| MontanaHatchet said: "Pacifism doesn't work...in fact pacifism produces world-threatening leaders like Hitler." That's only if certain nations aren't pacifist. In other words, there's not pacifism then. And that's hardly an excuse for saying that we strike war whenever it suits us. Hitler was a product of hardship, and that hardship was a product of war. |
We can get into minutia about Hitler but it's not overly relevant here, the basic point is that the pacifism of other nations is what enabled Hitler to come as close to his goal as he did. It was a failure to recognize the threat and have the political fortitude to do what needed to be done, that put us in that situation. Honestly the similarities are there, Hitler invaded several local neighbors before he went full scale. Russia has already invaded Georgia once and was only pushed back by international political pressure and the threat of potential multi-lateral military action. So we can discuss what brings about a Hitler type person (and note i'm not suggesting we are dealing withanyone as bad or as ambitious as him), but there are several leaders poised around the globe already with malicious goals and a lot of initiative/incentive to cause trouble. They will take strategic cues from how Obama handles this differently than Bush handled Georgia to make decisions about their future goals and objectives. For that reason alone what we got out of this deal is massively important to a myriad of foriegn policy issues down the road.
As for starting wars whenever it "suits us".....well I don't think I said we should treat going to war lightly. What I said was that we can't allow other nations to walk all over us just to avoid a potential political conflict. More to the specific point though, every nation has the right to go to war when it "suits them". Now the choice should not be based on something as simple as "is there a potential benefit for us?", but the entire point of sovereignty is that you have a right to protect your interests. The key is that war is very rarely a good option and is in fact very commonly not in a nation's best interest. But when it does "suit us" and when it is in our best interest, in those cases we can and most certainly should be ready for the undertaking.
The ideal scenario is for everyone to get along...but that is completely out of touch with reality. The best we can hope for, without opening ourselves to an unneccessary existential threat, is to be completely ready for any/all opponents...but never actually have to engage them or even overtly threaten them.
PS - Your point was still a bit vague to me so I tried to address everything I thought you might have meant by it (I'm not sure what/how much you disagreed with) . I do agree there was more to hitler's rise than pacifism, but the point I was making is that pacifism played the star role in enabling his rise to the heights of world power unchecked.
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| To Each Man, Responsibility |
