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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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 Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 11:04 am Post subject: |
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At the end of the day, there is NOT A DIMES DIFFERENCE between the Republicans and Democrats. Sound bites and "platforms" are meaningless once in power. Essentially the American government has been promoting policies (both foreign and domestic) that fill the coffers of wall street and big business. These policies have been bleeding the middle-class and lower class dry for decades. |
Counterpunch has some kind of book with that title.
O
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As regards to the Middle East, I don't giv a fig about who dominates it. Let Iran swallow the whole lot. They HAVE to sell their oil. What else are they going to do with it? Drink it? Necessity is the mother of invention. Perhaps the loss of stable oil supplies will be the shock necessary to develop alternative energy sources and promote conservation. Will it have a negative impact (the loss of ME oil). Absolutely, but only in the short term. And the USA will be better off in the long run.
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All I have time for for now.[/quote]
In the mean time the price of oil goes up and Iran has a huge effect on the US economy.
Why ought the US have a allowed Iraq then or Iran now to make themselves more powerful by actions they don't have a right to at the expense of the US.
And one other thing Iran has also conducted attacks overseas .
Objectionable stuff like blowing up a Jewish community center in Argentina and killing the translators of the Satanic versus in countries as far away as Japan.
Of course the US ought to be investing much more than it does it alternative energy. But it won't be ready overnight.
Last edited by Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee on Fri May 18, 2007 11:50 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 11:20 am Post subject: |
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| think he raises a good point, however. Bush talks about democracy when it comes to Iraq, but supports heavy-handed tyrants in Egypt and Pakistan. Musharraf and Mubarak are not enlightened kings like King Hussein of Jordan. Mush has even asked NATO to come to the table with the Taliban and is supplying the Taliban with weapons. Of course, he did this when the Taliban agreed to purge Al Qaeda from their ranks, but still he's about the least reliable ally the US could have. |
Musharraf ,Mubarak and the King of Jordan are softies compared to most mideast regimes . Asimple check of the observer human rights index will confirm this.
In Pakistan there are opposition parties and people can criticize even demonstrate against the government.
One of the problems in the mideast is that there is no liberal democratic alternative. |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 12:25 pm Post subject: |
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Osama Bin Laden doesn't give a fig about the "caliphate." He wants to take over and be the dictator and hero of Saudi Arabia. He wants to be welcomed and cheered. He wants to be the Arab Castro in his home country. He uses his religion and anything else to get what he wants. This was his goal long before either Iraq war. He became disillusioned, radicalized, and then developed his own vision to be the great Moslem/Arab/Castro/Messiah of Saudi land.
Were he to accomplish that goal. He would be quite bogged down in security and state building at home. He would probably reach out to make satelites out of weak states nearby. He would, of course, be limited in his reach by the fact that, in reality, the peoples in the other big states nearby have no wish to join any of their neighbors in a caliphate. Bin Laden is not stupid. Crazy and evil yes. Stupid no. He knows the caliphate is impossible. It's just a tool.
To accomplish his real goals, he needs to recruit people and raise money. So, he uses the caliphate along with a variety of issues, verbal rants and terror attacks. He needs an enemy to fight, and America, by betraying its own principles became his best target.
The interventionists in the US and other countries have created the enemy that terrorists, socialists, and the other evil scum and dictators of the world need to feed their evil.
Evil grows like mold and mildew in damp dark places. If we want to kill this evil, we need only let the light of liberty shine on the world. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 12:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Osama Bin Laden doesn't give a fig about the "caliphate." He wants to take over and be the dictator and hero of Saudi Arabia. He wants to be welcomed and cheered. He wants to be the Arab Castro in his home country. He uses his religion and anything else to get what he wants. This was his goal long before either Iraq war. He became disillusioned, radicalized, and then developed his own vision to be the great Moslem/Arab/Castro/Messiah of Saudi land. |
what makes you say that he doesn't demand the Caliphate?
Just about every source on the subject from Global Security , to Jason Burke . to even leftist Juan Cole says that is the goal of Al Qaeda.
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General Overview
Al-Qaeda is an international terrorist network led by Usama bin Laden [the "Osama" spelling is deprecated, because there is no letter "O" in Arabic). Established around 1988 by bin Laden, al-Qaeda helped finance, recruit, transport and train thousands of fighters from dozens of countries to be part of an Afghan resistance to defeat the Soviet Union. To continue the holy war beyond Afghanistan, al-Qaeda's current goal is to establish a pan-Islamic Caliphate throughout the world by working with allied Islamic extremist groups to overthrow regimes it deems "non-Islamic" and expelling Westerners and non-Muslims from Muslim countries. |
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/al-qaida.htm
What was Al Qaeda fighting for in Afghanistan? What was the Bali bombing about?
Who is Jemaah Islamiyah?
