On 2002-02-25 12:26, Kiff '61 wrote:


I'm not going to argue that Bush shouldn't be in the White House. He's there; I've gotten over it.

What I want from the Republicans is acknowledgement that the voting system, particularly in Florida, did not work as well as it should have in November 2000, and that it needs to be fixed. Upgrade the voting technology. Educate voters about the process. Encourage people to vote, period.

Kiff

Granted. I have no objection to upgrading the voting procedures, though I haven't yet seen a proposal that I think will significantly fix the problem. Most of them fix one problem while opening another.

But it's obvious the system went badly out of whack on Election Night, even without the shenanigans.

On 2002-02-25 16:04, TrollKing wrote:

On 2002-02-25 11:15, Barbara wrote:

....The state's answer is for the parents to get in there and improve their neighborhood campus if it isn't up to their brand of snuff. Sounds great in theory. But, as I explained earlier, in practice, parents are not given enough power to go do that, unless the principal is ameniable to it and enough parents commit to the long haul.

and i don't really see how the vouchers will help those kids, because if the parents don't care enough to pick a good school, the vouchers are useless.


TK

I'm not altogether sure they will, TK, and I freely admit it. To make matters worse, that tends to drop us into the category of the experimenters we tend to believe messed up the public system in the first place, people trying out their ideas on a captive audience of children.


But as I told Eric, conservatives have opted to back vouchers and related ideas in part out of a sense of desperation. If nothing else, the hope exists that they can perhaps be used to stir matters up enough to make other changes possible.

Also, as I told Eric, I was a very late convert to vouchers, because I share many of the fears about what they would do to the public system, but as it stands, the public system simply will not reform itself!

On 2002-02-25 23:56, HopefulCynic68 wrote:

I'm not altogether sure they will, TK, and I freely admit it. To make matters worse, that tends to drop us into the category of the experimenters we tend to believe messed up the public system in the first place, people trying out their ideas on a captive audience of children.

But as I told Eric, conservatives have opted to back vouchers and related ideas in part out of a sense of desperation. If nothing else, the hope exists that they can perhaps be used to stir matters up enough to make other changes possible.

Also, as I told Eric, I was a very late convert to vouchers, because I share many of the fears about what they would do to the public system, but as it stands, the public system simply will not reform itself!

yes, it does make us experimenters. and i believe that vouchers is an idea of desperation-- for some. for others, it's simply a way for the people who are sending their children to private school (like me) to reduce their financial contribution to the public school system as well.

another thing about the vouchers plan is that childless people will still pay in full for public schools through their taxes, while parents of private school children won't.

i believe that public schools are a necessity, that they benefit the entire society (including childless people, private school parents, and public school parents), and that they must be appropriately funded. a well-educated populace is crucial. but i agree that in many, many districts, the system is screwed up.

i like the idea that barbara mentioned of having the school district run by a board of parents from each school that are elected by the rest of the parents from those schools, with some seats on the board going to teachers in the district. i'd like to know of anywhere this has been tried.

****personal public school story -- not terribly related, skip if so inclined****

my wife and i tried sending our first-grade daughter to the neighborhood public school at the beginning of this school year, after sending her to a private school for the past two years. but every day she came home complaining of how "nobody listens". now, when a 6 year-old is complaining that nobody listens, there is definitely a problem.

then we realized that here in portland, first grade is the first time that most of the children have been in school for more than 3 hours a day, so they're really just learning how to even be in school that long and how to behave in school. our daughter had been going for full days since she was 4, so to her, it was a major step backward. so we pulled her out and sent her back to the private school, even though i have to take a loan out to pay for it.

it's really too bad, because sending her to the neighborhood school was both easier on the pocketbook and far more convenient (3 blocks away). but it couldn't work out, despite the fact that it is by no means a "bad" school, simply because kids are started late.


TK

Which school was it TK? Most of my friends have their kids in pre-school, but we may be a small slice of the general PDX pie. It seems crazy to wait until first grade before sending your kid to any sort of school/structured learning environment. We are going to try to stay in our school district, but prices have gone nuts here in Grant Park. We bought our house in '95, when prices were still reasonable. But, we're growing out of our little bungalow. Do you have a sense of how easy it is to get your kid into a good public grade school from out of the neighborhood? It may be either that or private school for our kid as well.

On 2002-02-26 13:12, Neisha '67 wrote:
We are going to try to stay in our school district, but prices have gone nuts here in Grant Park. We bought our house in '95, when prices were still reasonable. But, we're growing out of our little bungalow.

Have you thought about enlarging your house? Is it feasible?

Yes, but we're right in the city and there's nowhere to go but up. We'd have to get a variance on the height requirement, the City is very strict with these things, and the people behind/uphill from us might lose part of their view. Also, our house is from the 1920's and, with a toddler in the house, we're concerned about kicking up a lot of lead and asbestos dust.

On 2002-02-26 13:12, Neisha '67 wrote:

Which school was it TK? Most of my friends have their kids in pre-school, but we may be a small slice of the general PDX pie. It seems crazy to wait until first grade before sending your kid to any sort of school/structured learning environment.

richmond elementary. and i don't think it was that the kids hadn't been to "any sort" of school before first grade, but that kindergarten is only about 3 hours long in the public schools.

Do you have a sense of how easy it is to get your kid into a good public grade school from out of the neighborhood?

sorry, i don't. we only tried the one school. i think it may not be too tough, though.


TK

I found the following article on Stratfor.com. I think they've had a pretty good track record with their political and military analysis. If they're even close to correct about this, then the administration has (quietly) shifted into a totally 4T mindset. Mike Eagan, given your background, I'm particularly interested in your take on this.

My apologies in advance for the length of this post, but the link will probably move soon, so I decided to post the whole thing. For informational purposes only....

-------------------------------------------

Emerging Bush Doctrine Reshaping U.S. Strategy
25 February 2002

Summary

Although the Bush administration has seemed to be without a clear strategy for fighting groups like al Qaeda, a doctrine is slowly emerging that will reshape the global U.S. strategy. The defense of the United States is Washington's top priority, with all other foreign policy interests taking a back seat. Any nation that does not act against terror groups within its borders will be in a virtual state of war with Washington.

Analysis

Since the fall of the Taliban last year, the United States appears to have become rudderless in its war against terrorism. Washington's strategy has consisted of chasing down rumors about the location of al Qaeda and making vague threats about Iraq and insinuations about Iran and North Korea. It looks like the United States doesn't really know what to do next. But looks can be deceiving. If you examine carefully, you can see both a doctrine and a strategy emerging.

This is all framed by the Bush administration's view of the situation. From where it sits, there is every reason to believe that the United States will be attacked by al Qaeda again. Even more important, the possibility that al Qaeda or some other anti-U.S. organization has obtained weapons of mass destruction cannot be excluded. If that turns out to be true, then millions of Americans may possibly be killed in the coming months or years.

The most important goal for Washington must be to make absolutely certain that no further attacks, especially nuclear, chemical or biological, can be launched on the United States. There is no other comparable interest. The Bush Doctrine is based on the notion that the defense of the homeland from attacks represents an interest so fundamental that all other foreign policy interests must be completely subordinated.

We might summarize the Bush Doctrine this way: The United States faces an extraordinary danger. Washington is therefore prepared to take any action anywhere in the world to defend itself from this threat.

The defense of the homeland cannot be reduced to only defeating al Qaeda. The Bush administration has studied the lessons of the Israeli wars on Black September and other Palestinian groups and has drawn this conclusion: the defeat of any single group can disrupt and delay future attacks, but it cannot by itself eliminate them. Even if the United States were to utterly destroy al Qaeda, a new group would likely emerge. Therefore, the United States has three strategic goals:

1. Disrupt and defeat al Qaeda in order to buy time for a more thorough solution.
2. Prevent the emergence of follow-on groups by denying them sanctuaries in states where they can organize, train and plan.
3. Limit the threat posed by al Qaeda and follow-on groups by systematically eliminating weapons of mass destruction being held or developed by regimes that are favorably inclined toward them or in states where there is substantial sympathy for them.

Beginning with the last goal, there are a finite number of nations that have intensive programs underway to develop weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems and that also might be prepared to aid al Qaeda. Three were named by U.S. President George W. Bush during the State of the Union: Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Another unnamed nation is Pakistan.

It must be assumed by the United States that the first three of these countries are developing WMD and/or delivery systems. It cannot be ruled out that either their governments or powerful factions within their borders might be inclined to provide al Qaeda or other groups with these weapons for use against the United States.

Washington requires that these and other nations that are identified demonstrably and verifiably abandon all attempts to build weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems. They should also convince the United States that they will under no circumstances transfer any technology to al Qaeda or any other group that intends covert action against the United States.

In the case of Iraq, for example, no assurances that might be made by Baghdad could possibly carry any weight. It would therefore follow that it is the intention of the United States to identify and directly attack any Iraqi facilities that might be developing WMD. The recent announcement that the United States reserves the right to use nuclear weapons if needed fits clearly into this strategy. If it is determined that there are facilities that cannot be destroyed by conventional means, Washington is prepared to use nuclear weapons on them.

Intelligence is always imperfect. It is possible that sites will be hit that do not produce WMD. This is something the United States is prepared to accept. More serious is the possibility that all WMD sites are not identified. So in order to minimize the risk the United States intends to destroy the Iraqi regime by overthrowing its leadership through a variety of military means, obviously including air strikes and special operations.

If Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is in a hardened facility, even the use of nuclear weapons is not out of the question. A secondary and highly desirable outcome will be replacing the Hussein regime with one that is prepared to both abandon the development of WMD and deny sanctuary to groups planning to attack the United States. All other considerations, both humanitarian and geopolitical, are completely secondary to the primary goal.

