Does a free country have to be at war constantly in order to stay free?

See Switzerland

Not constantly but there will be many times where it will be necessary to keep freedom alive. Sometimes you have to give up peace to keep your freedom.

Take Switzer…ahh too late.Never mind.

No, not constantly.
What country in the west, has been constantly at war?

@wilma Us.

See Swi… What the hell?

Like the cuckoo clock it keeps on repeating.

See…..shoot.

There’s another peaceful country in North America that I’m thinking of that also doesn’t run around blowing up smaller countries to sustain itself, a very large one with a funny accent, but the name is failing to come to mind. That country is also often considered to have a higher standard of living than the US. Hmm…

I smell a running gag!

Apparently the US does.

.

@JeanPaulSartre That’ll be the cheese, phooey!

But then there is Switzerland. (Why has nobody suggested this yet?)

GA, @janbb! Wish I’d thought of it!

@janbb Must’ve just slipped our collective minds!

There are a lot of countries that either are neutral, or are just really quiet about their invasions. Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands…

I posted a Q inspired by this. The thing is, those countries apparently don’t have any natural resources that are of much value to anyone else, so there is no reason for anyone to go to war with them (Although…see Vikings. HA! I said “See Switzerland” in another way!)

Yes. Switzerland is free because of what others have done. And, sacrificed.

I wonder how free Switzerland would be if we let Hitler just do his thing.

People in our country really aren’t that free any more, largely due to war (the war on drugs which eroded our 4th amendment rights amongst many others, the war on terror which has us taking it in the ass at airports among many other things)...

@ChazMaz I wonder how free Switzerland would be if we let Hitler just do his thing.

Of course, if we hadn’t put Hitler into power then we wouldn’t have needed to stop him.

And how did we put Hitler into power?

The point is he was in power and we had to stop him.
So Countries like Switzerland could/can be neutral.

Thank you @ChazMaz well said

What the hell.

What war in the past 65 years has remotely threatened America’s “freedom”?

We killed some 3 million Vietnamese civilians in a war… for our freedom… that the Communists eventually won… oh, I guess apparently we haven’t been free since 1975. Right.

The only way al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups threaten our freedom is by scaring the public into electing warmongering, fearmongering Republicans who actually enact laws that take away our freedom.

Sounds like propaganda.

Removed by the CIA

@janbb And how did we put Hitler into power?

We funded the Nazi Party. An interesting side note, Bush’s granddaddy, the late US senator Prescott Bush was directly involved, to the point that his company’s assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act!

@stump: Define “free”.

I think a great many of the US citizens on this board would actually be appalled at the level of state intervention in the lives of the citizens of the countries mentioned here. In Switzerland, you are involuntarily referred to a psychiatrist if you fail your driving test three times.

Truly the land of the free, wouldn’t you agree?

No, that freedom just cant be constantly and openly threatened.

I think you’re somewhat mis-characterizing the argument that you and @ChazMaz had in another thread. It’s not necessary “to be at war”; that’s absurd, and he never said that in so many words (did he? he’s not stupid; I can’t imagine him saying that directly). But it is necessary to be “on guard” and “prepared”. And that “costs” money in terms of defense appropriations, enlistment, following orders, training and readiness, including occasional accidents that cause service-people to be killed… and being ready to stand in harm’s way when needed.

We’re all human and sometimes other humans tend to band together in ways that are not always solicitous to us, our neighbors and friends, we need to “spend” some of our freedom to maintain it. (If you have an agreement to protect a friend and then fail to extend that protection when needed, then you won’t have the friend—or deserve your own protection—for very long.)

Unfortunately, sometimes we band together in ways that aren’t helpful to our own interests, either, so we also need to be on guard against bands of humans that we nominally do associate with.

Another answer to the question is, it depends on how badly other nations want what you have….

@the100thmonkey, what on earth does that have to do with war?

Are you saying that, if only Switzerland engaged in more warfare, they wouldn’t refer their citizens to psychiatrists?

This is important. The idea that we fight wars in the modern era to “defend freedom” is dangerous and imbecilic. It has directly led to the death of millions of people, for reasons having nothing to do with freedom, and often everything to do with ideology or, in some cases, corporate profits. It is the worst kind of empty slogan because it motivates people to kill and support killing.

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
Albert Einstein

If we can ever practice this we’ll know true freedom

No – why not think about smaller countries that have had to fight for their continuing freedom on the diplomatic front for hundreds of years

@Qingu: I was merely adding a tonic to the “Switzerland rawks” meme I was seeing on this thread. It’s a very nice place, I’m sure, but in the context of Freedom®, it’s worth reminding people that there’s more to the question than a simplistic ‘this country’s free, that country isn’t’.

