Did you know that there is such a thing as the United States Institute of Peace?
Can a country that has been involved in military conflicts nearly every year since its inception really be a promoter of peace?
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4 comments:
I want to understand the premise of the question. Define peace for me.
I watched a cop wrestle a guy to the ground and put his knee in the guy's back while he handcuffed him. The guy had broken the window of a passing car by hurling a beer bottle at it. The cop did not act peacefully, but I consider that he promoted peace.
Likewise, many (not all) of US military conflicts have involved defending ourselves (as in 1812 and 1941), standing up for an ally or a weaker country (like France and Poland in the forties or Kuwait in the nineties), or answering the UN's call to help.
I agree that we've been some places we probably shouldn't have, but I'm not ready to disqualify us as a positive force in the world. I think that paints with too broad a brush.
I'll buy that to a certain degree. But things get a lot more complicated on the national scale. We may have gone to war to protect ourselves in WWII, but some historians will also tell you that FDR knew about Pearl Harbor in advance and purposefully failed to notify Hawaiian commanders. Might be true. Might not be. I dunno. Likewise, the dropping of the two atomic bombs in Japan were more about putting the fear of God into the Soviets, not ending the war.
Regarding Kuwait, it's been established that Saddam asked the U.S. if we would do anything if he invaded the country. We led him to believe that we would not get involved, and then we did.
Other interests are usually involved in these affairs. Rarely is our involvement solely about peace or defending weaker countries.
"...were more about putting the fear of God into the Soviets, not ending the war. "
Why couldn't it be both equally? And, in context of the approaching cold war, I consider both to be worthy motivations.
I didn't suggest that peace and defense were always sole stimuli, but the presence of other benefits doesn't necessarily negate peace and defense as motives. My point was, as was yours, that it's generally more complicated than our oversimplifications allow.
There are a lot of places called such things as the "institute for peace", "coalition for peace and justice", "institute for fairness", "council for religious tolerance", and so on. Sometimes they actually have something to do with their own name, but more often than not, the name is just a cover. How many of the blah-blah-blah-for-peace-in-the-middle-east organizations turned out to be fronts for Hamas, Fatah, etc?
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