Iran, North Korea and Pakistan are all in a different class from Iraq, but still represent fundamental threats to the United States either because their governments' actions are unpredictable or because the governments' control over WMD facilities are uncertain. Assurances from these various regimes cannot be taken at face value.

Therefore Iran and North Korea have been publicly warned, and we assume that Pakistan has been privately warned, that the threat presented to the United States by the diffusion of weapons of mass destruction, delivery systems or partial technologies is intolerable. Each country is being given opportunities to convince Washington that it is either not developing such weapons or that it is prepared to put into place inspection protocols that will guarantee non-diffusion. Barring a satisfactory solution, the United States is prepared to take extreme military measures in each of these countries to guarantee the elimination of threats.

Simultaneously, the United States is putting forces into place for a direct, global attack on al Qaeda. U.S. intelligence is in the process of identifying locales in which al Qaeda is operating, and to the extent possible identifying precise facilities and individuals. Under the Bush Doctrine and according to clear statements by the administration, the United States will at a suitable time attack each of these facilities regardless of where they are located.

If they have the support of the host government, that will be welcomed. If the host government cannot provide support but does not hinder operations, the United States will enter that country unilaterally. If the host country is actively hostile to the entry of the United States, that country will be regarded as an enemy aiding al Qaeda and its military forces will also be subject to attack.

Washington has been allied with many countries since World War II. Historical relationships are of significance only to the extent that the ally is prepared to materially aid the United States in defending its physical security. If, for example, European allies cannot countenance an attack on an Iraq, then what will they support?

If even the destruction of Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction appear to be too extreme a measure, then clearly the Europeans don't understand or are indifferent to the threat to the United States. The Bush administration will question the use of an ally who opposes steps essential to the physical safety of the United States.

Thus, embedded in the emerging Bush Doctrine is a fundamental redefinition of the U.S. alliance. During the Cold War, U.S. allies were judged on their willingness to stand with the United States against the Soviets. Now they are judged by their willingness stand with Washington not only against al Qaeda, but the range of threats that now physically threaten the United States.

The strategy that results from this appears to be a massive onslaught on multiple levels against al Qaeda, against countries that are intentionally or unintentionally enablers of al Qaeda and, above all, against countries that might be in the process of giving al Qaeda access to weapons of mass destruction. The key to understanding this U.S. strategy is its limitlessness. Embedded in the Bush Doctrine is the operational principle that there is no measure too extreme given the threat that exists to the United States.

The Bush administration thinks that extreme and limitless responses are what is needed to prevent the emergence of follow-on organizations. Building an organization like al Qaeda has taken years, a great deal of resources and above all physical sanctuary. For al Qaeda, there were several bases of operation, but Afghanistan was the most recent and best known.

A certain weakness has been identified in Washington's stance on previous anti-U.S. groups. In the past, the United States and others treated support for and hosting of such groups as one strand in a bilateral relationship. It was certainly a black mark, but it was also not a reason for decisive action.

So in spite of the fact that the Syrians supported and hosted extremists groups, the United States did not regard this by itself as a reason to launch military action. Quite the contrary, Washington maintained a complex and varied relationship with Syria in which it would fight to undermine these groups while simultaneously working with the government on other matters. In short, support for militant groups was not a threshold, but simply another strand in the relationship.

Clearly, Bush intends to change that. Under the emerging Bush Doctrine, if a nation supports or hosts a group that intends to attack the United States, or if it deliberately fails to act against such a group, then that nation is in a de facto state of war with the United States. The act of supporting or hosting such groups is a threshold that renders all other aspects of a bilateral relationship of no consequence. At a time and place of its choosing, the United States will act against both the group and the state.

In order to prevent the emergence of follow-on al Qaedas, the central feature must be to deny them sanctuary. Ideally, as some have suggested, the United States could work to abolish the poverty and misunderstanding that have given rise to al Qaeda. Unfortunately, even if this were possible, there is no time.

The threat, in the eyes of the Bush administration, is a matter of months and the abolition of poverty is a matter of generations. Therefore, if the carrot is impossible, then the stick will be used.

It is not clear that the Bush Doctrine will ever be formalized. But it is increasingly apparent that the United States is moving to adopt this strategy. It is a complete reshaping of U.S. global strategy based on the assumption that the interests of the United States have been fundamentally redefined by al Qaeda. An extraordinary threat has been posed. An extraordinary solution will be implemented.

In one sense, this seems to play into al Qaeda's hands. The group's strategy was to force the United States into a war with the Islamic world, so that its vision of Washington as the "crusader" enemy of Islam would be validated.

The Bush strategy accepts such a risk for two reasons. First, there is no choice. If the United States refuses to attack al Qaeda everywhere out of fear of perceptions, then al Qaeda will be a perpetual menace. Second, al Qaeda envisioned a series of broad attacks that were neither devastating nor decisive. The United States is indeed launching a broad attack, but intends to make it so stunningly decisive that it will impose a reality that will render perception immaterial.

The Bush strategy also plays to the core strengths of the United States. The United States is a global power and this is a global strategy. It is heavily dependent on military power and not particularly dependent on complex diplomatic solutions.

