Post #10,481
9/26/01 2:21:16 AM
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So what you're saying is...
we should go right in there and occupy Afghanistan ourselves? And perhaps Iraq as well?
You're quite sure that's what you want?
Now *that's* imperialism.
[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html|http://www.angelfir...e/index.html]
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Post #10,482
9/26/01 2:30:54 AM
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I didn't say occupy.
You did.
Occupying Afghanistan isn't going to fix the problems that it has - it needs a Marshall plan, along with some serious reductions in arms levels. We're about to do part B, but I doubt we'll do part A - leaving Afghanistan as Yet Another Breeding Ground for the Next Big Enemy somewhere down the line.
How did Afghanistan get all those weapons, including 100+ stinger missiles that may be pointed at us shortly? Why, we gave them weapons to fight the Soviets a bit back.
Now, if we give Egypt weapons to fight Afghanistan for us, how do we know they won't be used against us as well? We don't. Do you think Egypt's support is coming for free?
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
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Post #10,505
9/26/01 5:29:13 AM
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You do realize you're not making sense, don't you?
There is no way to implement a Marshall plan in a hostile country without first subduing and occupying it. The Taliban would just seize the money and do as they see fit with it. They've even robbed the UN.
[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html|http://www.angelfir...e/index.html]
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Post #10,506
9/26/01 5:41:51 AM
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I wouldn't call it imperialism.
Imperialism is when you dominate another country for the benefit of die Fuher - er, rather the motherland. No, scratch that, I'm drifting dangerously close to a Godwin.
Would you call the Marshall Plan an Imperialist Plot to dominate Europe or Japan? In fact, take Japan as an example - a lot of people in Japan consider their "loss" one of the best things that ever happened to their country. The way I see it, one of three things can happen:
1) Invasion, evacuation: We invade, smack some people around, and leave. Nothing really changes, because we haven't done anything to deal with the underlying causes of the problem. Problem repeats itself in 10-20 years, maybe sooner.
2) Invasion, imperialist occupation: We invade, install a puppet government which brutally oppresses the people just like the Taliban before us, and eventually they either get overthrow by somebody just as nasty as the Taliban, or they turn on us and drive the knife in again.
3) Invasion, Marshal Plan: We invade, kick the shit out of the Taliban, and then hold open elections for all citizens of the country. Anybody who starts even thinking about making noises like "vote for us or we'll kill you/vote for us and we'll kill them" gets smacked HARD and FAST. Regardless of who wins the election, and I have a feeling it won't be the Taliban - they aren't exactly winning a popularity contest with their own people - we help them build up infrastructure, but don't provide any military assistance. Same as the Marshall plan. There are other states in the region that need that as well (*COUGH*Iraq*COUGH*) - and if they are found to be behind the terrorist acts in question, then we need to do the same to them.
My bet is Shrub is up to Plan #1. Plan #2 would go over well with the Hawks, and Plan #3 won't see daylight ever, because it requires us to actually CARE about somebody enough to put our lives on the line, and think beyond the next quarterly profit statement.
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
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Post #10,507
9/26/01 5:45:55 AM
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Trouble is...
they may not vote for who you want either. Afganistan is hurting economically and until recently (according to rumor) it was the Taliban that was halting their prime cash crop (poppy).
There's little reason to assume that the farmers are going to vote for someone that will stop poppy production. Whoever end up in charge is likely to rule over a country that is sending more heroin to the US. (There's a wonderful thought).
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Post #10,513
9/26/01 6:05:07 AM
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Well, that's something else that needs to change.
Our puritanical attitude towards drugs is wasting huge amounts of money trying to stop the problem at the production point, and creating even more resentful hordes abroad who will grow up hating us.
Let them grow poppies if they want, and try to sell them to us. Put tarrifs on them at the border, and funnel the money into drug treatment programs.
Hell, I doubt there'd be a drug problem if we stuck 1/10th of the money into education that we do into enforcement...
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
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Post #10,614
9/26/01 11:38:15 PM
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Our puritanical attitude toward heroin?
Chan man, if you'd ever seen what speed does to people, you'd be puritanical too.
And drug treatment is a poor substitute for prevention. Shame on you.
[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html|http://www.angelfir...e/index.html]
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Post #10,615
9/26/01 11:49:11 PM
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I know drugs screw people up.
And I know that whatever we do to try and stop the influx of drugs, there are people who will find a way to take them. I attended Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington during the early 1990's - the level of drugs done there during that period was roughly equivalent to the drug use at a lot of campuses during the '60s. This was nasty shit, too - speedballs, cocaine, heroin, meth...
I was maybe one of three people that attended that college without getting high.
The question you have to ask is what are we getting out of the drug prohibition - and the answer is still "not much good." Loss of civil rights, people arrested and thrown in jail for "victimless" crimes (taking drugs), and a lot of really nasty people getting their hands on drug money, then turning around and using it to screw up our country. Not to mention the hipocracy of allowing alcohol and tobacco, but not any other form of narcotic.
As much as it might turn your stomach to think about it, I say legalize drugs, provide a safe environment in which people can take it (make them legal only in "clinics" where their behavior while stoned can be monitored), and by doing so, we can massively undercut the drug cartel prices, and drive them out of business at the same time. Funnel all the money that was spent on "policing" activities into training and treatment, and I'll bet you'll have a much healthier society in about twenty years.
Of course, we'd put out of work all those people who rely on having the "drug" demon around to kick, but they're in it to guarantee their own income, not to actually stop the drug trade. Oh, wait, they're called politicians, and we elected them. Never mind.
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
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Post #10,624
9/27/01 12:53:18 AM
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So you'd fight the monster...
by becoming the monster and then competing with it.
You don't solve a problem by shoving it off into some clinic somewhere, and then saying, "oh, the government's keeping an eye on it, I'm sure they'll keep those poor people from hurting themselves." That's not a solution. That's a whitewash.
And if you think "training" and treatment are going to work better than police activites, you're living in a dream world. Those detox centers should have revolving doors. You can't treat crime as a matter of public hygiene. There's a world of difference between peddling horse and neglecting to wash your hands after using the restroom.
Say the worst you can about the War on Drugs and all that. This silly talk of yours is still far worse. Until a better idea comes along - and no, it hasn't - I say stick with trying to put pushers behind bars. Users, too, for reasons given below.
And please don't suggest that drug use is a victimless crime. Even alcohol abuse isn't victimless. I've been a victim of alcohol abuse by others, and I've seen children neglected by their drug addict mothers. It's not pretty. And let's not talk of the pedestrians run over by drivers stoned out their worthless minds. Or killed for no particular reason, by thugs high on dust. Victimless crime my ass.
Have you actually thought any of this through? Everything you say on this subject reads like soft-left boilerplate. Its like you cut-and-pasted it out of Salon or something.
[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html|http://www.angelfir...e/index.html]
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Post #10,627
9/27/01 1:14:23 AM
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Yes I have.
Regrettably, some people are beyond hope. You can reach out, offer assistance, but if the person won't take it, then YOU CANNOT HELP THEM. PERIOD.
So, what are you going to do about that kind of person? Criminalize their actions, lock them up, screw them and their families over, and make certain that others will suffer for their deeds? Or are you going to give them all the rope they need to get out of the way, and make sure they don't hurt others?
And how about our society's attitude towards alcohol and nicotine abuse? Will we continue to endorse those drugs while banning others? Either ban it all, or don't try.
I understand your point about "victimless" crimes - one of the suggestions I have for people who show up at drug clinics is mandatory sterilization. Not to mention possible removal of their children from the family, etc. until they clean themselves up. The whole point is to salvage those who really want to be salvaged, and to get those who don't want to be salvaged away from the public, away from their families, away from threatening the rest of us until they do themselves in. Habitual drug use is a form of suicide, it just takes longer.
I reached most of these conclusions on my own, without the standard liberal claptrap. I've experienced what happens when druggies take it out on their kids and significant others - I've had a few friends in that situation, that I had to help out. I've dealt with the detrius, and I've had to take the trash out on occasion.
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
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Post #10,634
9/27/01 1:27:15 AM
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Re: Yes I have.
Criminalize their actions, lock them up, screw them and their families over, and make certain that others will suffer for their deeds?
one of the suggestions I have for people who show up at drug clinics is mandatory sterilization. ...The whole point is...to get those who don't want to be salvaged away from the public, away from their families, away from threatening the rest of us until they do themselves in.
Ooooooookaaayyyyyyy
Jay O'Connor
"Going places unmapped
to do things unplanned
to people unsuspecting"
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Post #10,642
9/27/01 2:26:18 AM
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Do you like crack babies?
Permanantly retarded children with serious emotional and learning difficulties that are born addicted to crack. They cost society, for the most part, a fairly large amount of money in social security payments, in prison costs, and in helping them (and often their victims) to put their lives back together.
All because their parents were addicts.
I'm not saying you HAVE to get sterilized - just like you don't HAVE to take drugs. Just if you want cheap, easily availible drugs, you don't get children. If you want to take drugs, you don't have to hide it from the rest of the world - we'll just help you find somewhere you can do it without hurting anybody else.
THAT'S the idea.
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
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Post #10,644
9/27/01 2:31:54 AM
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Problem is...
...your 'solution' is exactly the same as what we have now. Seperation and isolation and physical punishment of the guilty
Only thing is you've tossed in the ambiguity of now having to have the state decide who is guilty based on not what they've done, but what their intent is believed to be
Jay O'Connor
"Going places unmapped
to do things unplanned
to people unsuspecting"
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Post #10,652
9/27/01 3:21:15 AM
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I'm all for sterilizing hard drug addicts.
Including alcoholics. Make it mandatory if they commit a crime while under the influence, or to pay for their next fix. We don't want these people breeding. They haven't got what it takes to be adequate parents, never mind a prenatal environment that is quite literally poisonous. Also, a certain segment of them are more than a bit inbred, in the genetic sense.
I don't think this idea will catch on though. Our society isn't ready for it yet.
Plus, there's this vague nagging doubt in the back of my mind. Something about a slippery slope, and the Nazi era in Germany...
[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html|http://www.angelfir...e/index.html]
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Post #10,656
9/27/01 3:42:54 AM
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Half the world...
....doesn't want the other half breeding form some perfectly reasonable reason
You're right, slippery slope
Jay O'Connor
"Going places unmapped
to do things unplanned
to people unsuspecting"
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Post #10,635
9/27/01 1:29:24 AM
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Quite a mixture there...
Hi,
... one of the suggestions I have for people who show up at drug clinics is mandatory sterilization.
How would that help? Why would a man or woman go under the knife to get a hit of heroin? Wouldn't they simply get it off the street?
There are lots of approaches to dealing with drugs which have been tried. Executions, "coffee houses" and lots in between.
I'm of a general libertarian bent, so decriminalization has some appeal to me. But how far do we carry it? How much of a bureaucracy should we build to tax it? Do we want a whole edifice like state lottery boards popping up to encorage people to use "safe" drugs? Do we want TV ads for maryjane? I don't know....
The whole point is to salvage those who really want to be salvaged, and to get those who don't want to be salvaged away from the public, away from their families, away from threatening the rest of us until they do themselves in. Habitual drug use is a form of suicide, it just takes longer.
"Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways." - Stephen Vincent Benet
Who decides who will be salvaged? How do you separate casual users, who may have a habit which lasts decades, with dangerous habitual users, who may have a habit which lasts decades?
Life is complicated. It's hard to reconcile a free society with controls on dangerous substances which have wide appeal. There's no easy, effective, popularly supported (pick 2) solution to this problem, IMHO.
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #10,639
9/27/01 1:56:56 AM
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Casual heroin users?
Are you sure that such people even exist?
William Burroughs would beg to disagree. And he's been there.
[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html|http://www.angelfir...e/index.html]
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Post #10,640
9/27/01 2:13:50 AM
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I was apparently misinformed.
