Good coolaid?

Ever get a look at before and after pictures of Delhi, c. 1857?

New board motto?
 

i would keep my wife away from someone that good looking:(

That deal pre-dated Lend-Lease. And Lend-Lease undercuts your argument, since neither Great Britain nor the Soviet Union ever came even close to paying us for the material we "lent" them.

The idea that we made Britain "sacrifice" their Empire to pay for the war is absurd (as an aside, "Imperial Preference" was a nice way of saying "No Goods From The US").

We made the Brits give up India, the French give up Indochina (really?), and the Dutch give up Indonesia? Please. And when did the European left start thinking that colonialism was a good thing?

I guess we did end up with Okinawa, now that I think about it. And the Mariannas, which allowed Jack Abrahamof to take Tom DeLay golfing, so I guess that he may have a point.

I didn't say that there was something wrong with it. I was just pointing out -- as Massie did -- that there was a quid for the quo, and that our leaders quite consciously went after Britain's empire before, during, and after our involvement in the war. We did a lot for Europe, but it wasn't always selfless.

My referring to the destroyers-for-bases agreement as "lend-lease" was a mistake. The former was before we got into the war; the latter was after. And my argument was not that we extracted equal value for whatever we did.

Cite, please.

If you're talking about India, that was anti-colonialism, and attacks on Imperial Preference were based upon free-trade principles.

eta: Of course we acted in self-interest, but the idea that we had economic motives behind entering the war or the way we fought the war is absurd.

Robert Skidelsky, "Imbalance of Power," Foreign Policy (March, 2002).

I'm not, per se.

I don't understand this. I'm not saying our motives were purely venal, but nor were they entirely selfless, as Mitt Romney suggested. Don't we always have economic motives? How could you deny that our policy towards Japan in 1941 (for example) had no economic motive?

Lend-Lease actually became law in March 1941, several months before we were attacked at Pearl Harbor (66 years ago today -- wow).

I don't know what your argument was, then. I thought that the guy you quoted said that we used our position to take economic advantage of the UK. Citing Lend-Lease as an example doesn't seem to support that argument.

Maybe so. I was citing the destroyers-for-bases agreement, and was mislabelling it as lend-lease.

Fair enough, though I agree with Sebby that it was a fair trade.

How about considering Lend-Lease as a counterexample then? If we really wanted to bleed John Bull dry, then why did we loan them the garden hose?

And there were people who wanted to bleed them dry, and continue the "cash and carry" policy until the crown jewels were hocked and moved to Chicago, but FDR wasn't one of them.

And our postwar conduct was even more selfless. Marshall Plan? (I know -- it was just to make the Commies look bad, and to preserve our market for Lucky Strikes and Coca Cola.)

Touche.

Since the article is not available for free online, an example, perhaps?

Roosevelt not only had some broader and altruistic principals, he also felt strongly that once in the war we needed to win and that to win we needed to have the colonized people, particularly but not only in India and Egypt, with us, and not just reluctantly with us. Gandhiji had a following in the US from before the war, and he used it during the war to keep the pressure up for Independence.

There was a lot of strategy going on - Partition came to a great extent from the desire to have a strong Islamic counterwieght to communism (because it was feared that Congress and the Gandhiji were a bit of the fellow travelers). We made some huge blunders at Yalta, not least of which was backing the Shah. The strategy was motiviated by self-interest but also by some real principaled and anti-colonial feelings.

I am disappointed that Romney is fundamentally historically illiterate, but not surprised. Based on the last four years of watching the guy in Massachusetts, he's a wind-up toy.

I am disappointed and surprised that Ty is endorsing this neanderthal imperialist's view of the world.

I don't disagree.

I don't think Massie thinks we wanted to bleed John Bull dry, and I don't.

Some of it was.

I'm having a hard time finding free stuff on-line that isn't crap (hi Hank!), but I do recall the subject coming up in the context of books released in the last several years about Keynes, who was involved in negotiations between the UK and the US. Massie is, relatively speaking, something of a conservative, and I don't think he believes that the U.S. is evil, but I do think he's tired of the sort of ritual self-congratulation that many Americans, not least of them presidential candidates, often engage in.

Romney
 

John Podhoretz:

"...Who is the audience for this speech, aside from people like me who make their living in part watching them and reading their texts and writing about them?

