The only way I could see the second option is if America and consequently the rest of the world were at the brink of economic sosial break down. In order to survive America would go to war. There would be no united coalition to fightthe US as Erope would likely join the US. Even if there was US would likely come on top (at least it would be a fair fight) do to Americas technological supuriority.

Ok, there are 2 things in this world that will never happen. The American mainland will never be invaded and the Russian mainland will never be invaded. No matter what else happens in the world, those cannot occur because of the nuclear arsenal of Russian and America. No country would dare oppose those 2 superpowers for fear of their annihilation. And another thing that will probably never happen is peace in the middle east but I'll atleast acknowledge that it's possible, albeit unlikely in the foreseeable future.

That highlights the most disturbing school of thought of the 21st Century which has been floating around on the internet. The idea that if you were to fall off your pedestal you would ruin it for everyone else just for spite. That "take them down with me" thinking may be awesome for action films but not so awesome for the 6 odd billion inhabitants who share this planet with you. Its not cool or awesome to go down in blazing nuclear glory, only to realise you have to keep on living in a world you ruined. Good on you for seeing that.

Dude, politic haven't been about the fear of annihilation for some time. Did the USA force china to devalue their currency by waving their nuclear arsenal? Did they threaten to push the button when Venuzuela started al that anti-american rant? Is nuclear war an option on the table for negotiating with Iran and North Korea?
what you say about invasion is true, but you should include everyone else in the nuclear club as well. Nuclear arms are the best deterrent against invasion (Iran knows it), as it allows an inferior force to cause a disproportionate amount of damage against a superior force. As a diplomatic tool however, there is much found to be wanting.

actually WW2 made the USA.

If you have any doubts over this consider one thing.

Had the US not given loans to Europe to rebuild(money which went back directly into the US) Europe would have been unable to afford to buy anything from the US and local industries would have reestablished themselves quicker and europe wouldnt have had sizeable debts with intrest to the US.

See the US got there money back thrice.
Through Intrest
Through Direct payments that included inflation
and Through its own Industires which were supplying the rebuilding of europe, which the govement of course taxed.

Second, the INTREST on those warloans up and untill around 1981 Was exceedingly large making up actual % of the US income.

Had the US not loaned europe money the US would have stayed in adepression and possibly could have even had cival war, been invaded by mexico etc.
Now you laugh however during the depression people were migrating from the US to Mexico for a "better life"



Another thing is the US in conjunction with the Jewish State are guilty of the majority of all human rights abuse and war crimes in the last 50 years.

Of course you can disagree... however I would point you to the United Nations Website and to leaf through warcrimes section.
Of course I guess the UN is a terrorist commite?

If you still have doubts
Go look up Kosovo conflict and and find the US commanders review of it.

After he wrote the review he was prematurely retired.

why?
He found

The US purposely and directly targeted civilan structures to cause loss of life and morale.(agasint international conventions on war)

The Us let Turkey use chemical weapons

The entire Premise of the war broke international laws and was infact UNLAWFUL by both US and INternational law from the outset.



Btw if you do check out the Warcrimes section you will see the US is responbile for assinating democratic govements and replacing them with dictators.

That the CIA has written a "terrorist handbook" for a terrorists in other countries they deem hostile to the US, one time resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths as US supplied terrorists went from town to town executing raping and tortureing.

All agasint US law.
Not to mention international.
Yet not a single US citizin has been charged at anypoint in time for any of these things.

Hell the Us paid a PR frim to make up a story to get the UN to invade Iraq in the first golf war and they even got a 15year old girl toget up infront of the UN and LIE.
Was anyone punished? no.


Yet fly a planes into some buildings and kill 3000 thousand people.
a Piss all ammount.

and its scream bloody murder.

Think on this.
Millions of people each year in the US die from diseases directly related to obesitiy, infact the death toll from obesitiy some years in the US is higher then the total death toll worldwide due to war(not including war related non combatant deaths such as lack of food/housing)




The fact is sooner or later, be it large natural disarster or attack from "terrorists" and the US will be so hurt it will require international aid.

Since its currently common knowledge that "terrorists" that are wanting to attack the US have over 20 20kiloton russian nukes and that they have worked out how to bypass to trigger codes(evidence found in afganastain.. a nuclear testing bunker)

It will be sooner rather then later and if the rest of the world is lucky they wont set the bombs up in US cities but drop them 10km off the coast of major population areas.

Tidal waves traving faster then the speed of sound should have a rather cleasing effect on the US mainland

People may find my post offensive.. too bad mate.

