A Look at Idiocracy

[Beastro]

So, you don't care who actually committed the attack, you just want to see this other, unrelated person die as horizontal revenge? That seems like a good reason to you? Or have I completely failed to understand your meaning?

Yes, you did fail to understand me.

I said I didn't care if Saddam did it, he was poking the bear enough over the past decade to be in America's iron sights when they went stamping out those they had issues with.

North Korea quieted down for a few years and Qaddafi played ball with America's demands. Iraq was annoyance No.1 rivaling AQs previous terrorist attack at the WTC and other activities in the Clinton Era and couldn't avoid getting hit.

I do not know how to explain this to you, but Iraq had nothing to do with 911. Suadi Arabia and Egypt are where the hijackers, the closest co-conspirators to Osama bin Laden in terms of culpability, came from. The invasion of Afghanistan makes a kind of sense, if you only look at the broad strokes, but the occupation of Iraq was insanity.

The Iraq War killed over a half million people. Saddam could have been abducted by the USA and sexually violated on television every day since 911; I don't think the "we are all insane assholes for not freaking out about this" vibe would be as bad in that reality.

I happen to be a person. I get nervous when these "national will" type things, whatever they are, kill a shitload of person type things for insane reasons.

Do you understand self-preservation? Do you consider yourself a person? What am I missing here?

Of course they had nothing to do with 9/11, that is besides the point. Had Germany not declared war on the US after Pearl Harbour they'd have still been attacked because America again wanted to clear up who they didn't want on the international scene causing trouble.

The issue unlike WWII was that the US didn't want to appear to be a conqueror nor did they want to spend the money reshaping Iraq (and Afghanistan) to their whims, so they were idealistic and cheap.

They should have gone in, taken out Saddam, made an example of him and placed another dictator in charge while leaving with a passing comment about how they shouldn't rock the boat and turn out like their predecessor.

But that's nasty and mean, totally not like decades long bloodshedding like with these two countries and the Israeli/Palestine issue that could have been sorted out over half a century ago had the UN not ground the matter to a halt.

You're damn right to be nervous about the how the masses act when as one and the pull of forces we make up that are greater than us. All the more so keeping it in mind with regard to things like identity politics which effectively say you are nothing but pieces of those things.

Iraq was all about W's daddy issues, along with certain neocons getting mad that they felt Saddam's continued defiance was embarrassing for America, and, if anything, 9/11 delayed W's war in Iraq while he invaded Afghanistan. W was gunning for Iraq before Florida's dodgy ballots were even buried. Of all the recent stupid wars, Iraq was the dumbest and the least justifiable. I'm ashamed how quickly my own country, the UK, jumped on that war train too. I'll never understand Blair's thirst for it.

Because the Post Cold War was the end of history. Trouble like 9/11 shouldn't happen. We had to clamp down to keep the new age in order not realizing 9/11 killed it.

Most are ignoring what I said about the national interest and how nations have a measure of will unto their own. It doesn't matter what individuals want when a collective conscience goes looking for blood.

Yamamoto's comment about fearing that Japan had awoken a sleeping giant was closer to the truth than he realized. The problem is America's a very mellow giant and loses its anger quickly. You as a country like to be a superhero, aloof and only spending time swooping in to save the day before leaving to have everyone clean the mess up for you.

You are not empire builders and don't understand how they work because you assume hegemony doesn't need to be enforced, every country just has to become Little America and the world will be paradise.

[McAvoy]

Yamamoto's sleeping giant quote is this:

'I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.'

It's two parts. Awakening the US who at the time was a true industrial powerhouse. I could go into the stats about it, but US was just a super powerful factory country far more than most of the countries combined.

The second part is the resolve. The US had all the resolve it needed to finish the war in Europe and the Pacific. They didn't lose their anger quickly like you think they did.

Using that quote to prove something else is just wrong and out of context. Yamamoto knew of the US's industrial capability and its citizens. He also knew about Japan's. Not only that, but how the US WAS BEFORE THE BOMBING OF PEARL HARBOR. There was a big thing about not getting involved with Europe or the Pacific before Pearl Harbor.

The entire country mobilized to fight WW2. It was total war. The US didn't do that with post 9-11. That was fought with entirely the assets the US had on hand. Far different.

Apples and Oranges.