RoR: Forum

Qatar is also culpable for financing the terrorists as well.

Post 1

Thursday, September 18, 2014 - 7:10pm

Islam is an idea. Throwing the Christians (and Jews) to the lions in the Colosseum did not extinguish them. Biddle's analogy to the kamikaze is flawed: they were conscripts. A better analogy is the thriving underground of Nazis and neo-Nazis who fight on despite their defeat in World War Two. Indeed, their ideolgy explains their defeat and promises a resurgence. The collapse of communism did not prevent the Occupy movement.

The problems of the American government in Washington with the Persian government in Teheran go back to the coup against Modammed Mosaddegh im 1953. The communist influence within his govenment may have been very real, but rather than fight it with ideas, the USA government in Washington resorted to subterfuge. A committed and consistent assertion of the ideology of capitalism in all of its depth and breadth would have achieved more -- and without the consequences. Those included, ultimately, arming Saddam Hussein against Iran - and then paying the price for that.

The only way to win the game is not to play.

This is a war of ideas. It must be fought with philosophy, not bombs.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 9/18, 7:12pm)

Post 2

Thursday, September 18, 2014 - 7:49pm

The only way to win the game is not to play.

That is so wrong. And not just because it isn't a game.

The only way to win is to fight effectively.

Yes, there are Neo-Nazis today, but they don't control nations, wield great armies, kill people by the millions. Why? Simple, we fought the Nazis in WWII. If we hadn't all of Europe and much of the rest of the world would be living under a Nazi regime today. Should we have tried "to win the game" of Nazi aggression by not playing?

Because Islamic terrorism is an idea, doesn't mean that organized terrorists aren't using it to kill, and when you are under physical attack, you don't respond with an argument.

You fight ideas with ideas, but you have to defend against physical attacks with physical self-defense. And the way to bring justice into play is not just to fight the gun wielders, not just to fight the ideas, but to also make all those who are supporting the terrorists from behind the scenes pay the price. Go after the sources of funding, go after the money men, go after the arms suppliers, the banks and the regimes that knowingly support terrorism.

The idiot fanatics on the front line, the ones waving their AK-47s, putting on bombs, and hacking off heads are done if they no longer have a supply chain of guns, ammunition, food, transport, or friendly country to work from. They would have to scrabble around for food to eat and a place to sleep like everyone else.

Post 3

Thursday, September 18, 2014 - 8:00pm

The problems of the American government in Washington with the Persian government in Teheran go back to the coup against Modammed Mosaddegh im 1953.

It's good to be aware of the history. But the problem is the terrorist aggression coming from a barbaric culture who see massive killing and the imposition of the horrors of Sharia law as a religious calling. To focus on anything else in this context is blatant moral relativism.

The Islamic terrorists have changed the face of civilized nations. Our own government is taking away our liberties as if this would secure us against this insanity. Our treasure is taxed, our future is in hock to the national debt, and our currency is being destroyed - by Progressives out of both parties that want statism at home and nation building abroad.

Post 4

Thursday, September 18, 2014 - 8:10pm

The communist influence within his govenment [Iran] may have been very real, but rather than fight it with ideas, the USA government in Washington resorted to subterfuge. A committed and consistent assertion of the ideology of capitalism in all of its depth and breadth would have achieved more...

It isn't Either-Or. There should always be a commited and consistent assertion of the ideology of capitalism, and in the long run it would be the most powerful approach, but doing that doesn't mean you don't combat those who have attacked you, and who will continue to attack you. I don't see this example from 1953 as applying to our current situation. Instead of focusing on what we might have done wrong many decades ago, and implying that it is the cause of the terrorists attacking us, which would be wrong, we should be combating those who have already attacked us, and have already declared war on us. This means cutting off their funds, and going after anyone who supports them.

Post 5

Friday, September 19, 2014 - 4:13am

Islam is just another excuse to impose one's own mediocre values on others by force as no one would accept them voluntarily ... many other excuses have been used over the centuries.