The last aspect is critical because, in this mode of thinking, time is of the essence. Al Qaeda is already deployed and other attacks will happen. If it does not yet have WMD, it is certainly trying to get them. Therefore, every day's delay increases the possibility of catastrophe. It follows then, that there is not an infinite amount of time available for action.

The last six months have seen terrorist attacks as dramatic as Towerfall and as sneaky as postal anthrax. As described in Tom Black's post, and as demonstrated by events in Afghanastan, the U.S. Gov't is attempting to deny terrorists their sanctuaries. A question comes to mind-do terrorist camps have mail call?

Interesting Stratfor analysis, Tom.

It confirms my concern that the US will seek to use military force to maintain the current world order. Since the Age of Exploration, major powers have been able to create zones of influence far abroad, to set up favorable economic situations that exploit minor powers. Weapons of mass destruction made war between major powers not cost effective. I suspect when minor powers have weapons of mass destruction, exploitation of minor powers by major powers will also become not cost effective.

It is very traditional, come a Fourth Turning, that the established power, the power that most benefits from the existing status quo, attempts to use military force to maintain the status quo. It is also traditional that the established world order changes in spite of all efforts by the establishment. Three generations of technological, economic and social pressures shall be released.

Since the Age of Exploration, there has often been one power so confident of its military prowess that it believes it can take on the entire world. The Spain of the Armada, the France of Louis XIV and Napoleon, or the Germany of Bismarck and Hitler might stand as examples. It might be our turn to step into that arrogance.

One key question dogging Dubya's administration has been unilateralism versus coalition building. It would not be a good thing if the conflict gets defined as the US against Islam. It might be a good thing if it is defined as democracies supporting human rights against terrorists. It's not clear which perception will prevail, or which perception is more valid. The US is allying with non-democratic regimes with little respect for human rights. It is placing self defense as a higher priority than international law. To protect ourselves from international attacks, Dubya is launching international attacks.

Am I the only one that wistfully dreams of consistent principles? By Dubya's definitions, Israel is using terrorist tactics, we are supporting a terrorist state, thus we are a valid target of international attacks? Can we hope to win propaganda wars without bothering with principles or ideals?

Again, I still have the persisting doubt that anything can be resolved without addressing the ethnic, religious, economic, territorial, political and ecological issues underlying the military and security issues.

As the Olympics have slipped into the past without incident, the initial September 11th mood seems to be fading. I respect Stratfor's view of the US doctrine. I've been afraid for months of just what Stratfor sees. I don't think it will work. We cannot maintain the zones of influence traditional since the Age of Exploration, and the resultant division of wealth between the First and Third worlds. Dubya can try. I don't think he will succeed, but he will try. Still, I don't think the people of the First World are ready to let go of what they have without a fight. We have convinced ourselves that we deserve what we have, that the current world order is just. We don't. It isn't.

There is a Tarot card, "The Tower," which shows a split and falling tower, struck by lightning, with a king and a lord falling to their death. Modern Tarot interpretation errs on the side of the optimistic. One does not tell the person seeking a reading that there is a disaster in the near future. People don't want to hear it. The card, like all cards with obvious dark images, is thus given a positive spin. The Tower means an opportunity is coming to start over, to change, to grow...

The meaning of the card is less optimistic if it appears in the spread upside down.

As I see it, the old isolationism was shoved into a closet by Pearl Harbor and kept there by the Cold War. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the "New World Order" (the "last superpower" as hegemon) was sustained by Unraveling era self-absorption. But if the costs of intervention should become very painful-without the justification of self defense-will the public start paying attention? Will a Gray Champion arise as a champion of peace?

I think Bob's and Tim's responses to the article Tom posted are good.

I think it's true that the USA needs to attack Al Qaeda or other groups targeting the USA, and if the host country doesn't support the USA, it needs to go in, and if the host country supports Al Qaeda, it needs to be attacked; etc. At least if diplomatic means and allies fail.

But the rest of the policy concerns me. We are planning to attack Iraq because it MIGHT share WMD with Al Qaeda, though there is no evidence of it doing so, and prepared to use WMD ourselves to destroy their WMD, regardless of whether our attack kills civilians, regardless of whether it actually destroys their WMD, etc.

We seem prepared to attack Iran, N. Korea, Syria, or even China, on the same basis. Where does it end?

Will our attacks provoke more terrorists groups to form? If there is no restraint or concern with whether our attacks kill civilians or actually remove threats, then I suspect our unlimited war would be counter-productive, and thus truly unlimited and destructive for ourselves as well as others everywhere.

Because we need to act to protect ourselves, does not mean that we should not seek UN approval for our actions, consult our allies, and listen to them regarding what we should do. Instead, Bush seems to think he doesn't need to listen to anyone or get anyone's approval. His attitude seems the same as that toward global warming. USA's global capitalist and security interests first, regardless of the real effect of policies.

