"The Arrogant Empire"

Post #89,416 by cwbrenn 3/19/03 11:01:21 AM Reply	"The Arrogant Empire" I hate having other people's words speak for me, but this article seems to capture my concerns very, very well: [link\|http://www.msnbc.com/news/885222.asp?0cl=c1\|http://www.msnbc.com...885222.asp?0cl=c1] "We are all born originals -- why is it so many of us die copies?" - Edward Young
Post #89,428 by deSitter 3/19/03 11:58:10 AM Reply	Good, but punches pulled The current diplomatic failure did not accumulate all at once out of nothing. We dropped the ball when the Berlin Wall fell. Then and there we should have made bosom buddies of the new Russians, setting up a world-straddling cooperation with them minding Europe, and us the Pacific. To anyone with half a brain, the real danger in the world is obviously free nukes - and the only way to get a handle on the problem would have been to get real cozy with the Russians and new states that were once SSRs. I think I gave up on politics about the time (1990) when it became clear that our attitude to the people who had thrown of tyranny was basically "hey, it's a hard world, sink or swim. To us, you're still just a pack of useless commies." Then we let Sodamn get away when there was no earthly reason to keep him around. and the perfect pretext existed to march into Babylon and snag him. Clinton made things infinitely worse by letting the situation in Yugoslavia and the Israel/Palestine conflict get out of hand. This was his real failure as President - not his sex obsession. We should have clamped down on Israel in definite, unpretty terms - as in "deal with the Palestians justly or we will do it for you - and you won't like it. If you think you're so tough, you want a piece of us?" Israel remains a miserable, unjust regime, directly opposed to our political ideals - a pissy bunch of ungrateful leeches who we should have shed ourselves of long ago. It took a long time to get here, it will take a long time to get back to some semblance cooperation with the other 95% of the inhabitants of this sphere. -drl
Post #89,439 by cwbrenn 3/19/03 12:29:41 PM Reply	Agreeing to a great extent I think one of the things that makes the article effective, though, is that punches were pulled. It is an article I wish I could see more of -- one that invites discussion rather than makes proclimations. As far as Clinton's problems go, I think there's truth in many of your statements, but I sort of disagree re. Israel. he did, after all, have a series of meetings that wound up with Israel agreeing to so many "drastic" changes it got their Prime Minister assassinated by one of his own citizens. Too little too late? I don't really know. "We are all born originals -- why is it so many of us die copies?" - Edward Young
Post #89,533 by Ashton 3/19/03 6:11:32 PM Reply	Berlin wall.. Seconded in spades. It was my immediate thought on hearing the news: NOW is the time to GIVE them (in effective doses) a minimum of $100B and maybe much more -- all saved from the next 5-7 years' Trillions as would have been spent for idiotic weapons and weaponmaker aggrandizement -- Anyway. Instead we got - - the MBA, Econ CPA droids at work. We got [what you said]. Ashton
Post #89,451 by ben_tilly 3/19/03 12:54:36 PM Reply	Excellent article, thanks "good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not" - [link\|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html\|Stefano Mazzocchi]
Post #89,581 by deSitter 3/19/03 8:43:51 PM Reply	The Buke is kinda like Ted Kennedy -drl
Post #89,522 by a6l6e6x 3/19/03 5:25:38 PM Reply	Excellent piece. Thanks, Chris! Alex Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. -- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
Post #89,540 by Ashton 3/19/03 6:17:27 PM Reply	Incisive: much too deep for Dubya, Wolfowitz, Rove et al. Impeachment Next OR: the next Domino on the Neocon Fundamentalists' list, folks.. Our Choice (while we still may.?. Have Any???)