As for fighting them: war is like the festering wound breaking out in infections and lesions. You have to treat them, even radically, to prevent terminal illness. But it's the underlying infection that needs to be cured, otherwise you end up with the next breakout.

Curing this infection (imposing one's own values on others) with ideas is certainly a much better idea once you got over the breakout, however the source of this particular infection is never completely eradicated by ideas. Like an incurable illness you can treat it and prevent an outbreak, but you require constant treatment.

Constant treatment however is not available for all mankind, so like the vaccination against polio you can make great inroads, but sooner or later the disease spreads again and the next war is only a question of time when constant treatment was insufficient, failed, or new mutations crop up.

Any ideas how to permanently cure humanity of this specific disease? I'd hate to have to run the next world-encompassing vaccination-program like polio just to have it crop up again a few decades down the road ... not to mention that vaccination was none too popular at the time (talk about forcing someone for his own good - and that of others).

Post 6

Saturday, September 20, 2014 - 2:58am

I think we can learn something from Israel. The west currently is suffering from cognitive dissonance when it comes to terrorism. Just look at how many scream that Israel is practicing genocide against Palestinians. In many ways Israel is fighting our battle for us. Only they are not allowed the luxury of cognitive dissonance in regard to the Islamic threat against them. They are forced to confront the reality every day. If they do not then they will die. Hopefully the west figures it out before it is too late.

Oh and MEM you may want to debate with them but at the end of the day the nihilists will still cut off your head...

(Edited by Jules Troy on 9/20, 3:10am)

Post 7

Saturday, September 20, 2014 - 7:59am

There can be unilateral compromise by secularists with theocrats, but there can be no compromise of any kind by theocrats with secularists.

The theocrats believe that.

The theocrats eventually win as long as the secularists believe only half of that.

It is a specific example of the general conflict between freedom and totalitarianism.

Michael, you've accepted the characterization (by those who court forced association) of the attempt to thwart totalitarianism as a bad thing; why?

Is it, because you believe, if only freedom plays by freedom's rules, then freedom with prevail?

As an example, that is not how WWII was waged. WWII was waged to prevail, period. The new meme of 'The West must engage in this conflict in a self-crippling fashion' did not crop up until the Cold War. It is almost embarrassing to have to point out 'why.'

regards,

Fred

Post 8

Sunday, September 21, 2014 - 8:47am

American fashions, American music, American movies, and of course, American technology... We could win the war against Islam, the same way we avoided atrocities in Northern Ireland: by staying out.

It was true, of course, that Americans gave tons of money to terrorists in Ireland. But the Irish Catholic communities in New York and Boston did not themselves actually go there. The British did; and the IRA bombed sites in England as a result. You cannot win by picking one religious sect over another in a power struggle.

And that is what "Arab Spring" was: an intervention by the USA to destabilize the governments of the Arab/Islamic world. The results were pointless, tragic, or horrible in Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, ...

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was a practicing surgeon in a London pediatrics hospital when his brother was assassinated, and he returned to take over the government. That is the man the USA wanted overthrown by "moderate Muslims." I think that the "moderates" already supported him - and his western university education...

Laissez-faire does not mean "don't bother me, but let me interfere with you."

You do not trust President Obama's administration. You hate the man himself and you denounce his supporters. Yet, this intervention somehow strikes a responsive chord. You should ask yourself why.

Post 9

Sunday, September 21, 2014 - 1:53pm

Ayn Rand clearly explained the impotence of evil. The Nazi mystics and muscle-mystics could not have survived on their own any better than did the USSR, once America stopped supporting it. Both the Nazi Germans and Communist Russians profited from work done for them by Ford, IBM, and others. (The UAW sent workers to the USSR. They ended up in labor camps or otherwise executed once they were no longer needed. That betrayal is why Walter Reuther turned anti-communist, though not pro-capitalist.)