The fact of the matter is that Switzerland wasn’t invaded during WW2, IMO, because it’s basically a fucking mountain (that and the banking thing).

I guess I feel that not engaging in warfare does not equate to a free nation, and being a free nation does not equate to engaging in warfare.

@the100thmonkey
Allied aircraft dropped about 70 bombs on them apparently though and their airspace was not recognized as neutral. While they had been recognized for neutrality they were said to have been in violation of the “spirit of neutrality” because of their involvement with Nazi Germany:

Switzerland’s national bank, private Swiss bankers and private manufacturers of war material exploited in fact every loophole in the regulations for their business with Nazi Germany. This was evidently not the notion of neutrality…

http://history-switzerland.geschichte-schweiz.ch/switzerland-neutrality-world-war-ii.html

The answer to this question depends entirely on the rest of the world. If others constantly threaten the free country then yes. Otherwise no.

@Corey_D
That is excusing responsibility as a nation.
That’s simply a never ending cycle of violence. As long as one nation has to have the last word of retaliation there will never be an end.

In a previous answer about the Hippy era, I used a quote which is apropos here:

FIGHTING FOR PEACE IS LIKE F**KING FOR CHASTITY.

That one stuck in my mind all these years, from the sixties, and now I get to use it twice!

No. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, but there are other means of keeping the evil people in check. War must remain a last resort.

“War must remain a last resort.”

One we end up resorting to.

For Afghanistan we had no choice. But Iraq could have been handled differently. The last resort was not necessary. There was no clear and present danger. Terror camps creating people flying airplanes into skyscrapers however did pose a clear and present danger. The Taliban refused to shut them down and extradite the Al-Qaeda leaders. There was a UN mandate. What followed was an international police effort, because the Afghan police didn’t do their job. Suppose a fifth plane had killed 2000 people in the Sears Tower early 2002. The public would have been outraged why politicians didn’t do anything.

@mattbrowne, I agree Afghanistan was… maybe not “necessary,” but probably “justified” on the balance.

However, the way we have handled that war has been an atrocity.

In my opinion, we need to stop waging “wars,” and start waging “police actions.” That means no more dropping bombs on towns, killing 40 civilians for every 1 terrorist—or every guy whose neighbors claim is a terrorist. That means ending the military technology paradigm left over from WW2, where we bomb the shit out of the other side until they give up.

We are no longer facing an enemy that wears uniforms and fights like an organized, well-armored military. We are not fighting “soldiers.” We are fighting criminals.

Calling them criminals doesn’t mean that the Taliban and al-Qaeda are less evil, or less deserving of death, than the “soldiers” we have fought. It just means they use different tactics. They fight from civilians areas. They use booby traps and sniper rifles. They gain political control over areas in the same way heavily armed gangsters do—not like a military force. The Marja operation has gone a long way moving towards this ideal, but we still killed 15 civilians. We need to go further.

It’s not like our defense budget is too low to develop new, effective technology to better find and kill these people without endangering the lives of civilians that almost always surround them. We’re just lazy, our defense budget is entrenched with greedy corporations, and much of the public has no moral qualms about killing civilians if they’re brown people. It’s absolutely despicable.

Viet Nam was a “Police Action.”

@davidbetterman In name only. I agree with Qingu. We have to work out a whole new set of procedures for dealing with a very different kind of enemy.

@Qingu in theory I would like to agree with your sentiment to wage “police actions” instead of wars, but reality intervenes. I suggest that you read Cobra II, a military-based account of the initial stages of the (current and ongoing) Iraq War, which lays out the military side of most of the planning and invasion up to and just after the capture of Baghdad. The book starts long before the political grandstanding just prior to the invasion, detailing a lot of the behind-the-scenes planning behind the war.

The fact is that the military planners (the legitimate military planners) of that action estimated that the troop requirements would be on the order of 300,000-plus soldiers. Rumsfeld, Cheney and others wanted to promote the “light and mobile” forces that they’d been having wet dreams about, and insisted upon that instead. They wanted to invade and “win” with 100,000 or less. As an invasion and fighting force against the Iraqi army they were essentially correct: that plan of force worked to force the invasion and take Baghdad. And that’s when we lost the war, because we never could decide and commit to the cost (in equipment, dollars and manpower—including casualties) to winning the rest of the war.

We didn’t have… and will never have… the political will to commit the masses of troops that will be required to run a successful “police action” in a country the size of Iraq (and which operates in so many fundamental ways so differently from our own). It’s not that it can’t be done; but we don’t have the stomach to totally subjugate a country the way the Soviets did East Germany after WW2 (by comparison the West Germans were thrilled to be under the relatively benign control of the three-way alliance of Great Britain, France and the US). We also won’t commit those kinds of dollars. Don’t forget what that kind of policing eventually did to the Soviets.

