war question
Feb. 14th, 2003 02:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioA possibly-morbid thought experiment for a Friday afternoon:
Ok, suppose for the sake of argument that we were headed toward what historians will later label World War III -- US at war with Iraq and North Korea, much of the Arab world at war with Israel, Pakistan/India heating up even more, NATO divided, China perhaps taking the opportunity to go after Taiwan, terrorism abounding, serious consideration of nukes, etc etc. (Yes, I realize that not all events in this list are linked, but enough of them are that some subset of this could set off the rest, I would think.) So the question: at what point in time would the general consensus be that this is the case? When, for example, during the 1930s/1940s did the public (in the affected locations) generally realize that the events they were seeing were much, much bigger than a conventional war of limited scope? And how long before then did people who expressed such ideas get dismissed as paranoid?
(It's a thought experiment; do not read into this presumptions of my opinions of current affairs.)
Ok, suppose for the sake of argument that we were headed toward what historians will later label World War III -- US at war with Iraq and North Korea, much of the Arab world at war with Israel, Pakistan/India heating up even more, NATO divided, China perhaps taking the opportunity to go after Taiwan, terrorism abounding, serious consideration of nukes, etc etc. (Yes, I realize that not all events in this list are linked, but enough of them are that some subset of this could set off the rest, I would think.) So the question: at what point in time would the general consensus be that this is the case? When, for example, during the 1930s/1940s did the public (in the affected locations) generally realize that the events they were seeing were much, much bigger than a conventional war of limited scope? And how long before then did people who expressed such ideas get dismissed as paranoid?
(It's a thought experiment; do not read into this presumptions of my opinions of current affairs.)
Re: total war
Date: 2003-02-14 11:48 pm (UTC)I would not put Canada in the USA/Australia/Britain camp. Far from that, there as been a lot of backlash here about the war on wherever since the US "forgot" to mention Canada in his State of the union speech last year (when he was thanking those countries which helped in the after math of 9/11.. we only let a whole bunch of planes land here) and then when the US bombed one of our training exercises in Afghanistan and killed 4 of our soldiers (the last casualties we have incurred on a mission was during the Korean War).
Here is a quote from our prime minister that offer to support this "You know, you cannot exercise your powers to the point that of humiliation for the others. And that is what the Western world, not only the Americans, the Western world has to realize, because they are human beings too, and there are long-term consequences if you don't look hard at the reality in 10 or 20 or 30 years from now. And I do think that the Western world is going to be too rich in relation to the poor world. And necessarily, you know, we look upon us being arrogant, self-satisfying, greedy and with no limits. And the 11th of September is an occasion for me to realize that it's even more." Chrétien interview on Sept. 11
I don't know how much that point of view impacted the other members of the G8, but it sure made me proud to be Canadian that day.