Why is war guilt never a problem in the USA?

Question

The USA fought series of wars in foreign countries, the country has done terrible things in the past, but war guilt is never a issue. It never feels remourse. Germany talks about war guilt in WW2, but why the USA doesn't? (The USA is not better unlike what some uneducated Americans like to believe.) Is it because the USA is diverse, and they have someone else in the country to blame?

Answer 1

In the 20thC the US has not been involved in any conflicts in which its official policy & casus belli has been morally unsupportable, as per that of n**i Germany.

Admittedly there have unpleasant occurances, and quite a few at that, but these have been by-products of wider and generally well meaning policies.

When military operations have been undertake in an openly realpolitik fashion (arms to Mujahadin, the Philippines Rebellion, Grenada) Americans do feel awkward about these. But really none of these are close in magnitude to the behaviour of Germany or (to a lesser extent) Japan during WW2; only the supression of the native americans makes that cut and educated americans seem pretty sensitive about that...

Answer 2

Well it isnt that we do not have remourse, but rather that we are inclined to perpetuate our  good qualities and values while ignoring our faults.  We look at our contributions to the world with a patch on one eye....

You answered you question partly with the uneducated Americans bit.  Americans are pressed no to understand cause and effect but rather to accept perceptions as un-debatable facts.  How else can you explain a country that believes it went to war against Germany to ride the world of the racist n***s when colored soldiers in the USA were not even allowed in the same movie theatre with German POWS and their American captors.  How can you explain fighting it for freedom and democracy only to give up every part that n***s originally wanted to take over to the brutality of Communism and the Soviets?

The "patriotic" response above me is probably one of the clearest examples of how pride and folly combine to make arrogant and ignorant citizens.  The sheer magnitude of misconceptions in this answer is why the government then gets away with crony capitalism or elitist internationalism all in the name of "freedom" or "peace".

America has never gotten into a war its elites have not seen profit in waging.  There is never any guilt in making money in America...

Answer 3

why shouldn't Germany feel guilty about WW2?  as a nation they vigorously supported Hitler's aggression against most of Europe. i recall no hostile action made to Germany before Hitler began his war of aggression and expansion over most of Europe.  other than the usual brutality of war, i do not remember if WW2 German soldiers participated in war crimes or such despicable behavior against its enemies so long as they were Aryan and met Hitler's approval,but the internment and murder of 8 million Jews was an unprecedented atrocity against humanity that the world should never forget.  i don't mean i believe current German citizens should be penalized for that shameful event.  but i think all humanity should be ever vigilant against the human frailty that allowed an entire country and almost an entire world to stand by and permit this.                                                                                       please provide examples of any other country that has expressed remorse over an act of war. i can think of no nation doing so, though i believe some national leaders have apologized after defeat.  i don't see that the same as being remorseful, and am not convinced as to the sincerity of the apology.                                                                              as to the USA:  i think individual soldiers return home from war with serious life time emotional problems as a result of guilt as well as the experience of the horrors of war. certainly that was true of Vietnam soldiers, and there is mounting evidence of American soldiers deeply disturbed by the behavior of their fellow soldiers in Iraq. and maybe some personal guilt as well. i am personally deeply opposed to the us intervention in Iraq and am very sorry for the damage done to that country and its citizens.  while i think this is a shameful event in American history, i do not feel any personal guilt about it.  even while the president was lying to the people of this country about the "need" to start a war in Iraq, i felt mistrustful of the situation and thought any crisis in Iraq (Saddam Hussein, the alleged weapons of mass destruction, the allegations Iraq was harboring bin laden, an aggressor against the us) should be dealt with by diplomacy and/or the the international community.  while i haven't marched in the streets to protest the war (I'm in a wheelchair so would have trouble marching in any event) i have continually written and spoken out against this act. i blame the greed and arrogance of bush/cheney for this abomination and i didn't vote for the jerks either time and do all i know as a citizen to oppose the war.  i think the us as a nation and as a people have two historical events to feel shame and remorse about.  one is the treatment of the American Indian as we came to this country and have steadily wiped out the Indian people, put them on reservations, violated numerous treaties with them, and destroyed the land and creatures that provide for them. the second thing Americans have to be shameful about is the enslavement and abuse of the African people.  while few, if any,Americans alive today ever owned slaves or participated or benefitted directly from the institution,i think we must all take some responsibility for the legacy of slavery and its impact on African Americans today.  as a nation, i think we are too callous and insensitive to the evil remains of the institution in our culture today. other than the above instances, i think the usa has acted courageously and selflessly in defense of its allies and itself.