No one thought Romney would say that Mormon elders would play a leading role in his White House counseling him on policy. Anyone inclined to believe such a thing won’t be convinced by Romney’s protestations in any case."

Right, because self-loathing is the preferred European ideology.

If you're not hyperventilating, you must be sticking your head in your ass?

Dehydrated people have less blood?

Is that yoga or pilates?

I thought it was parody.

Charlie Wilson's War
 

I just read Charlie Wilson's war a second time, and then it turns out it is coming out on the silver screen. I have always said that if they made it into a movie it would get panned because no one would believe it (even though it is all true - I think George Crile was honest). Fact is definitely stranger than fiction. If you have not read the book you should. It is amazing.

Is it Me?
 

Or is this the worst slate of candidates we've ever had?

Is it Me?
 

As far as qualifications? Or electability? The Republican line up is awful. Do people really want a thrice-married bald man who wears a ton of orangey base makeup, is married to that Judy Nathan chick and was literally losing his mind until 9/11 made him refocus? Creepy guy (but on the plus side, he won't put up with Muslim shit). I just can't hear that accent all the time. Anyhow, could someone please explain again why McCain isn't the front runner? I just don't get that. Yeah he had melanoma but he's not like dying and isn't so old. His MOTHER is campaigning with him and she looks pretty good.

I'm bitching about the R candidates b/c I think we are going to end up with one of them as President. I really don't have faith that Americans will have the balls to vote for a black man for President. Things would be different if voters knew the man's name for a long time (like Colin Powell) but whereas I think Americans welcome a new white guy on the scene they won't do the same with a black guy who seems new to most. Clinton: too many negative feelings about her from the get go. From my standpoint, almost all of it unfair and she got the shaft as First Lady just for taking on something more than "helping paraplegics to read" as her cause. If we do get her as Pres, it would be pretty cool if she took badass stances with the UN's bullshit and *certain* other countries. I wish I could see more of that aspect of her.

Is it Me?
 

McCain isn't leading because people are tired of seeing him run, which is sad in this election, since he is one of the best candidates in either party.

I read some pundit describing Rudy's campaign as "Yeh, I'm not likable, but you'll be safe." I don't know how far that gets you with GOP voters, since Huckabee is kicking everyone's playing the "I'm a swell, good, god fearing guy" card pretty effectively.

I like Barrack Obama because of the whole bunch of them he's the only human who has a chance of being elected. He's actually the person he is on the stump, which is amazing. I don't agree with a lot of his policies, but he is centrist if you read between the lines, more so than Hillary would be in office, I think.

In the end, I think Rudy wins a "lesser of two evils" squeaker against Hillary, and the collective brains of DailyKos, Focus on the Family, MoveOn and the Southern Baptist Convention explode everywhere.

All 500 of them.

Is it Me?
 

I have the same thoughts on Obama, although I need to read up more on his policies. I also think it would be a huge positive step if this country elected a black person, although I'm not sure he can beat Hilary in the primary.

I cannot bring myself to vote for Hilary for a multitude of reasons, but I do think she is a smart, formidable politician, who has successfully made her on mark apart from Bill.

Rudi is the only one on the GOP side I could vote for, but something about him is just not presidential. But his positions are mostly closely aligned with mine of all those in the race.

I think McCain is basically a well-intentioned idiot.

Huckabee strikes me as a charlatan.

Is it Me?
 

You, Ty, Gatti, GGG, Hank, Spanky, myself - hell, the guy who spent that night at a Holiday Inn - have more foreign policy knowledge than Obama.

And he's a wish-washy, feel-good-but-say-nothing-empty-shirt on the stump. Is that the person you think he is, because that is hardly an endorsement?

Is it Me?
 

I think McCain is well-positioned for a comeback. Giuliani, Romney and Huckabee are all so flawed that it's hard to imagine any of them winning. Thompson may be clinically dead. McCain has the stature the rest of them lack.

Is it Me?
 

McCain would win the general election. The last two would not have been close with him as the R.

Is it Me?
 

Obama has good judgment, and on foreign policy he seems to have surrounded himself with good people, unlike -- e.g. -- Hillary.

It sounds like you're kinda into him, actually.

Is it Me?
 

Of course. Because Oprah is my proxy.

Is it Me?
 

Who are the persons surrounding Obama who have foreign policy positions you know well and like well?