SW: Simple, we fought the Nazis in WWII. If we hadn't all of Europe and much of the rest of the world would be living under a Nazi regime today. Should we have tried "to win the game" of Nazi aggression by not playing?

Exactly. Can you imagine a German or Japanese invasion of the United States?

Something like 75% of all of the German casualities were on the Russian front while the USSR lost more soldiers at Stalingrad than all US army deaths in all wars since the Revolution.

We honor the Spartans at Thermopylae with movies. No one honors the people of Miletos and other Greek towns in Ionia facing the Persians, or the people of Akragas in Sicily attacked by the Catheginians. They packed up, took their coined wealth, and rowed away in the middle of the night, abandoning the town but saving their lives.

Now, think again about a Japanese or German invasion of the United States... Possible? Successful?...

Strasser: "Can you imagine the Germans in your beloved London?"

Rick: "It's not my beloved London; but when you get there, let me know"

Strasser: "Can you imagine the Germans in New York?"

Rick: "There's neighborhoods in New York even I wouldn't go into."

SW: There are Neo-Nazis today, but they don't control nations, wield great armies, kill people by the millions.

Easy for you to say: you are not a Jew or a Pakistani or a Turk beaten unconscious by a couple or three skinheads. Your home is not defaced; your cemetary is not defiled. One, two, or a million, the principle is the same. The Nazis are not gone, only gone underground. You know that the world has more sailboats today than in 1500. We probably have more Nazis than Germany before 1932. We defeated the USSR; communism fell. Yet, we had the Occupy movement and all the WTO protests and still have specifically Marxist realizations such as a central bank, public schools, and several civilian volunteer corps. ... to say nothing of streets and roads, Amtrak, the National Institutes of Health, and professional sports facilities underwritten by taxes.

It takes ideas to defeat ideas. Not everyone needs to be convinced or even persuaded. But for political freedom to be the default cultural assumption, the common philosophy must be at least implicitly objectivist ... as it was in some few other times in history... A permanent shift (as such things may be in human history) will take an explicit acceptance of reality and reason.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 9/21, 2:06pm)

Post 10

Sunday, September 21, 2014 - 4:19pm

We could win the war against Islam, the same way we avoided atrocities in Northern Ireland: by staying out.

Nonsense. Neither the IRA nor the Provo had any basic philosophy that they were adamant in forcing Americans to accept, or to die.

The Islamic Fundamentalists want to kill Americans - our being over there inflames that, but not being there wouldn't erase it. They will keep sending people here. They will keep killing American's over there. No one can change their minds about this. They won't give up that as a goal. They will have more and more success as time goes on.

Pacificism isn't a workable solution.

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You cannot win by picking one religious sect over another in a power struggle.

I'm not talking about religious sects - not Shites, Sunnis, or any of the broader religious denomiations - not Christians, or Jews, or Muslims. I'm talking about a political 'sect.' Islamic Fundamentalists are a political sect who use the Koran as a political action guide - that's who I'm talking about.

I'm picking out those who actively support or engage in the initiation of force against Americas and are united by their Islamic Fundamentalist beliefs. If America burys its head in the sand, we not only can't win, but will lose.

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And that is what "Arab Spring" was: an intervention by the USA to destabilize the governments of the Arab/Islamic world. The results were pointless, tragic, or horrible in Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, ...

That's nonsense. "Arab Spring" was a made up term from the media who took the Progressive viewpoint that the little people were overthowing tyrants and colonialist puppet governments. They were, and still are, blind to the Islamic Fundamentalist's drive for a Caliphate and the destruction of all who won't bow to Muhammad.

You have taken the position that the US caused the violence initiated by Islamic Fundamentalists. That's absurd. We intervened in Libya, which we shouldn't have, since they weren't attacking us (at least not at that point in time), but the intervention only tipped a balance sooner rather than later - a balance between terrorist organizations wanting a Caliphatea and the dictator Quadaffi who wanted to continue his regime.

