Why does America keep fighting wars against ideas?

A

alex=

Active member
First, communism in Vietnam, not radical islam (or jihadism, or terrorism, you really could say either of the 3) in Iraq and Afghanistan.

You can't fight a war against something that doesn't have a physical body, or those who practice guerrilla warfare (VC and Al Qaeda or the Taliban). Well, practically you could but the way we fight isn't suited for guerrilla warfare (fight fire with fire).

I'm studying this in APUSH right now, so lets discuss, I'm interested about what other people think about this.
 
Because wars against ideas allow politicians to make vague, rhetorical references to the "war on terror", the "war on drugs". I personally think that it's one of the many expressions of America's unwillingness to engage in anything like total war, at least recently.
 
The US in some instances, like the ones you have described, is viewed as the world police. In vietnam we were simply trying to protect the ideals of communism from spreading.
 
I know, that's a common opinion. But why did we care so much about commmunism spreading? Why should we care so much? Just to stab at the Soviets?

Also, after the Tet offensive in '68, we knew we were fighting an invisible enemy but continued to dump lives and money into Nam. Why do you all think?
 
Because "we" think we're right about everything. The people who make the decisions (whomever that may be) are arrogant, selfish people that can't and don't seem to see the other side of things.
 
How many wars have been fought over religion...? I'm pretty sure most of them are just that. And that's an idea. And a lot of it has to with who's ideology is better. Look at the Cold War. It was a war of whether or not the political idea of communism was better than capitalism and vice versa.

wars are such a good idea!

said no one evar
 
Yeah duh we're selfish. What's the point of not being selfish. If something is gonna negatively affect you and you have the power to stop it, then fucking stop it. It's called being a winner.
 
Read the Clash or Civilizations, you shall find out. Basically the ideas are excuses. Also most of the idealogical wars have ended. Like the author of CoC says.
 
Be cause the spread of communism was a very serious threat during those times, you have no idea how serious the scare was because you werent alive, neither was I.

And communism is a TERRIBLE TERRIBLE thing. Both my parents were born and raised in communist controlled Poland, the shit they talk about is nuts.
 
i mean who knows how powerful it would have gotten if nobody did anything about it. sure, it didn't exactly effect us directly at home i guess, but what if like a decade later it had enough power to match the US and then became a problem for us. we wanted to stomp it out before it got out of control and became a much bigger problem
 
We weren't (aren't) opposed to "communists" for purely ideological reasons. They provided an economic system that wasn't or still cannot be compatible with ours. America is just imperial capitalism, so the more countries developing their own independently functioning economies, the worse off we are. We cannot exploit their resources if they don't abide by our economic system. It certainly isn't because we are afraid of new ideas. These wars have much more material purpose than that.
 
Well it's never been given a chance, so as the market continues to fail worldwide we will just have to wait and see how things pan out!

 
it was a literal case of "if they aren't with us, they're against us"

It ended up being a waste in the end, but the ideological reasoning was sound to start off with.
 
I'm not a communist. I do not support the ideology or countries who do (even though they really dont).

But, communism did not need to be stopped. Why does the U.S. claim to believe in freedom when we do not allow countries freedom of governance? It's basically saying, "You can have any type of government you want, as long as we approve of it."
 
Ill only cover a very small amount of the things but here-

-buying a new apartment meant paying a down payment, and monthly payments for 10-30 years before getting your apartment. Most couldnt even afford this (this meant up to 3 generations living in a single home)

-Healthcare was provided by the gov, sounds good right? Wrong, the medical services were garbage. If you wanted a doctor to do anything well or have surgury you needed to bribe them and the nurses. Or go to a private practice that only the super rich could afford

-My parents tried a ton of fruit for the first time when they came here since nothing was available

-Stores were empty, you could only buy something if you had a gov issued stamp, these stamps were hard to get and there would be lines waiting to get the newly shipped in food

-Wages were almost to low to live on, you could only afford the most simple life possible

-factories were gov run, and the unions were 100% controlled by the gov. In other words nobody had a say

 
hah 2016.. Honestly though Ron Paul. Sorry to break your heart, but completely unregulated free markets with zero state industry or intervention is even more of a utopian fantasy than communism ever was.
 
