Europe and US relations

[mutz]

America hasn't had a "foreign" war on it's own soil since 1776, and the last war on American soil was its own Civil War, which wasn't very civil. Other than those two, America hasn't experienced the utter destruction and decades of reconstruction in their homeland that many other countries have, so the common American citizen hasn't the same things confronting him in his memory that citizens of some other countries do. The perspectives are radically different.

When you have lost everything, including many of your nearest and dearest, you think more than twice before getting into that mess again. Those who have been devastated through natural disasters have that perspective too.

Life is polarity, and polarities are unstable until they find rest in the middle.

You could say the Europeans have had their belly full of violence and the Americans have a belly full of violence. The Americans want to see things as black and white, good and evil, and the Europeans, having been there, done that, know where that leads and prefer a more cautious approach.

The Americans will consider the Europeans ungrateful, and the Europeans will say thank you, but we can only repay in a currency which we can respect. The Americans will say our security is in control and the Europeans will say that's an illusion, we tried it.

...and so forth and so on...

But doesn't this all sound very familiar? Like adults and teenagers? Like capitalists and communists? Like Mac and PC? Like GeeForce and Matrox?

You can try to enforce the instabilities or seek their resolution. You can seek common ground, or just take ground.

You can always find a reason to pick a fight, but there is always a better reason not too.

[KvHagedorn]

The world wars could have been avoided by preventing the first one.

I fully understand Europeans when they shun war. They have every right and reason to. How could someone who lost so many of their relatives for nothing be expected to pay again in blood? But now they are giving away their lands and shunning their right and duty to renew their own families.. why? Because it is a terrible world? Yes, it is a terrible world. It is terrible because you let it be so. You do NOT have children.. what could be worse than that? HAVE children, and teach them well. Have the courage to stand up for yourselves and they will too.

The coming catastrophe COULD be avoided by deporting the current invaders of Europe as civilly as they have invaded. Too bad Europeans' "better natures" will not allow this until it is too late.

Courage is not going off to "die for your country." Courage is facing popular opposition and doing the unpopular thing to save those people from having to die for their country, or to be overrun and made anonymous nonentities in the very lands of their fathers. Tough choices.. but very easy to see the best one if you look. Just as easy as it would have been for Kaiser Willy to have a chat with Tsar Nicky and decide that war would suck, and stand up to their generals. Think of what the world would be like now if they had had the courage to do that...

[mutz]

...but hey, wait a minute. What are we talking about?

The "Americans" we are talking about were Europeans, and many other nationalities, who went to "America", but then again it wasn't "America" because it was there eons before Amerigo Vespuci was born. So I guess the only ones who have a right to say anything would be the "Indians", but then again they were only called Indians because the Europeans thought they had found the western route to India. So I guess they were the natives of the continent that eons ago broke off from the one vast continent that Europe was a tiny part of, but then again it wasn't Europe then and all the crazy humans were still down in Africa, which I guess makes us all Africans....

So what the hell ARE we all talking about?

[Novdid]

Who knows?!

[KvHagedorn]

We are talking about "to the victor go the spoils".. or now that we have nukes and gas and biologicals "to the victor go the spoiled".. or with the situation in Europe, "do the spoiled have the courage left to survive without war?"

I guess we will all find out.. maybe.

[RedRed]

Just as easy as it would have been for Kaiser Willy to have a chat with Tsar Nicky and decide that war would suck

you are a bit off there KV...
World War I in europe was just waiting to happen. The armies & navies of the then super-powers (yes, there were several and yes the US wasnt one of them...) were faceing each other off....
Any excuse would have done the trick.... This is at a time when the Empires were still strong, but had nowhere left to expand.

Few understood then what a minceing machine a war of that technology would be for both side, and, quite frankly, those who made the decisions probably didnt care to find out.