Democratic govements require the govement be answerable to the people, which means the people are responbile for the govements actions and enforcing laws upon it.

What the US govement is guilty of the US people is guilty of.

If my govement(australia) drops a bomb on a group of kids, and the suvivors grow up and do a terrorist attack back agasint us and it kills one of my children.

The fact is I AM directly responsible for my childs death, because I am responsible for what my govement does and the reprecussions of those actions.

Afgan and the Iraq war is the biggest witch Hunt in the history of the world with the largest death Toll.

Now I may come across as hating the US.. I dont.. its a beautiful country.. its just a shame about the people that live in it.

I dislike any human who thinks its right to force others to there line of thinking by the threat and use of violence and agression.

I just wish SOME people would ask questions.

Such as
When suddam used chemical Artillery rounds to punish some of his subjects.
Where were the Shells made
Where was the Chemical Agent made?
Who had observers present.
Who shiped bodies back to there own country to autospy to further there own biological and chemical "defence programs"

THE USA.

Didn't the great depression end in 1939? WW2 was from 1939 to 1945. AFAIK, the US started giving the loans to Europe after 1945.



Proof please.



Proof please.



Proof please.



Proof please.



Exact numbers please.



Proof please.



Accusations without proof will generally upset people.

1) A national debt is not necessarily a bad thing. Actually, every country on Earth is in debt in some way or another. From a purely economic standpoint, a national debt has no effect on the market.
2) The current US debt is only about 33% of GDP. Many, many, many European (Italy, for example), Asian, and African countries have national debts several times their GDP.
3) The US national debt is mainly debt from the government to its citizenry. Only a small fraction of that debt is owed internationally, and the US government budgets a considerable amount of money each year to debt relief.

The US isn't going anywhere.

Gabal

I pointed you where to get the proof from a international body.

If I posted ANYTHING in the thread you would have claimed its false and wrong.

So I point you towards a world body which has a website which has majority of all the data im talking about and you reply with.

"proof please"

Now proof is a funny thing because I could link you to sites which say the annual death due to obesity in the US is only in the thousand range, others with in hundreds thousand and others higher.

The reason why is that obesity has many secondary effects that cause death and some and sometimes aint included in diffrent studies.

So instead of linking to a site which gives death % I have decided to link you to one which gives you the total expenditure and toll of obesity in the US in relative terms.
(us gov site btw)
http://win.niddk.nih.gov/statistics/

some intresting snippets
"
: What is the cost of overweight and obesity?

A: Total Cost: $117 billion
Direct Cost: $61 billion*
Indirect Cost: $56 billion

*A recent study estimated annual medical spending due to overweight and obesity (BMI >25) to be as much as $92.6 billion in 2002 dollars—9.1 percent of U.S. health expenditures.[12]
"

then we have relative deaths.
"

Q: What is the mortality rate associated with obesity?

A: Most studies show an increase in mortality rates associated with obesity. Individuals who are obese have a 10- to 50-percent increased risk of death from all causes, compared with healthy weight individuals (BMI 18.5 to 24.9). Most of the increased risk is due to cardiovascular causes.[1] Obesity is associated with about 112,000 excess deaths per year in the U.S. population relative to healthy weight individuals.[9]
"
Remember... thats RELATIVE to per healthy weight death......
and obesity increases your chance of dieing from side effects by 10-50% from all causes...
What does this mean exactly?

It means your got a 10-50% higher chance of dieing from a heart attack
It means your got a 10-50% higher chance of dieing from dieabeties.
IT Means your got a 10-50% Higher chance of dieing from Kidney failure.
and so on and so forth.

You're right Drathkar, some people will find your post offensive. Offensively stupid. You weren't doing too bad till your blatant antisemitism came through, congrats on being a blind racist that can only see one side of a story. I'd shred your post, but it's beneath even my petty attentions.

I completley agree that politics are not about the fear of annhilation. However, when politics fail, the deterrent to war is the fear of destruction of the earth. The United States and Russia have enough nukes to wipe out the planet. I mention them because they have like 50 times more nukes then all other countries combined. Nuclear weapons aren't a bargaining tool... yet and if they're ever used as one too loosely then there's gunna be trouble. Look at the Cold War, that's the war of the future.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons

Mathias, the problem is that the US is currently developing and hopeing to field by 2012 fully automated combat robots which wont require any human input so that the USA can fight wars without suffering ANY human casualties.
THats fully automated.. not human controled.

I assume Other countries are also developing such weapons.. and if anything is going to destablize the world its the ability to kill without being killed.

psychoak
So I shouldnt hate people who support terrorism.. who break international laws.. and who kill without remorse and deem human life which isnt there own country worthless?