I'd heard that Jackson Browne was a heroin addict for a long time. It seems that he [link|http://www.miaminewtimes.com/issues/1996-05-30/film2.html|hung around some] for a time, but I can't find anything about him in particular. It seems to be a mistaken rumor.
I thought it was strange to hear such things, but figured - "hey, you never know...".
Thanks for the correction.
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #10,651
9/27/01 3:20:24 AM
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Re: Casual heroin users? Not so.
Probably much more than you imagine. Driving cabs, holding jobs across the spectrum -- it is the $$-cost which so alters the equation that, (once physiologically addicted in the US) -- and with no income: then comes the crime, to try to 'survive', with obvious replay of all those now familiar scenarios. Except for the lunatic few - maintenance dosage does NOT impair most activities, nor 'show' in personality traits - nor noticeably affect health generally. Malnutrition, etc. derive from having no money after getting that artificially-priced fix.
Naturally there are few stats on such users, so it is easy to presume this is an urban myth (our fav art form - those).
Years ago on two occasions I snorted a line of so-called decent grade. I did so not from some wish to experience a kewler-high yada yada, or from some psych. need for the claimed 'release': but hearsay is just that. I wanted to *know* at least something about the attraction, and I trusted that my mental state was adequate to any of those I might discover. (*Nothing* is "the only thing without some risk")
Nausea - the first-time user WILL experience that, such that you don't.. want.. to.. move.. (!) or just very slowly, for some time. Peace. THAT is what is induced. "Nothing matters" very much and, that is a state rarely experienced here -- it is perhaps the Nemesis state of normal Murican 24/7 hustling: for $$, for notoriety? for attention.. or the usual mindless diversion from - anything like silence, from introspection, from solitude.
Two experiences makes me no expert on any aspect, especially as the phenomenon might affect a wide variety of personalities in various life situations. But at least I understand crudely: the appeal. In fact, my view is that -- were we generally as a species, *less bound* to repeat-endlessy some new-found pleasant experience ?? Heroin would be in every medicine cabinet, and several times a year: would facilitate healing from a variety of ugly mindsets. Nothing else comes close, though ALL drug use is about: escaping from a daily 'reality' one WANTS to escape from. Some how..
But we aren't generally possessed of that discretion - we are besotted with comfort or the desire Never to be.. uncomfortable for more than a few minutes.. yada yada. And so: that idea IS a pipe dream, workable only among the few adults (??) as exist here and elsewhere.
IMhO Murica has devolved into an inherently juvenile-focussed society dedicated to the kind of vicarious 'living' seen in escapist 'action' flics; what else does it say about us that, the most popular type of film IS about heaped dead burnt bodies + sirens and car chases? (Pauline Kael was on NPR a few days ago, explaining that she left 'reviewing movies' as -- virtually all the new ones were beneath contempt and, no improvement was in sight). The consumer part is about: imagining that possession of lots of stuff.. makes up for an impoverished inauthentic 'life'. Hah..
So in a way I agree with that part of Marlowe's view of the need for 'prevention', though whatever is done - is bound to fuck with civil liberties - and no such solution can address the ROOT cause:
That we have created an environment of celebrity worship of the banal, of mindless infotainment: that and more is WHAT the wannabe heroin user means to (try to) ESCAPE! Alas, if your head is still fucked-up for whatever constellation of reasons and personal immaturity: heroin won't un-fuck it either!
Thus, I have no nicely packaged 'solution' either, unless it be the impossible one to implement: Gehabt Kindern !! now.. grow up. Then we can all talk - *but not before* - it'll just be more fairy tales about Rugged Induhvidualism and the Murican Way. More about 'machine people' molded to accommodate a 24/7 $-besotted Corporate nation. Heard all that.
Ashton
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Post #10,641
9/27/01 2:22:29 AM
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You'd rather write off people than try to prevent...
their getting messed up the first place? And they call *me* hardboiled.
