UG, did you mean to say, "How do you propose we go about getting control of the oil in the Middle East?"

Simple. Massacre anyone with the name Urbane Guerrilla. It works everytime.

Pouty pouty pouty -- wotta bitch.

Aliantha, what kind of situation is it where all of your fuel is controlled by your enemy?

A really bad one? - just guessin

I thought it was clear that such a simpleton question doesn´t really need an answer. The Iraq war is not a NBA game. War on Terror is a very complexed issue for which the US has only raised more questions than there are answers. It is not about the US, it´s the World who has to win. As it the situation is now, this US administration only makes it harder.

Humanity being the US cause is of course utter bollox. Pax Americana is the driving force, as you´ve showed with the PNAC and saying this: "Aliantha, what kind of situation is it where all of your fuel is controlled by your enemy?"

It is not. Bigotry is like the pink stain in "The Cat in the Hat comes Back", but there is no Little Cat Z. Killing splatters the bigotry all over. The more bigotry you physically attack, the more there is when you're done. The longer we're there, the more Inigo Montoyas will populate the country.

you keel my fah-ther

What kind of country makes enemies of those who control it's fuel?

You know UG, it's always been their oil, in their land and theirs to control as they see fit.

Maybe the billions of dollars spent trying to wrest the oil from the people who've had it since time immemorial would have been better spent exploring alternative fuel options.

Your argument isn't a good one UG. It's not 'your' oil in the first place, so you have no right to it other than to pay the market price, and if 'they' choose not to trade with 'you', then that's 'their' choice.

Hmmm...philosophy. "Cat In The Hat 101"?

Nonetheless, Ali, we'd dearly like a situation where they'd likely choose to deal, and smoothly, with us. It is likely in any case, as petroleum will for a long time be the salable commodity in the greater world economy. Combining this wealth generator with widely varied and distributed investment in all other economic sectors helps the oilpatch nations escape the risks of one-crop economies.

Well, Jay, the animosity is actually coming all from the other direction -- I live over here, and that is what I've seen. We Americans are not remarkably hostile to Araby in general nor Iraq in particular, even in spite of the abuses they've heaped on us. Our enemies, as I see it, are not only self declared, they are self made.

Is there a connection with Israel? That connection is in large measure one also made by our foes. What is not appreciated in the Arab nations -- for this is too Arab-official to be the Arab street, though the problem will only be solved in the Arab street -- is how deeply decent Christians were offended by the excesses that antisemitism evolved into during WW2. Clearly, Europe and America had to do the right thing by the Jews. Balfour went so far as to offer the Jews of Europe a choice of either the Judean parts of the post-Ottoman Palestinian Mandate, or else as big a slice of Uganda as they could handle, and got back a polite "No, thanks, about Uganda. We wouldn't care for it." Israel was it, and after a certain amount of bootless spluttering in the Palestinian Mandate, Israel it was, in 1948.

The Arabs and Druzes who made their peace with the Jewish influx are Israeli citizens today, and welcome. Those induced to turn refugee, and then turned away from settling in neighboring Arab countries as would be only natural, have been induced to be at feud with the Jews, and from there the infection has only spread. You can't tell me being at feud is ever going to produce righteousness, but the anti-Israel, "drive them into the sea" faction doesn't care about this -- therefore I care very little for them.

Neither we, nor the Israelis, are here to submit to somebody's vengeance fantasies. If they want vengeance, they'd better be prepared to have vengeance wrought on them. If they want prosperity they will find us very sympathetic.

HM, I propose to make bigotry extinct by its being the province of losers, of people who didn't survive long enough to breed their replacements. Nowadays, disposing of the bigots is solely a matter of bringing up enough bullets. We want Islam's idiots to dispose of themselves, either directly or by having us pull the triggers. This will leave room and political weight for the ones who aren't going to act like that or think like that. True, it will also take a real effort to undercut any concomitant resentment, and we will have to make that effort: the feuding mindset has to go away through being made ineffectual, useless, Hobbesian: that dead men see no grandchildren and make no money.

Something different to wonder at is why these onetime provinces of the Ottoman Empire have ended up so brutish of governance and so poor at peace.

Breeding is just one way that it spreads. The other is when we yell "bigotry!", lob a missile into a country, and say "collateral damage can't be helped, here, have a repainted school and the world's largest embassy/military base in your capitol city."

http://www.informationclearinghouse....ticle16253.htm

This is why we can't win the war in Iraq and why the troop surge won't do anything.

The Arab minority in Israel has never been recognized by the State of Israel as a national minority. The national, ethnic, and linguistic character of the Arab community has been consistently ignored and has often resulted in discrimination by the Israeli Government. They are often considered to be a Trojan Horse in Israel.

What you say is true UG, however the fact remains that it's not the US's decision as to how oil in the middle east should be distributed. Or should I say, it shouldn't be.