The Jewsish STATE happens to be the ONLY country in the world which makes LEGAL Torture.
It also happens to be the only country in the world that allows the Torture of one human to get information out of another.. such as tortureing the baby of a mother.

Take a look at Palastinian attacks agasint Isreal.. then look at the death tolls on both sides of military and Cilvian personal.

One side has unguided and faulty rockets filled with gunpowder.. a low order explosive.

The other has high tech weapons including laser guided munitions.

How is it that the SIde with the better more accurate and guided weapons always manages to kill hundreds of innocent people.

Jewish settlers get there children to pelt aid groups helping Palastinine families with rocks and the Isreali soldiers stand by and LET it happen.
Guess what the soldiers do if they throw rocks back?

Now.. It just so happens that Isreal gets soldiers from all over the world If there Jewish to defend there "homeland"

Islamic states are apparently bad
jewish fundermentalist states are apparently GOOD.

Link please.



Thanks. Still, you initially spoke of numbers, not probabilities. And where are the numbers of the total death toll worldwide due to war(not including war related non combatant deaths such as lack of food/housing)?

And by proof, I mean facts that proof beyond a reasonable doubt the accusations you are speaking of are truth.

I can not prove that any of those accusations are false beyond a reasonable doubt, but I do not have to.



That's very interesting. I've heard of improving the unmanned combat drones, but not of developing fully automated drones. In my experience though, fully automated means fully repetive, IF A then B, IF X then Y, IF NOT X then A. Thus its not very good for a expensive robot in a dynamic combat zone. Contrary to science fiction, there is still no programing code that learn or do anything completely on its own. There needs to be a programer who makes the code.

*Ignores Drathkar's anti-american and misinformed post and goes on to another post*



That's correct, for the US anyway it ended just before the war began. Reference here: Great Depression



Considering my family served World War 2, Drakhars post spits in my face and my family who fought and died to protect foreign countries and the US.

yes it is a good thing, you know why? because we have let the jews be the whipping boy for us, for arabs, for the nazis and any other people, I find your post offensive becasue my step cousins are jews. I think your just racist, and you turn a blind eye to what the arabs have done. The jews are good people and they torture those terriost bastards because they have to, you cant just sit them and down and say, "Well Abdul old boy, would you be kind enough to tell us where that bomb is so we can disarm it? and would like some more tea?" Also you nedd some cold mother******* to torture babies, and I dont think the jews have any like , since would probally remind them of when the Nazis did to their children. Hope you apoligize for that comment Drakhars   ,

International law is a joke, has been since it was started. The only country to abide by the Geneva Conventions to date is the evil empire itself. In every war we've been in, civilians have been used as shields, children sent out with grenades, disease used as a weapon, villages massacred for cooperating, captured soldiers tortured for information or just for the hell of it.

I frequently despise my loathsomely stupid country because it abides by a piece of paper created by a confluence of idiocy. It's idiotic not to kill civilians in a war. WW2 ended because the allied forces started killing axis civilians. The Germans and Japanese killed millions of civilians before we firebombed and nuked them, broke their will, and ended a war that could have dragged on for another 100 years the way the English wanted to fight it. They literally would have needed to run Germany out of people in order to win. That idiot Montgomery could have destroyed Rommel repeatedly, but every time they retreated, he left them alone. The fuckers would actually break for tea in the middle of a battle. Honorable war is stupid war.

When they retreat, you run them down and kill them. When you find a civilian factory producing munitions, you blow it up, in broad daylight while they are working in it if you can. You scorch farm lands, destroy levee systems, raze every bridge you can find, and starve the fuckers into submission. War is just like any other problem. When the shit hits the fan, the instinct for self preservation will solve the problem. Grinding each other into hamburger for a couple decades till someone gets bored is stupid. When your enemy surrenders unconditionally, then you're supposed to be honorable. Screw the Geneva Conventions, and screw the UN. They are the leading cause of death in this world by prevaricating themselves into perpetuating bad behavior by people that wont take care of themselves.

As to the rest of your propaganda laden post, do you really believe that shit? Some guy blows himself up on a school bus and you have the balls to call Israel out on targeting civilians? Sorry to be a horrible terrorist, but I'd turn the entire region into a sheet of glass. The women and children in Palestine don't deserve to live. They don't just put up with that shit, they run around cheering them on, how proud they are for their suicide bomber relatives that go blowing up people eating dinner in retaliation for existing. They have no grievances, they've been supported by Israel for decades after starting a war, losing it, and being offered back what was taken from them fairly in reprisal for their attacks. Offers they refuse, and then refuse again when their new demands are met.

