ROTFL priceless. Victory isn't a war aim.

Again, Lincoln wasn't primarily concerned with freeing the slaves. Emancipation was a tactic to help win the war, driving a wedge between the Confederacy and France and England. Why didn't Lincoln try to free the slaves as quickly and cheaply as possible? Because that wasn't his goal. Again, read any mainstream history of the Civil War.

If you don't think that Lincoln was trying to provoke the South into firing the first shot then you are so completely ignorant of the history that it's not worth talking to you about this. Read any mainstream history of the Civil War.

You know, Lincoln's words and actions. Reading mainstream histories of the Civil War.

If there was an influx of cheap slaves they very well may have been able to afford to purchase slaves or save enough to purchase them.

Like there's a reason slaves were all black. This wasn't always the case. In most of world history there wasn't much hostility against the slave class - nor was it unique to one particular race. All men are created equal, land of the free, etc, how do you make sense of this as a Southerner? Without this racial ideology, the institution collapses. It took decades to completely internalize this idea that the American Revolution was compatible with slavery. And it sure as hell wasn't going to die without a bloody fight.

That looks like a Confederate flag, but I'm not totally sure since Ron Paul isn't standing in front of it

It makes sense. If you are near the bottom of the social spectrum, it's important to not sink any lower. You might be really, really poor but hey at least you aren't a slave, social mobility is possible (albeit unlikely). Gives them some kind of hope. Even within the slave class there were higher status and lower status slaves.

You seem to have missed the point.

Let's presuppose that eliminating Islam is important. Or Christianity, or whatever. You are more likely to win this through war and conquest than purchase. Plenty of places have been converted to another religion via conquest. I don't know of any religion that has been bought out of existence.

It makes tons of sense. The biggest bully in school was almost always the kid with the broken home who was treated like hell at home. His dead beat his ass, so all he could do to feel big and powerful was to beat up kids smaller than him at school

Same principle applies. There's also the huge incentive to keep the poor aligned with you for political reasons- you want to find a common "enemy" or even a scapegoat so you can keep them on your side and worrying about this threat rather than rebelling against you.

...

What?

Make the enemy surrender. Afaik this is the aim of every war ever fought.

Religions die out of existence for reasons other than conquest too, though. Plenty have been converted through peace. A considerable amount of religion is spread through buying off people (look at the missions to poor countries, where missionaries go in, basically give them everything they need, in exchange for teaching them about their religion, and that is reasonably successful).

But you are correct that the fastest way is conquest. It's also the most expensive way, and it also doesn't work well when you aren't willing to use complete brutality (slaughter anyone who disagrees). You could have ended racism in the south by killing all white men there and taking their women and children back with you via conquest, but no one outside of Fly is recommending that course of action. It certainly would have worked. There would have been tons more union deaths (and of course confederate deaths, which is apparently no big deal). But it would have been damn effective! If something is as outrageous as needing that to happen, then I suppose you could find a way to justify it. I just don't think the costs are necessary in almost all cases. Self defense/defense of others with no other options might be the only exception.

American Revolution/War of 1812 begs to differ. The aim of that war was to get the Brits off our soil. There was no need to get them to surrender, only to stop attacking.

lol

Well that's trivial. By war aim I mean the reason the country is fighting the war; what they hope to accomplish by fighting. Victory is only a war aim in that sense if the country is fighting a purely reactive defensive war or if they are just bloodthirsty.

Yes, and this kid is broken in spirit, morals, and character. He or she will likely not amount to much.

Are you saying that this is the South?

Well according to him the South has an inferiority complex to this day because the north were meanies, even though the South fired first and stuff.

Is that why Al Gore Sr voted against the civil rights act so many times?

If you want to blame the Civil War, slavery and racism on the North, blame it on this Northerner: Eli Whitney.
Eli is gonna get punished for that this weekend though.

Stop attacking? The first shots of that war were fired by the colonists. Who, it seems, could've definitely acquired their independence without violence. Unlike your made-up-during-this-thread beliefs about ending slavery without violence, I have explicit and conclusive historical evidence that colonies which did not fight a revolution were eventually allowed to leave the British Empire.

Funny that neither your nor Paul spend a lot of time whining about the unnecessary cost of the American Revolution.

Oh no it's not funny at all, it's actually an artifact of the deep racial animus underlying the paleoconservative intellect. That's really more sad than funny.

Strange, I listed two wars, not one.

I could been more clear, occupation is a form of attack, but to be more clear for forum nits "to stop occupation, and to stop impressment of sailors, stopping funding attacks from enemies, and violation of trade rights."

Hopefully that satisfies you.

But self-defense and firing first are not mutually exclusive.

They do have an inferiority complex. You ever heard the "SEC" chant? Pretty much sums up Southern inferiority complex. My team sucks, but a fellow slaveholder was good, so I AM AWESOME!

Wait, isn't that quote pretty much what you think the North should've done to the South in lieu of war?

I know, but all I'm saying is that we know colonies left the British Empire without having to fight a brutal war. Adams could've TRIED to negotiate some sort of colonial member of Parliament or the like, right?

Inb4 the founding fathers are tyrannical warmongers according to libertarian logic.

No.

Possibly. Might have been smarter to wait and do it peacefully. Might not have been.

The goal is to reduce bloodshed and minimize costs of doing something good, right?

Obviously the oppression of the colonists was horrible, but there are much better solutions than pretty much split a country in half, caused a ton of resentment in the process, and kill a hundred thousand people. It's pretty damn easy to do better than that.