The last two statements you've made to me have demonstrated nothing short of bully boy tactics in order to arrange things in such a way that it benefits the US and of course their allies.

HM, it seems to me you mistake their fault -- their eighteen-year effort to start a war with us, dating from Marine Barracks Beirut 1983 through 9/11 -- for our fault. I don't.

"...of course their allies" -- in a word, you, Ali.

Keep in mind our self-made, self-declared enemies are busy trying to bully us. We see no practical difference between this and the assaults against us that put us into World War Two. Still gonna mean fightin', and we understand that.

Fighting of this nature mostly quits once everybody is too fucking tired of it. But you have to wear everybody out first.

Who are you talking about here?

That line is total bullshit. I remember 2003. The international investigators led by Hans Blix were not fooled at all. The American people were not fooled by the Iraqi nuclear program, they were fooled by Colin Powell and the Bush administration.


On the other hand, you have an incredibly historicist take on democracy. It reminds me of the way that Marxists claimed that Communism was inevitable. They were so convinced that Communism was inevitable that they tried to accelerate the progression to communism by setting up dictatorships in Central Asia. Those dictatorships are now opposed only by radical Islam.

Democracy is great, but it doesn't seem like a historical inevitability any more than Communism was, and it doesn't seem like a cure-all either.

It Has Unraveled So Quickly

Hurray for bludgeoning!

Hmmm... so you're saying our problems with the Arab world began in '83 in Beirut? Do you think those Marines were there on vacation?

Happy Monkey, your reply shows doublethink, or maybe unthink, if you cannot follow my argument. Who, indeed. Doubleplusungood.

Griff, no, I'm not saying that; I'm saying the current phase of the problem, the going after us, really got going about then. Were they or were they not trying to either start a war with us, or win it then?

Aliantha, I remember it ended when the Communists won in 1975 -- and then kept the place buggered up, and the refugees streaming and rafting out of there, for the next ten years. One reason I'm ardently pro-human and anticommunist, remember?

Really, people: I'm far more sensible than you want me to be; deal with it better than you have, okay?

Your view on how and why the Vietnam 'occupation' ended is as warped as some of your other views UG.

I rather think it was because public pressure led to the government of the day deciding they'd bitten off more than they could chew and couldn't solve the problems of another nation any better than those of their own.

That we were getting our ass kicked due to our policies toward how we fought that "conflict" had nothing to do with it? Yeah, right.

those tricksy jungle folk did make life hard didn't they?

Maybe Bush thinks it'll be different this time cause there's no trees to hide behind?

Or maybe because there is no way to stop the Iraqi civil war.

Maybe you're right pierce.

Arm our side with Mr. Potato Head grenades! It will terrify the other side into submission!!!

They were not. They were trying to get the US out of their yard..... and still are. :cool:

I put it to you that that is the same thing -- given our reasons for being there.

I suggest you don't try to usurp my yard with that silly non-logic. :lol:

Which amounts to a confirmation that I'm really in pretty good shape, and arrow-straight.

Which amounts to making an excuse for a most horrendous betrayal to the forces of oppression and injustice. Communism's class-war paradigm creates both, on an industrial scale, everywhere it's been. Remember that in 1954-55 the refugees ran from Communism from the North to the South. Were they wrong? History says they were absolutely right.

Thus, kill communists faster than they can be made, and injustice and one source of oppression is removed from our Earth. This is a good thing. Bloody way to get it, but human goodness and resistance to evil is worth any volume of blood. I've been there, examined it, and that's my conclusion.

You may of course think as you like -- but that doesn't mean your opinion would actually coincide with the reality. I endeavor to keep my opinions grounded in reality and in large measure I succeed.

North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam motivated by and in the name of communism -- nationalism was never more than a convenient cloak. In the end, the Vietnamese had to abandon communism in order to restore the nation to functionality. Marxism's approach to economics doesn't much coincide with how economics really works, and without a good economy, nothing works and life is terrible. Collectivism doesn't work and shouldn't be practiced. Shoot its practitioners before they get around to shooting you, which they will do if you have anything of mankind's true birthright in your mental makeup -- your liberty.

Wow. I did not know that refugees were fleeing the north and south pole. Having learned that, even I can be arrow-straight.

Amazing how history is so easily understood once it is rewritten.

You got this much right but you fail at being an anti-totalitarian by placing too little faith in a free market to leverage those other freedoms.

Oh, I dunno. It's true I haven't said much about it. Dictatorship, however, is quite the opposite of free market -- even if it doesn't happen to be Marxist.

Tw, every time I think you couldn't possibly get more idiotic or more delusional you prove me wrong, you mighty misreader of posts. Interesting, but now I'm curious -- just how do you keep it together enough to pee in the pot -- or even draw breath? Surely even one of your mismade mind could see it was North and South Vietnam I had in mind.