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Jemaah Islamiyah[1] (JI, Arabic phrase meaning "Islamic Group" or "Islamic Community") is a Southeast Asian militant Islamic organization dedicated to the establishment of a Daulah Islamiyah[2] (Islamic State) in Southeast Asia incorporating Indonesia, Malaysia, the southern Philippines, Singapore and Brunei[3]. JI was added to the United Nations 1267 Committee's list of terrorist organizations linked to al-Qaeda or the Taliban on 25 October 2002[4] under UN Security Council Resolution 1267 |
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jemaah_Islamiyah
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Were he to accomplish that goal. He would be quite bogged down in security and state building at home. He would probably reach out to make satelites out of weak states nearby. He would, of course, be limited in his reach by the fact that, in reality, the peoples in the other big states nearby have no wish to join any of their neighbors in a caliphate. Bin Laden is not stupid. Crazy and evil yes. Stupid no. He knows the caliphate is impossible. It's just a tool. |
Al Qaeda envisions a long war. Al Qaeda in fact does not think the Caliphate is impossible . nor do many others it seems.
rom the May 10, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0510/p01s04-wome.html
The Caliphate: One nation, under Allah, with 1.5 billion Muslims
By James Brandon | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
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"A few years ago people laughed at them," says Zeyno Baran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and the leading expert on Hizb ut-Tahrir. "But now that [Osama] bin Laden, [Abu Musab al-] Zarqawi, and other Islamic groups are saying they want to recreate the Caliphate, people are taking them seriously. |
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But unlike Al Qaeda, Hizb ut-Tahrir believes it can recreate the Caliphate peacefully. Its activists aim to pursuade Muslim political and military leaders that reestablishing the Caliphate is their Islamic duty. Once these leaders invite Hizb ut-Tahrir to take power - effectively staging a military coup - the party would then repeat the process in other countries before linking them up to form a revived Caliphate. |
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0510/p01s04-wome.html
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To accomplish his real goals, he needs to recruit people and raise money. So, he uses the caliphate along with a variety of issues, verbal rants and terror attacks. He needs an enemy to fight, and America, by betraying its own principles became his best target. |
or maybe that he needs the US out of the mdieast so he can conquer it.
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Evil grows like mold and mildew in damp dark places. If we want to kill this evil, we need only let the light of liberty shine on the world. |
In the 1990s the policy of the US in Afghanistan was "non interventionism". |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 1:02 pm Post subject: |
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| Tiger Beer wrote: |
| [Do world-affairs require a hegemon?] No. |
That is what people like Ron Paul said after the First World War -- when all of Western Europe excoriated us for the opposite reasons they excoriate us today: because we refused power and retreated to our own, nationalist, concerns.
The Great Depression, the rise of Fascism, and Pearl Harbor settled the argument, however.
The fact that many on this board want to return to our nationalist days and equate our post1945 internationalist posture as meddling in others' domestic affairs just for the sake of meddling in others' domestic affairs does not surprise me in the least. You have only superficial familiarity with what hegemons do -- financially, economically, and militarily.
If you would modify your views and propose something more akin what Christopher Layne has proposed in his book on "off-shore balancing" -- that is, that we must abandon our unilateral world-power position and share it with the French-German power block in the EU, and perhaps with others like China and/or Japan -- I wholly agree. But that is not what I see you saying, above.
I sometimes treat this board as a convenient window to view the extreme radical left and the libertarians' worldviews. This thread has not disappointed me in this regard.
Last edited by Gopher on Fri May 18, 2007 9:25 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 1:23 pm Post subject: |
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The first World War was caused by the aggresive invterventionist policies of the European governments in that era.
The Great Depression was caused by the US Government's expansionist money policies and then the sudden contraction. Government intervention in what should be a free market in provision of money. Which is why we need to abolish fiat money and allow the market to provide hard currencies (gold and silver backed are the two most likely).
The stock market crash of 1929 was caused by the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill, which also exacerbated the Great Depression.
Fascism rose in Europe because of the legacy of WWI and the attempt by the imperialistic interventionist victors to profit from war at the expense of the losers. It was also a result of the spread and adoption of socialist dogma.
The attack at Pearl Harbor was the result of US interventionism in the Pacific and that policy was designed by FDR to get into the war.
Last edited by ontheway on Fri May 18, 2007 1:24 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 1:24 pm Post subject: |
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| ontheway wrote: |
| The first World War was caused by... |
| Gopher wrote: |
| I sometimes treat this board as a convenient window to view the extreme radical left and the libertarians' worldviews. This thread has not disappointed me in this regard. |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 1:25 pm Post subject: |
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...
