Well... all these warmongers didn't do anything. They sent other people to die because they were just honorless cowards.
That's true. I recall around the time of the Iraq War, there was some journalist with a camera hanging around the Capitol and speaking the members of Congress as they walked in and asked if they would want any of their sons or daughters to go off to fight in war or if they were in the military at all. It seemed many of them were uncomfortable with being asked those kinds of questions.
Light years away from king Leonidas of Sparta who didn't send anyone to die in the battle against the Persians.
He was with them...so he was the first to die. With honor.
But such politicians don't even know the significance of the word honor.
There's a phrase one might hear from military leaders: "I would never ask my men to do a job that I would not be willing to do myself."
As long as there's no military draft, then at least we can say that those who enlist do so voluntarily. (Although that's not true in Ukraine or Russia, as I've seen videos of men being dragged kicking and screaming by press gangs enforcing their conscription laws.) But if they ever do bring back the draft and start forcing people to fight, that would be even worse.
Actually I believe it was more a matter of oilfields there...
it's always about business. Thatcher's son had some involvement in South Africa.
Conflicting interests in the case of the war on apartheid ...but unfortunately these people have neither shame nor moderation.
I suppose there may be economic interests of concern down there. I can see where it would have strategic importance as well.
But one thing about business is that it seems to care little about which government is in charge - just as long as they're willing to do business. If it's some kind of socialist government which actually cares about the welfare of its people, then Western governments see it as a threat to be eradicated. Just as Thatcher's ally, Ronald Reagan, took the mighty island nation of Grenada and eliminated the grave threat they posed to America and our way of life.
Britain lost India... and all the rest...
it didn't appear weak then...quite the contrary. Decolonization was a sign of greatness for Britain.
They weren't necessarily "weak," but they were certainly weakened on multiple levels due to the ravages of WW2 and the enormous costs they incurred.
Plus, I think they had quite an image problem they were trying to overcome, as was the U.S. Colonization, racism, apartheid, segregation - it was making us look bad, so the trend after WW2 was to disavow and reverse those policies as a sign to the world that we really are the good guys and that we've turned over a new leaf.
Britain may have lost her Empire, as did France, but the U.S. was well-armed and standing by to maintain order in the world and try to keep the former colonies within the Western fold. From an economic standpoint, one can still benefit from having a business-friendly government in charge, even they're independent and no longer a colony. In that sense, having a colony is more a matter of "national pride" or vanity. But that also seems to go along with the idea of not wanting to appear weak.
I remember some people who thought that the US giving up the Panama Canal was weak or would be viewed as a sign of weakness. The Bay of Pigs was another example. Some people thought we should have just bombed the hell out of Cuba and wiped Castro and his minions out. To not do so was considered "weak." Then there was Vietnam. Nixon's idea was that all we had to do was just keep bombing them, but we couldn't pull out, lest it be seen as "weak."
A major reason for Carter's defeat in 1980 was because people thought he was weak. He was weak on Iran over the embassy takeover, as well as weak on the USSR regarding the invasion of Afghanistan. In contrast, Reagan came off as some kind of tough guy who was going to deal with the world like some western cowboy. But in acuality, he was kind of weak, too. Trading arms for hostages is certainly weak. And then that failed adventure with the Contras in Nicaragua. If Nicaragua was really such a threat, then just invade, like they did with Grenada. To not do so in the face of such a grave threat to American soil seems...weak.
Or, maybe all these countries never really were that much of a threat to begin with, and the entire US foreign policy and military posture over the past 80 years has been built upon wild exaggerations and lies about the outside world.
It hasn't really changed much of anything or made the world any more secure. If anything, all it's done is create more problems, such as the kind we're seeing today.
Galtieri, Videla were all criminals... the inventors of state terrorism.
If Britain wanted to appear the defender of democracy and human rights, they could have also sanctioned Argentina over the military of dictatorship of 1976-1983.
But Britain has always been the loyal servant of the US Deep State that created the military dictatorship in Argentina.
US policy in Central and South America has been quite a story in itself. Some nations (such as Cuba and Nicaragua) had revolutions against their US-backed puppet governments, and for that, the US government declared them to be enemies and threats to US security.
If you've ever seen the movie "Missing," it's about a man whose son goes missing during the time of Pinochet's coup in Chile in 1973. There's an interesting scene early on the movie where they show the Italian embassy in Chile, and there's hundreds of people huddled in there as refugees, seeking asylum from the military government committing atrocities and openly killing people on the streets. But at the U.S. embassy (where they kept denying that the U.S. had anything to do with the coup), absolutely no one was going there for shelter. The missing man's father is in the ambassador's office and looks out the window and sees that the embassy grounds are completely empty and says "Maybe that's why there's no one out there."
The man ended up suing the US government and even named Kissinger in the lawsuit, but it was dismissed due to lack of evidence. It seems most of the evidence was withheld due to reasons of national security. And then people wonder why there are conspiracy theories.
EU member states have been at peace for 80 years.
Speaking of animals...we believe war is animalistic because we have had Mussolini and Hitler.
Because we have evolved since 1945.
We convinced ourselves that war is something monstrous and primitive.
And whoever speaks of war or normalizes war will be called fascistic in Italy.
Americans have said similar things, about how evolved we've become. We're a lot different now than we were in 1945, that's for certain. But we were on the verge of a great many changes. War may be animalistic, but oftentimes our leaders paint it as humans having to tame the "animals" and "savages" of the world. In a sense, war may be viewed as kind of like bullfighting or lion taming. Americans might even see Europe as being "tamed" by us, which is why they're peaceful now, yet they've also been America's trusty sidekick ever since.
Kind of like this:
