Social Question

Linda_Owl's avatar

Do you think that America is headed for additional military conflict?

Asked by Linda_Owl (7748points) April 15th, 2013

I came across this Link on the internet & I do believe that it contains a great deal of fact, but I am interested in hearing what my fellow Flutherites think. The Link is as follows

http://www.trueactivist.com/gab_gallery/the-road-to-world-war-3/

I realize that you CANNOT believe everything that you read or watch on the internet – so does this Link make any sense to you?
If America continues to wield its military power, are we headed towards a Nuclear War? I would like to believe that it could not happen, but having grown up during the ‘cold war’, it worries me that it might happen.

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45 Answers

Random1324's avatar

Anything can happen, humanity has been at war with each other since the beginning, over what each person that commands their countries, believes. So, yes, we could have another World War. Nuclear War? Maybe, just hope not.

Dutchess_III's avatar

Following, waiting to hear from people with a much greater understanding of current events than I have (or care to have.)

Seek's avatar

Well, if Star Trek is any indication, we’re going to wipe out 250 million people due to nuclear war in the next 20 years, paving the way for First Contact.

zenvelo's avatar

I had to quit watching that because it is quite distorted. It takes discrete events and tries to tie them together as part of a “plan” to purposefully cause war. And it distorts other facts, forgetting that Iran was involved in invading Iraq and has supported terrorist and insurgent behavior in other countries.

Our biggest threat right now is North Korea, and yet that does not threaten World War because the Chinese are also tired of the NK ranting and raving and disruption.

@Linda_Owl, use a little critical thinking when viewing videos on websites like that.

rojo's avatar

We are ALWAYS headed for a military conflict. It’s who we have become.

Random1324's avatar

@Seek_Kolinahr If star trek is going to come true (Lets hope NOT!) then we might want to do something, so we don’t have 250 million people die, for no reason.

Dutchess_III's avatar

…Star Trek was a science fiction television program. No more, no less.
Caution: For entertainment purposes only.

glacial's avatar

The URL alone is enough to make me roll my eyes. I’m so tired of this consipiracy theory crap.

Random1324's avatar

@Dutchess_III I know that, I’m just saying IF it does.
@glacial I know right? But humanity’s citizens can’t help wondering and being curious.

Dutchess_III's avatar

Yes, we can help it. No, we’re not all curious. Most of us don’t even give it a second thought. We just went through this.

Seek's avatar

Well, if we’re going to believe in made-up stories, might as well pick one with a happy ending of exploration and an end of poverty and world hunger.

Random1324's avatar

Still believe we’re going to have another war. If not with ourselves then with some other being.

Dutchess_III's avatar

We might even have one right here, on Fluther. Just mention “pajamas” and “Walmart” or convenience store in the same sentence and viola! You have a war!

Random1324's avatar

@Dutchess_III I haven’t been here long (If you couldn’t tell by my lurve) but I can believe that in a second.

ragingloli's avatar

@Seek_Kolinahr
‘Happy Ending’ is debatable.The Feds were at war with the Romulans, the Klingons, then there was Wolf 359, the Dominion War, and if you count STO, Romulus was destroyed, ultimately resulting in the next war against the Klingons, all the while the Borg are making their comeback, as well as the Iconians.

Dutchess_III's avatar

We need to arm ourselves against the Borgs!!!

ragingloli's avatar

@Dutchess_III
Borg. There is no plural S.

glacial's avatar

@ragingloli Yeah, but there’s no racism, except when there is, and no need for money, except when there is, and no hunger or pain, except when there is.

Dutchess_III's avatar

So sayeth the government, @ragingloli. It’s a conspiracy to convince us there is only one Borg, not the hordes of Borgs that actually exist and are coming to imprison us in trailer parks, where they will starve us by only giving us food stamps to eat.

Linda_Owl's avatar

@zenvelo , I (personally) think that I use critical thinking whenever I read anything on the interenet or watch anything on the internet. I have followed, to the best of my ability, the events of our various “wars” (starting with my memories of the Korean War) & followed by the Viet Nam War which took many of my classmates. To me it seems that our government response can be depended upon to send in military personnel. And the War in Iraq appeared to be directly tied to their oil. So, no matter how you look at it, it does appear that our government will continue to send in military personnel & that some of the decisions that are made by our government do not make sense unless you cast a wider net and try to find out what is actually going on. After all, even you must remember the lies that Bush & Cheney & Rumsfeld & Rice told that engendered support for attacking Iraq.

Seek's avatar

@ragingloli Somehow, the prospect of war is less scary when the casualties are volunteers fighting light-years away, instead of civilians who have no escape getting carpet-bombed by political factions who are consistently at odds with the actual beliefs of the people they represent.

zenvelo's avatar

@Linda_Owl Yes, I remember that, but to connect it to a World War-mongering conspiracy that it will be the direct cause of a war with Iran is a bit far fetched. And your statement views our government as an edifice that has no policy changes at all. We do have a different President and administration now.

LuckyGuy's avatar

I started listening to that video and it got me mad. He seems to(intentionally?) forget critical items. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Kadaffi (-2 sp) invade Kuwait in August 1990? Didn’t Kuwait ask for help and didn’t the UN condemn the invasion and tell him to get out? Didn’t he refuse until 5–6 months later when the Coalition forces moved him out?
Weren’t the Iraqis the ones who set all the oil wells in Kuwait on fire in the Gulf making one of the worst environmental disaster the plant has ever seen?
Just checking. And that is just one item I know about.
How many other nonsense claims are in that video?

I will say that so far every weapon mankind has developed has been used.

rojo's avatar

@LuckyGuy I think you mean Hussein, not Kadaffi. But, somethings to remember.

There were no innocent parties in that war.

The whole thing started when Kuwait used a “slant drill”—a machine that can drill an oil well at an angle—to tap the al-Rumaila oilfield.

There was historical enmity as well—Iraq had borrowed $14 billion from Kuwait to pay for the Iran-Iraq War. They were going to attempt to pay the debt by forcing the price of oil up, but Kuwait dumped a LOT of oil on the market, causing the price to go down.

On July 25, 1990, US Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie told Saddam Hussein, “we have no opinion on Arab-Arab issues, such as your border disagreement with Kuwait.” Saddam translated that to mean, “we don’t care what you do” and, on August 2, annexed Kuwait into Iraq.

KNOWITALL's avatar

I think America is always heading for additional military conflicts.

It’s not always wrong, but it’s not always right either, and in both of those cases, it’s devastating for humans, animals and our planet, and generally good for our economy.

I remember Obama saying “no new troops in Afghanistan” just a few years ago, so it doesn’t even really matter which party is in charge, we tend to jump in anyway.

LuckyGuy's avatar

@rojo Thanks! I was working from memory and mixed up Hussein and Kadaffi. I actualy do know the difference. My mistake. The rest of the comment holds though.

jerv's avatar

@Seek_Kolinahr If you go with the Shadowrun timeline, we will lose billions from a virulent plague and the US will split up into many nations, including the South seceding again. Given that we already have megacorporations with more money and power than any government, I see the SR future as more likely than Vulcan visitors. The SR timeline lacks WW3, but has enough other issues (including rampant smaller conflicts, often between corporations) that it really isn’t much better.

ETpro's avatar

The narrator does gloss over actions that folks like Kadaffi, Saddam Hussein and the Iranian Mullahs have carried out. Further, I hardly think the the international financiers who own the Federal Reserve Bank want an all-out nuclear war, which would just as certainly kill them and their families as it would kill you and me. However, the idea of forcing the world to use petro-dollars and the attempts to establish American global hegemony are very real, and the implications are very chilling.

If you’re interested in separating facts from fiction Noam Chomsky recently gave a talk called Who Owns the World.

