Why Kerry doesn't deserve your vote

[Couture]

You're right, let me rephrase that. Get a plan, then stay the course. Staying the course with the status quo is foolish at best.

I still say that pulling out now would be the mistake of all though. It would simply embolden AQ and others like them even more. We've been pulling out of hot spots for 30+ years. It's obvious that tactic doesn't work. It only invites further aggression by those that would do us harm.

Dude, we didn't pull out cause we wanted to. When you turn a whole population against you, there are only two choices.
1. Continue fighting until everyone is dead
2. Get out

In Vietnam, we could have genocided the whole island. Just start rounding everyone up...men, women, and children and kill them all. No people left, no one to make war.

Otherwise, keep throwing more lives away for no good reason.

The only real alternative we had was to get out, and that's what we did. If you are so gungho about not backing down, then why don't you volunteer? I hear they are running pretty low on troops right now.

The point is...this war was bungled. When we road in, they cheered in the streets. Now, they set bombs and snipe. We promised democracy...we gave them a puppet govt. We said, "look at these wasteful palaces Saddam built...then we moved into those same palaces. We promised an end to torture and human rights violation...we brought them Abu Ghraib.

We've methodically turned this population of people against us. The longer we stay, the harder it will be to leave. And this is where I differ from a lot of liberals. They think we have to stay to bring democracy. To stop civil war. etc.

I say that Iraq belongs to the Iraqi people. If they want civil war...then that's their decision and the blood will be on their hands. If we let them vote and they chose to vote for an Islamic regime...well so be it. Again, it's their responsibility. A friendly Islamic regime that we aided, will be a lot easier to get along with than an Islamic regime that is our sworn enemy.

And Wildcard, I want to give you something to think about. Did it ever occur to you that we have so many enemies not because we have shown weakness, but because we've acted like the biggest bully in the world.

 

[shereads]

I think what’ll probably happen is we’ll set up some figurehead and scram, and he’ll be deposed and all hell will break loose for a while, then some new Saddam will appear.

---dr.M. [/B]

I admire your optimism, but I have a feeling things won't be that simple.



If we're posting our predictions and putting cyber-money up, here's my best-case scenario:

We pull out a token number of troops before November, or maybe just dress them in burkas so nobody will know they're our troops. (The boots are a dead giveaway; make a note of that for the Pentagon.)

After the election, we send in new troops (actually the same ones, but for PR purposes we'll say they're Rested & Ready.) A percentage of them will refuse to go back, claiming Conscientious Objector status and doing some jail time, or escaping to Canada.

There will be intensified discussions of reinstating the draft, and since it's the second term, GWB might go for it. But Congress isn't going to like it one bit, because they'll suffer for it in the midterm elections.

There will be lots of fuss about fairness, and someone will filibuster in an attempt to eliminate the college deferment so that the draft is not so heavily weighted toward the sons of lower-class families this time around.

Someone will mutter something about drafting women, but Dubya will threaten a veto; the religious right is already pretty incensed that the Fairer Sex is in uniform and prisoners are out of them.

The bill will pass with some minor concession to fairness, like a new and different college deferment disguised as some other loophole - like officer training, or better food. Without the protection of the college deferment, and with the National Guard actually in-country this time in large numbers, the sons of congressmen and the nephews of presidents could be in danger of serving alongside the sons of AT&T and Bechtel and Tyson Foods.

Nevertheless, with or without the draft, we'll have to maintain enough troop strength to stay the course until some of the investors in the war have seen a decent return, or at least until they break even.

There's no way we're backing out of all those no-bid rebuilding contracts. It would be dishonorable to go back on our word.

~ ~ ~

Who wants to bet on whether one or all of the following happens before the election:

• Gas prices take a temporary nose dive. America has wheels again!

• A vial of smallpox, a keg of anthrax, and some yellow cake uranium labeled "FROM AFRICA" are suddenly found in a place where we looked once or twice before, but somehow missed them.

• Osama turns up dead in a vault in New Jersey

• Saddam passes away of natural causes before he can be brought to trial; we don't want him reminiscing about the old days while he's on the stand. You know how old people ramble.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Let me get this straight: are we seriously suggesting here that the US just pull up stakes and go? I mean, we've fucked that country over rather thoroughly with our little invasion. Now you think we should just declare victory and let them sink or swim?