Post #89,568 by dmarker 3/19/03 7:47:35 PM 3/19/03 8:06:06 PM Reply	This author teds to oversimplify & repeat propaganda I have read him each week for the past few months & formed the opinion that he doesn't do really deep research & is trying to tread a narrow line between honesty & not offending his editor-in-chief & the Republican admin. His characterization of Hussien regiem is partly fair but also partly propaganda detail. I know he is concerned about how the US is being seen by others. He does travel & he does seek to probe. I will add more comments here as I digest more of the article (only got 1/4 way thru at this point. ##2 The 2nd & 3rd parts of the article are interesting. Parts are worth debating with him. In essence what I read as his botom line is my own argument that Bush-Cheney & Rumzfeldt have screwed up in handling their mission & that yes the US & its citizens will be in for a torrid time unless there is quick progress in restoring Iraq & finding a satisfactory settlement to the Palestinian question This bit is interesting >> Yet none of these actions seems to earn him any good will. The reason for this is plain. In almost every case, the administration comes to multilateralism grudgingly, reluctantly, and with a transparent lack of sincerity. For a year now, President Bush has dismissed the notion that he should make any effort toward a Middle East peace process, even though it would have defused some of the anti-Americanism in the region as he sought to confront Iraq. Suddenly last week, to gain allies on Iraq and at the insistence of Tony Blair, Bush made a belated gesture toward the peace process. Is it surprising that people are not hailing this last-minute conversion? << Doug Spectres from our past: Beware the future when your children & theirs come after you for what you may have been willing to condone today - dsm 2003 Motivational: When performing activities, ask yourself if the person you most want to be would do, or say, it - dsm 2003 Edited by dmarker March 19, 2003, 08:06:06 PM EST Expand All History
Post #89,578 by Ashton 3/19/03 8:40:40 PM Reply	I don't think he's trying for intricacy (and his broader points are already too 'difficult' for the idealogues to seriously ponder; that would be to break the emotional High of that felt Certainty..) What IMhO has stymied most honest and thorough studies of the 'plans' of this admin re Iraq - is the overt insincerity [mentioned] of their every utterance. Unshamed by the fact that most anyone can limn the next Messianic Message with good accuracy - not only Americans but everyone has been patronized. Only that usually connotes "explaining the obvious to an unnecessary degree". With Dubya speaking, it is never clear that he has grasped the significance of what they wrote for him. How can you debate the BOTH pigheaded AND mentally unarmed? The increasing likelihood that this Iraq event is merely an opening salvo of a Fundamentalist Master Plan for Literal US Empire... [?] That is my scale of question, just now and just before the Shock & Awe game has commenced: yes there may well be 'plans' -- but we aren't apt to learn of them for some time, and never via any honest revelation. How quickly can a Juggernaut be turned around? / Can.. a US President be actually impeached before the next mischief triggers Unthinkable madness via the Law of Accident? (Especially when we have no opposition party here, at all; just Republicrats, and a handful only, with guts.) Ashton
Post #89,721 by johnu 3/20/03 8:29:45 AM Reply	The master plan The increasing likelihood that this Iraq event is merely an opening salvo of a Fundamentalist Master Plan for Literal* US Empire...* You are partially correct. There is a master plan to install a democratic government in Iraq and work to spread democracy throughout the middle east. As for the empire part, if you consider democracies part of a literal US empire, then we already have quite a large empire. Regards, John Urberg
Post #89,736 by cwbrenn 3/20/03 10:07:18 AM Reply	A plan for a REAL democracy? So what happens if they hold an honest-to-God genyooine election and elect someone who wants nothing whatsoever to do with the United States? I mean, we've overthrown legitimately elected leaders of nations before... "We are all born originals -- why is it so many of us die copies?" - Edward Young
Post #89,756 by Brandioch 3/20/03 11:33:50 AM Reply	Like in Afghanistan? Oh, our current regime FORGOT to include money for Afghanistan in the budget. Oooops. Instead of talking about fantasies, why don't we stick with verifiable facts? There was the same "master plan" to turn Afghanistan into a Democracy. The pipeline is going through...... Democracy does not exist..... There will not be any increase in US governmental aid to Afghanistan. Seems to me that the "master plan" centers around fuel.

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