Is it Me?
 

Not "Not Ty" Bob likes the fact that Zbig Brezinski and Tony Lake are on Team Obama.

AoN, Slave should appreciate him because Sandy Berger has been playing the heavy, telling members of the Democratic foreign policy establishment that they had better not associate with anyone other than Her Imperial Majesty.

This is fucked up.

Ted Poe is a Republican Member of Congress from these parts. He's a former district judge, and he used to be a fan of "creative" sentences, like making people wear signs in front of the stores they stole from and having abusers apologize to their wives on the steps of City Hall. He also triedo get video cameras into the deliberations of a capital murder trial, but that didn't fly. He's the colorful sort of Texan everyone loves, and if it weren't for his Republicanism, and the attendant misguided notions that go with that affliction, I'd be a bigger fan than I already am.* Alas, no one is perfect.

Anyhow, seems like being a Republican member of Congress isn't good enough when taking on the State Department in Iraq. A constituent's daughter had the misfortune of being gang raped by her coworkers. When she went to her employer, KBR, about it, they told her to keep her trap shut, threatened her job if she sought medical treatment, and to show they meant business, they locked he in a shipping container without food or water, under armed guard, for over 24 hours. Someone took pity on her and got her a cell phone. She called dad. Dad called Representative Poe, and after he made some calls, she had to be rescued by agents from the US Embassy in Baghdad. She had to be rescued from the custody of a US company.

Two years later, no criminal charges have been filed, and the news article above says they can't find anyone that's actually investigating the case. It's pretty clear, similar to the Blackwater situation, that there AREN'T going to be charges filed. DOJ and State aren't talking to Poe about it.

In the meantime, she's suing the shit out of Haliburton, which owned KBR at the time. Haliburton says me no Alamo, and the whole thing is just frustrating as fucking hell.

An American woman was raped by her coworkers, threatened with retaliation by her American employer, and then held in custody, and somehow or another there's nothing criminal about it.

Pisses me off. Especially because there's now nothing in the world preventing assholes like those who work at KBR from doing that shit again. Hell, this sort of thing encourages them.



*I suppose that's Republicans felt similarly about Charlie Wilson. I note that I, of course, was a fan of Charlie Wilson long before the book came out. Then again, I hated Bush well before the 2000 election. Call me the Cassandra of Texas politicians.

Is it Me?
 

See here and here for some names. But for me it's less the specific individuals, and more the sense I have that Clinton has -- for whatever reason, though I could speculate -- surrounded herself with the Democratic foreign policy establishment which got the Iraq war wrong and often seems more interested in proving its seriousness by distinguishing itself from the left. Clinton and her advisors are cautious, doctrinaire, and hawkish, in comparison to Obama. When Democrats debate foreign policy, there are two debates going on. One is for the people who vote in primaries, whom many Democrats -- Hillary foremost among them -- apparently don't think vote on foreign policy concerns. The other is for the foreign policy elite. Hillary seems to working hard to blur the differences between herself and others in the former debate, while signalling to the audience in the second that she is one of them. Obama, in contrast, doesn't seem to care what the Democratic foreign-policy elite consensus is, and for that I give him high marks.

I've been saying this for years - the GOP, from Bush on down, have no control whatsoever over State (or the CIA, for that matter). This is nothing new at all.

My question would be why hasnt the DOJ responded properly?

Is it Me?
 

Si expressio unius est exclusio alterius, fuck you.

Is it Me?
 

I agree that he's a lightweight on many issues, but among the current crop, he and McCain stand as the only two people I'd ever feel comfortable allowing around the good silverware. My admiration for the man isn't tied to any belief he'd be a great leader.

Is it Me?
 

Mea culpa

Your extensive knowledge of the fall of Constantinople and the rise of the Turk will most definitely come in handy.

Is it Me?
 

Giuliani can beat Hillary. He has the claws to take her on which McCain lacks.

I think the race will be Hillary vs. Rudy and the social conservatives will hold their noses and vote for Rudy. And he knows this.

James Dobson and the rest of his shrill white trash brigade scream about Rudy and claim they'll start a third party, but when they're faced with a Hillary and Bill White House, they have no choice but to vote for the lesser of two evils.

Is it Me?
 

admit it, if you ever do have to choose between shia and sunni, you'll go to atticus for the pros/cons.