If there's any way we could possibly make a worse mess of what we've already done, that would be it. American prestige would be in the crapper, American credibility would be joke, and the middle east would be in flames.

No. We've got the tiger by the tail and we can't let go. We've got to stay there. Even is it's just cosmetic.

---dr.M.

 

[KarenAM]

Not-quite-serious but sort-of-serious post here:

Hey, I've got an idea! There's this thing called the UN, which is supposed to help in international crises like this! Why don't we call them and see if they can help? I'm sure they're in the yellow pages or something! Maybe if we were nice to them they might lend us a hand!

And here's another thought. Let's pack the troops out of Iraq and send them to Afghanistan, where they can help rebuild that country with the international mandate that we have to do it. They can also hunt down Osama bin Laden, put him in a little cage, and let people pay $1.00 each for a chance to throw pig shit at him. We'd have that $6 trillion in debt paid off in no time!

Okay, I know it would be morally wrong and counterproductive to do that, even to Osama, but I really, really hate that guy.

 

[cantdog]

Factional strife in Iraq

Actually, we have a history problem again with some of our assumptions.

The Kurds aside, there are no "serious factional differences" between the confessional traditons in Iraq. The conflicts there have been on other grounds. When there is a relative stability, Sunni and Shi'a have a longstanding modus vivendi, a tradition centuries old of managing to get along.

This year hundreds of thoudands of Shi'ites from all over the world gathered at Hussein's tomb in Karbala. His tomb is the foremost reason Karbala is a holy city. They came for Ashoura.

Ashoura marks the martyrdom of Hussein, son of the imam 'Ali and grandson of the Prophet. More than 1400 years ago, Hussein and a band of 70 supporters were surrounded by hundreds of Ummayad soldiers who promptly massacred the entourage, killing Hussein and his entire family. It was a successional dispute, and a lot of power and money was at stake. The movement of the Prophet had already swollen to an empire, and the Prophet's grandson had to go.

Ashoura was able to celebrated at Hussein's tomb for the first time in 25 years, since Saddam Hussein had banned the religious processions and ceremonies in 1979 when he became president of Iraq. Arab and regional news broadcasts showed thousands of pilgrims donning black gowns, flagellating themselves with chains, beating their chests and using swords to beat at their foreheads-- all to mark the tragic martyrdom of Hussein and to call attention to the culpability of the umma for allowing the massacre of Hussein and his family.

Also that day, a suicide bomber in the Kadhimiya district of Baghdad and another in Karbala caused together more than two hundred civilian deaths, mostly religious pilgrims come for Ashoura. Nearly a quarter of the dead were Iranian pilgrims.

On the 2nd of March, leading Sunni clerics joined their Shi'ite brethren and called on all Iraqis to consider themselves "Husseiniya," the living embodiment of the struggle andsacrifices the Imam Hussein faced.

On the third of March, the leading Sunni religious establishment called on the Iraqi resistance to immediately halt all attacks on Iraqis and on Iraqi instituions

Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, arguably the leading Shi'ite cleric in Iraq, joined Harith al-Thari, chairman of the Sunni cleric council, in castigating U.S, forces and the coalition governing body for dragging their feet in securing Iraq's borders. Both blamed foreign insurgents, with some officials bringing up that likely the culprits were al -Qaeda.

"These people know an Islamic Iraq is coming," said Jawad al-Naboulsi, a Sunni Iraqi businessman. "They fear Shi'ites and Sunnis uniting in one fist."

Tony Blair also assessed the situation the same way: "The purpose...[of the Ashoura attacks] is to try to set the different religious communities in Iraq against each other..." (Blair, in London, March 3rd.)

cantdog

 

[shereads]

Re: Factional strife in Iraq

Actually, we have a history problem again with some of our assumptions.

The Kurds aside, there are no "serious factional differences" between the confessional traditons in Iraq. The conflicts there have been on other grounds. When there is a relative stability, Sunni and Shi'a have a longstanding modus vivendi, a tradition centuries old of managing to get along.

This year hundreds of thoudands of Shi'ites from all over the world gathered at Hussein's tomb in Karbala. His tomb is the foremost reason Karbala is a holy city. They came for Ashoura.