It is very traditional, come a Fourth Turning, that the established power, the power that most benefits from the existing status quo, attempts to use military force to maintain the status quo. It is also traditional that the established world order changes in spite of all efforts by the establishment. Three generations of technological, economic and social pressures shall be released.

Ooooh, I like that, Bob. Pretty good way to put it.

For what its worth, here is a quote from an e-mail to people planning a very mundane, routine conference on the Food Stamp Program Quality Control Program:

"I understand the flight concerns -- to be honest, its a concern that I share. This country was forever changed -- for better or worse -- by the events of 9-11."

The person I'm citing is a 45-year-old female married African American professional, a mid-level manager at the USDA Food and Nutrition Service.

In the 4T, the culture will be harnessed as propaganda...

I wonder if Nader will embrace this game.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12496

On 2002-02-27 14:07, Barbara wrote:

It is very traditional, come a Fourth Turning, that the established power, the power that most benefits from the existing status quo, attempts to use military force to maintain the status quo. It is also traditional that the established world order changes in spite of all efforts by the establishment. Three generations of technological, economic and social pressures shall be released.

Ooooh, I like that, Bob. Pretty good way to put it.

Brings to mind another question that is the subject of another thread: What happens if we lose? Paul Harper addressed that question in 1997, by saying that it depends on the victor. With a magnanimous victor, you get a Marshall Plan and don't get into any more wars for at least half a century. With a moderately vindictive one, you get a big reparations bill, a bitter populace, and maybe a dictatorship. With a really vindictive one, you end up like the Armenians or the Jews after Masada. Personally, I would bank on a moderately to really vindictive victor. In fact, I could have used the Second and Third Punic Wars as examples of the moderately vindictive victor(Second War), and the extremely vindictive one (Third War). At the end of the Third - and final - war, the Romans slaughtered a large number of Carthaginians, enslaved the rest, leveled the city, sowed the resulting field with salt, and placed a curse on the site.

This is probably one of the weirdest articles. I have ever read , with crazy themes of the anti-globalisation protesters being similar to Nazis and defense of neoliberalism.

One thing is interesting, namely this Australian woman makes a comparsion between the era we live in now and the 1930's.


Helen Hughes: Loud mobs hold democracy hostage
By Helen Hughes
March 01, 2002
THE build-up of demonstrations since the 1999 World Trade Organisation debacle in Seattle has a deja vu feeling for anyone who witnessed the rise of national socialism in the 1930s.




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The demonstrators have the same passionate conviction that capitalism must be uprooted. Some anti-globalisation advocates thought the attack on the World Trade Centre well directed, so that al-Qa'ida supporters find the anti-globalisation environment favourable. The postponed Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, which commences tomorrow at Coolum, is next on the anti-globalisation agenda.

The demonisation of multinationals is a key issue. It is couched in exactly the same language used by Hitler to attack Jews in the '30s. The multinationals are accused of exploiting their workers, notably in developing countries, accumulating vast profits and conspiring to control the world.

The multinationals are businesses and some are Australian businesses. Ear implants produced by an Australian multinational have brought hearing to thousands worldwide. World trade and multinationals have spread new technologies, creating low-priced, high quality goods and services for mass consumption.

Multinationals put breakfast foods on the table. They provide an array of electronics and the internet. Their fast-food innovations mean that working mums need not cook every night. In developing countries, multinationals have provided jobs where no jobs were before. They pay much higher wages than local firms, enabling developing countries to import rice and wheat from Australia at much lower prices than they can grow them in the tropics, and hi-tech goods from the US, Europe and Japan that they cannot yet produce at home.

A few multinationals do cut corners, particularly if corrupt and despotic governments allow and even encourage them to do so, just as a few Jewish businesses, like other businesses, cut corners in Germany in the '30s.

The ultimate costs of sharp practices, however, were and are enormous where national bankruptcy laws, the safety valves of market systems, operate. Enron has been caught. And as a result of its collapse, US laws will be strengthened to protect investors, including employee shareholders.


The anti-globalisation attack on the multinationals not only uses the language that scarified Jews in Germany and Austria in the '30s, but it is also based on lies. Unchecked by rational political behaviour, the lies of the '30s led to Kristallnacht, World War II and 30 million deaths.

Environmental action is most advanced in free countries. Freedoms are highly correlated with per capita income. Hard evidence shows that the more open a democracy, the higher the standard of living. The countries that are poor and falling behind the rest of the world are the ones that are closed in and at war with themselves and each other.

Without globalisation and its competitive markets, we will all be on track to Third World living standards and the freedoms enjoyed by the women under Taliban rule.

Of course, the demonstrators have every right to demonstrate. Young people in our liberal democracy should be concerned with more than their latest CD or designer sports shoes.

But CHOGM seems an ill-chosen target, for here developing and developed, black and white, get together for friendly talks about issues such as living standards and the environment. Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe is likely to be censured as a transgressor against decent political conduct.

If the demonstrations against CHOGM are marred by violence, if the participants are harassed, they will recall the screaming mobs that sheltered fascists in the '30s. As in those days, demonstrations are being infiltrated by violent thugs who encourage crowds to crash barriers and attack police and multinational outlets as well as local shops and restaurants.

