I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier

[Plane]

1915:

I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier,
I brought him up to be my pride and joy.
Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder
To shoot some other mother's darling boy?


http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/rosinger4.html



The anti war movementr is nothing new , and I do not question its legitimate role in our society .


But...

With no balance the anti war movement become a certainty of victory for any enemy that wants to attack , this encourages war ,very paradoxicly.

[Michael Tee]

<<With no balance the anti war movement become a certainty of victory for any enemy that wants to attack , this encourages war ,very paradoxicly.>>

This reminds me of 1984, War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, etc.  It's complete nonsense.

The false premise is that the U.S. is beset by powerful enemies ready to attack it as soon as the anti-war movement gains enough strength to overbalance its adversaries.

The reality is that the U.S. is inevitably the aggressor in each war it has fought since the end of WWII (with the possible exception of Korea) and so an American peace movement could hardly have been a causative factor in any of them.  In fact, the anti-war movement is usually a force for ending conflicts that were started by America's belief in violence as an acceptable political tool.

[Universe Prince]

With no balance the anti war movement become a certainty of victory for any enemy that wants to attack

Why? Are you assuming that all anti-war folks are complete and absolute pacifists? It is not so. It is possible to be anti-war and still believe in self-defense.

[Plane]

What is a defense that contains no offense?

In the planning for takeing over Europe neither the Kaiser nor Hitler considered the USA to be a freind , but neither saw much threat to their plans from us either.

If NATO had existed a lot earlyer we might have avoided World wars one and two in like manner to the way we avoided WWIII.

[Universe Prince]

What is a defense that contains no offense?

An unoffensive defense. Now I have one for you. What do you call a bull that has swallowed a bomb? Abominable. And after the bomb explodes? Noble. Anyway, you seem to be assuming that an offense means aggressive deterrence, but you have not made a case for it. Your speculations about if NATO had existed earlier are merely speculations and are therefore weak support at best.

In the planning for takeing over Europe neither the Kaiser nor Hitler considered the USA to be a freind , but neither saw much threat to their plans from us either.

You're a puzzlement. You immediately go to the World Wars, nice examples of military aggressiveness leading to major war rather than preventing war, yet you use them apparently in an attempt to illustrate your point. And I fail to see how they do so.

[Xavier_Onassis]

With no balance the anti war movement become a certainty of victory for any enemy that wants to attack , this encourages war ,very paradoxicly.

==================================
Yeah, that it how Sweden, Iceland, Andorra and Costa Rica were all overrun...

Why do you say there is no balance to the anti war movement?

Even when there is no enemy, they invent wars: war on drugs, war on terrorism.

Are we being attacked by drugs?
Are we being attacked by terror or any other abstract noun?
Was terror hiding in Iraq?

Saddam is gone, the WMD's do not exist, the one place where there were some terrorists- Afghanistan- is being ignored and again being taken over by the Taliban.

And there have been 600,000 dead Iraqis, 21,500 maimed Americans, and nearly 300 dead ones, and you fail to recognize that thyere is a very strong WAR movement in this unfortunate  country?

[Plane]

Are we being attacked by drugs?
Are we being attacked by terror or any other abstract noun?
Was terror hiding in Iraq?


[][][][][][][][][][][]

Yes
Yes
Yes

And there have been 600,000 dead Iraqis, 21,500 maimed Americans, and nearly 300 dead ones, and you fail to recognize that thyere is a very strong WAR movement in this unfortunate  country?

200,000 that we wanted to kill, good that they are gone.
300,000 Killed by our opposition , they don't care about colateral damage .
100,000 killed entirely by accident or mistake.
3000 Americans killed (do we count contractors)

More than an order of magnitude of advantage to our side , how long before the opponents tire?

[Universe Prince]

Are we being attacked by drugs?

Yes

Plane, would you please explain in what way, exactly, we are being attacked by drugs? Thank you.

[Plane]

Are we being attacked by drugs?

Yes

Plane, would you please explain in what way, exactly, we are being attacked by drugs? Thank you.

For most of its victims , seduced would be a better word.
I have known people who were hopelessly addicted , and their lives were as disrupted as any victim of violence could have been.
I have had a Friend shot to death by someone he was trying to arrest over a little bit of pot.
I even have known a victim of dread disease who broke the law for the sake of effective relief of pain and another who was very sick and needed to break the law for an effective nausea relief.

The War on drugs has been too emotional and irrational , what is forbidden should be a much shorter list .
The entire anti drug effort should be revisited and combed out to produce a rational program .
The real dangers and the mere prejudices should be separated .

There are thousands of people wasteing in prison that we don't need to have locked up.
There are thousands dieing in the huge cat and mouse game that produces and smuggles the drugs.
There are some of the worlds most nasty people financeing thier unsavory hobbys with the incredable profit.

If I were king we would just unmake the whole narcotic drug enforcement scheme .
We would make Marijuanna and a few other mild drugs as leagal now as they were in the time of George Washington.
We would re-establish the credibility of the government and the medical community and use persuasion to its utmost to educate the people about the danger of the drugs that are addictive.
A few drugs would remain forbidden and the list of forbidden drugs would be pretty short , just the ones that the FDA could not find a safe dose for at all.

People who are addicted should be treated for the desease , and allowed to waste away if they can not choose otherwise.


Since I am not king I don't expect much of this to happen this year.
So I would encourage everyone to obey the law as it is as much as possible , and vote for rational people to make the laws better at the best pace that they can.


Meanwhile the casualtys of the drugs themselves mingle with the casualtys of the war on the drugs .

[Universe Prince]

For most of its victims , seduced would be a better word.

So can we agree then that people are not being attacked by drugs? Suggesting people are attacked by drugs is like suggesting that Wal-Mart is assaulting the urban population or the middle class. It is a voluntary choice made by people, not an instance of people being attacked by Triffid-like marijuana plants.