Ashoura marks the martyrdom of Hussein, son of the imam 'Ali and grandson of the Prophet. More than 1400 years ago, Hussein and a band of 70 supporters were surrounded by hundreds of Ummayad soldiers who promptly massacred the entourage, killing Hussein and his entire family. It was a successional dispute, and a lot of power and money was at stake. The movement of the Prophet had already swollen to an empire, and the Prophet's grandson had to go.

Ashoura was able to celebrated at Hussein's tomb for the first time in 25 years, since Saddam Hussein had banned the religious processions and ceremonies in 1979 when he became president of Iraq. Arab and regional news broadcasts showed thousands of pilgrims donning black gowns, flagellating themselves with chains, beating their chests and using swords to beat at their foreheads-- all to mark the tragic martyrdom of Hussein and to call attention to the culpability of the umma for allowing the massacre of Hussein and his family.

Also that day, a suicide bomber in the Kadhimiya district of Baghdad and another in Karbala caused together more than two hundred civilian deaths, mostly religious pilgrims come for Ashoura. Nearly a quarter of the dead were Iranian pilgrims.

On the 2nd of March, leading Sunni clerics joined their Shi'ite brethren and called on all Iraqis to consider themselves "Husseiniya," the living embodiment of the struggle andsacrifices the Imam Hussein faced.

On the third of March, the leading Sunni religious establishment called on the Iraqi resistance to immediately halt all attacks on Iraqis and on Iraqi instituions

Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, arguably the leading Shi'ite cleric in Iraq, joined Harith al-Thari, chairman of the Sunni cleric council, in castigating U.S, forces and the coalition governing body for dragging their feet in securing Iraq's borders. Both blamed foreign insurgents, with some officials bringing up that likely the culprits were al -Qaeda.

"These people know an Islamic Iraq is coming," said Jawad al-Naboulsi, a Sunni Iraqi businessman. "They fear Shi'ites and Sunnis uniting in one fist."

Tony Blair also assessed the situation the same way: "The purpose...[of the Ashoura attacks] is to try to set the different religious communities in Iraq against each other..." (Blair, in London, March 3rd.)

cantdog

Thank you, cant. You know more about Iraq from an Iraqi perspective than anybody who's posted, and that's a perspective that's certainly been missing in all of our discussions about the war.

 

[shereads]

Not-quite-serious but sort-of-serious post here:

Hey, I've got an idea! There's this thing called the UN, which is supposed to help in international crises like this! Why don't we call them and see if they can help? I'm sure they're in the yellow pages or something! Maybe if we were nice to them they might lend us a hand!

And here's another thought. Let's pack the troops out of Iraq and send them to Afghanistan, where they can help rebuild that country with the international mandate that we have to do it. They can also hunt down Osama bin Laden, put him in a little cage, and let people pay $1.00 each for a chance to throw pig shit at him. We'd have that $6 trillion in debt paid off in no time!

Okay, I know it would be morally wrong and counterproductive to do that, even to Osama, but I really, really hate that guy.

I'm not certain there's any moral constraint against the tossing of animal dung, as long as there's no nudity or pointing.

We'd have saved a few billion dollars and a few thousand lives if we had just offered a $200 billion reward for his arrest two years ago. Semi-retired Special Forces agents would have been parachuting into Afghanistan in those crates of Meals-Ready-To-Eat, and in no time the population of the mountains along the border with Pakistan would have quadrupled, 90% American, and determined to win the money. If you get a dozen people to eat raw animal intestines for a chance to appear on "Fear Factor," you can certainly get one to find and arrest a cave-dwelling maniac for $200 billion.

 

[Sunnie]

somehow I don't think it's the Keryy voting record that did it for ya, wildcard....

i'd say roy moore might be more appealing to Kentuckians of right leanings. there's yer Christian prinsiples.

ROFLMAO

 

[shereads]

Let me get this straight: are we seriously suggesting here that the US just pull up stakes and go? I mean, we've fucked that country over rather thoroughly with our little invasion. Now you think we should just declare victory and let them sink or swim?

If there's any way we could possibly make a worse mess of what we've already done, that would be it. American prestige would be in the crapper, American credibility would be joke, and the middle east would be in flames.

