[Maru]

Originally Posted by jaxie

Well we are human beings, Syrian's are human beings, shouldn't we want to do something to help the people being obliterated by their government? I'm not seeing much being attempted diplomatically either. I'm certainly not arrogant enough to think we can fix everything in the West but I am humane enough to think someone should be trying to make it stop.

Growing up I thought this was what the UN and NATO were about, helping the innocent, going in and putting a stop to the violence. Now I look at these organisations and I wonder what is the point if they are just there to make noises. What happened to the 'peacekeeping forces?'

Note to the post about the stop the war speech. Had I anything to do with do with the Labour party of 2013 I would be slinking out of this thread on my stomach and not wanting to remind people about how Labour played politics with the vote to intervene with air strikes in 2013 when a difference might have been made early on. There was some shameful politicking going on over that vote that had very little to do with the reasons for the air strikes and a lot about party politics. Zero respect for any of the MPs involved in that.

Does anyone ever wonder how WW2 would play out today?



Should we care?

Yes, of course.

Isn't that why we do charity donations? I certainly don't do mine to pay for prostitute services for members of Oxfam staff.

I get what you're saying, jaxie, I really do. When Aleppo was being bombed, it tugged at my heartstrings reading the calls for help claiming we were standing by while genocide was committed. This was in 2016, and the media didn't really cover it, but it was all over Twitter, etc... I always feel an emotional response to these things, regardless of what logic would have me say, life is unfair...

Even if the entirety of the West banded together and got involved, isolated the regime, removed it, and installed a new infrastructure... it's society needs a culture that will actually adhere to it, or it will collapse again in another power vacuum. We learned this with Iraq.

This may sound harsh, but sometimes letting these things occur is the best thing to do for those cultures. That there is something inherently wrong with their model that is so incompatible with peace that no govt or substantial structure there could thrive as-is. If we interfere, we stop all the micro-processes that are occurring that push those cultures to evolve... I am OK with humanitarian aid, and I support this, though I think there are agendas involved there that aren't always "sound". And even I think that it introduces issues, just like welfare and socialist systems have in the our systems, where we've effectively taken away the pain of life and that has ceased people trying to innovate or create a live for themselves... they instead become overly dependent on pre-existing or "supplemental" infrastructures for the short-term, when they need to be focused on the long-term.

It is like with animal rescue. Yes, I could become a super pup or kitty mom, board all the neighborhood pups I see on my walks, and even start a rescue of my own, saving lives. Not only does that restrict my freedom in terms of being able to thrive in my own life, but it's not addressing the cause of the issue... the irresponsible homeowners who take in pups, feed them, but don't vet them and leave them on chains to get pregnant over and over... and then worse, they dump them on the side of the road god knows where... they are the issue, not the strays. So taking them and in and getting them neutered and all that, and re-homing, it helps some in the long run and gives me a little bit of emotional solace... but there's much more of them coming out of the woodwork than what rescue handles because the problem is so much larger, regardless the size of the rescue community here. We put down at least 70,000 animals a year in our shelters each year... and that's only what's reported as being their shelter pets... doesn't include contracted euthanasia.

Same with the homeless. My local shops are near a homeless camp, and I'm walked up to constantly for cash. The mayor has said don't give these people money, we are building the infrastructure to house and get them off the streets... but what if they don't want the type of help we offer... some have never seen structure in their entire lives, and as soon as you place them under it, they become totally different human beings and don't function as we expect them to. So I think solving those issues as well is difficult...

My point is, it's not as simple as go in and save people... if I were to take someone in from off the streets, I'm not just responsible for them, but I'm also responsible to myself and others... and is it reasonable to offer all the possible solutions we have to people in the external world, while there are dire needs at home. Things were very different during WWII... and as many who are nostalgic for the past, our cultures were a bit more cohesive and the war effort did help to drag America's economy out of difficult times... but again, different times. And while no doubt we could help some people abroad, it could do much more harm domestically as the 911/Iraq War did to the US... our politics have never recovered since. And though many voted for Obama thinking (including white folk) that he could reverse that trend, the complete opposite has happened... (edit) Anyway there seems no easy solution domestically or abroad

America's response to World War II was the most extraordinary mobilization of an idle economy in the history of the world. During the war 17 million new civilian jobs were created, industrial productivity increased by 96 percent, and corporate profits after taxes doubled. The government expenditures helped bring about the business recovery that ;had eluded the New Deal. War needs directly consumed over one-third of the output of industry, but the expanded productivity ensured a remarkable supply of consumer goods to the people as well. America was the only that saw an expansion of consumer goods despite wartime rationing. BY 1944, as a result of wage increases and overtime pay, real weekly wages before taxes in manufacturing were 50 percent higher than in 1939. The war also created entire new technologies, industries, and associated human skills.

The war brought full employment and a fairer distribution of income. Blacks and women entered the workforce for the first time. Wages increased; so did savings. The war brought the consolidation of union strength and far-reaching changes in agricultural life. Housing conditions were better than they had been before.

In addition, because the mobilization included the ideological argument that the war was being fought for the interests of common men and women, social solidarity extended far beyond the foxholes. Public opinion held that the veterans should not return jobless to a country without opportunity and education. That led to the GI Bill, which helped lay the foundation for the remarkable postwar expansion that followed. The war also made us more of a middle-class society than we had been before.

Source: http://prospect.org/article/way-we-w...g-world-war-ii