And you want the government involved in all this? Build special prisons with free hop for the junkies? And yes, you're talking prisons. That what "getting them out of the way" amounts to in practise. Either that, or lock them up in the attic like they did with senile grandmothers and retarded kids in the old days. I'm no fan of detox, but this is worse.
Good grief, Chanster. Everything you propose as a replacement is worse than what you decry. Is it any wonder you made such a big deal of America's sins when non-Americans had just slaughtered thousands of civilians in cold blood? Your problem is you have no sense of proportion. None.
Oh, and we already tried banning booze. It was too late. Plus booze is way easier to make than heroin. And those are the only things that were wrong with the idea. So that's a false analogy right there. We stuck with the booze problem, but we're not stuck with pandemic heroin addiction. Not yet, anyway. but if you have your way, we will be.
(Maybe we should inject Antabuse into potatoes sold in certain inner city neighborhoods. Even drunks gotta eat sometimes. Yes, it's got some side effects, and it's not known what it'll do to the few non-alcoholics to be found in such places, but that's the lesser evil.)
Another false analogy of yours: nicotine. I've seen what cigarettes do to people, and it's not pretty, but it's a cakewalk compared to heroin. Or even alcohol, for that matter.
Heroin dealers are scum. This is true whether they're legal or not. If they're legal, that's a problem with the law. This is a malum in se. Shoot them like rabid dogs.
Bottom line: No, you haven't though this through.
[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html|http://www.angelfir...e/index.html]
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Post #10,515
9/26/01 6:16:55 AM
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Algeria is a perfect example
Formerly a French colony for 100 years in N. Africa, it was granted independence in 1962. It had a democratically elected government until 1991 when an Islamic fundamentalist party won enough seats to pretty much run the government. The installed government feared the country would turn into a theocracy so it suspended the election and invoked martial law which started a civil war. Fortunately the country seems to be recovering and held elections in 1999.
But the point is that democracies are very hard to start and even hard sustain, especially when religious zealotry is so ingrained into the society in question. Pumping money and other goodies into Afghanistan in some kind of Marshall Plan isn't likely to encourage democracy either because they (the majority of Afghans) don't want it.
Ray
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Post #10,516
9/26/01 6:31:30 AM
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Point well taken, still
"Peace bombs", done wisely - can hardly be misunderstood in the end (though there will be infinite spin to attribute nefarious motives - that's to be expected). You *can't* possibly tie such aid to.. provided you next start becoming just like us.
We need perhaps to begin to fully understand what Gandhi meant, when he said (to recipients of 'aid' from India), we offer you this assistance, and pray you will forgive us for it..
That was no mere clever phrase - that was wisdom, something our overall policies are often quite short of.
A.
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Post #10,520
9/26/01 6:51:45 AM
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Problem is Peace Bombs are...
often duds. When you pump money and supplies into a country, there is no guarantee that the money will be truly appreciated. We helped the Afghans drive out the USSR; now it seems like the Afghans in power hate us even more than they hate the Russians. We [the US] and UN have provided millions of dollars in aid to the Taliban lead government only to see it spent on such noble projects like blowing up Buddist shrines, building soccer stadiums (where they don't play soccer but schedule public executions of infidels - q.v. 60 Minutes this past weekend), and hosting bin Laden.
I'm beginning to think the success of the Marshall Plan was a aberration.
Ray
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Post #10,524
9/26/01 7:40:21 AM
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Aberration.. hmmmm
Well, let's review: the Germans were suffering from the Draconian provisions of the Versailles ending to WWI. The workers were suffering most per usual, yet the level of cultural education (?) of the populace was IIRC among the highest of any country.
Desperation about $/DM, and the finding of a scapegoat for that: International Jewry, was all A. Hitler needed to begin his coalescence, transformation of a society into a heartless machine. Atavistic rituals and banners helped this along - a lot, demonstrating our nearness to the mouth of that primordial cave. Once again.
Japanese? - more feudal than Germany in the '30s, for a gross oversimplification. Huge language barrier: pictograms with diverse meanings; utterly alien to the Romance languages. Ate raw fish even (!) and.. valued silence, simple gardens with One rock + a pebble. Unfathomable to hip Western desire for noise + lots of stuff around, all the time.