Hey really sorry to offend you, but sitting around and soaking up what your parents have told you isn't going to help your case. Have you ever tried to apply a little bit of objective critical thinking to the matter? Newsflash, the Eastern Bloc and the USSR didn't fail entirely because of their own internal problems.Try telling the US's massive percentage of impoverished citizens what its like to be able to have healthcare, eat produce, buy an apartment, find jobs, or find jobs where they will have union representation.
 
Maybe we aren't actually fighting for those reasons. Maybe it's about underlying shit like money, resources, etc.

Fighting an idea that people are afraid of is an easy way to drum up support. Like the war on terror. It's a fucking sham

I mean hell we even have the war on drugs. There's a war on drugs, you can be locked up for huge sentences yet the pharmy companies are making a fuckload of money selling everyone drugs. There's a drug for everything and that's great, unless the government or massive corporations don't have a hand in it.

As a nation we lack principle. These war's are disgusting. We aren't fighting for anyone's freedom right now, just another bullshit lie.

Our government is comprised of fucked up people with the interests of themselves and groups with money in mind not yours or mine.
 
Communist Poland was a terrible place, but there are plenty of horrible capitalist places to. For example in Colombia, a capitalist country they deal with the homelessness problem with death squads. We can go back and forth like Christians and Muslims saying "you did the crusades" vs. "you did 9/11", but people are good and people are bad. Russia was not a good place to try communism, because it was not a manufacturing economy. Even today, communism has never been attempted in the type of economy it was meant for, and we may never know if it works. Personally I think we should stick with the free market system, but I see nothing wrong with communism itself. Either way, i am sory your parents had to live in Poland at that time.
 
Communism should never be attempted in a spread out agriculturally based country like the soviet union. The model was made for a population dense, manufacturing based and culturally complacent place like England(the island itself, not the empire).
 
Thats a ridiculous statement. Communism in the Soveit Union was an experiment that failed miserably. How many capitalist states have failed miserably?
 
Don't say that it failed miserably. They turned a backwards peasant nation into an industrialized world superpower within 15 years. They were the pivotal piece in the defeat of the nazi's during WWII. Their economy was booming through WWII. Eventually capitalism caught up and the US waged an all out economic war on the soviets and when Stalin was replaced they changed their ways for the worse. They didn't fail miserably until they took a less communistic road.

And to the guy talking about communism being a bad idea in unindustrialized nations. You are probably right. Orthodox Marxism certainly doesn't suggest communist revolution in agriculturally based peasant nations. The necessary ingredients just aren't there. That being said, planned economy has worked wonders in the USSR and began to in China before a few failed Maoist campaigns followed by Deng Xiaoping's reform.
 
I like some of the examples people give about why capitalism is bad. Some real free market capitalism is pretty fucking awesome. Unfortunately that's not what we have, and that's now what many so called "capitalist" countries have.

If you're going to hate something hate it for what it is.
 
So you guys talking about Communism, you guys do understand that humans have never actually seen true Communism at a national scale right? The fact that most Communist countries have a leader and/or a controlling central government shows that it was not true Communism. There are a number of small communes in North America that actually do pretty good for themselves. Sure, they aren't actually accomplishing anything outside of their commune (nor should they if they actually believe in what they are doing), but they are doing it, successfully.

I actually think there is room for Communism at a large scale, but it has to happen from the bottom up, and everyone has to be in on it. If you force one person to become Communist, the whole thing will fall apart. This is personal opinion though, so you know, grain of salt.
 
Was any single one of those countries given the chance to develop on it's own without either a material or economic war waged against it? No.

The average living conditions are shit in China because they have liberalized their economy without any regard for working conditions until the 2008 Labor Contract Law (dont bring up the 1994 labor law because they didn't implement it). Also peasant living conditions have grown vastly since before 1949.

