No, I'm going to have to call you on this one on several key points.Originally Posted by Skiz
Not in a malicious manner as omara suggested. No, no it hasn't.
Have buildings been destroyed and civilians lost their lives in engagements that the USA participated in? Of course. War is a bitch. Shit happens, and all.
We are usually fighting for those who cannot fight for themselves. We have also played a major factor in rebuilding these countries' infrastructure from current operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and dating as far back as post WWII Japan.
The bottom line is this - the USA has never gone in and attacked another country in a malevolent manner.
In the case of Vietnam how in any way did the U.S. help in rebuilding infrastructure ? One of the major offensives of this war was the deforestation of large areas of the Mekong Delta with four chemical agents, agent orange being the most famous of the four of the so called rainbow herbicides. Dioxins were the key component of all four agents the second most poisonous substance known to man after plutonium.
Some areas of land are still not arable to this day, and second and third generation genetic mutations are still being caused.
I can go through the whole history lesson but the basic fact is there was no North and South Vietnam before the US' involvement, it was a proxy war between the two superpowers in which two million Vietnamese people died for their country. They had virtually unanimously 'as a nation' voted in a communist government after the ousting of the french colonial forces in 1954.
In no way was the U.S. a benevolent protector 'helping those who can't help themselves' from any foreign invader, a democratically elected government was fighting for the land of it's people, that America did not agree with the political ideology does not give it the right to topple the government or wage war on the people.
The major reason for taking this conflict from a 'police action' to a 'war' was the attack on the destroyer U.S.S. Maddox in the Tonkin Gulf an attack which was smoke & mirrors, a trumped charge to bring more force to the conflict after which the U.S. simply poured progressively more men and materiel into the conflict in an attempt to crush a people and what they had wanted and been fighting for for the last 20 years before the U.S. arrived.
(for further reading on america's secret war in vietnam 'The Pentagon Papers' a leaked top secret military report on the war is an excellent source and since it was internal government study an accurate appraisal ).
If history though, isn't your thing, we can always go to current events. The war in Afghanistan had exactly what aim ? I know it was the first strike in the ill defined 'War on Terror' but exactly why did it start ?
I mean the original premise was that the government of Afghanistan was harboring Osama Bin Laden, but then he was also being harbored by Pakistan and had training camps in both countries. I mean if your going to go and pick on a country to invade wouldn't you want to nail the military dictatorship that took the country by armed force ? But that military dictatorship was America's 'friend' and the reason why Bin Laden was never found was he simply slipped over the border.
Which leaves us with the war on terror in Afghanistan. The countries infrastructure had not even recovered properly from the last invader that spent eight years warring on the people. The current evil doers the Taliban had only been in power for 5 years before the invasion. Incidentally since the government has been toppled and the original objective to capture Bin Laden has not been achieved why is there currently a war ? In fighting the Taliban the U.S. is fighting a fundamentalist religious belief, it would be like waging war on the baptists, no amount of bombing is going to change their beliefs. The fundamental truth of this war is that the U.S. is not going to change the beliefs of the people by warring on them.
Once again though the U.S. is being selective, there are other fundamentalist islamic states out there, some far wealthier ones that actually do support and fund terrorist groups yet the U.S. has not got around to them in the war on terror and in continuing to wage war in an already war torn country that has had it's infrastucture blasted back to the stone age, the U.S. is not in any way being a benevolent benefactor, helping those who cannot help themselves.
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