Last edited by ontheway on Fri May 18, 2007 1:27 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 1:25 pm Post subject: |
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The attack at Pearl Harbor was the result of US interventionism in the Pacific and that policy was designed by FDR to get into the war. |
I would like to see more on that, if you have the time I would appreciate it. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 1:30 pm Post subject: |
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| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| I would like to see more on that... |
Suggest you consult what professional scholars have written on the Second World War's origins and not follow an internet quack who shows no sign of appreciating Hirohito, the Japanese military, and driving them all, Japanese ultranationalists and the zaibatsu.
For a nice, up-to-date summary of one of the problems ("What was the emperor's role in all this?") complete with refs to additional scholarship on the larger problem, see Noriko Kawamura's "Emperor Hirohito and Japan's Decision to Go to War with the United States Reexamined," Diplomatic History 31 (2007): 51-80.
Back to Giuliani's slamming the door closed on Ron Paul's nonsense: I hope everyone who is talking about this has actually seen the debate in question.
See Giuliani slam Ron Paul
Ron Paul, again, repeats Chalmers Johnson's muckraking "thesis" and is off on so many facts that it is nearly impossible to know where to start when responding. Best to respond as Giuliani did. And I find the audience's response heartening as well. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 8:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
Back to Giuliani's slamming the door closed on Ron Paul's nonsense: I hope everyone who is talking about this has actually seen the debate in question.
See Giuliani slam Ron Paul
Ron Paul, again, repeats Chalmers Johnson's muckraking "thesis" and is off on so many facts that it is nearly impossible to know where to start when responding. Best to respond as Giuliani did. And I find the audience's response heartening as well. |
Here is the exchange:
| Moderator wrote: |
| Are you suggesting we invited the attacks, sir? |
| Ron Paul wrote: |
| I'm suggesting that we listen to the people that attacked us and the reason they did it. And they are delighted that we are over there because Osama Bin Laden has said, 'I am glad you are over on our sand because we can target you so much easier.' They've already since that time killed over 3,500 of our men...[cut off by the bell]...I don't think it was necessary. |
| Giuliani wrote: |
| Can I make a comment on that? That's really an extraordinary statement. That's an extraordinary statement as someone who lived through the attack on Sept. 11th that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I've ever heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11th. |
Notice that in the portion quoted above, Ron Paul did not suggest that the US invited the attacks. He only suggested that our response was ill-advised.
Giuliani does not respond to his statement at all, conflates what he said, and once again takes the opportunity to remind us that he lived through the attack on Sept. 11th.
Crunchy Con Rod Dreher agrees with me:
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| I'm thinking that as obnoxious as Ron Paul's remarks came across last night in the moment, he said something important and necessary to think about. If we're ever going to avoid getting into quagmires like Iraq again, we've got to be able to talk about the kind of thing that Ron Paul had the bad taste to bring up last night. It feels good (felt good to me, anyway) to watch Giuliani's eyes blaze and smoke come out his nostrils in rebuking Paul, but really, indignation is not the same thing as refutation. And insofar as indignation is allowed to kill the discussion of US foreign policy and its relationship to anti-American Muslim extremism, it does not serve the national interest. Ron Paul's argument deserves to be answered, not shouted down as beyond the pale of discussion. "How dare you!" is not an argument, but an argument-ender. |
Giuliani's response is obnoxious and self-righteous. I don't want Ron Paul to be President, but Giuliani missed a perfect opportunity to demonstrate that he might know something about the issues. Instead he went for the indignation and the sound bite. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 8:36 pm Post subject: |
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First, I think there was more to Ron Paul's position than that small excerpt conveys. Like those who inform his worldview, including bin Laden, apparently, Ron Paul grandiosly attacks and denounces post1945 American foreign policy in a rambing, disconnected series of one-sided allegations that string NATO, TP/AJAX, Vietnam, 9/11, and other events together in one nice, neat, and annoyingly-simplistic "it-is-all-our-fault-and-we-deserved-it" bundle. How can one possibly respond to this sweeping generalization on American foreign policy without conflating what he said, by the way?
Shows no comprehension at all regards why we embraced internationalism in the 1940s either. Reverts to the nationalist position without even addressing the fundamental issues involved in why we abandoned that position in the first place.
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MR. GOLER: Congressman Paul, I believe you are the only man on the stage who opposes the war in Iraq, who would bring the troops home as quickly as -- almost immediately, sir. Are you out of step with your party? Is your party out of step with the rest of the world? If either of those is the case, why are you seeking its nomination?
REP. PAUL: Well, I think the party has lost its way, because the conservative wing of the Republican Party always advocated a noninterventionist foreign policy.
Senator Robert Taft didn't even want to be in NATO. George Bush won the election in the year 2000 campaigning on a humble foreign policy -- no nation-building, no policing of the world. Republicans were elected to end the Korean War. The Republicans were elected to end the Vietnam War. There's a strong tradition of being anti-war in the Republican party. It is the constitutional position. It is the advice of the Founders to follow a non-interventionist foreign policy, stay out of entangling alliances, be friends with countries, negotiate and talk with them and trade with them.