We reacted to what was going on in Egypt but we weren't a key player. We did nothing of any significance in Algeria, Bahrain or Tunisa. I wouldn't have intervened in Syria or Iraq. Anyone who thinks America has caused this fire across the middle east is blinding themselves to the real drive for a world wide Caliphate brutally enforcing Sharia law - that's whats going on.

Bashar al-Assad was a doctor in London, but in Syria he is a brutal dictator and close associate of Iran. I've never found or believed that there many, if any, identifiable muslim moderate fighters in that country.

Sunni, Shite, Iran, Wahabist, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Hammas, ISIS, Al Queda, etc.... All of the incidents and the reactions to those incidents that are associated with those nouns will just bury you so deeply details that no clarity will ever be possible. Not until you step back and see the common denominator of an unrelenting, irrational, uncompromising belief in forcing everyone to accept the koran in the same way the Islamic Fundamentalists accept it, and the demand to live by it as they direct or die, and the means of achieving that is to use all of the violence necessary to bring about a global Caliphate.

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Laissez-faire does not mean "don't bother me, but let me interfere with you."

You appear to think that Laissez-faire is really pacificism. You don't appear to grasp that free trade ends where the initiation of violence begins. Is this something left over from your anarchy days, or have your returned to supporting anarchy?

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You do not trust President Obama's administration. You hate the man himself and you denounce his supporters. Yet, this intervention somehow strikes a responsive chord. You should ask yourself why.

This has almost nothing to do with Obama. In my opinion, anyone who trusts Obama is either a terribly uninformed person who pays zero attention to anything political, or they have drunk deeply of the Obama/Progressive kool-aid. I don't believe the man has even a remote grasp of what honesty means. His lies are legion. But I don't hate the man himself apart from his policies and philosophy - I have no respect for him, but that's different. As to his proposed intervention (whenever he and poll takers finish deciding how to nuance it), I'm not supporting it at all - its a political sham, it won't work, it doesn't have his real support, and doesn't even address the real problems. Obama appears to be incapable of any action that isn't purely political underneath (and usually lies or misdirection on the surface) - and politics are calendar driven - with the next big calendar dates being mid-term elections, then the 2016 elections.

Post 11

Sunday, September 21, 2014 - 5:04pm

Evil by itself is impotent, but it embeds itself in an otherwise healthy and good structure. The whole of a society becomes a mixture of good and evil. It is like a parasite in a healthy body. The invasion is an initiation of force. We actively try to remove parasites from our bodies.

The job is to root out or at the least not support the evil and to support that which is good. And if it attacks, you should defend.

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Pre-WW-I Germany was an advanced European culture. Despite the massive destruction of WW-I, they remained a culture that was rich in the arts, in literature, and science and technology. But they became infected with vile ideas. Ideas that if taken to an extreme would have been self-extinguishing - just like Altruism. If someone takes Altruism to an extreme they sacrifice their life away. But that isn't the way it is most often found. What happens is a corruption of good by a degree of evil. It is an infection that needs to be fought.

Your take on this appears to come from your anarchy background and a belief that to do nothing is all that is needed.

Yes, there could have been a German/Japanese/Italian invasion of the US. Not then, but decades after a WW-II that we did not participate in. It is easy to spin a historical fantasy where the Axis won the war because we did not participate, where the USSR lost, along with England, France, etc. Then the most likely next step would be a kind of pause while the Nazi parasite consolidated its winnings, rebuilt the expended war treasure-chest, converted the accumulated treasure and resource of their victim nations to Nazi ends and restocked their weapons, and worked on engineering a massively bigger war machine designed to attack the US.

Would they have won? I don't think so, because our freer economic base would catch up and then surpass their ability to manufacture weapons. But there are no guarantees. And our costs would have been massive and traumatic far beyond what we actually experienced.

You are conflating a group of skinheads with the brutal killing machine of Nazi Germany. That's too absurd to comment further on. But I agree with at least part of one thing you said, "The Nazis are not gone...." The Islamic regimes of WWII sided with the Nazis and today they are the Nazis.