Italy - 3rd part of The Axis Powers. Well, they Did have opera, Ettore Bugatti, DaVinci *and* the Pope - and a culture as old as anyone's. Latin-based language - grokkable even by Murican monolingues.
(US? We were morosely amidst the depression, with the CPAs in charge - insisting on balancing the books, no matter who died under the weight of their religio-economic parables. Never heard of 'innovation' - after all that instant-greed sunk everyone on Black Tuesday in '29)
Post-war: it appears that after the toxins were purged, the endorphins returned to normal brain chemistry - there was no problem "understanding each other", despite different languages. Even in Japan, the ideas of women having a life too + the nice ring to the idea of 'self-government' -- seem to have taken, via the inculcation by Our Military-God Doug MacArthur, who surely atoned for his massive vanity, in a bravura performance such that the Japanese still Love him.. mostly. (Right after Demmings, who showed them how to out-do the Murican PHB in intelligence - Still!!)
Now as to the 4th World today - those as poor as the 3rd economically AND characterized by antediluvian ideas of God'sWill which posits the Male as local god / the female as a piece of shit, with merely occasional recreational value... and the Judeo-Christian form of Martial Arts as Really a Bad Idea [thanks, Peter]
WOULD 'generosity' from The Great Satan\ufffd be seen as mere pandering to the weak-willed, agitprop towards the surrendering of that Certainty that Allah is On [Only] Our Side?
Dunno but.. seen one Fundamentalist: you've seen them all.
Ayatollahs - they're everywhere.
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Post #10,622
9/27/01 12:23:26 AM
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Marshall Plan an aberration? No, rather, a data point.
Our aid to Europe also meant with resentment. That's why they talk of the "ugly American" over there, and are always going on about our arrogance and bad taste. And it's why there are so many pomos in France. Remember, the modern existentialist movement started with Sartre, who was arguably a Nazi collaborator of sorts, and never could come to terms with his guilt.
But it doesn't get out of hand there, as it does in the Muslim world. What's different? Let's enumerate variables:
1. Cultural tradition. The Muslim world is a thick surface layering of Islam rooted in a core of ancient familistic dysfunctions. Europe was a skin of Nazism that had oozed out of a dead and gangrenous Judeo-Christian/Liberal tradition.(1) We wiped the skin off, and partially embalmed the underlying tradition. But it still oozes postmodernism.
2. Capacity for guilt. The Muslim world is repeatedly humiliated, but never takes the lesson to heart. They simply project their failings onto the West, and cast themselves as the noble longsuffering victims. They have no capacity for guilt, or shame, or even chagrin. You can't teach people like that. Even the nuns can't get through to them... oh wait, different group. By contrast, Germany at the end of WWII was utterly aghast and ashamed of itself. The festering corpse of Christianity had just enough power left to make them feel guilt, given a sufficiently enormous sin and the sight of piles of dead Jews. And guilt was what they were most in need of at that juncture. Also, France at least was able to feel embarrassment at how quickly they'd caved in to the enemy. Italy disowned Mussolini, and with him, most of what he had stood for. That's not quite the same thing as guilt, but it's repentance of a sort, and good enough to do the job. (In the case of England, guilt is moot. The English had nothing to be ashamed of, having long since put aside the appeasers.)
3. Totality of defeat. We crushed Nazi Germany into the dust. We didn't have to crush France into the dust, because the Nazis had done it for us. England didn't need crushing, apart from the appeasers, who had been more or less crushed at the start of the war. We levelled Japan's cities, and truamatized their surviving population. It was drastic, barbaric even, and arguably a war crime, but it got through to them when nothing else had.(2) But the Muslim world desperately needs crushing, and has never had it. We've stomped on them plenty of times when they got to be a nuisance, starting with the Barbary pirates and continuing through to the present day. But we've never followed through and finished the job. A policy of containment, even an aggressive one, is a poor substitute for victory.