No. We've got the tiger by the tail and we can't let go. We've got to stay there. Even is it's just cosmetic.

---dr.M.

I agree. I think we'll stay for other reasons, but that's the only one that matters anymore. We forget that there are several million Iraqi families whose lives were as normal as it's possible to be under a dictatorship, and who may even have believed us when we promised that if they just wouldn't interfere with our guys, we'd make sure they suffered minimally during the invasion and the rebuilding - and that we'd make their lives better than they were before we arrived.

They're not all beheading Americans or stringing bodies up on bridges anymore than we're all out looking for Arab-Americans to insult or mosques to vandalize every time we're enraged about what's happening in the news. We destroyed the infrastructure and dismantled what passed for law and order. If we leave before we've at least achieved some semblance of a order and helped secure their borders, whatever happens in the inevitable free-for-all will be our fault.

Nobody asked Iraqi shopkeepers and schoolchildren and grandmas if they were willing to risk this disaster on the chance that we might help them. And we definitely didn't ask educated, non-Burka-wearing Iraqi women if they were willing to risk being subjugated under an Islamic regime. We probably will have to leave them with one anyway, but we should leave them with plumbing and basic police services before we walk away.

 

[Sunnie]

Re: Re: Re: Why Kerry doesn't deserve your vote

Perhaps if Clinton hadn't spent 8 years FUCKING HIS INTERNS but running the country instead, things wouldn't be so fucked up. I mean seriously...why can't people see that?

Dude. We are writers on Literotica, for fuck's sake. Since when does SEX have anything to do with doing one's job correctly?

Impeach a man for a blowjob. Let a man lie about why he started a war, and he's immune. Where's the justice there?

 

[lucky-E-leven]

Please Excuse the Interruption

***shameless plug***

Sher, your box is full.



~lucky

***resume politicking***

 

[shereads]

Thank you. Done with style, as always, Luckster. How's the Dadster?

 

[Sunnie]

Let me get this straight: are we seriously suggesting here that the US just pull up stakes and go? I mean, we've fucked that country over rather thoroughly with our little invasion. Now you think we should just declare victory and let them sink or swim?

If there's any way we could possibly make a worse mess of what we've already done, that would be it. American prestige would be in the crapper, American credibility would be joke, and the middle east would be in flames.

No. We've got the tiger by the tail and we can't let go. We've got to stay there. Even is it's just cosmetic.

---dr.M.

Doc, I love you. But think about the lives lost since we're been there already. True they're nothing in comparison to the lives lost in previous "real" wars (Let's face it -- the Pax Americana taught us to forget what war was really like), but one life lost is one life too many as far as I'm concerned. I watched the Berg video, that poor man getting his head literally hacked off by these crazy fucks...Not to mention what our "beloved" soldiers are doing to the Iraqi prisoners...

You're right, we have to stay, but now it's because we are stuck, we've got no choice. We should never have been there in the first fucking place. We should have gotten our asses out the minute Saddam disappeared. We should have been in Afghanistan looking for Bin Laden's dumb ass.

Shoulda coulda woulda. Doesn't mean anything now.

 

[lucky-E-leven]

Thank you. Done with style, as always, Luckster. How's the Dadster?

Check clean box. Thanks for asking.

~lucky

 

[Pure]

I agree with what I think couture is saying. Leave. Do not put conditions. Let's say for the sake of argument, 1/3 out every three mos. That's all gone in 9. As the numbers diminish, concentrate the forces, i.e. withdraw from remote areas and into a few main cities.

Becuase the pace is forced, it will be believed. Those Iraquis who want to get things in order will have to try asap, not wait 5-10 years.

The UN might undertake to go in, knowing the US would be out.

There are few desirable feature of the new leader: shi'ite; strong man; favorable to private ownership, ie., oil companies. Of course the US can't name him, that would be the kiss of death, but someone will likely emerge.

Query: Can Bush do this? Can he avoid a several year hemorrhage period? Maybe a neo con whiz kid will find a rationale. A number of actual conservatives are getting antsy.
(See the Weekly Standard, or National Review websites.)

