Posting Towards Gomorrah

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
dissent. Gilligan's Island wasn't even written until the mid-60s. Was he using Guernica to humorous effect?

No, but then, neither have you.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Spanky
My grandfather served in the Marines with Joe McCarthy (although I think they were both in reserves or something because they were both pretty old and they were in the US during WWII). My grandfather brought Joe back to my grandparents house for the weekend and my Grandmother said he was really creepy. They had an African American maid who wouldn't go near him and my grandmother thought that he might have made some unwelcomed moves on the maid.

My grandparents were staunch Republicans and anti-communists, but thought that there was something really wrong (not polically but personally) with Sen. McCarthy.

I thought Joe lied about his military service. Maybe grandpa took a 3 year vacation from the Missus?

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Spanky
This debate reminds me of two other decisions Democrats made that were a screw up and the fact that they still deny they were screw ups shows why they can't be trusted with foreign policy.

2) SDI. North Korea has a nuclear weapon and the means to deliver it. Iran may be in the same situation soon, but the liberals still argue that SDI is a mistake. Until they admit they were wrong on SDI they can't be trusted.

Spanky, I don't know whether the Democrats were right or wrong to oppose the program, but I know:

(a) it was funded and proceeded;

(b) it was initially pitched as a defense against the Soviet Union -- not rogue states (no one worried too much about rogue states then) -- which made it even less plausible technically; and

(c) as anyone who is paying attention knows, even now -- nigh 20 years later --it still doesn't work worth a damn.

It is only recently that the program "passed" about the simplest possible test (i.e. hitting one slow missile that they knew was coming) after numerous failures. For a long time, BTW -- the program folks hid how badly it was doing.

It may still be worth pursuing, because we have the money now and who knows how technology can leap forward, but odds are that shit ain't gonna save us from anything in any of our lifetimes.

Point of all of the above -- opposing SDI in the 1980s and/or early 1990s was not at all irrational, given the state of the technology, and budgetary constraints. Also, it was reasonable to believe that it could be needlessly destablizing to try to break out of the implict compact of Mutual Assured Destruction for shit aht wouldn't work anyway.

S_A_M

P.S. To answer Hank's anticipated query -- I am neither a rocket scientist nor an expert in missile or signalling technology. My perceptions are based on reading and on secondary/tertiary sources. One of those sources, however, is a very smart government physicist who happens to be an expert on some of the above -- and who basically says that any time someone says "SDI" you should call the cops because there's a robbery in progress.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
it was reasonable to believe that it could be needlessly destablizing to try to break out of the implict compact of Mutual Assured Destruction for shit aht wouldn't work anyway.

S_A_M

Thank you for finally admitting the Dems' approach to the USSR was flawed, and that w/o Reagan's resolve we would still have a 2 Superpower world.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Thank you for finally admitting the Dems' approach to the USSR was flawed, and that w/o Reagan's resolve we would still have a 2 Superpower world.

Has the Vatican made Reagan a saint yet, or is that still being held up by the paperwork?

[Spanky]

This was a classy move. She didn't have to apologize because she didn't say it, but she apologized anyway. More politicians should follow her example.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/10152006...e_haberman.htm

[Spanky]

If making you sick is a way God punishes you for bad behavior, I have been a bad, bad boy. Anyone want the flu? If you come over to my house I will be happy to give it to you.

[Spanky]

Angels and Intelligence Estimates

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, October 6, 2006; Page A23

Lost between the Foley tsunami and the Woodward hurricane is the storm that began the great Republican collapse of 2006. It was only a few weeks ago that the Republicans were clawing their way back to contention for the November elections, their prospects revived by the president's strong speeches on terrorism around the Sept. 11 anniversary, the landmark legislation on treating and trying captured terrorists, and a serendipitous fall in gas prices.

Then came the momentum stopper, the leaked National Intelligence Estimate that was trumpeted as definitive evidence that the war in Iraq had made terrorism worse. Mark Foley's folly and Bob Woodward's history have overwhelmed that story, but it will remain an unrebutted charge long after Foley is forgotten and Woodward is remaindered. It demands debunking.


The question posed -- does the Iraq war increase or decrease the world supply of jihadists? -- is itself an exercise in counting angels on the head of a pin. Any answer would require a complex calculation involving dozens of unmeasurable factors, as well as construction of a complete alternate history of the world had the U.S. invasion of 2003 not happened.

Ah, but those seers in the U.S. "intelligence community," speaking through a leaked National Intelligence Estimate -- the most famous previous NIE, mind you, concluded that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, slam-dunk -- have peered deep into the hypothetical past and found the answer. As spun by Iraq war critics, the conclusion is that Iraq has made us less safe because it has become a "cause celebre" and a rallying cry for jihad.

Become? Everyone seems to have forgotten that Iraq was already an Islamist cause celebre and rallying cry long before 2003. When Osama bin Laden issued his declaration of war against America in 1998, his two principal justifications for the jihad that exploded upon us on Sept. 11, 2001, centered on Iraq: America's alleged killing of more than 1 million Iraqis through the post-Gulf War sanctions and, even worse, the desecration of Islam's holiest cities of Mecca and Medina by the garrisoning of infidel U.S. soldiers in Saudi Arabia (as post-Gulf War protection from the continuing threat of invasion by Hussein).

The irony is that the overthrow of Hussein eliminated these two rallying cries: Iraqi sanctions were lifted and U.S. troops were withdrawn from the no-longer-threatened Saudi Arabia. But grievances cured are easily replaced. The jihadists wasted no time in finding new justifications for fury and reviving old ones. The supply is endless: Danish cartoons, papal pronouncements, the liberation of women, the existence of Israel, the licentiousness of Western culture, the war in Afghanistan. And, of course, Iraq -- again.