In Genoa, small local businesses were worst hit. Well organised anarcho-fascists, recalling the excesses of communism and fascism, have taken advantage of high incomes, cheap fares and the internet (all of which follow from globalisation) to turn good natured "demos" into fascist violence.

Al-Qa'ida supporters will be in the forefront, though hopefully our visa system will prevent too many from attending. If demonstrators and police are injured, or best of all, killed, they will regard the demonstration as being a great success. Those who shout loudest do not represent democracy. There are no quick and easy ways to improve the world.

Some 125 million people died during the 20th century because shouting mobs overturned democracies. The demonstrators have duties as well as rights. At the end of the day, they should be joining political parties and taking part in the electoral processes that can bring constructive change.

Helen Hughes is professor emeritus of economics at the Australian National University in Canberra and a senior fellow at the Centre of Independent Studies in Sydney.

On 2002-02-23 02:07, Vince Lamb '59 wrote:

On 2002-02-23 01:13, Barbara wrote:
Oh, and let's not forget to add that Katherine woman to the list (I can see the heavy makeup in my mind, but cannot recall the last name).

Harris.

Barbara, you accused me in a previous post of being a 'dutiful soldier' (wrongly, by the way) for the GOP, and further added that you think we keep insulting the intelligence of the voters in Florida (again, not true).

But...I might retort that you guys have the most peculiar obsession with K. Harris' makeup. Every time I see a reference to her by someone leaning or firmly Democratic, I almost always see some reference to her makeup. What is it with you guys and her makeup? :smile:

On 2002-02-23 22:36, Eric A Meece wrote:

Every Generation in every time and place contains a few of the sort (dictators), who usually get no chance to implement their malice.

Your foreign policy depends on them, yes.

No, our foreign policy recognizes that they exist. I'd rather they didn't. I don't like large military expenditures, they drain off valuable resources and keep taxes high. But they are necessary.

Today, places such as Nigeria and Iraq are governed by autocrats as cruel as any you would wish to compare them to. They are held in check, not by 'progress' but by the threat of force. Within the nations of the West, similar men (and women) are held in check by the knowledge that if they try to act on their desires, they will be stopped by force, not persuasion. It's not a question of what decade, Eric. The only thing unusual about those decades (1930s 1940s) was that several of these sorts did manage to obtain power at once. They're always around.

Because of progress, there are fewer of these types around. More states are democratic today, did you notice? I think BTW Nigeria has moved toward democracy recently. The 1930s and 40s WERE unusual indeed, but we've based our foreign policy ever since on the notion that it was the norm. It is not.

Yes, I've noticed that there are fewer around today. America is the primary reason why, Eric. There is no such thing as 'progress' as a subject or an object to a verb. There are specific reasons for the shift to democracy. The end of the USSR is the most important recent one.

Only if some specific government first assembled enough power to impose some level of organization on the natural chaos of international affairs. Some power would have to step into the role America was absent from, or the ways and means to check the troublemakers would not exist. There's no such thing as leadership by committee.

You don't remember the Congress of Vienna then? The Treaty of Westphalia? NATO? Of course there is. Multi-lateralism is not only feasible, it's normal. Go it alone American militarism is abnormal. It is foisted upon us by the red zone.

The Congress of Vienna was not leadership, it was a meeting of the winners of a war to divy up the spoils, and to reconstruct a monarchy on the wreckage of Napoleonic France. Great Britain and her allies did just that, but it was leadership only in the sense that a pack of fairly evenly matched predators worked out their territorial boundaries.

NATO does not provide any leaderhship. NATO works by unanimous vote, in theory. In practical terms, NATO does pretty well what the U.S. Government wishes, or it does nothing at all. In Kosovo, in Bosnia, in the Gulf War, it was America that made the decisions and provided the bulk of the power.
In Kosovo, almost all the critical fighting power was American.

I'm not even commenting at this point about whether it should be that way or not, but it is currently that way.

The European member-states don't have the military power to play in the same league as the U.S., and recent events since 911 have only driven that point home with cruel inescapability.

Already, there has been mutterings of NATO being obsolescent, and not just in America.

If you look at known examples of multilateral action, almost invariably some specific government, and within it some specific individual or small group, is the driving force behind the decisions.

The closest thing to an exception that I can think of in living memory is the Alliance in World War II, and even there, ask Churchill's ghost if he felt 'equal' to Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta.

True, a lot of the peacekeeping personnel are European, but that actually means very little.

Why aren't we doing it then? Why not give the other nations credit?

Here we finally come to a criticism of America that has some merit. We don't do the peacekeeping because it's boring, dangerous, and we are averse to casualties, and because, to put it baldly, it's more convenient to use other nationals for that work. During the Clinton years, an additional complication was that Clinton's primary goal was always keeping his approval numbers high, which meant he could risk no American casualties at all in any operation whatever.