 

[cantdog]

Tiger by the tail

Let me get this straight: are we seriously suggesting here that the US just pull up stakes and go? I mean, we've fucked that country over rather thoroughly with our little invasion. Now you think we should just declare victory and let them sink or swim?

If there's any way we could possibly make a worse mess of what we've already done, that would be it. American prestige would be in the crapper, American credibility would be joke, and the middle east would be in flames.

No. We've got the tiger by the tail and we can't let go. We've got to stay there. Even is it's just cosmetic.

---dr.M.

Doc points out the largest difficulty in all this. Kerry isn't going to get out either. All the antiwar candidates but Nader are out of the race. When it did seem that, in the person of Dean, we had a genuine opposition candidate, the whole Dean campaign went down in media flames. Newsday, Newsweek, Time, newspaper after newspaper ran stories about how no one could know what Dean really thought or believed, what a cypher he was, blah, blah, blah. The AFL-CIO withdrew its support for the man, every pundit panned him. So Kerry really isn't an opposition candidate; he's the one that the corporate players want, just as Bush is. It's all right now, they can relax; neither candidate will disturb the status quo.

As far as the Iraq situation goes, the Pentagon wants a bridgehead in the area from which to project US power. The obvious opportunities for extractive industries, if there were a docile Iraq, have been touched upon by many in this thread.

We've enforced compliance in most of the American hemisphere for many decades. The idea was to do the same in Iraq. We don't much care to run the place ourselves, as the nineteenth century empires did. The American empire's style is to let someone from the country itself do that, so long as they will satisfy the needs of the multinationals who own our government and dispatch our army. We even prefer despots, local strongmen, to more responsive forms of local government, for two reasons.

First, we need someone with real power, who can make it happen when we want something clearly not in the public interest locally, who is one man. One man, whom you can go to and tell him what you need without waiting for some assembly to meet and vote. One man powerful and ruthless enough to not just smile and tell us yessir, but to be able to ram it down the local's throats and make it stick.

Secondly, responsive governments are always coming up with programs to benefit their people. They might set a minimum wage or allow unions. They might set clean water standards or insist on fair market prices for their commodities or outlaw toxic waste dumping or tax the wealthy exploiters from overseas. This we can't have, so the more democratic the local government is, the less good it is to us.

So we can't trust the UN to leave Iraq with a "suitable " government, since they don't have the same agenda we do. For what is an "American interest"? You always hear that our army protects American interests. What is meant by that?

The only thing it usually means is the financial interest of some American-based multinational. Like Anaconda Copper in Chile. Like United Fruit in Cuba. Like Mr. Morgan's investments in England, which made us back that particular side in WW I.

That's all an American interest is, and that's completely normal, historically.

From a wish-fulfillment standpoint, the oil people drool at the idea of a docile, compliant Iraq.

But Bush mishandled it. There are a billion muslims on the planet. The initial Bush reactions to 9/11 were to talk "crusade" and "Operation Infinite Justice." It was a Christian-vs-Muslim thing all the way, and Bush is a messianic arch-Christian zealot.

The Pentagon were the ones who shut down the loaded terminology. They realize that the most important muslim is the undecided one. They know that Bin Laden and the Iranians and many other Islamists all say we are engaged in an anti-muslim campaign. We say we are concerned with peace and freedom and democracy. The undecided muslim is watching. Is his civilization indeed coming under attack from this global superpower? Are they actually trying to subjugate the dar al-Islam? Or is it just the fundamentalists they want to shut down?

We are going to have an incredibly hard time pulling out without screwing everything up. If you once set a date, saying, "On this day we will be gone," immediately no one has to deal with you or promise compliance. All they have to do is wait, now, and you'll be gone and they'll still be there.

An Islamic state is the more likely because of Bush's bungling, and his crass priorities for the oil and the money. Fundamentalists, like our own president only more so, cannot be given the resources of a state to play with. Iran created Hizb Allah in Lebanon, for instance. Their headquarters are literally in Teheran, they make no secret of it.

Fundy Christians are infuriating and annoying, but Fundy Christians with the resources of the American government could wreak enormous damage. Fundy muslims the same, in an oil rich country. Now we're seemingly making another one, on top of the one we created in Iran by screwing with Mossadeq and then by isolating the Shah.