Your writing often takes the form of putting a target up, like Marxism, communism, Nazi Germany, then turning around and claiming that nothing has changed because we have WTO protests, public schools, skinheads, etc. This a common approach you take and it is in the form of a major fallacy. Because there are commonalities between a few skin heads and Nazi Germany doesn't make them the same thing, and when you weigh the dangers or destruction or threat of a few skin heads against Nazi Germany that becomes obvious. You can claim that are many, many Nazis underground today - but I question your facts, and that today's Nazis have been banished to the underground stands as evidence of a win against that philosophy (with the marked exception of the Nazi nature of Islamic Fundamentalism).

The big difference is that the skinheads cannot kill millions of people which the actual Nazis did. What kind of bizarre conflation is it that your arguments end up supporting? I know what the danger of your arguments are. They try to blot out the danger of a movement with hundreds of thousands of supporters, that is more brutal than anything since the German Nazis, that has the historical precedent of a Caliphate existing in every year but about 400 of our past since about 600 AD, that is showing signs of exponential growth, that is not impotent when it comes to financing their existence (ISIS now makes about a million a day in oil revenues), that has killed Americans, and promises to kill us all.

Post 12

Monday, September 22, 2014 - 7:56am

Michael:

Yet, this intervention somehow strikes a responsive chord.

Not with me. 'This intervention' is a weak half measure, gesture politics. Far worse and more destructive to the interests of a free America than doing nothing at all.

I'm an advocate of the Powell Doctrine. There are only two speeds to conflict; 1] Peace. 2] Maximum effort, to humanely end the conflict as quickly as possible, only unleashed when there is justification. That is the path to credibility and decreasing need to ever deploy force. This other path is just insane and an policy which will lead only to ever increasing need to deploy force...and has been American policy since after Korea. We ended the Vietnam conflict after 55,000 American lives and countless injured with 'Never mind, America really didn't mean it.' If that ending was anywhere near acceptable, then it was acceptable to have never entered the conflict at all and those 55,000 lives were wasted for nothing by this broken collective we refer to as a nation. And as a nation, it has been broken ever since, with few signs of healing itself.

The in between No Man's Land of endless drawn out limited action and proxy wars and half baked covert ops and gesture politics is the worst kind of cluster fuck imaginable, and invites only endless invitations to engage in more. It isn't the weasels making the deals in the Georgetown Bistros and cashing in on all the drawn out mayhem who pay the price for this feckless policy; it is the E1s, who pay now, who pay later, who forever pay while others play. And why they don't, finally-- after decades of this abuse of our military by an effete civilian corp of 'professional' politicians prancing their way in an assembly line of spineless goo oozing from the reflecting pool by the Woodrow Wilson School to their BMWs on the Beltway and estates in Northern Va-- treat the world to history's biggest fragging, is a complete and utter mystery.

And yes, Obama is so deeply centrally seated at Ground Zero of that feckless mass of freedom eating Ivy League goo infesting DC that I indeed hate the man, the movements that spawned him, and those many like him. That feckless mass of Ivy League goo is a cancer eating a free nation. Their energy is devoted to destroying a free nation and replacing it with their eyes rolled into the back of their heads vision of utopia. Only it isn't their vision; it is the vision of those who instructed those who instructed those who instructed this latest generation of self replicating robotoids, who none the less accepted their instruction with open arms as they felt the wind rushing through their hair on their effortless sprint to the bottom of the hill.

regards,

Fred

Post 13

Monday, September 22, 2014 - 11:45am

I sanctioned Fred's post.

This intervention is obscene. He will transport 5,000 "moderate Islamist" rebels to Saudi Arabia (a country under sharia law, where there had more beheadings in the last month than ISIS has carried out all year) - then the US is to train and equip this force so that 6 to 12 months later (after adding another 1/2 trillion to the debt) they will go up against what, by then, will be over 45,000 ISIS troops plus Assad's army and air force - all of whom will be ready and waiting for them.