But America has used other nationals as stand ins for the unglamorous and boring, but still important, work of peacekeeping.

But peacekeeping is the aftermath, Eric. The work of breaking the enemy defenses to begin with, the air power, the bulk of the intelligence work, that's mostly or entirely American.

America was and is responsible for most of the action to keep the rogue states in check, Eric.

It doesn't have to be that way. We are not the only nation with concerns about rogue states. If we didn't assume so, other nations would do it, as they did before. This is not 1938. That was an entirely unique situation, with Europe weakened by WWI. Your policies are and have been for 40 years based on an out-of-date Munich-based foreign policy.

In terms of relative military power, Europe is weaker in 2002 than it was in the aftermath of World War I.

Also, keeping the rogue states in check is not a big job. We aren't talking Hitler or Stalin. However bad a Saddam may be, he has much less power. The developed democracies have enough resources to check the small rogue states and to make social progress. Your idea that there must be a powerful state that is socially backward in order for there to be world peace is as absurd as it sounds.

In 1925, Germany was all but powerless in military terms, and that changed in a hurry. It's the presence of a strong democratic power in the world that prevents these small problems from growing into big problems down the line.

We could have gone the route of Europe; indeed should have. Reagan's militarism did not end the Cold War; that is a myth.
Gorbachev decided to end it for the good of his country; he did it unlaterally. That's all there is to it. It would have happened had Carter won re-election.

Eric, this is sheer fantasy. Gorbachev did not end Communism for the good of Russia or anyone else. His primary goal was to save Communism.

And no, had Carter been reelected, odds are the USSR would still exist. It's true that Communism tends to run out of steam, and it was stagnating, but that's not enough! There are several ways it could extend its life, the simplest being by sucking in resources from outside by force.

Carter had the delusion that he was dealing with honorable, decent people when he dealt with the USSR. This enabled them to deceive him about their goals and means time and time again.

The change in policy under Reagan was based precisely on a recognition that the USSR was stagnating, and could be pushed over the edge. The 'conventional liberal wisdom' of the time was that the USSR was a permanent reality that had to be adapted to, and that confrontation was madness.

It was Ronald Reagan, in an early State of the Union address, who opined that the USSR could be brought to an end if America and the West stood firm. At the time, he was derided for this, by 'experts' who 'knew' that the USSR was strong and was not going to be defeated by this cowboy from California. When he called the USSR an 'Evil Empire' the cautious diplomats at State and many in the media almost had heart palpitations, even though it was just a simple description of reality.

Under Carter, and to some degree also under Ford and even Nixon, the USA was widely perceived, internally and externally, as a helpless giant, or even a declining power.
This was partly a product of the 2T chaos and confusion, but partly also a result of an ingrained reluctance in some quarters of the West to look at the USSR for what it really was.

The horrors and the secret police and the internal spies and the slave labor, they didn't stop with Stalin, they continued up to and well into the time of Gorbachev.
They had lessoned somewhat, but they had not stopped.

Under Reagan, the USSR was forced to try to match the USA in a defense spending race, since the USSR really was a very backward power by most standards. It's whole claim to superpower status, it's whole status in the world, was based on its perceived military equity or superiority to the USA.
This illusion was shattered once Reagan set the wheels in motion.

Once Reagan started forcing them to try to match America in economic resources, scientific development, and weapons procurement, the weakness of their system became apparent. They couldn't do it. And that revelation weakened them enormously, as it weakened their prestige with every dictator that looked to them for support, with every revolutionary movement that saw USSR support as their key to success, with their own internal dissidents who suddenly saw that the State was not invincible.

Gorbachev was forced to the policies of glasnost and perestroika by the reality that the USSR was out of money and available resources, and had to practical way to match the continuing US build up. Gorbachev hoped that by loosening the system just a little, he could make it flexible enough to survive.

The trouble was, that you can't loosen the system a little in that particular type of dictatorship. Once the State gives a little, everyone can see and know that it's out of options, because they know from experience that it won't do so voluntarily. Once it becomes clear that the State can be challenged successfully in that particular type of system, the State is doomed.

Gorbachev did not end Communism unilaterally. He had to be dragged kicking and screaming to it, and then he claimed credit for it afterward since it was the only claim to fame and success he really had.
In terms of his original goals, he utterly failed, since Communism in the USSR collapsed, which was just what he had hoped all along to prevent.

Recall, if you will, Yeltsin standing on the tank. That marked the end of Communism in Russia, not anything Gorbachev sought to do. The factors leading up to that moment can be traced, in much, to three people: President Ronald Reagan, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II. They, not Gorbachev, wrote the epitath for Soviet Communism.

Unfortunately, you folks in the red zone think that "morality" consists in mindless obedience to Christian preachers, whose ideas you want to impose on the rest of us in the blue zone, and this is your version of a higher authority. People in the blue zone more closely understand that the Higher Authority is ultimately found within each person, not merely enforced by the church and state.

If the voice of moral Authority is entirely internal, why isn't it universal? Morality can't be one thing for one person and another thing for someone else.