Unless we find a way someday, somehow, to avoid and prevent wars, we’re going to have to learn that there are no halfway measures. If you’re going to war it has to be total war, total domination and annihilation of the enemy’s capacity, will and manpower to fight back until it just no longer exists. This is why from antiquity conquerors who sacked a city-state would slaughter all adult opposition and enslave the children. That worked. It’s not that people had zero compassion thousands of years ago—human nature hasn’t changed so greatly—but they did know how to fight and win wars, and they didn’t fight “nice”. They fought to win.

@stump Our only enemy is/are weapons dealers. armaments manufacturers, bankers, real estate agents, stock market manipulators, Illuminati, our own government, and the people too afraid to stand up and do something about it.

@CyanoticWasp, 300,000 plus soldiers… for a military occupation. AFAIK, we’ve never tried a “police action.” We haven’t even tried anything like Marja before.

The amount of soldiers we had toppled the Iraqi government in days. Which is to say, we easily won the “war” against another country’s armored, uniformed, military force.

What ended up taking 7 more years and hundreds of more lives, and thousands of civilian lives, was the war against “insurgents,” who with a few exceptions had no armor or heavy weapons. And in many cases (as in Fallujah) were motivated to fight because our soldiers did things like fire into crowds of protesting civilians.

Compare Fallujah, where we killed 800 civilians, 1000 insurgents (which probably included civilians), and destroyed or damaged half of the homes in the city, with the Marja operation. It is night and day. And the Marja operation seems to be as successful, without having to resort to what you call “total war.”

By the way, on “total war” ... you are correct, it can be effective. It is also immoral. Total war, today, would mean dropping nukes on cities and murdering millions of people. Every war we have fought since WW2 has scaled back more and more from “total war.” And this is a good thing. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the moral stomach to murder millions of people just to “win” a war, especially one that barely if anything impacts my own personal safety. If you support that kind of thing, I think that’s frankly despicable, and you should consider what conquered people thought of such “empires” and their legacy in history.

@davidbetterman I am with you on the weapons dealers and armament manufacturers.

@Qingu
Bravo and well stated. I would also add, If we can actually form truly concerted coalitions with international troops throughout the world we may actually be able to have true “police actions” with highly mobilized forces that garner more support as far as their peacekeeping agendas. We may actually have to willingly subject our troops to international standards and courts which we have been wont to do in the past.
Being more international in composition will only add to the credibility and effectiveness of peacekeeping missions. Of course this has everything to do with whether our stated aims are in fact towards a more peaceful and stable world or whether that is just a nice front.

@SeventhSense, I absolutely agree.

And this is the main reason why I support the dreaded “world government.” It doesn’t have to be a scary evil empire. It can be modeled after the EU, with countries voluntarily joining when they realize their economic interests are tied together. Ideally the UN would function this way, but obviously we’re not there yet.

Saw a recent Nat Geo that studied probable reason for early south American peoples probably joined larger tribes and cities as protection from thugs and warlords.

Civilization usually means giving up some freedom (nope, sorry you can no longer kill your neighbor and rape his wife. Stop stealing the corn and abusing the temple cow).

Civilizations can offer varying amount of recreational warfare (Vikings?), and varying amounts of personal freedoms. You will not succeed however if giving equals unequally taking, unless you have mastered slavery or modern health reform.

The two are not necessarily linked.

Stereotypes however would have bigoted liberal elites saying in the voice of the school counselor in sought park:

“repubs are bad
repubs like war
war is bad
repubs are all powerful
repubs take away freedoms.
remember kids, repubs are bad.”

It’s not so simple. Party agenda prevents IQ from operating above the level of 80, so put away your party bigot hat and put on your thinking cap.

@DrMC, war is pretty much the worst thing imaginable. I’m sorry you think otherwise.

And Republicans do tend to support invading other countries more than Democrats.