Disengagng from Iraq will have to be done very carefully, and we may already have damaged our ability to influence events there beyond the point where we can get out without setting our interests back tenfold from where we were before the war.

We can't afford to have this pack of monkeys stay in. But whoever takes the reins in 2004 will find Iraq no picnic.

cantdog

 

[KarenAM]

Gosh, cantdog, that's an absolutely marvelous post. A throughly lousy situation, but you've done a fine job analyzing it, and made me think about things.

I like it when people make me do that.

 

[amicus]

Gee Whiz. cantdog...most readers to this column, most people in the world don't have a deep interest in history.

Cantdog said:

"The only thing it usually means is the financial interest of some American-based multinational. Like Anaconda Copper in Chile. Like United Fruit in Cuba. Like Mr. Morgan's investments in England, which made us back that particular side in WW I.

That's all an American interest is, and that's completely normal, historically."

Nowadays, any one can search for the history of Anaconda and United Fruit and with very little probing, discover what a boon to these third world countries the companies were and are. There was very little 'in country' consumption of Bananas and Copper, but a US and World wide market that brought hospitals and schools and roads and the yankee dollar to these 17th century countries drained by colonial spain and portugal.

In the entire middle east, subtract the oil revenues from a world market and see what kind of an economy you have with dates and figs and camel hair, (I know I repeat myself)

For people who read these posts and never reply, I point out those who use a little knowledge, a bit of truth, here and there, to make a political agenda against the United States do so at the risk of the exposure of their tactics...

The History of the middle east goes back 5000 years, if you think the current Christian/Muslim conflict is new...you are wrong, it is simply a continuation.

America is a player now..not just the europeans and all know we do not want to occupy or to colonize...but dozens of countries have invested in the middle east to harvest the oil and it will not fall to Islamic Fundamentalists.

Analyze that...

amicus

 

[cantdog]

Gosh, cantdog, that's an absolutely marvelous post. A throughly lousy situation, but you've done a fine job analyzing it, and made me think about things.

I like it when people make me do that.

You're making me blush, now.

But it was you who last and best pointed out that we shouldn't have gone in in the first place, just as demonstrators in 600 cities around the world were telling us all on Feb. 15th. Plus nearly every government in the world.

But we did go in; that's the legacy of the Bush presidency. He was not a large enough man, and he isn't accompanied by large enough men, to have handled 9/11. These people simply leveraged it to pursue their greedheaded agenda and to consolidate their control over any possible popular opposition domestically by setting up their secret state police.

Now we're, as you said, stuck. The course, as it's been so far, is last thing we want to stay. But we'll have to think of something. I think we ought to try to get the UN to bail us out, and I think we ought to pay dearly if we have to to make that happen.

I also think we ought to love-bomb the dar al-Islam. Make October Muslim Appreciation month, with Middle Eastern classical music in the stores, Hollywood types making fashion statements in middle eastern dress, really mean it.

Or something.

We had the world pretty much by the balls when Bush came on. No one country can touch us, we're militarily unassailable by anyone, except possibly, a generation from now, the Chinese. No combination of states could do it, either, as things were when Bush came on.

So all he had to do was not piss people off enough to create larger groups of states who would be able to agree that we had to go. What chance of that? None, then.

Bush started in antagonizing everyone! We repudiated all kinds of solemn treaties previous presidents had negotiated, dynamited the Kyoto accords, the ABM treaty, Bush barfed on heads of state abroad and harped continually on the untouchable sovereignty of the United States.

Treaty or no treaty, nothing was going to limit, even in principle, the freedom of action of America to do whatever America wanted... and then, with the World Trade Center and Pentagon hijack bombings, he set out to create an overarching desire in the hearts of one billion muslims to unite against us, by declaring a holy war against the muslims.

And all he had to do was shut up and play nice, and we could have continued raping the planet with impunity for a long time to come.

Whereas really, how much more intelligent would it have been to back off from the pursuit of global domination, develop alternative and sustainable agriculture and energy, create on the basis of the Four Freedoms world conditions militating toward genuine peace and real security. Rattling sabres at people and stealing their shit only makes people edgy.

We stand in a unique position to positively affect the wellbeing of the whole world, with the amount of resources we can control, our tech edge, the incredible wealth we have.