Answer 4

Actually, among most Americans, at least the non-racist ones, there is a lot of war guilt regarding the "Indian wars" (wars against native americans), and Vietnam.  There is still a lot of racism against the true owners of this land among the feds, but most americans generally have a positive attitude towards native americans, at least north american ones.  The ones that cross the rio grande in Texas or the California border however, are another story.

During the revolutionary war and war of 1812 for obvious reasons no war guilt; the Brits were turds, and they deserved a beating.  It was that simple.  During the civil war, there is not so much war guilt, as war bitterness, in the south that is.  Southerners are still bitter over the outcome of the civil war for reasons that go well beyond racism.

See, the reason the south wanted to secede from the Union, the biggest reason, was the same machine causing controversy and no end to grief now; the corporation.  The corporation was born in the 1840's, the legal intention behind it, was to make business more efficient.  Its easier if a bunch of people legally call their business operation a person, rather than have separate branches of the same business operate under different umbrellas but all legally unified, because to do it that way would mean a lot of red tape.  With the red tape, more regulations, and with more regulations, more money being lost when, well, people needed to work.

It was not however, meant to be exploited as a loophole in the law so that the executives forming a corporation could do whatever the h**l they pleased.  Problem is, the men who started it did exactly that.  In fact, the reason Abraham Lincoln passed the income tax law, was both to finance the war effort against the south, as well as curtail corporate power and it was in fact corporate powers who were the root cause of Lincoln's assasination.  It is only because of Lincoln, that corporations have not morphed into the world governing bodies you see in cheesy sci fi movies.  Not only did Lincoln keep america together, when most countries who fall into civil wars do not live to tell the tale, but he also curtailed corporate power WHILE holding the country together.

Abraham Lincoln is therefore, easily, the American King Arthur, murdered, by equally evil people as in the Arthurian myths.  Also, I think the people behind Lincoln's assasination were all from New York and educated at Harvard.  Leave it to New Yorker Harvard snobs to shoot someone like Lincoln, or rather, have him shot.

Whatever the case; the south wanted to secede to escape corporate abuse, it wasn't because "gosh, they were all such racist hillbillies they HAD to have slaves, and they were willing to kill for their racism!"  The truth is slavery was stealing jobs away from poor whites, who formed the vast bulk of the southern population.  The great majority of southerners, racist as they were, making liberal use of the n word as they did, were actually against slavery, reason being, because of those "damned n*****" they did not get to work, and without work, you don't get to eat.

So, racist as they were against blacks, they were still against slavery because they wanted to work and earn a living.  If not for ethics, for understandable reasons most southerners were against it.  What kept slavery going was in fact, the corporation.  The industries and factories of the north, were actively fed by raw materials from the south.  Naturally greedy southern land owners needed more and more slaves to meet the demand.  In fact we are seeing much of the same now; the corporation has always run, and will always run as long as it exists, on slave labor.  It ran of the slave labor of blacks back then, and it runs on the slave labor of mexicans and indonesians now.

But see, because blacks were "locals," that meant countless job losses.  In fact if you read Jefferson Davis' policies as president of the Confederate states, one of them was returning jobs to whites.  The south seceded, again, to get away from corporate tyranny in fact, no where in the U.S. will you find more anti-corporate sentiment, than in the southern U.S.  Despite his efforts to curtail corporate power most southerners stereotype Lincoln as being a corporate dog, even though he was far from it.  Also, the whole Gettysburg address freeing the slaves?  Gettysburg, or whatever speech freed the slaves my 10th grade history is a bit sketchy....  I found out, later on reading history on my own in college, that the real reason Lincoln did that, was to be on good terms with the south and show them he was not their enemy.  Because see, that is precisely what the great majority of southerners wanted; the slaves freed, so that they could work and get paid.

Lincoln was fighting corporate greed on one side, fighting a war, and actively trying to mend a broken country.  Only because of Lincoln's laws, has corporate abuse been curtailed, but in response the corporation has taken its slave operation overseas or, used illegal immigrants.  Even so, the south fought on, regarding the war, because they wanted nothing to do with corporations period.  They wanted simple farm lives, nothing more.

Much of the animosity, the propaganda against the southern united states does indeed come from corporations, unsurprisingly, because southerners fought a war against them.  There was more to it than just "the slaves," a lot more.  Had the south won, for economic, not ethical reasons, the "scalawags" as they called poor whites, would have eventually overthrown the southern gentleman class.  In fact, unrest regarding slavery was more intense in the south than it ever was in the north because, once again, black people, slave black people, were taking white jobs, very much against their will mind.