Some of those 5,000 will defect to the enemy, others will run away, and those who remain will be butchered. At least that is the darkest scenario. If enough American "advisors" go into battle with them, using our air power, it will look a little like a success - many of the ISIS forces will be killed, the rest will be pushed back and go into hiding, but in fact it will only be a momentary containment. They won't be eliminated as an organization, and there won't be any reduction in the world wide funding of Islamic terrorism, and the Islamic Fundamentalist ideology will not have been swayed. Then the call will be for a "surge" and nation-building and a democracy in the middle-east (anyone heard those songs before?)

Fred is right about the feckless civilian leadership. They try to find tactics that make them look good, or at least like they are trying, and they don't care about the causualties as long as the poll numbers aren't too bad. They almost magically shy away from taking the very actions that would be effective. We saw that in Vietnam, and we see that when we realize that no one is seriously targeting the money sources that without which Islamic Fundamentalist organizations would dry up blow away in weeks.

Instead we have a non-plan put forth by our Community Organizer in Chief, while our Secretary of State spent September 11th in Saudi Arabia kowtowing to the King of a nation under sharia law, and now that Kerry is back in the US, he goes to the UN to plead with Iran to help us with ISIS!

But the execution of the plan is likely to be a year or more away and that's all Obama cares about right now... just achieving the appearance of doing something, something that his poll-takers assure him is the least unpopular approach. It lets him focus on his real goals.

Obama's long term goals remain in place: Move the US towards his brand of socialism and global governance, eliminate any opposition by diminishing the GOP/TeaParty/Conservatives/Libertarians till they are no longer effective and the progressives have what is effectively a single-party political system so that total tranformation of America can be carried out in the next few decades.

Post 14

Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - 11:14am

5,000 rush-trained proxy troops sent to a slaugheter. He wasn't born during the Bay of Pigs, but you think he could pick up a history book once in a while. Unless that is the point.

He wants to make this a fair, long, drawn out fight? Not make too much of it? Go military-lite as his Third Way No Way?

There are reasons that the Powell Doctrine is the Powell Doctrine, and they are not the reasons many think.

The obvious reason for supporting the Powell Doctrine is, when the decision is made to use force, it is used overwhelmingly, with a clear mission, designed to end the conflict in 10 hrs if possible, or 100 hrs if not, or as fast as the resources of our military can end it. Not a fair fight. Not a measured response 'in kind.' Overwhelming, decidedely one sided, 'unfair' force. To prevail and end the conflict as quickly as possible, without any uncertainty in the outcome, not to draw it out for years as a 'limited' conflict. What the Hell does that even mean? In WWII, it took years to prepare the punch, but once thrown, fortress Europe was over-run in less than a year. Gulf War I was over in 100 hrs. That is what credibility looks like. We seldom have seen it in modern times.

The less obvious reason for supporting the Powell Doctrine is, the deployment of that kind of massive yet credibile force is not approved by this nation easily. It is not subtle. It can't be finessed. It can't be snuck in under black budgets and covert ops, like the cluster fuck in Iraq after Gulf War 1 that culminated in the shame of Iraq 1996, where the Kurds in Northern Iraq, covertly encouraged to revolt against Saddam because the US would 'have their back' were hung out to dry, which is a euphemism for 'allowed to be slaughtered in the thousands' by Saddam's ground forces while the US did nothing but take pictures from on high in $30M fighters enforcing a 'No Fly Zone.' What an absurdity. "Do what you want on the ground, just don't sully the upcoming Centennial celebration of Wilbur and Orville's accomplishment because we're going to be throwing some parades over here.' That national shame -- that then latest stain on the soul and character of this broken collective, was key in Bush's decision in post 9/11 America to take advantage of America's mood and repay a debt of honor, seven years and thousands of lives late. The cost that was eventually paid was far higher that the cost that would have been paid in 1996, and yet, burn the nation to the ground that would leave that debt unpaid, and yet, we just witnessed that expensive boulder pushed 90% of the way uphill and then let to fall back on us by Mr. Community Organizer and his Optics craving endless campaign, creating an even bigger mess in the M.E.