No one is thinking like that, of course, and also running for president. Except Nader. More media is bashing him than anyone except Sharpton. Don't look for it tomorrow.

cantdog

 

[amicus]

After cantdog's last post, I feel he must be added to the 'rabid' list, even the saliva is lethal...


amicus

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

Gee Whiz. cantdog...most readers to this column, most people in the world don't have a deep interest in history.
<snip>
The History of the middle east goes back 5000 years, if you think the current Christian/Muslim conflict is new...you are wrong, it is simply a continuation....

First you denigrate history and then you quote it, but I, too, denigrate the quality of history that you cite.

I suggest, that there were more than financial reasons for America entering WWI. A German U-boat sinking the Lusitania had something to do with that (With 128 dead American citizens, it was difficult to look the other way.) The Zimmerman Telegram between Germany and Mexico, intercepted by the British also carried weight — America has a distaste for losing states.

To suggest that Latin American countries required the intervention of America, and the United Fruit Company, to help it find a market for their stagnating banana crops is incredible. To validate your implication that American intervention acted as economic relief from years of Spanish and Portugese colonisation must defy even your immensurable abilities at parsing logic.

You do make one valid point. Without the oil, there would be little beyond the odd shipment of figs and dates to be of interest to the western world. The Arab factions would then be left in peace to kill each other barbarically, retail, instead of having Western “allies” do it for (and to) them, wholesale.

Where I fear you most missed the mark, was in your statement that “all know we do not want to occupy or to colonize.” This is precisely what is not understood by the Iraqis, and as the American Military prepares to transfers from its Saudi bases to establish new Iraq bases, do they not have they reason?

 

[cantdog]

Gee Whiz. cantdog...most readers to this column, most people in the world don't have a deep interest in history.

The older I get the more history I read. It's key shit. It's right up there with tolerance and mysticism, in the second row behind stuff like sex and children and improvisation.

In the entire middle east, subtract the oil revenues from a world market and see what kind of an economy you have with dates and figs and camel hair,

Exactly. They know that, and they know that in thirty years the oil will effectively be gone. This is their one chance to build the nest egg for their children's children. Hence OPEC. There are dozens of desalination projects, costing billions, being put in all over the region, because the resource the next round of wars will be fought over is water. The oil countries have to make the most of what Allah has given them, and think long-term. Soon it'll be dates and olives and camels again, rice and wheat and cotton.

But if they can build enough sustainable industrial base, and educational systems to keep their grandchildren from ignorance, before it all runs out! Some are doing much better than others, and some are being prevented from acting wisely by us and other exploiters. What good is the oil wealth if all the fruits of it lines the pockets of Exxon-Mobil and goes away? What if all the industry is foreign sweatshops?

Yet this is what we are trying to do. Not just buy the oil, but own and exploit it for our own benefit. And many elites and leaders in those places are just helping us do it, because personally they are becoming very rich. we have a name in the newspapers for these greedy and unwise men: moderates.

In our own country, middle class jobs are scarcer and scarcer, the upper few multibillionaires are having banner years under this administration, while literacy rates, infant mortality, life expectancy, and other statistics demonstrate that the rest of us are being third-world-ized right here in America.

We subsidize these businesses with our taxes, lend them the aid of our armies, and reduce our taxing of them. We pass protectionist trade laws to keep them from having to compete directly with other countries' businesses.

They respond by basing themselves overseas to avoid U.S. regulation and tax liability altogether, ship the industries overseas, farm out the jobs to places where they don't have to pay much, they can pollute all they like, and if a loyal employee gets hurt while working to enrich them, they can simply let them go and replace them with another.

Why do we keep helping them so expensively, and sending our young men and women to die to make them richer, while they keep kicking us like they do? Because the people who make those decisions are also personally getting very rich.

Meanwhile the list of things which desperately need doing gets longer. Reduce greenhouse gas emissions, clean the air and water, preserve the rain forests and forests in general, the list goes on. These people control all the money.

You get up in the morning, in your millions, and it's money that determines what you're going to do today. But the money isn't interested in long-term thinking, so the list gets longer.