Or were you trying to make a joke? There, I think that covers the possibilities.

I should have said market not free market. A dictator claiming complete control over the marketplace is a far different thing than maintaining control. A black market is very good for disolving respect for authority.

So, Vietnam abandonned communism after all, even without the US. Isn't that a pity of the 2 Mio deaths (plus another 1,5 Mio in Laos and Cambodia) for trying to force it from the outside? Same what´s now happening in Iraq (1000 Iraqi's killed this week alone) and might be happening in Iran?

As usual the only thing the US is learning from history that it's not learning from history.

I don't think the US is the only country guilty of not learning from history Hip.

I was referring to Vietnam and Iraq, but you're right, it's a common problem.

I don't think it's a national thing either; I think it's a human thing. Robert Heinlein said it best in Starship Troopers -- the book, not the maladroit movie of that name; jee-zusss was that a European misreading of an extremely American manner of thought:


Add to it that man is man's own natural enemy on this Earth -- absolutely no other organism capable of eating a human is anywhere nearly as lethal as a human. This is the sort of thing you pick up from what might conveniently be called The Heinlein Lecture.

Either you love Heinlein or you hate him. Seldom is anyone wishy-washy.

He's fucking awful politically, most of the time, but a great writer nonetheless.

Well, lad, there's the most visible difference between thee and me. I read ST at thirteen and found it seminal. I've lived my life through an understanding of The Heinlein Lecture. The guy's thinking is libertarian, you know... check out Tramp Royale sometime for his views on visas, passports, and general ID paperwork and paper shuffling.

The other most visible difference between thee and me, were I to post a barechested pic like you did, is I've got more hair on my chest and less on my head -- unless you count the part around my jaws. :p

I read it at twelve (and thrice since then, and actually at this very moment reading it again) and thought it was a damn good read, but not a damn good political philosophy.

Mmm, this may be. It certainly hasn't been tried out in the form laid out in the book, but that's true of most social science fiction. The particular clue that it's a libertarian global societal setting is that line of Rico senior's: "Laws are few."

In ST Heinlein glorifies militarism in an almost apostolic way. Truth is that war is dirty and there's nothing apostolic about it. But then again it's (Science) Fiction, no real blood running, no dismembered bodies, no teared up skulls with scattered brains.

I can imagine that one loves the book at the age of 13, but with the years wisdom and reality should replace idealism and fantasy. I'm afraid you got stuck at that age.

South America, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Mogadishu, Iraq, Afghanistan show how reality is.

And I've said it before, the White House foreign politics have nothing to do with Starship Trooper mentality, but everything with influence and energy sources. So, dream on Professor, dream on...

Where do you get those death figures?

Too lazy to find yourself? Like here..

Hip, you might need a better link than that one. Even Wiki has a warning on that one.

Hippikos, running through everything Heinlein wrote is what might be called The Heinlein Lecture, as evident in ST as in anything else. I respond to the wisdom in The Heinlein Lecture very well. If you can't... well, I can't help you. God couldn't help you.

Having both read Starship Troopers and served two hitches in the military, I find what Heinlein has to say about military service to be quite real, and quite wise -- they compare well. Yattering about "glorifying" the military is mere dronespeak, of nil value. People who've done military, thus committing a portion (or even the entirety) of their lives to the protection of their societies, do not speak as you do, Hippikos.

There are the people who get Heinlein, and there are the groundlings. All I can suggest is more exposure. You'll still be you, Hipp, and not become me -- you'll just be smarter or wiser, is all.

~2,000,000 to 4,000,000 Killed (The Vietnam's Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs released figures on April 3, 1995 claimed that nearly 2 million civilians in the north and 2 million in the south were killed between 1954 and 1975.

Yeah these people are well know for telling the truth....Haaaaaa....Haaaaa...

Yeah, and you believe McNamara, Kissinger, Nixon, Westmoreland?

Like in Iraq, the US knows exactly how many US soldiers died in Vietnam, but Vietnamese casualties never have been fully archived, 1,5, 2 or 4 Mio, who knows, who carez...

Yep...the North Vietnamese were always truthful...like keeping their bargains from the Paris Peace Talks?

The difference between Vietnam and Iraq
 

Hey, in Vietnam the Communists committed many atrocities. In and out of the cities.

This is only news, or seems news, to certain people.

In Vietnam, America was actually fighting against someone instead of sitting in the middle...

I've read everything he published... it took me a very long time to find it all and read it. Changed me. ST is a great story, there are several more with a similar theme, some more poetic and subtle.
I too felt that places like Portugal have it right... two years compensatory service should be the way, end of story. Freedom is not free.
Don't want to kill? Conscientious objectors get to be in support jobs, there are plenty of them.
BTW, I tried to serve, arthritis kept me out.

I have also read all of Louis L'Amour's work. Another great American Storyteller.