How important is Iraq in this calculus? The vaunted National Intelligence Estimate -- unspun -- offers a completely commonplace weighing of the relationship between terrorism and Iraq. On the one hand, the American presence does inspire some to join the worldwide jihad. On the other hand, success in the Iraq project would blunt the most fundamental enlistment tool for terrorism -- the political oppression in Arab lands that is deflected by cynical dictators and radical imams into murderous hatred of the West. Which is why the Bush democracy project embodies the greatest hope for a reduction of terrorism and why the NIE itself concludes that were the jihadists to fail in Iraq, their numbers would diminish.

It is an issue of time frame. The bombing of the Japanese home islands may have increased short-term recruiting for the kamikazes. But success in the Pacific war put a definitive end to the whole affair.

Moreover, does anyone imagine that had the jihadists in Iraq remained home they would now be tending petunias rather than plotting terror attacks? Omar al-Farouq, leader of al-Qaeda in Southeast Asia, escaped from a U.S. prison in Afghanistan a year ago and was apparently drawn to the "cause celebre" in Iraq. Last month he was killed by British troops in a firefight in Basra. In an audiotape released Sept. 28, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq said that more than 4,000 of its recruits have been killed there since the American invasion. Like Omar al-Farouq and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, they went to Iraq to die in Iraq.

It is clear that one of the reasons we have gone an astonishing five years without a second attack on the American homeland is that the most dedicated and virulent jihadists have gone to Iraq to fight us, as was said during World War I, "over there."

Does the war in Iraq make us more or less safe today? And what about tomorrow? The fact is that no definitive answer is possible. Except for the following truism: During all wars we are by definition less safe -- and the surest way back to safety is victory.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Thank you for finally admitting the Dems' approach to the USSR was flawed, and that w/o Reagan's resolve we would still have a 2 Superpower world.

Maybe so.

Would that be better or worse for the United States than what we have now, in light of the events of the past 16 years?

Discuss.

S_A_M

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
Maybe so.

Would that be better or worse for the United States than what we have now, in light of the events of the past 16 years?

Discuss.

S_A_M

are you serious? do you think Islamic terrorism and Iran N/K would not have grown with the UUSR around?

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
are you serious? do you think Islamic terrorism and Iran N/K would not have grown with the UUSR around?

1st not as much and second, no way.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
Maybe so.

Would that be better or worse for the United States than what we have now, in light of the events of the past 16 years?

Discuss.

S_A_M

Well, you're right that the 2-superpower model kept in check a number of regional problems, owing to the fact that one power or other other made them shut up in the interest of staying in the good graces of said superpower. But I think it's too hard to assume away the USSR's underlying problems and imagine a 1980-era USSR around today. Even though we did spend them into penury with the Cold War, it's hard to really visualize them tromping around in today's environment.

Besides, NK wasn't really under one umbrella or the other, right?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
When Osama bin Laden issued his declaration of war against America in 1998, his two principal justifications for the jihad that exploded upon us on Sept. 11, 2001, centered on Iraq: America's alleged killing of more than 1 million Iraqis through the post-Gulf War sanctions and, even worse, the desecration of Islam's holiest cities of Mecca and Medina by the garrisoning of infidel U.S. soldiers in Saudi Arabia (as post-Gulf War protection from the continuing threat of invasion by Hussein).

The irony is that the overthrow of Hussein eliminated these two rallying cries: Iraqi sanctions were lifted and U.S. troops were withdrawn from the no-longer-threatened Saudi Arabia. But grievances cured are easily replaced. The jihadists wasted no time in finding new justifications for fury and reviving old ones.

It takes a Krauthammerrian sort of hubris to argue that the jihadists should shut up now that Iraqis are dying from causes other than hunger and now that we have lots of troops occupying Iraq instead of relatively few stationed in Saudi Arabia. It's hard to imagine how Moslems might object to 600,000 dead Iraqis and an occupation that's run for several years and shows now sign of ending, eh? Hubris, or just massive obtuseness.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
are you serious? do you think Islamic terrorism and Iran N/K would not have grown with the UUSR around?

Just raising a question I find interesting, and don't pretend to know the answer to . . Would WE be better off with the Soviet Union still around?

Islamic terrorism/jihad was growing -- but it was focused on the Soviets much more than the U.S. due largely to geography and spheres of influence (e.g. Afghanistan). Also -- the godless Communists are worse than the infidel Christians.

Iran -- may or may not have made a difference.

North Korea -- I think it would have made a difference and NK would likely not have a bomb today if the Soviets had survived and the Russian paymasters had kept the gravy train going and the leash on NK (to some extent). The Soviets definitely did not want NK to have a bomb any more than China did.

However, NK does have some leverage in that relationship, because both China and the Soviets want to keep them extant on the Korean Penninsula.

S_A_M

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
Just raising a question I find interesting, and don't pretend to know the answer to . . Would WE be better off with the Soviet Union still around?


S_A_M

As for whether the United States was better off, while the Soviet Union existed it was possible that the United States could be wiped off the map. Now that is not a realistic option. The Jihadists at worst may get one or two cities, but the Soviet could hit at least five hundred. As for the population of the world, the Soviet Union was trying to turn more countries into giant prisons where all political dissenters were sent to work camps and everyone but the communist elite was guranteed a life of poverty. Now the spread of communism has been seriously curtalied.

Sorry, but that was a pretty stupid question.