Everybody's history is 5000 years, and we shouldn't be engaging in any Christian/muslim conflicts. That's a totally asinine thing to do. It's never been a good idea and it isn't now.

cantdog

 

[Pure]

good stuff, cant dog.

 

[Wildcard Ky]

Dude, we didn't pull out cause we wanted to. When you turn a whole population against you, there are only two choices.
1. Continue fighting until everyone is dead
2. Get out

In Vietnam, we could have genocided the whole island. Just start rounding everyone up...men, women, and children and kill them all. No people left, no one to make war.

Otherwise, keep throwing more lives away for no good reason.

The only real alternative we had was to get out, and that's what we did. If you are so gungho about not backing down, then why don't you volunteer? I hear they are running pretty low on troops right now.

The point is...this war was bungled. When we road in, they cheered in the streets. Now, they set bombs and snipe. We promised democracy...we gave them a puppet govt. We said, "look at these wasteful palaces Saddam built...then we moved into those same palaces. We promised an end to torture and human rights violation...we brought them Abu Ghraib.

We've methodically turned this population of people against us. The longer we stay, the harder it will be to leave. And this is where I differ from a lot of liberals. They think we have to stay to bring democracy. To stop civil war. etc.

I say that Iraq belongs to the Iraqi people. If they want civil war...then that's their decision and the blood will be on their hands. If we let them vote and they chose to vote for an Islamic regime...well so be it. Again, it's their responsibility. A friendly Islamic regime that we aided, will be a lot easier to get along with than an Islamic regime that is our sworn enemy.

And Wildcard, I want to give you something to think about. Did it ever occur to you that we have so many enemies not because we have shown weakness, but because we've acted like the biggest bully in the world.

Where to start with this one: Vietnam. (It's not an island) Maybe we could have bombed Hanoi. It was off limits though, you know, politics of the war. Have you ever seriously looked at the frag list from Nam? The number of targets that was off limits borders on ridiculous. Vietnam was guerilla jungle warfare. We never fought it that way. We kept trying to take conventional war to an enemy that didn't want to play by the rules. Sound familiar? We also fought what we called a "limited" campaign. It was limited by the politicians. Certain targets and tactics were declared off limits due to fears of involving China.

I am gungho about not backing out. I can't volunteer because I'm 38 years old. I'm also a vet. I was in Panama and Desert Storm. I was gung ho about us finishing Panama, which we did, and gung ho about finishing Desert Storm, which we didn't. I was the first in my unit to volunteer for Desert Shield, and I stayed voluntarily until Desert Storm was over. I would have volunteered to stay longer if we had decided to go to Baghdad and finish the job. I've done my service in the military. Have you?

You say they hate us because we bully? Are we a bigger bully than Saddam? Than Bin Laden? Than Milosovich? Than Noriega? Than Mohammed Farrah Idid? Yes, we throw our weight around at times. Given the track records of those that I just mentioned, I think that's a good thing. We have enemies because we stomp out tyranny and terrorism. You missed my point in all of that though. I wasn't speaking of why we have enemies. I was speaking of why those enemies feel like they can attack us. We show weakness before these enemies by tucking tail and running when things get tough. The backing down only makes them bolder. It culminated with 9-11. The one thing they universally respect is strength. At the most critical times, we have failed to show strength. We get attacked, we cut and run. They see that as weakness, and start planning their next attack. If you don't see that, then you are choosing to ignore it. It is a cycle that goes all the way back to the 1970's.

 

[Couture]

Good points. However, did Hitler cut and run? You know, he could have probably gotten by with making war on various governments. The problem was not that he cut and ran, but that whole populations of people were ready to fight to the last man.

I agree with you to a degree, but not to the extent you say. Do you remember when you were in school, and most schools are the same. There was the school bully, but then there was always someone who the school bully didn't fuck with. The person who would do whatever it took ... the one who even if they didn't win the battle, they won the war.

I think this is a much better strategy, don't you?

The person who practiced ultimate defense got into far fewer fights than the bully. Nor did they have everyone gunning for them at a moment of weakness.

This mess of preemptive attack is stupid and is turning the world against us. A strategy of all out destruction when provoked, and none of that rebuilding shit either, would be much more effective, and serve as a much better deterent. At least it does to me in my drunken opinion.