Just think of the tremendous improvement -- relationships with Vietnam. We lost 60,000 men. We came home in defeat. Now we go over there and invest in Vietnam. So there's a lot of merit to the advice of the Founders and following the Constitution.
And my argument is that we shouldn't go to war so carelessly. (Bell rings.) When we do, the wars don't end.
MR. GOLER: Congressman, you don't think that changed with the 9/11 attacks, sir?
REP. PAUL: What changed?
MR. GOLER: The non-interventionist policies.
REP. PAUL: No. Non-intervention was a major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East -- I think Reagan was right.
[I think he means: have you read Chalmers Johnson? -- g.]
We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us. (Applause.)
[This is Chalmers Johnson's thesis again; actually used to by North Korea and North Vietnam's interrogation line vis-a-vis American POWs. -- g.]
MR. GOLER: Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?
REP. PAUL: I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, "I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier." They have already now since that time -- (bell rings) -- have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don't think it was necessary...
REP. PAUL: I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem.
[CIA does not "teach and talk about" this line of allegation. If so, who exactly is he citing? In any case, Chalmers Johnson does. And the latter, the part that links the 1979 embassy seizure to TP/AJAX, is Kinzer.
Ron Paul sounds an awful lot like Jesse Ventura citing X-Files-derived JFK conspiracy theories during his governorship based on "I read!" Chris Mathews once challenged him on this and asked "Yeah, but what?" and he declined to respond. -- g.]
They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free. They come and they attack us because we're over there. I mean, what would we think if we were -- if other foreign countries were doing that to us? |
| Kuros wrote: |
| Instead he went for the indignation and the sound bite. |
And what makes you so certain that Ron Paul and those who inform him -- in this case Chalmers Johnson and Stephen Kinzer -- are not grasping for the same indignation and soundbite, only from the other side of the spectrum?
Finally, I watched it several times and have not yet seen Giuliani's eyes blazing or smoke coming out of his nostrils, either.
There is an indiginous, Muslim side to the Muslim world's extremism and xenophobia, Kuros. And it exists with or without American foreign policy or military bases.
Last edited by Gopher on Fri May 18, 2007 9:07 pm; edited 4 times in total |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 9:05 pm Post subject: ... |
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I'd just like to applaud Tiger Beer for his appraisal of the situation.
Citing Wilsonian ideals is a form of black/white logic. It's perfectly possible to behave "benignly hegemonic" without resorting to WWI-era isolationism.
Of course, many on the right bitterly oppose ceding power to the global community and the plurality that would entail in favor of some sort of entitlement to hegemonic behavior.
In other words, the best thng about collapse of the Soviet Union is a closer scrutiny of the west. Monarchy was not given up with the intention of founding a new substitute ruling class. the mere suggestion of such would lead to labels of marxism, but I believe the best thing the US could do in its current role would be to empower the world to make its own decisions and, as opposed to isolationism, for the US to follow along and uphold these global principles.
This stands in stark contrast to the practices of the past seven years, seven of which I have spent abroad and, as an American, have found deeply and personally shameful. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 9:17 pm Post subject: |
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Kuros: look at this again...
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MR. GOLER: Congressman, you don't think that changed with the 9/11 attacks, sir?
REP. PAUL: What changed?
MR. GOLER: The non-interventionist policies.
REP. PAUL: No. Non-intervention was a major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East -- I think Reagan was right... |
The question centers on 9/11.
Ron Paul's all-over-the-place response cites "non-intervention," "the reasons they attacked us," "[why] they attack us [now,]" "Iraq," and "Reagan." And who exactly is "they" in Ron Paul's thinking, by the way?
Now, did Giuliani deliberately mischaracterize Ron Paul's position? Or is Ron Paul's position simply a bundle of confusion and difficult, under the best of circumstances, especially in a real-time debate, to grasp in the first place?
But how do you know that this was not the comment that stuck in Giuliani's mind and that this was what he responded to?
I do not doubt that Giuliani went for easy points. I do doubt Ron Paul's supposed clarity of thought and coherency of message in what remains -- taken together or taken in excperts you chose -- simplistic, now-past-tense/now-present-tense nonsense.
Last edited by Gopher on Fri May 18, 2007 9:34 pm; edited 5 times in total |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 9:29 pm Post subject: ... |
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| Are you imlpying you don't like his "nuanced" position, Mr. I-dont-support-the-war-but-Colon-Powell-said-there-must-be-something-there-and-I-applaud-Britain-for-entering-the-war-which-I-dont-support-and-there-should-be-no-secret-prisons-PERIOD-except-for-my-special-position-and-listen-to-me-I'm-a-democrat-but-no-I'm-a Republican? |
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