The catchword here is "hopes to field" not "will field". Seeing how the military procurement for robotics is a rather convoluted hand wringing process, and full of unrealistic specifications (the specs for the man-portable Packbot required it to have a fire extinguisher plus an assortment of feature to make it close to 40kg to practically build). There is also the ethical considerations of using combatants which cannot disobey an unlawful order such as killing of wounded, civilians etc. Even so, there are problems with identifying hostiles from non-combatants and general flexibility. Humans eyesight is still found to be far superior in multiple target acquisition and tracking, so in short, It'll be some time before we see terminators on the battlefield.
As for zero casualty wars? Dying in war is necessary to remind us how horrible it is.
Of course, these days we easily forget that real causes requires real sacrifice and hope that one day, you can go to war, frag some noobs and use you haxor skills to win the war.

You need help psychoak. Seek profesional counseling as soon as possible.

Therapy is for people that can't handle reality, here's hoping we never face it, you wont.

woo advocating genocide on an internet forum sure proves my masculinity woooo

Calm down dude, it was actually the USA which promoted the doctrine of daylight precision bombing against industrial targets whereas it was the British who argued for nightime carpet bombing with incendiaries to target civilians. The general consensus in the military is that the indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets fails to break morale (it has the opposite effect) and is at most a nuisance to production. Humanity is generally proud it left the above mentioned behaviour behind long ago, but by all means, you can lead by example and let the success of your actions convince the world that a conscience is a liability.

Dude, if we did not we would be just like the terriost, and how can we say we are fighting for what is right if we just end up killing the people whe are trying to help.

we havent had a negative growth quater yet how the fuck are we in a recession

Here's my idea, I say that we privatize the military and shift from a consumer based economy to a war based economy. What we'd do is instead of having the government pay for the war in Iraq, it would instead be funded by rich people who actually want the war to continue, that way the world won't hate us (directly) and the money we get from loaning out our forces stimulates the economy. But what if the nation is under attack? In that case the military is recalled from wherever it is and is then used to defend the country which only can occur after a 2/3 supportive vote from Congress and the House. Subsequently, we have solved our war problem and supply the economy with i long lasting source of income!

Privatizing of a military and turning war into business will create the necessity for perpetual war in order to sustain the military. People will still hate the nation for unleashing the scourge of "Market Base Proxy Warfare" into the world. Although income generated from such ventures will be quite considerable (profits directly proportional to the amount of conflict in the world) the Corporate-Militaries will become somewhat supra-national with independent territories outside that of the original nation so taxing them could prove difficult. Recalling them will be near impossible as you've let the genie from the bottle and it doesn't want to go back. Neat idea though, too bad about all the killing.

Gee someones grandaddy fought and died in ww2?

My great great Uncle happend to be a POW and he was nuked by Americans....
Of course you happend to nuke your own POW's too, infact one managed to survive the nuke but he didnt survive the Lynch mob that hung him up by the neck on a pole(there is a picture of it thats quite distressing, also a picture of a japanese woman holding her baby who was carbonized directly under the bomb)

Also lets remember some facts
Which country haulted Japanese expansion through Aisa?
Australia

Which countries soldiers gave Japan its first defeat?
Australia

Lets move onto US policy

Lets not forget and I quote Eisnhower
"The bombs should never have been droped"
why?
because Japan had been offering unconditonal surrender for 3 days before they were droped and the US SENATE decided that they had to show stalin that they had nukes.

If you want proof, look at old newspaper articles with Eisenhower quotes once he became president speaking about the bombs and that Japan had offered unconditonal surrender before they were droped.
OR apply through whatever govement body holds senate minutes for senate meeting the days prior to the bombs being droped.

Funny thing is, I bet the US POW were marines.. and dont marines have some thing about never leaving a man behind?



So lets get down and dirty... I find it offensive the USA can step on everything my ancestors fought and died for in WW2.
A world that was surposed to be free from one man imposing his will on another.
Has a country called the USA which holds human life cheap and thinks nothing from spending it for its own aims, which will lie cheat and even steal to accheive some measure of wealth.

Of course US citizins made there bed and there finaly going to have to sleep in it.

FBI phamlets to Police state things such as.
People wearing jeans are possible terrorists
People who attempt to enforce there legal rights(police the police) are possible terrorists
People who have an atlas in there car are possible terrorists.

Lets not forget the USA is the only democratic country in the world which has armed its police with tanks and personal flamethrowers.
I personaly cant think of why cops would need tanks or flamethwoers but apparently US cops do.