The true hand behind the jim crow laws, and other such abominations, came from the corporate funded capital of the U.S. because when you think about it, it is the corporation, which most stands to gain from slavery, not a southern society that was largely farmers and laborers.  Lincoln passionately fought the war, not to serve anyone, but because he felt that had the country been divided, that the ideals of the U.S. constitution, weren't worth sh*t.  I mean, if the ideals of the U.S. constution can not even keep a country together then, what was it worth?

Think about it.

You had the British, who very much believed in social class, believing that a country where opportunity was based on merit, not birth, would not survive, and during the civil war, America very nearly proved them right.  Ironically though, the corporation has for all intents and purposes created an oligarchial society.

Also, as many British nobles went bankrupt in the late 19th century, many shamelessly looked for brides among American industrialist's daughters.  The product of one such union was British prime minister Winston Churchill.  As more and more nobles began breeding with the Boston Brahmin and Mayflower families as they are called, some Mayflower families being of noble birth, British ideas of "class" and "birth" began sneaking into American culture.  It is those ideas, in fact, which govern the selection criteria of the Ivy league schools.

In fact the only reason the Ivies were corrupted, originally, Harvard was a place not unlike CUNY (City University of New York), was because British nobility started sneaking into the gene pool of the people in charge of funding those places.  Harvard, Princeton, all Universities that existed since before the U.S. was even a country, are called the "Ivy League."  In the begining, you could be self taught, and if you passed their entrance exams, you got in.

Modern Ivies no longer have entrance exams, and many people with flawless SAT scores are not admitted.  In fact, Harvard has rejected countless thousands, if not millions, of students who got perfect scores on the SAT, in favor for people with lower scores.  Sometimes Harvard has even rejected people who got into M.I.T.  See, that is the main beef with the Ivies because, if those places are rejecting smart people then clearly it takes a lot more than grades or class standing to get into one of those places.

Part of the reason there are so many Jews in those places, the great majority Ashkenazi, are their ties to European nobility.  In Europe it is well known that is how the Jews there survived so long, by pimping out their daughters to monarchs, kings, princes and nobles.  In Spain a famous industrialist family I believe married off one of their sons or daughters to the Spanish royalty.

The reason the Palestinians are made to suffer, is not because "Israel controls america," so much as the fact that many ashkenazi are blood relatives to European nobles, and the ones who have the most European noble blood in them, naturally have the closest ties to the powers that currently run this earth.  Conspiracy has nothing to do with it, so much as nobility in Britain, and in Europe where they survived, not allowing the people of the west or the world to truly be free.

No one will ever listen, regarding Israeli depredations, because to speak against the people who run Israel, the original 10 ashkenazi farm families who ran plantation like operations, is to speak against their own relatives.  Combine this with american attitudes in the belief that they MUST defend Israel for Jesus' return and, well, that corrupt state isn't going anywhere.

Oh trust me, there is plenty of war guilt, and war bitterness around here, specially among the educated.  Wars the U.S. feels were not justified, such as the Indian, Mexican, Vietnam and yes Iraq wars, there is a lot of guilt, generally.

Wars the U.S. feels WERE justified such as WW parts 1 and 2, there is generally no guilt

Answer 5

All nations have a certain amount of guilt over what their nation has done.  All countries have done things that as a collective they are not proud about.  In the US, there is guilt about the treatment of the Native Americans, the fight we picked with Mexico during the Mexican War, dropping of the Atomic Bomb on Japan, etc.

Answer 6

Lack of information. A large number of the US population has very little knowledge of their country's foreign policy and how it's carried out. The hundred's of US military invasions, occupations (some as long as 30 years, as was the case in Nicaragua and Haiti), coup d'etats and political murders around the globe, is largely ignored by the American people.

Answer 7

The losers tend to feel guilty.

Answer 8

it sounds like your not very patriotic.

now im not either but it really annoys me when people complain about the US because they are a bunch of idiots.

really if living in the US bothers you that much then why don't you flee to another country? we have alot of freedom here where nobody else does go live in some 3rd world country then come back here and tell me you love it way better there.

anyway its not that the US doesn't have remorse its just the fact that never in history has a war with foreign countries been brought to our land where bloodshed and terror has ruined us. we always went to aid others but never got so involved to bring it back to the fatherland