Hrm. Well, back to the topic at hand, no, I wouldn't die for my country. A country, to me, is just imaginary lines on a map. Being prideful in imaginary lines, to me, is silly. If someone invades or attacks, there will be an upsurge in patriotic fervor, and I wouldn't have to worry about going to war anyway. If someone nuked us, I feel confident that Dubya or his successors would nuke the heck out of the aggressor, then name a few countries that belong to the "Axis of nuclear evil," whom will then be invaded in due course.
In the situation with terrorists, Xandax is right; it's not the same as two or more nations duking it out. The best way to deal with terrorists is to knock out their support; not cut off their financial resources, but make them out to be the enemy. If they begin blowing up civilian targets in places like Iraq, for example, then they'll lose popular support for their cause. Recruitment will drop. If every time they attacked someone and managed to harm the people they claimed to be helping, it would damage their image.
[QUOTE=ch85us2001]A very powerful Eastern Civilization with nuclear power decides to over take a weaker country that is allied with most of the western civilization (USA, Britain, and others). More and more countries are drawn in on either side, until we have a full out world war with Nuclear options on are hands. Finally, your country is attacked by the Eastern civilization, and joins the war. Would you go?[/QUOTE]
Isn't this kind of situation a bit out-dated? This sounds like the kind of thing that started WW1, the alliances which dragged everyone into a singular conflict, or also like in WW2, where even countries who tried to stay neutral wound up being dragged in--sometimes against their will.
[QUOTE=mr_sir]On the other hand, if there was only a slim chance of it going nuclear but the threat was there, and the Eastern Civilisation had twisted policies and views on stuff (like Hitler's views etc.) and were doing indescribable/horrible things then I probably would go to war as I'd feel it was for the good of the majority of the world's population to do that.[/QUOTE]
One of the sad things being that there were quite a few people who were made aware of what the Nazis were doing even before the first concentration camp was liberated. But anyway, if it turned out that this hypothetical Eastern country was purportedly doing something of this nature, you'd really have to wonder about some things:
1.) Is this merely propaganda? It wouldn't be the first time a country's leaders misled its people by demonizing the enemy. And what worse stigma could be attributed to an enemy than being compared to Hitler?
2.) Would we really know about what was going on? It's not like the Nazis didn't try their best to keep the concentration camps under wraps. Not everyone is going to be made privy to the knowledge of whats going on.
3.) A few people might be made aware of what was going on in this Eastern country. They may conclude it has nothing to do with them, or is not their concern, or they can't do anything about it right now. One of the justifications for why the Allies didn't head for concentration camps more rapidly once in Europe was due to the need to root out the Wehrmacht; there were bigger, more important fish to fry at the time.