No, but its a nice line. Unfortunately though, it is true. I wish it wasn't but it is.
REAL Arms Limitation?
- Thread starter alt_historian
- Start date
No, but its a nice line. Unfortunately though, it is true. I wish it wasn't but it is.
I refer you to my previous statement.
Please present some evidence to support your assertion.
Israel has a large standing army (although many of them are conscripts). Switzerland doesn't.
Well, lets see, we have the big one of course - the Second World War that could have been nipped in the bud at many points had it not been the wave of pacifism in the 1930s. That includes the Rhineland remilitarization, the Czech imbroglio (remember "peace in our time"?) not to mention the Austrian re-occupation. Then there's the failure to react to the Italian assault on Ethiopia. And of course, the failure to assist the legitimate gocernment in the Spanish civil war. And that's not forgetting the Japanese assault on China that got a pass. All due to the pacifist attitudes in the 1930s summarized by the Oxford Union resolution that "Under no circumstances will this house fight for King and Country."
More recently, we have had the attempt to prevent the liberation of Kuwait after the Iraqi invasion "give sanctions time to work" (ignoring the fact that they never have). After ODS started, attempts, successful as it happened, to bring about an early end to the fighting that left the Saddam Hussein power structure intact.
Between the two we have the Korean War (which the supporters of the North were incited to start by the pointed omission of South Korea from the terrotory the U.S. was prepared to defend) not to mention the end of the Vietnam war where the fall of South Vietnam and the new regimes of Kampuche and Laos were the direct result of pacifists cutting off financial aid to South Vietnam. And then we have Afghanistan.....
Of course, we can't forget the October War where Israel was prepared to carry out its usual pre-emptive strike against the gathering Arab armies but was prevented from doing so. That cost a lot of lives.
Note how in every case, pacifists sided with dictators against liberal democracies. The reason is quite obvious; try pacifist propaganda against a dictator and he'll have the people in question 'disappeared'. Liberal democracies won't. So, by definition, pacifists only inhibit the actions of liberal democracies and leave dictatorships free to carry out their aggressive will.
In an old western gunfight (mythological I know but a good proof-of-concept example) the man who grabs the hero's gun-hand may not be trying to get him killed but that's what happens.
Pacifists are the lowest form of human life. They are parasites who take all the benefits society had to offer but refuse to carry out the most basic of functions of any society -protecting its members. Worse, they not only refuse to carry out their responsibilities, they actively condemn those who do and try to prevent them from doing their duty. They haven't even got the basic integrity to take responsibility for their actions; when faced with the consequences of their actions, they refuse to acknowledge them, crying out that they can't be blamed because they are "idealists"
The National Guard is not a militia except to the people who try to conflate ot with one for the purposes of attacking the Constitutional Second Ammendment. National Guard units are essentially regular army units manned part-time. They cannot function without the regular army and rely on said Army for most of its critical functions. The National Guard is essentially a part-trained reserve force and a component of the Regular Army.
The nearest thing the United States ever had was the "Sheriff's Posse" beloved of Western movies (I'm not sure how often a local Sheriff ever actually called for a posse - I suspect that, like the walk-down gunfight, the number of times it actually happened was very slight). The National Guard most certainly does not qualify as a militia force. It should be noted that most attempts to mobilize the Guard has shown that the units in it are very far from combat effective and require months of work before they are combat-capable. Thank's to Iraq, that isn't the case at the moment but one Iraq has vanished for a year or two, they'll be back to pre-Iraq standards.
The Israeli armed forces are nowhere near a militia. The Israeli defense forces are simply regular forces with a very large reserve component. They don't even come close to a militia. In any case, quoting Israel as a country that's inhibited from going around attacking its neighbors puts you on very dangerous ground.
Switzerland probably comes the closest toa militia-based army but still no seegar I fear. Again, it falls under the category of a regular army that has a very large reserve component. (one might include Singapore in that category as well). The Regular Army forms the framework into which the reserve troops are slotted; the force cannot function without that regular component.
The definition of a militia is that it is a levee-en-mass from the population who supply their own arms and are assembled into units without contribution from or participation by regular forces. That was viable pre-20th century because there wasn't much difference between military arms and those held by the average citizen. Also, the tactics used on a battlefield didn't take much grasping and only a limited amount of training. Today those don't apply. They do provide a useful test though, to identify a militia-based national defense system, look at an armored regiment. How many of its members supplied their own tank? (you can apply that to air forces and navies as well. How many fighter pilots bought their own fighter?)
Wasn't there a short story written that everyone gave all it's nukes and other WMDs to Sweden and then Sweden basicly said,"OK now bow down" and took over the world written about 20 years ago?
Yes, maybe I didn't help by saying the latter would be the ideal ultimate objective. However, just some general disarmament would still free up vast amounts of resources - in terms of physical resources, but more importantly in the area of human ingenuity - which could much more profitably be utilised for other things. Something where the end objective is to, y'know, build something rather than destroy it.
These seem interesting ideas. Although apparently they wouldn't work either:
I don't remember signing anything saying I have to join the army (I assume that's the "responsibilities" to which you refer). Secondly, I haven't "actively condemn[ed]" anyone in the military, because I realise they're doing a tough job. I simply condemn the reasons the British military was sent into Iraq and, to a lesser degree, Afghanistan. However, that's a different debate.
Have you ever actually met, and talked to, any pacifists? It doesn't seem that way. If anyone's a "parasite", it would be the dictators you seem to think we are in league with (or however you want to put it).
Just one more attempt to get you to listen,
a) the starting point was talking about reducing the amount/level of armaments overall, not to get rid of them entirely. I realise that in some extreme cases the use of armed forces is necessary, I would just rather not be involved in a war I feel to be unjustified.
b) if, in the idealistic end-point world I was talking about, nobody at all had any armed forces - except maybe at the level necessary to, for instance, assist in the case of natural disasters or other emergencies - then it wouldn't matter if the country was a dictatorship or not. They simply wouldn't have a military large enough to mount an aggressive war.
Hmm... Swede/Sverige-wank?
Last edited:
Poul Anderson wrote a novel set in a world where that had happened- but then he's Swedish!