KV I have looked over the last few posts in the last few threads... Now, I am only joking at this but....
Perhaps you should go and pack a lumberjack shirt and head for the bad-lands... You want a US that is clean, uniform, right-wing, but with wealth distribution - (but dont tax me, mr Central government), central government to be stron, but with no control over your personal freedoms, a democracy where only men can be elected and only if you agree with it? You are fed up with the US being the worlds policeman, even when Europe as a whole doesnt want you to be theirs. You believe that europe is doomed to some sort of ethnic obliteration - which we, for the most part are too polite to see? Ill tell you what, The louisianians had better return to france, half of new york and Boston to Ireland, lets send most of the blacks in the states to africa (many of them dont integrate, they practically have their own language! as many of them are Muslim, all the better) , the chineese to china they are differnt colours and tend to live in groups , the koreans back to Korea, Heaven forbid that the Jews go back to Europe or Israel! the Mexicans back to .......
Ill tell you what.... Let Europe rot, close up your borders, crawl into a bunker somewhere and wait for the appocolypse....
The mayflower brought the first seeds of corruption to your vision of america.

RedRed

[RedRed]

and another thing:

You do NOT have children..

So what? The european average number of Kids is only slightly less than the US... Its only SLIGHTLY

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demograph...al/childbr.htm

That link blows seven shades out of Dogberts earlier, unsubstantiated, proposition that you seem so keen to espouse about us.

the average rate of childbirth in the UK is 1.61 kids per woman
In the US its 1.93

Check your facts before pontificating!

How many kids have you got?

[thop]

interesting link.

Niger 8.00

bye everyone, i'm off to Niger to start a TV Cable Company, seems they have nothing to watch there

[RedRed]

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/social/youth.htm

above the stats on the ageing populations - lets just squash that myth while we are at it!

YES WE HAVE AN AGEING POPULATION - BIG SURPRISE ITS THE SAME STORY IN ALMOST ALL THE DEVELOPED COUNTRIES

KV, ever wonder why employers are giving Mexican kids work round texas? Because there arent enough kids around to work for minimum wage!

the UK and the US are within 2% or percentage population <15 and within 4 of >60 and in BOTH cases its less than 20%

dont you realise that Dogbert was waffleing when he was making his 'gut feeling' claims?

its 2AM now and I am of to my liberal bed

[RedRed]

throp -
unfortunately you only stand a 3% chance of seeing 60!

lots of births - lots of deaths....

RedRed

[KvHagedorn]

Red, we probably agree more than we disagree.. same goes for the English and Germans before WWI. Perhaps we understand each other just enough to argue from the same point of reference, eh?

The Kaiser and the Tsar were nigh absolute monarchs. They could have stopped the war if they'd had the guts to. Yes, I've read Massie's book (Dreadnought) and know the history surrounding the first world war.. perhaps the attitude back then could be summed up as yours.. that war was inevitable. Well it wasn't, really. Not REALLY.. look at the arms race with the US and Russia during the cold war.. thank God neither side gave in to the "inevitability" of that potential conflict. They were just being silly, romantic, fools to give in to war then.. thinking it was some source of glory.. ha, by the time they found out what modern warfare was, it was too late.

Your characterization of me is a bit unfair there, don't you think? Let's leave it like that, and I won't say anything about you, since you seem to be a fine, normal fellow.

The Mexicans come here in search of work, yes, but it is the greedy builders who bring them here for their cheap yet honest labor. Greed is the sin which will undo us all, as it has in the past.

Speaking of the Empires pre-WWI, I noticed something in that link you posted..

Bulgaria 1.20(!)
Greece 1.24(!)

Looks like Turkey will get their empire back by attrition..

[az]

With CAREFUL immigration, you won't have to fear the immigrants. Now our government made some mistakes and created turkish "ghettos" in berlin (I grew up in one), and they didn't force our language upon the immigrants. These were big mistakes. But we also imported lots of korean nurses (my mother was one of them), and although they of course have korean music, culture, and dance "circles" (for lack of a better word), all the korean women (I know next to no korean man) integrated VERY nicely into our society. What about the dutch that were brought here to dry the moors? The hugenots?

I agree, though, that all those greedy builders who employ people for minimum wage (or illegally employ illegal people and pay them illegally low wages) are a BIG problem. BUT one argument that's heard all too often in germany is "those aliens steal our jobs!" that's bullshit. Virtually all trashmen in berlin are turks (well, the ones that clean the streets. The ones that drive the trucks and empty the trashcans in them actually make quite a nice living - there are not so many turks there). Which Skinhead would du such dirty work for so little money?