It’s also useful to note that we probably wouldn’t have a problem with Iran right now if our CIA had not engineered the overthrow of a popular, democratically elected leader, Mohammad Mosaddegh and had him replaced by our hand-picked puppet dictator, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1953.

Our CIA was also behind Saddam Hussein’s attempt to invade Iran after the Iranian people finally threw off the yoke of the hated US puppet Shah, whom we had originally imposed on them.

So yes, there are rouge nations in the world. We have to recognize that and be prepared to deal with them. Sadly, the US is probably chief among them. And it’s an increasingly dangerous game that will eventually result in a miscalculation leading to nuclear holocaust unless we stop it.

rojo's avatar

Here is an article by Brian Becker on the conspiracy to start the first gulf war with Iraq. It is a part of a larger Report by Ramsey Clark on war crimes in Iraq.
If you take the time to read it, just for fun, substitute “North Korea” for “Iraq” and see how similar the prelude is this time around.

JLeslie's avatar

I didn’t click on your link, but I will say that even during the cold war I never believed nuclear weapons would be launched. I wasn’t alive when kids had to do a-bomb drills in school, but there was still plenty of talk of cold war. It’s just hard to believe any country could be so awful, so crazy to launch a nuclear missle and start a war. As far as I know America is the only country to push a button and launch such a devastating device, but at least it was to end a war. Not that I think it was ok, I am very conflicted about it.

KNOWITALL's avatar

@JLeslie I agree completely. No one wins.

Linda_Owl's avatar

Well, @JLeslie , I was in school when we had the “duck & cover” drills & I can guarantee you that the thought of seeing mushroom clouds on the horizon gave us nightmares. Then in the late 60’s our government found out that nuclear warheads had been placed in Cuba & in Texas they called up the 49th Armored Division & it included one of my history teachers. So, the possibility of a Nuclear War scares the dickens out of me.

ETpro's avatar

I was in school during the “duck and cover” drills as well. We’d all seen film of what a small nuke did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and by then we and the Soviet Union had hydrogen bombs many thousands of times more powerful than the bombs that decimated those two Japanese cities. We knew damned well that “duck and cover” was code for “firmly grasp the the back of your knees, pull your head between your legs, and kiss your ass goodbye.” This fact was obvious for us, because my school was nestled in close proximity to the Norfolk Naval Base, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, and the Oceana Naval Air Station. We knew we would be ground zero in any all out assault.

flutherother's avatar

I didn’t watch the video. Nuclear war is an inaccurate description. It wouldn’t be war it would be disaster on an unimaginable scale.

jerv's avatar

MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) will keep the superpowers from doing anything like WW3.

Rogue states, on the other hand…

Guerrilla warfare and/or terrorist attacks are far more likely than a traditional war like WW1 or WW2.

rooeytoo's avatar

I don’t know, but you can bet that if NK does nuke someone, the USA will be in deep doo doo for not preemptively doing something to ward off the carnage.

ETpro's avatar

@rooeytoo That’s life in a superpower. Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

rooeytoo's avatar

@ETpro – yes and as time goes on I am sure there will be shouts of why wasn’t the security better at the Boston M. And these shouts will probably emanate from the same ones who were complaining about homeland security and delays at airports, etc.

Dr_Lawrence's avatar

If not now, then as soon as public support will tolerate it.

ETpro's avatar

@rooeytoo You’ve got that right.

rojo's avatar

Just for the sake of clarity I am not one of the ones @ETpro is talking about .

Yes, I am bitching about homeland security, delays at the airport AND the fact that we are about to get even more restrictions on our liberties and BUT I am NOT asking why security wasn’t better. What do we expect? A pre-crime unit that stops it before it starts ala Minority Report?

Linda_Owl's avatar

I sincerely hope that Science does not make the leap to the scenario of the “Minority Report”!

Random1324's avatar

“Why can’t we be friends…”

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