. I was comparing the US to the Soviet Union. The United States, as of now, is more powerful than the Soviet Union ever was. And, with a crazy person at the helm, significantly more dangerous. I don't know if you've checked into the history of Russia, but Stalin wasn't the Soviet Union's only leader. You tell me.
You mean like in vietnam where we could not minimize civilian cassualties and had a large amount of cassualities on our side. You say great states fall apart quickly. U.S. took a century to get to become a notable power in the world and WWII to become a super power and the cold war to become THE super power. Well we don't have a crazy person at the helm. We don't even have a helm. A president dosen't have that much power. USSR has not liberated nearly as many people as the United States has. Did you just read that part of my post? We were killing more japanese by not droping the atomic warhead. Buy doing that it shows that resistance is useless. Surrender or die. Even thought fire bombind killed many more people they still thought they had hope.
The Moorish (Islamic) invasion of Europe began in 711 AD, which preceded the first Crusade by nearly 400 years. Islam being generally isolated to the Middle East and Asia is not due to their lack of imperialistic efforts, but rather their inability to conquer the whole of Europe and hold the areas they did overrun. Who was nicer 800 years ago is irrelevant. I care who is nicer now, in the recent past and for the foreseeable future. I don't know which is harder. I don't really care for either idea. Maybe Mohammed did believe what he was teaching. Teaching that the earth was flat and believing it didn't make it so, did it? Do you have any proof that Bush is a lunatic other than that he apparently doesn't share your views on foreign policy? The Japanese didn't even surrender after Hiroshima was vaporized by our first atomic bomb. What makes you think they would have surrendered the moment a US Marine stepped foot on their shores? The bottom line is that dropping the atomic bombs probably saved hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives and definitely saved tens of thousands - if not hundreds of thousands - of American lives.
Irrelevant. Not cutting military spending is not the same as not being able to cut military spending.
Eugene Victor Debs Leon Trotsky Ernesto "Che" Guevara Patrice Lumumba Gamal Abdel-Nasser Ho Chi Minh(for beating the US, not for being a good guy per se) are the first that come to mind off hand.
A minor point at this juncture, but just to set the record straight. It was Hirohito's generals who were passionate about starting the war in the first place and not giving up at the end. I've seen numerous references to the analyses of the time which leaned toward the conclusion that Hirohito himself actually had a good bit of Buddhism in his soul and would never have chosen war as a path on his own. The American leadership believed that he had a strong pacifist streak and were careful to maintain his dignity after the surrender. His pleas to the citizenry to regard the occupation forces as friends, and their continued respect for his leadership, are given a lot of credit for the speed, harmony, and success of the rebuilding effort. As for whether nuking civilians brought the war to a speedier conclusion and saved lives in the long run, people will argue that forever. Some say they would have kept fighting until we shot the last four-year-old and the last flag hit the ground; that the only way to get them out of that mindset was to convince them that Americans are a people with absolutely no honor and we would commit as heinous an act as necessary to win. Others say Hirohito would have finally grown a backbone and shamed the generals into backing down rather than be remembered forever as the guys who caused the total destruction of Japanese civilization. I say we are clever enough to have found a third path. Perhaps sending Korean or Chinese troops in to occupy the first fallen Japanese city, using their racism against them. The civilians would have been so outraged that they might have rebelled against their own military leaders. Regarding Islam: don't forget it has a huge presence in sub-Saharan Africa. Kenya, Uganda, Somalia, etc. Must be more than a hundred million Muslims on that continent not counting Arab North Africa. And for all practical purposes it has ALL of Indonesia AND Malaysia, two gigantic countries. And its foothold in North America has grown too large to ignore. The Sufi movement is catching fire in the U.S., displacing Zen as the exotic Asian religion du jour. Fortunately it is the pacifist branch of Islam, Mohammed's Quakers, as it were.