As usual, it wasn't the weasels who paid that overdue debt. And it won't be the weasels who clean up the bigger mess. Once again, it was and wille ventually be the E1s, far from the trendy Bistros in Georgetown where the pooches are endlessly being screwed, including, their embrace of gesture politics and half measures in support only of the Holy Optics that support their grasp of power at the CronyFest on the Potomac.

Keep that force well bottled up. But when it is taken out of the bottle, let it rip. That is not only credibility, but the humane use of force. With more than a little irony, these drawn out half measures are piling up the corpses around a world in flames for decades on end, with no end of sight, even if the Holy Intent of those half-waging conflicts is to minimize the ugly footage on CNN.

Insanity, by feckless weasels. We need a heavy dose of Athenian Democracy. Bring back the Ephebes as the gateway to citizenship; let only the warfighters take this nation to war, not the war profiteers, including, political profiteers. The report card is in; there is nothing to admire about civilian authority over the military in this nation, whether that be LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, or Obama, or the cadre of ratcake Ivy Leaguers infesting the machinery of state as career politicians, ruining this nation as if by deliberate design, as if those tiny inbred chokepoints had been long over-run by our global adversaries, which they were.

Too easy to abuse from afar, too costly in the abuse. With a federal government whose primary function is national defence, our machinery of state needs a lot more military academies and a lot less inbred Ivy League with their pet Soc. grad school theories foisted on the nation via forced association..

regards,

Fred

Post 15

Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - 11:38am

Bush 41 acted credibly in Gulf War 1. He told this nation and the world exactly what he was going to do, and he unleashed the military to do it. Saddam was kicked out of Kuwait in 100hrs.

Bush 43 was not honest with this nation. He took advantage of the nation's mood post 9/11 and kept our national shame swept under the rug. He acted politically in the use of national force. I'm not talking about WMDs -- within three days of (Saddam)being dragged out of his spider hole in Dec 2003, a scared shitless Qadaffi was coughing them up in Libya. That is detailed in an April 2004 IAEA report that got not much press. The debate in the US was all domestic political ratcake theater, nonsense. MSNBC and its cooked 'war for oil' nonsense, yet to explain how many milliseconds have transpired during this entire event when Iraq has not been a member of OPEC, as if that was in US interests. They point at oil executives being involved in post war planning as evidence of something, as if the smart thing to do would have been to ask the advice of community organizers with all their Marxist Studies expertise about how to restore Iraq's oil industry after the war for Iraq.

I'm talking about not telling this nation the whole truth. That, bracketing Iran in Iraq and Afghanistan was part of the mission, that we were in bases in 15 M.E. nations, and that America's shameful cowardice in 1996 was part of the decision. When Hezbollastan (the out of all control region north of Israel that used to be Lebanon) tried to heat up the conflict in 2006, it didn't spread to a wider region. Why not? Because Iran could not easily supply the shitfighters in Hesbollastan to sustain any conflict, and Syria, with the US all over Iraq next door, was in no position to join in and 'push Israel into the sea.'

Does Bush 43' get any credit for what -didn't- happen in the region in 2006? Of course not. But he didn't tell the American people the entire truth about why he had grabbed the M.E. by the belt, and those reasons are slowly becoming widely apparent to us in 2014 while Obama stumbles his way to whatever the Hell he thinks he is accomplishing with these ineffective half measures going nowhere.

Unless, as is quickly the only remaining credible assumption, his intent all along was to bring the US down. The only choices at this point are incompetence or malevolence, and as we've often been told, this Golden Pass Ivy Leaguer with the 'Marxist Studies' basket weaving transcripts he is ashamed to make public is a smart guy.

regards,

Fred

(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 9/23, 11:41am)

Post 16

Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - 9:39pm