AZ

[KRSESQ]

""The coming catastrophe COULD be avoided by deporting the current invaders of Europe as civilly as they have invaded. Too bad Europeans' "better natures" will not allow this until it is too late. ""

This raises an interesting point. The reason so many people emigrate to Europe and America is because life in their native lands became so economically and politically intolerable that uprooting in favor of an uncertain future was preferable to staying (sound remotely familiar?)

If the tide of that emigration is to be turned then the political and economic conditions of those source-nations must be drastically altered, so that the citizens will be willing to remain. How to do this? Various means have been tried. VERY few have succeeded. Revolutions in those nations serve only to perpetuate the cycle of violence that the people are fleeing.

The only thing that prevented the mass-emigration of most of the population of Eastern Europe and Russia during the Cold War was the Berlin Wall!

GW has been trumpeting about regime-change in Iraq, ostensibly to prevent the proliferation of WMDs. A secondary effect of toppling Saddam and installing a stable democracy (assuming it's possible) would be to improve political and economic conditions
that would stem the tide of emigration from Iraq. A similar effect could be gained from stabilizing the situation in Isreal, Lebanon, and dozens of other nations around the world.

It remains to be seen if this stabilizing effect will hold true in Afghanistan.

Assuming it does, the question becomes: is the west (USA, Britain and Europe, Russia, and other "stable democracies") willing to take on the nation-building necessary to stabilize the world's hot spots and reduce, if not eliminate the need for the mass-emigrations going on today? Do we have the right or the duty to take military action to force changes in those nations to make them more stable? At what point do we decide that the current level of mass-migration is an unacceptable burden upon our economies, political systems, and cultures?

The European colonial powers left a political vacuum in many nations that were given their independence. The chaos in those nations over the past half-century is one result (the former wards of the US have done marginally better) . Are we willing to do what needs to be done to undo the damage, assuming we can come to some agreement on what needs to be done?

When do we make that decision? Before we're faced with chaotic social change in our own neighborhoods, or after its too late?

Kevin

[Joel]

I can easily see now why that other thread, that included this link, got closed so quickly. Didn't take long for this one to go downhill.

As the mod who is trying his best to sit in the middle of this one it's amazing to see how the two sides view each other. It looks as if those in the US view the Europeans as a bunch of spineless whimps while the ones in the UK view the Americans as a bunch of War Mongering Egomanics. Both views are really so far from the truth.

No there has not been a major World War fought in the US but we have seen our fair share of battles. Do you really think that we enjoying sending our young off the die in another country?? This upcoming war can be avoided, but it is up to Saddam and his like to make that decision. We don't want to have to go through what y'all have already gone through. That why we are willing to stand up to it now while we still can.

Joel

[efty]

regarding nation building is there a successful example example in recent history? The british left gave Cyprus its independence along with a crippled constitution doomed to catastrophy. Of course they had their motives and their best interest in mind, thats why I don't believe in any sort of intervention in any country's internal affairs because whoever is intervening does not care for the people's best interest but their own. This has been proven many times over and thats the case with Iraq. Do you think the american government gives a damn about the loss of people, or the fact that they are starving to death? Do you think that this war is to save the Iraqies from a tyrant? Thats all bull and totally out of place. The US just wants to secure the place for its own interests in the region.



And yes, the Europeans need to get their act up and try a bit harder. The whole mess in Yugoslavia was not wholly homebrewed but many european countries had their hands in deep enough to mess it up. And when the trouble comes they don't take responsibility. Furthermore the fact that the serbian people "revolted" against milosevic is an indication that bombing the hell out of them was not the way to go but a more subbtle approach would have been better suited.

Well it is easy to critisize when u r out of the circle but the truth is that my country has been inside the circle with everyone messing around and destroying a perfectly harmonious coexistance with the turkish cypriots.

I would like to thank all the European nations and the US for all the help they provided in dividing my country and brewing hatred between our people.

oh and this war on iraq is not for saving Helen(destroying Sadams virtually non existent WMD). History will tell what the motives were and will also show the results.