@DrMC Here, try this. You can easily find your “financial” thingy on your home page,etc. Pull up , “charts,” type in HAL (NYSE) pull up the ten-year chart on this, Haliburton stock. Now, note the tremendous gain that began in mid-2002. Now, realize that the then-VicePresident of the United states was a guy named Cheney, who is still running his filthy mouth instead of hiding under a rock awaiting prosecution…he also just happened to be a former executive of Haliburton, right? So, based on WMD’s, The domino theory, other money-making rationales, scams, hustles, etc. we invade Iraq. The point here is to compare the HAL stock timeline with the Iraq “War”...Now, Haliburton, an oil equipment company, is somehow, miraculously awarded the contract to feed the “troops” (euphemism for “our loved ones”) being used as cannon fodder, How do you get from oil equipment to hamburgers? That’s easy, just have your former exec, be VP of the US!!, see, and make SURE he has LOADS of your stock at ridiculously cheap prices, in ADVANCE of the contract award, Also, better try to hide this little discrepancy so start another, shadow company, called KBR and make THEM the caterers, besides, here’s another IPO, insider trading bonanza as well..make sure Cheney and the Bush Mob, Carlisle, get their fair share, in ADVANCE, see how it works? Note the “coincidental” massive rise in HAL and the amounts of US deaths in Iraq? This is called, “blood money,” see? Every dollar these scum of the earth make is at the DIRECT cost of a life, a limb, a mind, of our sons, daughters, mothers fathers, aunts uncles, brothers sisters, etc.
Want a good stock tip? Invest in body bag mfg, companies, and also prosthetic mfg. companies…they are booming now, but of course, the insiders have already made their despicable blood money killings.
But I digress! LOL What was your question?

did I hear that IQ inch up just a tiny bit?

@Qingu
The problem with the world government is that I can see it comprised of a strong European Union, a more than willing Third World and the Big Eight on the very fringes of this circle with a very tenuous and vacillating regard to true compromise. It might be a start though. It would have to be based on a new paradigm that has as its basis the welfare of the collective and the relegating of national identity as secondary to the aims of the whole. The agreement as to what that is, will be only the first hurdle with endless hemming and hawing. In a perverse sense we can only hope that the issues facing the planet become so extreme as to force the nations of the earth to either join forces or risk the extinction of our species.

@Qingu – I agree with most of what you said. The problem even with “police action” is criminals using innocent people as human shields. This creates ethical dilemmas. Like during a hostage crisis. Suppose bank robbers got 30 hostages and they plan to kill one every 30 minutes. Does the police intervene after the first gets shot? If not, there will be a second after another 30 minutes. If they do intervene they probably kill or injure all of the hostage takers but in the process of doing so, let’s say 5 innocent people get killed as well, but 25 do live. There are no easy answers for solving ethical dilemmas. The best strategy is convincing the innocents in Afghanistan that the international force is their friend.

@SeventhSense a country that doesn’t retaliate, and has no allies that will retaliate for it, won’t exist for very long. Not retaliating against an aggressor is basically begging to be attacked.

@Corey_D
This is the common logic but the common logic has caused the common state of affairs in the world. And more often than not the US has been the aggressor in so many subtle and blatant ways. We’re just finally seeing a few bold enough to bring it back to us on our shores. Once the very idea of “separate nations” at odds has been dissolved it will be more clearly seen what are simply criminal acts to humanity and these can be dealt with like any crime.

We’re getting closer. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that this is an issue of ideologies, religious differences and social causes more than anything. The “War on Terror” isn’t about an organized enemy. It’s a battle against propaganda steeped in ignorance and the offspring of its perversion coupled with some legitimate social causes. This can never be overcome by violence alone. The idea of retaliation itself is very primitive and doesn’t wish to subjugate the violence of a crime but wants to have vengeance or payback and thus creates more crime. The only problem is that eventually “an eye for an eye” leaves everyone blind.

@SeventhSense if that were true then why doesn’t Japan or Germany attack us? We retaliated fully against them. You have to look at the incentives we give other nations. If they attack or threaten and get what they wanted without being retaliated against, then they have a clear incentive to do it again. It worked once didn’t it? There is then no resistance to violent dictatorships wanting to expand. Do you think preaching nonviolence will deter them?

They must know that if they attack the free nation, then the only result will be their death. That is how you deter a tyrant.

You have to look at the incentives we give other nations.
Yes we have to look at this.

I’m with the others here….see Switzerland and remember this. The people who inhabited North America before this presumed “Freedom” you are talking about…didn’t see it THAT way. In fact they saw it as an arrogant people who took more than what they needed and wasted it while plundering the land and driving the “first” people from what were their homes and places of origin. Freedom….real freedom doesn’t oppress someone else. We have never been a country based on real freedom. We have always been a country based on the exploitation of others and commercialism

No. The USA and UK have interfered unnecessarily in many conflicts .I am not disputing the fact that a Veteran is very brave and deserves respect-little of which he or she gets from the Government once their use has been used-up.The USA and UK rightwingers have a tendancy to see patriotsim equated with using military force whenever they feel like it, often with disastrous results.Veterans return traumatised and injured with very little Government support and many feel they would rather have not joined the armed forces at all. See Ron Kovic-Born on the 4th July-A Vietnam Veteran who fought for his Country-went through terrible injuries and now campaigns for Peaceful resolutions to conflicts and minimal intervention.
Scandanavia and Switzerland rarely get involved in conflicts and is one of the most Liberal parts of the World.

Why not use Switzerland as a model?

<cuckoo! cuckoo!>