Friday, April 4, 2008
Easten/Mideastern Promises
To all of you who intend to vote Democratic in this year's Presidential election AND whose main issue is ending the war in Iraq (yes, myself included), a word or two of caution. JUST BECAUSE Obama and Clinton are saying that they will end the war in Iraq/withdraw our troops from that country, doesn't necessarily mean that they will. I mean, just harken back to Nixon in 1968. That son-of-a-bitch said that he was going to "honorably" (his "out" word, I guess) conclude our involvement in south-east Asia. "Honorably conclude", he said and look what frigging happened. He ended up escalating the "situation". It wasn't until after Gerry Ford took over that the whole damned nightmare was over - mercifully (yes, albeit shamefully). Couple this, I'm saying, with the fact that Hillary herself is as Nixonesque as any politician of recent memory and, yeah, you kind of get the picture here..................................P.S. As for Obama (at this point, the much more likely nominee), the harsh reality is that even he may in fact find it significantly harder to leave Iraq....than it was for frigging W. to enter. I mean, even he himself has said that it may be entirely necessary to "go back in" - this, to prevent genocide, the all-out carnage from a full-blown civil-war, etc.. I don't know, bottom-line, folks, the nightmare in which we currently find ourselves, there's a possibility that, no, it might not be over for a while.
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21 comments:
I'm not so sure it will be hard to leave Iraq, UNLESS you still want to control Iraq.
The world history is filled with instances where a occupying power left a country the were trying to control,they couldn't until they relinquished their desire of control of others, but by giving up their desire of control taking their forces home became much easier.
Most important case to us , the British giving up their hopes of controlling their former 13 Colonies on the North American continent.
When we had to we left Vietnam quite quick, USSR left Afghanistan, the British left Afghanistan 3 times and India, Pakistan, Churchill even left Iraq, France left Vietnam and Algeria, hell even many European powers left many African colonies when it cost them too much to stay.
It is just our demands the world do as we say that keeps us there, just as it kept the European powers in many places on this planet until they couldn't take the cost in blood and money.
Humility is so freeing to foreign policy.
Why do you have to put others down for a TV show that millions of people loved and that was absolutely hilarious?
You sound like a jerk.
Clif, read my March 27th posting; "Thank You, George W. Bush". It might flush it out for you a little. Lydia, that "hilarious" show of yours, I'd rather stare at a chalk-outline of Sal Mineo for a half-hour. Thanks for the compliment, by the way. Yeah, like you don't put down people.
Will, I have studied military history for over three decades both in and out of the military and one thing I have learned from it;
Over the centuries, once a empire and the people who populate it let go of their closely held beliefs, that they are the top of the human existence, they can easily correct some of the mistakes they have made from their arrogance.
It never fails, as long as they demand the world or some part of it change to meet their expectations, they meet rising resistance, as soon as they allow others to be as free as they demand to be, everyone gets along much easier.
BTW, I also learned empires ALWAYS fall, and it doesn't matter if they use their military or economic prowess primarily to try to control the planet, they are destined to fall eventually.
What we are seeing in the first decades of the 21st century, is the US going through what every other world class empire before it has gone through.
BTW your limited post leaves out the Kurdish problem, .... the internal Shiite fight between those who want the be free from Iranian influence and those who look to Iran for help, .... the chasm between the Sunni fundis and the Baathists.
Iraq is much more complex then Yugoslavia ever was.
Churchill learned that post WW1 and got the hell out, all Bush is doing is retracing Churchill's failed attempt to control Iraq.
The European powers since the time of the crusades have tried and failed to control the middle east. France and Great Brittan tried post WW1 and failed. Post WW2 most of the European powers who were crumbling world empires just left the whole mess to the UN and went home. The USSR tried and failed in Afghanistan, and we are doomed to follow in their all their footsteps because some in power currently refuse to admit they can't change historical forces.
I'm aware of the Kurdish problem, the Shiite on Shiite violece, etc. and, yes, that's another reason why that hell-hole of a country (which really ISN'T a country but instead a make-shift hodge-podge created by Britain) WILL explode after we leave (and this from a fellow who thinks that, yes, we definitely need to leave -what's that, Obama says that it may be necessary to leave 60,00 troops there afterall?). And, yes, I think our presece is making that potentiality even worse (you really need to read my words more thoughtfully - unlike you and Lydia, I speak with nuance). As for theories here, did the French leaving Vietnam cause those frigging bastards to "get along much easier? Come on. Look, I agree with you. We need to cut our losses. All I was saying (and, again, I don't think that you read the actual words) is that I'm not totally sold on the Democrats' ablity to totally ignore the mayhem. Think back to BEFORE our involvement. The only reason that that "country" stayed together was Saddam's iron-hand kept it together and, yes, THAT was why we should have never invaded; Saddam, for all his warts, kept a lid on shit....and he also prevented what we might potentially have at the end of this; a Shia crescent all the way to Jordan. Pragmatism and nuance, my brother, not easily refuted bromides/rank partisanship.
As for theories here, did the French leaving Vietnam cause those frigging bastards to "get along much easier? Come on.