1) According to Kierkegaard, Christianity was already dead in Europe in the 1840's.
2) Brutality is a language of sorts, sorely lacking in richness of expression, but quite unambiguous and compelling in what little it can convey. And it's the only language some people understand.
[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html|http://www.angelfir...e/index.html]
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Post #10,645
9/27/01 2:34:18 AM
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Minor correction.
In the case of England, guilt is moot. The English had nothing to be ashamed of, having long since put aside the appeasers. You need to read up on what happened in Dresden near the end of WW II. Estimates of up 250,000 people (way more than the combined Japanese atomic bomb victims) were killed and the British had a hand in it. Alex
Whom the gods destroy, they first make mad. -- Euripides
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Post #10,657
9/27/01 3:45:45 AM
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Heh.. Marlowe, yer on a roll :-\ufffd
Love the 'brutality option' as in,
(Motorcycle crazies startin' out one afternoon..)
Well chaps, what'll it be today?
\ufffd mindless destruction?
\ufffd senseless brutality?
\ufffd deliver some flowers to the old folks home?
\ufffd all of the above?
Kirkeg\ufffdrd was probably pretty close in lots of ways, not just that one IMhO. But damn few prolly stumbled upon the Pseudonymous Works of K. except in dry academe. I wonder what he'd have thought, with a crystal ball to see Murica 2001 [??]
Christian 'world' has always been mercantile-based = why they like Onward Christian Sojers and similar bellicose mantras. That's why they 'won' over the Muslim variety of fantasies about 'us all'. We're likely not as well organized as was Attila or Genghis - but we have the will to make up for that via any means techno- possible.
I have no idea what anyone 'ought' to do next, but expect that your encapsulation is close enough for govt. work: it'll come down to kick-ass and as always Gawd Will be on Our Side\ufffd, assisted a bit with nukes and transistors. Still.. one always has to ask,
Is the World.. ready for self-government. Yet?
(And.. can civilization survive the ravages of religion or, will its mania alone, precipitate the End?)
Cheers,
A.
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Post #10,612
9/26/01 11:32:10 PM
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You wouldn't call it imperialism. But others will. Loudly.
And that's why we must refuse to cowed by the propangandist manipulation of language. Or anything else, for that matter.
Your point about the danger of proxies does have merit, I'll grant. But doing it in person also has dangers. Our young men in harm's way, etc.
I'm not suggesting anyone actually *trust* Pakistan, or what remains of the Northern Alliance. Hell, I don't trust Windows, but I use it for some things. I just use it in an untrusting, cautious fashion. That's how to use proxies.
I say try the proxies first, and monitor them very closely for misbehavior. And if that that doesn't work out, we come in and do it in person. Not to "assist" the proxies, as in Vietnam. We come in to replace them, and we make no bones about it.
[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html|http://www.angelfir...e/index.html]
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Post #10,613
9/26/01 11:37:48 PM
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Not bad...
I think the one thing that I disagree with is your comment on "putting our young men in harm's way." Okay, so we don't put ours in harm's way - we pay another government to put THEIR young men in harm's way.
Talk about leading by example.
That is why it is so important for us to step up to the plate up front, instead of letting others do our work for us - that way, the only ones with a moral leg to stand on in challenging our actions are those who would do the same. Everybody else would either have to put up or shut up. Not that they will, but I think you get my meaning.
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
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Post #10,626
9/27/01 1:04:04 AM
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Leading by example?
Who, pray tell, would be following?
You don't help anybody learn by doing all his homework for him. Unless you're trying to teach him abject dependency.
On the other hand, if we go in and fight all our battles in person from the very first, we'll eventually control the entire world. And then leadership will be a moot point. There'll be nobody left for us to lead. At least not until we invent warp drive. And then we can go out there and play Captain Kirk. Or Zap Brannigan.
A world government, with its capital in Washington, DC. There are worse scenarios. But even so, are you sure that's what you want? Because that's exactly where this leads.
[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html|http://www.angelfir...e/index.html]
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