Paul,

Still no mention of the Falklands, Korean, or Afghan wars? After all the hype you retreated in humiliation.

After WW2 Vietnam was split into North and South Vietnam as a French Protectorate. North then decided to "liberate" South Vietnam by sending in guerrilla fighters, until the French finally asked the US for help, which eventually became a proxy war for the US and USSR, at the end of which North Vietnam subjugated South Vietnam bringing decades of poverty.

With regards the US, did you bother to read my last post?

Notably, the US learnt from this, using the same tactics to destroy the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and bringing the communist tyranny to its knees.

Shadow, with your total lack of understanding of the Vietnam War as demonstrated by your last pathetic post on the subject. I would not even know where to begin to educate you on that matter, a extremely complex subject may I add, a subject I have taken a very keen interest in over the past 40 years, having read and watched much to do with the war, and the causes and the outcomes both for the Vietnamese and others including Australians who were involved.

In no way has anything you have posted in that bit of high school history justified the US spending $640US billion annual on militarism, more than the next 8 top spending nations combined. It has nothing tp do with bring "freedom and democracy to the world", but everything to do with feeding the US military-industrial complex. Did you read what Dwight D Eisenhower, not a noted radical, had to say on the subject?

Margret 'Bloody' Thatcher ordered the sinking of the ARA General Belgrano, with the resultant loss of 323 lives, in contravention of stated British policy on engagement. In many peoples minds that act made Margret 'Bloody' Thatcher a war criminal.

Paul,

You are hilarious. First you list the conditions required for a war crime, yet are unable to link any one of them to the sinking of the Belgrano. Next you come up with a half arsed definition of a war crime in that Thatcher went against a non existent "stated policy".

The reality is that the only war crime exists in the fevered imagination of the loony left whingers, and I am expecting an equally feeble explanation as to how the Korean war was all the fault of the US.

As for the Vietnam war, I wait in breathless anticipation for your explanation, I suspect your 40 years of trolling through Pravda was wasted.

The post WWII Vietnam War had it origins in the French failure to honor the undertakings it gave in the Franco-Siamese Treaty of 1938. During WWII the United States had supported the Vietnamese nationalists, the Viet Minh led by Ho Chi Minh, in their armed resistance to Japanese imperialism in Indochina. Following the defeat of Japan the US which had previously opposed French re-occupation under the Roosevelt administration took a far more conciliatory stance to the French under Truman. Ho Chi Minh formed the independent state of Vietnam in September 1945. The French with the aid of both British and Japanese troops soon regained control, fighting continued until the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954.
At the Geneva Conference of 1954, France relinquished all territorial claims to Indochina. National elections were planed for July 1956, elections which most certainly would have seen a nationalists victory under Ho. The forces of the US backed, but vastly unpopular, Bao Dai regime in Saigon and those of the Nationalists under Ho Chi Minh first engaged in hostilities in November 1955. American involvement seen an escalation of the war until the American withdrawal and its failed Vietnamisation policy, seen final victory by the Nationalists forces in August 1973 with the fall of Saigon.

"the US spend[s] $640US billion annual on militarism, more than the next 8 top spending nations combined."

I presume you mean they spend the money on the military, not only militarism.

I'd point out that those who you have obviously unthinkingly accepted make these comparisons erroneously. If you use the more accurate conversion tool of PPP then the numbers become much less stark. A minor but still important point.

So why does the US spend so much more on its military than any other nation? The main reason is that the task of defending democracy and freedom world-wide has fallen disproportionately on the US. While many other nations have a vested interest in that defence, few have been willing ot make the necessary monetary sacrifices required to fulfill those requirements. For example, Japan up until very recent times effectively abdicated all responsibilities for its own defence and the general defence of freedom-loving world. The US picked up that responsibility. Equally, although to a lesser extent, the large European nations out-sourced their defence to the US such that when, for example, they felt the need to operate militarily in the their own backyard (Kosovo) they were incapable to doing so without the US backing them.

So the US picked up the slack. But it didn't do it for altruistic reasons but because it was clearly in its own best interests to do so, since the welfare and economic success of the US depends on the maintenance of the current world paradigm.

The US has been called upon three times in the past century to save the world from tyrannous regimes, Finally it, the US, realised that it would be continually called on to do so unless it actively organised the defence of freedom loving West through NATO and ANZUS and a string of smaller pacts. But for those to work the US had to lend its economic power to the West's military equation. This in turn lead to disproportionate US military spending. QED.

Mhaze, do you believe your own propaganda? "The main reason is that the task of defending democracy and freedom world-wide has fallen disproportionately on the US" Give us some examples of the US delivering all this freedom and democracy stuff.

"since the welfare and economic success of the US depends on the maintenance of the current world paradigm." Only to feed their military-industrial complex.

"The US has been called upon three times in the past century to save the world from tyrannous regimes," can you point us in the direction of these 3 times."

The useful idiots will fall for this American clap trap, hook, line and sinker. Go for it Mhaze, your doing well. Shadow will be alone soon to back you up.