Well you just PROVED you do not know your history very well;
In 1956 Eisenhower PREVENTED elections from occurring all over Vietnam in an effort to reunify the country, and meet the requirements of the Geneva accords of 1954, because;
get this;
Ho Chi Minh would have gotten 90%+ of the vote
Do ya thunk 90% of the people agreeing on a candidate is as you so eloquently put it;
frigging bastards to "get along
I wouldn't call them bastards, but would think 90% of a vote is getting along very well;
Only John Foster Dulles and Alan Dulles interference in Vietnam prevented that and started the US into the fiasco which we all call the Vietnam war;
If ya don't believe me son.
READ the Pentagons own history of that foreign policy fiasco, which THEY wrote as it went along;
It is known as the Pentagon Papers, and it very clearly shows Vietnam would have recovered as a society and country quite well from French colonial rule EXCEPT for the US government of Eisenhower through actions of the Dulles brothers blocking it from happening.
And with your characterization of the Vietnamese as bastards I NOW think your a slimy repugnant troll PRETENDING to be progressive, this half assed attempt of a blog not withstanding.
You have let other clues slip out in your many posting on the tubes son also. (your dishonest handle is not very hard to google)
And Castro used to get 99%. Uh, boat people! This is getting boring. P.S. This Voltron guy doesn't seem to like you very much.
Gee, what a surprise, you blame the Republicans for the Vietnam fiasco. Nothing about L.B.J., the Gulf of Tonkon, the biggest lie in the history of the U.S. Presidency, "I will never send American boys to do the fighting that Asian boys should be doing themselves." Oh, and I suppose Pol Pot (he of the 1.7 million manual murders) was actually a secret agent for Nixon. And you trust Communist elections, too. Just great!
And get your God-damned labels off me, pal. I'm an independent thinker who eschews such imbecilic demarcations. In the words of Friedrich Nietzsche, "I mistrust ALL (my emphasis) systematizers and I avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity."
Will take no prisoners Hart stated"That ad-hoc rationalization of yours, Lydia; Republicans are hypocritical on moral-values, it might have had more oomph to it had the object of your vitriole been, say, Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay, Bill Bennett, or any of those moronic TV preachers. John McCain (again, who I am not voting for because I strongly disagree with his Iraq policy), for the vast bulk of his congressional career, has not been divisive (hell, he has more friends on the Democratic side of the aisle) or judgemental. Why don't you guys just admit it over there, you're a bunch of shrill partisans whose capacity to make reasoned discourse is marginal, at best. Admit it, just like Fox should admit that they're not what they claim to be."
Good afternoon, i had desired to craft a response to this dubious rubbish yesterday evening, however i was extremely knackered from my lengthy flight and from a fortnight abroad.
Have no fear, as i shall certainly give it, its due, before persuing more pleasurable avenues such as disecting that old sod Freedom Fans dishonest illogical drivel.
Now sir, shall we look at the facts here since you obviously seem so resolute and intent on avoiding and dodging them.
First sir you come into a blog as a fresh faced new blogger and immediately proceed to hurl snide veiled and not so veiled insults and personal attacks at the blog owner and other regulars without so much as addressing a single fact in the post you are attacking. Those sir are the tactics of a ruffian, a scoundrel and dare i say a blog troll.
Immediately after entering the blog sir instead of debating or refuting a single shred of the information Ms Cornell put out there on the main post you immediately proceeded with a snide childish personal afront to the blog owner demeaning her show and insinuating she lacks credibility. You then proceeded to label all the regulars who frequent this blog with a dishonest sweeping generalization or as you say rabid shrill partisans which might i add is less than truthful as many on this blog are independent, unregistered or even Conservative. Perhaps you need to read the book How To Win Friends and Influence People sir because quite clearly you are either a wretch, who lacks the social skills to interact positively with other individuals or your agenda is for your true intentions and positions to remain opaque for nefarious purposes , namely subterfuge, as it appears you intend to attempt to impugn the credibility of progressives putting out information and facts about candidate Mccain that are clearly relevant to this campaign, in order to silence them, so damaging information about the candidate you claim to not support but yet have done nothing but support the past two days with your daft and dodgy arguments that are nothing more than personal attacks completely bereft of facts and supporting evidence.
Let me ask you sir, would you consider it reasonable and acceptable behavior to start insulting and attacking your coworkers or making dishonest sweeping generalizations when starting a new job or when at a family reunion or wedding and meeting new relatives and inlaws for the first time, would insulting people you know little to nothing about while refusing to address their arguments with factual evidence be your modus operandi, if so sir i find that irrational behavior quite bizarre and dubious. The logical conclusion would be as stated previously that you desire your true intentions and positions to remain opaque for nefarious purposes, in other words sir you are a ruffian and a plant whose heart is as black as coal and who attemps to stiffle reasoned discussion and free speech by branding others shrill partisans and implying they are not credible while refuting not a solitary thing they say with factual evidence, if you believe candidate mccain is being attacked unfairly then by all means prove it sir, in fact i challenge you to attempt such a or else resign your self to being exposed as a blog troll sir.
