BF2S Forums What event marks the end of the Post Cold war American prosperity?

I don't see any. Just paranoia.

Not sure, the last war the US won - Vietnam?

Or the trade war with China - which is probably more serious.

^ considering the above it would also make more sense to draw the line at 1945/1946 because the global power balance shifted again after WW2. This gives you a time period of ~1945-1991. I'd draw a new line there for similar reasons. The age of US dominance only truly started when the Soviet Union collapsed and hasn't definitively ended yet.

I'd also like to add that many prefer to see the two world wars as one timeperiod now: 1914-1945. Yeah it overlaps with the long 19th century but that's not really an issue. Borders between timeperiods are often vague and not well defined anyway.

Last edited by Shocking (2012-12-30 09:54:46)

Dilbert_X wrote:

Not sure, the last war the US won - Vietnam?

Or the trade war with China - which is probably more serious.

Gulf War 1, 1991. Got Kuwait back.

Gulf War 2, 2003. Removed Saddam from power rather quickly.

Our military has historically been pretty good at warfare.
Our politicians have historically sucked ass at foreign policy, and figuring out what to do once the military has achieved military objectives.
They usually end up sitting in Washington DC with their thumbs up their asses, and telling the military "well, hell.. that was quick! You did the military part so well, why don't you try your hand at the foreign policy and political part tooI Imma gonna go play golf and run for reelection..."

Hint: Infantrymen are not hired for their brilliance at foreign policy...

9/11 totally destroyed this country.  Now the only thing people are talking about is the economy but I clearly remember 10 years ago the mass panic which caused at least a substantial proportion of people to say things like "freedom isn't free" and "I've got nothing to hide so I don't care about the surveillance state".  Those attacks exposed us to the real world, while most other countries have been exposed to war and death and destruction 9/11 was a loud wake up call to the USA.  We are not insulated from the rest of the world, although we pretend to be.  And what was our response?  We are now even more heavily involved in the Middle East, we probably have special ops in every country from Pakistan all the way over to Morroco.  It's just a physically impossible task for us to micro manage every single backward fucked up government in that region.  Not to mention I believe it will backfire.

Meanwhile China rises from the East and if you've been paying attention recently they're saying they're going to test our resolve in Asia -- they'll start some shit with Japan over those islands to see if we stand with them or leave them in the dust.  This is all happening in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.  Hell, who knows, this still might turn into one. 

I see every problem America has faced in the last decade as being at least somewhat related to 9/11.  It wasn't the people who were killed, although that was horrible in itself, it was the constant 24/7/365 media paranoia which continues TO THIS DAY.  It was an act of psychological warfare.  Don't want the government to squeeze your nuts?  Terrorists!  Don't want the government to track literally everything you do electronically? (for 100 percent of the population btw) Terrorists!  The only cold comfort is that the economy is the greater distraction.  We are slowly coming out of the haze but we've still got a long ways to go.  And another attack would put us back at square one.

rdx-fx wrote:

Dilbert_X wrote:

Not sure, the last war the US won - Vietnam?

Or the trade war with China - which is probably more serious.

Gulf War 1, 1991. Got Kuwait back.

Gulf War 2, 2003. Removed Saddam from power rather quickly.

Our military has historically been pretty good at warfare.
Our politicians have historically sucked ass at foreign policy, and figuring out what to do once the military has achieved military objectives.
They usually end up sitting in Washington DC with their thumbs up their asses, and telling the military "well, hell.. that was quick! You did the military part so well, why don't you try your hand at the foreign policy and political part tooI Imma gonna go play golf and run for reelection..."

Hint: Infantrymen are not hired for their brilliance at foreign policy...

All wars are political. 

Also, I'd disagree that we "won" the war in Iraq.  You can win every battle in the war but if you're political objectives are impossible you still lose.  Look at Vietnam.  Iraq is closer to Iran now than it was under Saddam, it is still a shithole dictatorship.  There is no "democracy".  It's also pretty close to another civil war now.

Fun fact, did you know Irans been using Iraqi airspace to supply the Syrians?  Such a victory!

Should the U.S. have pulled out of Iraq (pardon me, but what is the proper spelling for that country?) after having captured Saddam in 2004?

AussieReaper wrote:

Dilbert_X wrote:

Scaring themselves and being paranoid is what Americans, egged on by the media and govt excel at.
'The Islamic Menace' is just the latest incarnation. How much was spent and how many freedoms given away countering the imaginary 'Red Menace'?

The McCarthyism against Communism has simply been replaced by the Islamic equivilant.

No misguided paranoia there.

-Sh1fty- wrote:

Should the U.S. have pulled out of Iraq (pardon me, but what is the proper spelling for that country?) after having captured Saddam in 2004?

We should have had a post-war strategy, which the Bush adminstration did not have.  They were outright delusional up until 2007 when they finally realized the war was being lost (badly) and they finally did something about it. 

Now, is it realistic to assume if Petraeus had been in charge in 2003 that things might have turned out differently?  Who knows.  There was a failure of political leadership.  If you're losing a war, you have to acknowledge it.  Something that Obama has unfortunately not done in Afghanistan.

Fuck you people.  Don't derail this perfectly good topic with gun control bullshit.

9/11

That was an event perpetrated by globalist to unleash a third world war that we are now in the middle of.

A2TG2 wrote:

9/11

That was an event perpetrated by globalist to unleash a third world war that we are now in the middle of.

american delusion. to call the iraq-afghan wars a 'third world war' shows just how inflated america's sense of conflict (and by extension, importance) really is. it is also a gross disrespect to those who served and died in the first two world wars to insist that a little romp around the desert against a bunch of tribal goatlords is anything near the deployment and devastation of a 'third world war'. or as if anything near as much is at stake (cries of neo-con "freedom" in today's case are merely propagandist and fear-mongering - arguably so in the first two world wars, too, if you're adopting the position of a cynic; but real territory and real power was at stake). this isn't even another vietnam, and vietnam was far from a fuckin' world war. feel free to call it that though to over-inflate the crisis and thus assuage your humiliation-in-failure. this is america trying to play toy empire in the sandbowl and failing, miserably, is all. 'the coalition' was more like a farcical neo-imperialist world police nee naw'ing onto the scene after a made-for-tv terrorist disaster; hardly the allies vs. the axis. the 'axis of evil' here - much like in the cold war - is largely imaginary and phantasmal in its threat. if there's anything that the expensive and painfully protracted "war on terror" has taught us over the last decade, it's that the "global terror network" is mostly a collective fiction... one penned ironically enough by CIA black propaganda, decades previous. you bought into your own self-concocted nightmare.

shifty, america's twin-blow (in domestic market and in world security) were both ticking time-bombs. it wasn't as if one day, suddenly and spontaneously, everything just unraveled. 9/11 was not an 'unprovoked' attack. it was america finally, after nearly half a century of neo-imperialist rule and foreign-policy intereference, finally reaping what it had sowed. ditto the financial crash. an elementary education in middle-east history and in 1980's->2000's economic policy will show you clearly enough why america was to become the single greatest locus for islamic hatred, and why a huge financial sector bubble was long due a prickly pinned pop-cum-detonation.

Last edited by aynrandroolz (2012-12-31 15:22:43)