Learn how to think for yourself. Learn how to think critically. Learn that before you attack communism you need to understand what communism means and where the ideas came from. None of those countries were the product of the material circumstances Marx had predicted and never did they achieve communism. None of those countries ever would have claimed to be. They all attempted socialism on the road to communism but were bombarded by western imperialists who needed their resources. You are the product of western propaganda just as much as you think the people in "communist" countries are the product of communist propaganda. Do not tell me people in North Korea are brainwashed when at the same time you produce a response as shitty and un thought out as you just did.

 
The problem with large scale communism is there's a lot more room for things to go wrong. Smaller communes where people like things the way they are and work together for the greater good. Once you try to apply that to a national scale at this point there's a lot that can go wrong.

Idk, I'm going drinking
 
I agree. I guess I worded it wrong. When I refer to 'national' I'm more picturing a world without nations, per say.

I believe an answer to a lot of problems going on right now is to decentralize government and have overlapping bi-laws of sorts. I think we, as a species have outgrown nations and centralized government. If we are going to continue in the direction of globalization of industry, resources, and economy we can't have random borders hindering the flow of whatever it is we are trying to move. It especially starts to make sense when you look at some of the countries that are getting royally screwed right now due to the borders that were drawn by others (Africa would be the prime example).

To bring this all back to the actual topic of this thread, it's not like America's "idealistic" wars are anything new to humanity. Europe was all over that shit when they were the empires at the time. In the end though, there is a true agenda behind every idealistic war ever fought. The idealism they put forth is, for the most part, the governments way of getting the people behind them, allowing the war to go forth in the first place. In the end, all wars are fought for resources at their root.

To eliminate nations and modern centralized governments might not end wars, but I think it would be a step in the right direction for humanity. Of course, this would open a whole new can of worms: trying to evenly disperse resources to everyone equally seams like an impossible task at this point in time, but it has to happen eventually if we ever want to progress as a species and survive. Humans can be a stubborn species, and to fully accept different ideologies without judgement might be the biggest hurtle we will face in the near future. I mean, racism is still a very real thing all around the world... and it's completely illogical.

Now that I've gone and said all that, bring on the opposition!
 
It's for oil. No joke. I'm on mobile right now but what does the world run on? Oil. If the illuminati does exist they are oil moguls. Why was alcohol illegal in the 20s and 30s? Because it could be used to fuel cars as ethanol. All of fords original models ran on ethanol rather than petroleum. Oil moguls were the biggest advocates for prohibition.

What did 9/11 have to do with Iraq? Huh, good question. Nothing. I do not believe that 9/11 was a conspiracy but I do believe that we used it as an excuse to raid Iraq for their oil.

Why do you think the middle east Hates us so much? Or the rest of the third world for that Matter? We're bullies, we strippe countried far less wealthy than us of their only valuable resource and act

Like our hands are completely clean. 50 years ago when American politicians went to the middle easy they were praised in the streets, now they can't travel without a convoy.

There's more but I don't wanna type it out. Why is weed legal? Hemp makes excellent biodiesel, far better than soy. Biodiesel is the fuel of the future but it's available today.
 
Actually, Catalonia had communism in its true form very very briefly at one point.

Also, OP, you realize that we are not fighting a war against Islam in the Middle East right? And the Gulf War was not about helping Kuwait.
 
This.You don't know how bad communism is until you've lived under it. You think the North Koreans are having a better time over there than we're having in America? America fought those wars to free the people who were forced to live under communist dictators.

'murica.
 
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These ideas OP speaks of tend to be terrible ideas and just fuck shit up all over the world so that's why America fights them.
 
to keep FEMA in power. if there is a war on something, FEMA is in full control of what is going on. Don't believe me? read the article called "FEMA: The Dark Underbelly."
 
Im not quite sure.. But I think you just mixed up your words. You meant that America fucks shit up all over the world right? I think that would make a lot more sense.
 
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