You claim to oppose the war sir, and while i find that position commendable, however, after examining you words and tactics over the last two days, I am obliged to conclude that you are nothing more than a ruffian and a prat, and your dubious claim to oppose the war and be an unbiased moderate is nothing more than a facade or sham to silence the blogosphere from discusing information that is damaging to your candidate.
Your charade grows tiresome sir, so in conclusion I say unto you sir if you are here for reasoned debate based on factual evidence then consider Thu at your service, however if you continue to play the sniping little plant pretending to be a moderate while insulting and assassinating the credibility of those exposing facts you dont like to the light then consider Thu your foil sir.
To summarize my rather lengthy post, mr will, i challenge you sir to refute any of the statements you feel are dubious or unfounded with factual evidence rather than throwing a tantrum like a 5 year old prat and saying you sods are shrill partisans you dont like my candidate while feigning to be an unbiased moderate and providing not a single shred of factual evidence to back your claim.
Actually sir you lacked the gravitas to even bother to construct an argument no less back one up, all you did sir was fling insults, personal afronts and sweeping generalizations while claiming your opponents were lowering themselves to similar behavior when that was shall we say rather dishonest at best sir.
One further point sir, please refrain from calling the Vietnamese as you say bastards sir, i have family members there and in other various parts of Asia and Europe and would prefer more reasoned civil and shall we say fact based erudite discourse sir, i pray that is not too much to expect from the likes of you as clearly you are overmatched intellectually, and that is why you need to resort to derailing from fact based reasoned discussion with insults and personal afronts.
Ya know son, IF the Dulles brothers hadn't blocked the freedom of the Vietnamese people from choosing their own leaders instead of having the US forcing them to take what ever dictator the US government decided, the entire 1960's would have been different.
And as for calling YOU a reichwing troll son; if acts like a republican operative I call it a republican operative, and give your new best friend dolty some man love while your at it son.
Gee, what a surprise, you blame the Republicans for the Vietnam fiasco.
Well son they were the clowns WHO STARTED the path to the fiasco in Vietnam in the 1950's;
and YOU clown haven't even admitted as much.
Oh, and I suppose Pol Pot (he of the 1.7 million manual murders) was actually a secret agent for Nixon.
No widdle boy, but nice right wing try at telling me my position.
So much for YOU knowing shit from shinola eh boy.
One rigged pinko election (yeah, they had so many more, huh?) does not a civil society make. And what about after WE (us colonial bastards) left, how did that work out for all those hundreds of thousands of boat people, fleeing for fear of their lives? Yeah, bro, the Communist North Vietnamese WERE bastards. Sorry, but they were.
I mean, you said it, right, after a colonial power leaves, all is hunky dory. Well, we left.
Nobody held a gun to L.B.J.'s head and made him escalate our involvement, fabricate the Gulf of Tonkon episode, lie repeatedly to the American people, etc.. In fact, he could have ended our "colonial" involement any time he wanted. He did not. What a disgrace. Agree?
"Will, I have studied military history for over three decades both in and out of the military and one thing I have learned from it;
Over the centuries, once a empire and the people who populate it let go of their closely held beliefs, that they are the top of the human existence, they can easily correct some of the mistakes they have made from their arrogance."
Forgive me here, I know that since I don't have military experience I shouldn't have an opinion, but firstly I don't think America is an "Empire" or has any plans of becoming one. Secondly I believe that America and Democracy IS the "top of human existance".
"It never fails, as long as they demand the world or some part of it change to meet their expectations, they meet rising resistance, as soon as they allow others to be as free as they demand to be, everyone gets along much easier."
Yes it was cruel of us to demand Hitler change to meet our expectations. We should've just let Europe be "as free as they demanded to be".
Or Japan for that matter.
So why are you guys still harping about Darfur? There as free as they demand to be, aren't they? After all, who are you to demand that part of the world change to meet your expectations?
(And Cliffy, the "man love" comment was beneath you. I thought "tolerance" was the path. Why do you still use those phrases in such a derogatory manner?)
Dolty any SUPER POWER with over 700 military bases spread around the planet in such a way the sun NEVER sets on all of them at the same time , just might be considered to be an empire.
And the man love comment was just, well as you say, a little less then three showers a day son.
Only a reichwinger (like you son) would bring NAZI Germany into a discussion of Vietnam and how we tried to FORCE them to accept OUR terms (talk about a little beneath ya son)since the early 1950's when we tried and failed to help the French to hold their colonial empire together there, then tried to force the Vietnamese to accept the US version of Vietnam, until we had to leave in 1975. (appropriately the 200th anniversary of the founding fathers telling the British Empire to fuck off, don't ya think?)
But do enjoy your new tubes friend since all the rest abandoned ya , he seems right up your closed minded alley
BTW I heard somewhere Moo moo was in the hoosegow since Last may, just around the time he disappeared from the tubes, and you began crying caused you missed him soooo much.
You "heard"?
You mean you didn't read the post on Lydia's purporting to be from his daughter?
If that was true (and we really have no way of knowing with any certainty) he's where he should be. No tears shed there.
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