Waiting for Fitzgerald

[bilmore]

But, what the heck:

Amazon has everything!

http://mrsun.us/2005/10/miers-smoking-gun.html

[Not Bob]

Originally posted by Spanky
Was Allende a communist? I thought he was a socialist. He may have been a communist but he definitely did not run as a communist. Same with Chavez. I don't think Chavez ran as a communist. I know Putin did not run as a communist and he is not a communist. Wasn't Massadeq in Iran? And I don't think he ran as a communist either.

I was joking about Putin, although I think that he's as much of a communist now as he was when he was in the KGB. And Mossadeq *was* in Iran (we put the Shah back after we took him out) -- that was a bad typo.

As for whether any of those people were actually Communists, who can tell? Party labels are meaningless -- I think that the official name of the "communist" party in Poland during the Cold War period was something like the "United Workers Party."

Originally posted by Spanky
Actually I think we had a few left, and we were definitely in massive production. May have take a few months. Didn't we leave Garrisons in Western Europe.

There was a massive demobilization after V-J Day. Not sure on the numbers, but we went from millions to a few thousand very quickly. But not quickly enough for the remaining troops, who rioted. In David Hackworth's book "About Face," he talks about the miserable morale and fighting condition of US troops in Europe between 1946 and 1950 or so (he joined the army as a 16 year old, and served in Trieste in that time period).

Originally posted by Spanky
I agree with you on this. Sidd just asked me if we should have. I don't think it would have been politically reasible for the reaons you mention, but it would still have been the right move.

Maybe.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
He had no choice at that point but to cut the best he could under the circumstances, he knew the senior partner in the Atlantic Coalition was mentally incapacitated. It doesnt' undercut his history of warning of the danger of trusting Stalin and his sadness and disgust at the sell out at the end of the war.

I know Poland was a big deal for Churchill because Poland was the reason England entered the war. They took on Hitler to protect Polands sovereignty. But I think FDR convinced Churchill that they could trust uncle Joe when he promised free elections in Poland.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by bilmore
That's silly.

I might say "if you don't allow your subjects to take part in the decision-making, and continue to kill them in great numbers, we are going to depose you and your co-thugs, and then step back and let your subjects choose how they want life to be."

You might say that. But I wasn't responding to what you might say; I was responding to what Spanky actually did say:

Once we had the bomb and they didn't we should have told Stalin to hold free elections or face annihilation.

Now, maybe by "annihilation" he meant "we will depose you and your co-thugs," but I doubt it -- the A-bomb was not exactly a surgical nuke that could be used to take out only the Kremlin.

I can't believe that you think we're forcing Iraqis into something. We stopped the guy beating up the little kid. In doing so, we haven't forced the little kid into anything.

I don't believe that. We didn't threaten to nuke the country -- again, I was responding to Spanky's point, not yours.


But the "guy beating up the little kid" analogy is more than a little strained. So you cross the street to stop the guy -- any decent person would. But then what? Do you keep the kid in your house, and prevent the guy from getting him back? Do you shoot the guy in the head and tell the kid to elect new parents?

If our primary motivation in going into Iraq had been to spread democracy -- something I think you and I disagree on, but not a discussion I think we need to rehash -- then I would acknowledge that this was a valuable and noble goal.

But I would still view it as a mistake, given the distance between the goal we have accomplished and the costs we have incurred. We had already stopped the guy from beating up the kid -- through no-fly zones and crippling of the military. But we went a whole lot further than that, deciding that we should in fact bring the kid over to our house to live with us, until he could choose new parents, while fighting off his relatives.

Maybe you feel this was worth it -- fine. But you seem not even to acknowledge the cost -- 2000 American lives and counting, how many thousands of innocent Iraqi lives we don't know, etc. And yes, maybe you can justify those deaths because of the benefits a democracy would bring Iraq, if we actually get to see one -- but isn't that simply taking the "the benefit to the many is more important that the costs to the one" view that you claim to hate so much?

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
For Penske. Cuz I'm too lazy to PM and someone else might find municipal dog laws interesting and I'm still staying away from this place.

Merde! I spent two and half years of my life rewriting the Seattle Dangerous Animal Code to address the due process that it lacked in the exact manner that Houston's does. And at the end of the excercise, the City Council Beeyotch [EDITED ON REQUEST OF AND IN DEFERENCE TO ANOTHER POSTER WHO TOOK OFFENCE TO THE USE OF A SLANG WORD FOR FEMALE GENITALIA] Jan Drago, who supposedly is the "dog friendly" City Council member, gave us the big F.U.

I heard more stories like that than I can count on my ten fingers. And middle class and below people who forced to face the prospect of either spending thousands of dollars to appeal the siezure or sign off on the city/county killing their dog.

The only thing to do is stock up on the guns, as needed, and be ready to take your dog out of the jurisdiction when they come. don't ever voluntarily comply with a turnover of the dog, unless you want it to die in captivity at the hands of the state.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Spanky
2.

See my response to Bilmore. What he is saying is not what you said. To use his strained analogy, your proposal was "stop beating your kid or I'll blow up your house with your family inside."

[Penske_Account]

x

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
See my response to Bilmore. What he is saying is not what you said. To use his strained analogy, your proposal was "stop beating your kid or I'll blow up your house with your family inside."

Easy Cowboy:

Stalin after WWII. For sure we should have said pull the Red Army out of every other country save Russia. If not, we drop A-bombs whereever we think Stalin is. We keep dropping until the Red Army pulls out.

Option 2 - Stalin Step down or we will keep dropping bombs if we hit you. It he doesn't step down, then it may or may not be a good idea to follow through with our threat.

Stalin was originally Hitlers ally at the beginning of the war, and the Soviet Union had a history of aggression very similar to Japans.

I think Stalin's government was just as bad, and as dangerous as the Japanese government, and posed an even greater threat to world security.

I don't see any problem if we had treated the two governments just the same.

As for Iraq I agree with Bilmore's analysis.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
We had already stopped the guy from beating up the kid -- through no-fly zones and crippling of the military.

All we did was take away the falthers baseball bat, but he was still using the tire iron. One kid, the Kurds, may have gotten away, but the other two kids (Sunnis and Shiites) were being beaten senselenss

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
But the "guy beating up the little kid" analogy is more than a little strained. So you cross the street to stop the guy -- any decent person would. But then what? Do you keep the kid in your house, and prevent the guy from getting him back? Do you shoot the guy in the head and tell the kid to elect new parents?

Sorry, man. This second-group-of-people response is just meaningless drivel.

If you have the courage to swing away at that bee's nest* it'll all work out in the end.

Gattigap




* One of bilmore's favorite authors. Reg. requ'd

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Sorry, man. This second-group-of-people response is just meaningless drivel.

If you have the courage to swing away at that bee's nest* it'll all work out in the end.

Gattigap




* One of bilmore's favorite authors. Reg. requ'd

Could you just re-print it for those who do not want to register?

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Spanky
Easy Cowboy:

Stalin after WWII. For sure we should have said pull the Red Army out of every other country save Russia. If not, we drop A-bombs whereever we think Stalin is. We keep dropping until the Red Army pulls out.

Leaving aside the historical inaccuracy of the suggesting that we had a big huge stockpile of A-bombs.....


On what theory -- other than "the interests of a nation justify the deaths of millions" -- can you possibly advocate "dropping A-bombs where we think Stalin is?"


As a history prof of mine put it -- we hanged people at Nuremberg for doing what you are suggesting, but they did it on a much smaller scale.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Gattigap
You are talking like a member of the indoctrinated right that first believed Stalin was the embodiment of Capital C Communism that had to be defeated as an all-encompassing ideology and to be justified required subservience by the masses to the works of Karl Marx but also ignores the possibility that much of the people's subservience was possibly obtained not so much by ideology as by the crushing rule of a totalitarian regime focused on preserving its existence, which may be analogous in some ways to Baathist rule, which we'll leave aside for the moment because of potentially uncomfortable parallells to finding yourself arguing that some Iraqis actually bought in to Baathist ideology, such as it was, and didn't actually starve from the thirst for freedom that they would've seized years ago but for the iron hand of the Evil Fucker Saddam.

I don't think that's an entirely fair characterization of Spanky's ideology. If I read him correctly, I believe he would assert that we were morally compelled to attack Iraq and occupy it against the will of the Iraqi people so that we could bring them liberty and democracy whether they wanted it or not. He also apparently believes that it's okay to kill them until they do want democracy.

I hope this helps straighten things up.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
But the "guy beating up the little kid" analogy is more than a little strained. So you cross the street to stop the guy -- any decent person would. But then what? Do you keep the kid in your house, and prevent the guy from getting him back? Do you shoot the guy in the head and tell the kid to elect new parents?

Exactly what we're doing. Crazed beater is still trying to get at the kid. We've got troops there to stop him, and, if it comes down to it, they'll shoot him. His choice. - he can stop, or die.

But I would still view it as a mistake, given the distance between the goal we have accomplished and the costs we have incurred. We had already stopped the guy from beating up the kid -- through no-fly zones and crippling of the military. But we went a whole lot further than that, deciding that we should in fact bring the kid over to our house to live with us, until he could choose new parents, while fighting off his relatives.

The no-fly zone and sanctions were a joke - thank the UN for that, I guess. The kid was still getting creamed. How far in stopping the beating is too far? Once it involves pain and effort on our part? And I think you overstate - the Baathist thugs are still the small minority, not the whole extended family. You make it sound like we're fighting the bulk of society to save one deviant kid. We're not - it was the Baathists who were, and are, the deviant minority.

Maybe you feel this was worth it -- fine. But you seem not even to acknowledge the cost -- 2000 American lives and counting, how many thousands of innocent Iraqi lives we don't know, etc. And yes, maybe you can justify those deaths because of the benefits a democracy would bring Iraq, if we actually get to see one -- but isn't that simply taking the "the benefit to the many is more important that the costs to the one" view that you claim to hate so much?

No. It's serving my overall values that hold that convincing the world that being a dictator/thug/murderer is a dead end make life for all, and thus for me, much better in the long run. Walking away from murderers is easy for me right now - until later, when someone surmises that they can do such things with impunity. I want them to quiver with fear every time they contemplate genocide. Only then will I feel safe from it. It's all about ME!

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
It is when you post like this that you are at your most offensive.
[I'd say, any other comments, pro or con?]

S_A_M

I'm don't think he's being offensive deliberately. I just think he's a simple man, without wit or art.