As for living on Earth, yes, people in a given nation do live under an enforced moral code, called the law. Not all morality can or should be legislated, but basically all law is indeed legislated morality.

I agree. However, it is you conservatives are the ones these days who are saying the state should be reduced, and that greedy people should get away with corruption and violation of peoples' rights in the name of "freedom". It is you guys who want to cripple our legislatures with term limits and with insults toward all politicians who try to make reforms. You are the ones who are creating the climate of the 3T that hates all "government." We liberals want democratic laws instituted to protect peoples rights, not to protect the property of a few. You are opposed to these laws.

No, not to all of them. But yes, property is a basic right, and like the other basic rights, it is interlinked with the others.

True, American taxation is not as bad as that of Europe.
Further, it's perfectly legitimate for large amounts of tax money to go the military. That's one of the basic purposes of the
Federal Government.

Because we think erroneously that we are the only good people in the world and thus have to be #1. It's not so. As I've pointed out, other nations are if anything better than we. They are more democratic too. They have up to date parliamentary systems with proportional representation. We have an elected king and an outdated two-party system that represents those who already have the power.

First of all, I don't think that Americans have a monopoly on moral goodness.

Second, just because a nation is more democratic does not automatically make it better. Historically, some of the nastiest, most awful events ever performed were done by democratic decision.

No, we don't begrudge taxes for maintaining the roads, the defenses, those parts of the communications system that are best handled publically, and we don't begrudge taxes for aiding the needy (the really needy, that is).

Of course there are individual exceptions, but this idea that conservatives hate all taxes alike is silly. We do maintain that America already takes in sufficient money through its taxes for most needs, and that the tax structure is itself organized in an inefficient and immoral way.

Of course you say this, because you don't acknowledge the real needs of society. You just assume the need is not there. From that point of view, of course the "money is sufficient." What do you mean by an "immoral tax structure," other than what we liberals point out is the fact that the rich get away with not paying very much?

I favor a flat-percentage income tax, since you ask, which means that if you have ten times the income, you pay ten times the taxes. Incidentally, once that was in place, I might be willing to consider a tax increase if I thought the situation called for it, since it would be spread evenly across all brackets in accordance with the ability to pay.

I oppose the so-called 'progressive' tax, which means if you make ten times the income, you pay thirty times the taxes.

I also oppose sales taxes, since they fall heavier on the poor by percentage. That same tax on a purchase that is .00001% of a rich man's income might be 10% of a poor man's.

I don't like progressive or regressive taxation either one.

If it does, it'll be the first time in history that such a thing has occurred!

Actually, many reforms have come about non-violently in the past two centuries. Wage laws, child-labor laws, etc. There was unrest in society beforehand, but the reforms were passed democratically, as a result of an awakening populace. Thanks to you guys today we have a populace that is asleep.

You think nothing new can ever happen. But I have news for you. Just 200 years ago there was no democracy anywhere in the world. Now the majority of nations are democratic. Change can happen if we realize that it can. There just have to be enough liberals around to have the guts to make the changes.

Eric, it wasn't liberals who worked those changes. It wasn't even mostly Prophets. The growth of democracy was largely the work of Civics. The changes to the child labor laws and the wage laws were the result of Missionary efforts, from people who would todya be considered religious right.

Where there is no vision, the people perish, it says in your holy book.

Precisely, and we in the Red Zone doubt your vision, Eric. We're not sure the vision you see is for real. In fact, we 99% sure it isn't.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: HopefulCynic68 on 2002-02-28 21:31 ]</font>

On 2002-02-25 02:06, Eric A Meece wrote:

the parents collectively should be acknowledged as the masters of the schools, not the ideologues who have taken over too much of the system, to its detriment.

This is red zone ideology and nothing more. Teachers are there to teach. What you call ?ideologues? means simply the fact that educated people like teachers tend to be liberal, and you don?t like that. Same with reporters. No, people who are trained to teach need to run the schools, not the parents.

Wrong, Eric. Authority over their children can only derive from the parents. As for training, you haven't explained where the teachers would derive the right to run the schools, save from the collective authority of the parents of the children involved.

The training of our teachers, also, leaves much to be desired of late. To much of it is based on faddish psychological theories, the latest politically correct left-wing ideology, and wishful thinking.

This is not a slam against teachers, BTW. Many of them know what I am talking about.

Yes, this means that parents have a say in what their children are taught,
and the right to veto certain things, no matter how much they may appeal to the 'progressives' have have come to see the schools as the training ground for future 'enlightened citizens'.

That is absurd. If you support education, then allow the teachers to teach. If parents want to do it, they can do home schooling.

That's why many have done just that, Eric. But even there, they are often harrassed by school officials who disapprove of home schooling, and see the children as 'their' primary responsibility. Too many school officials see the activities of parents in raising their children as being subject to their review, not vice versa.

The fact is, towns with a university are the most left-leaning areas.

No kidding! That's part of what's wrong!

The intelligencia votes Democratic. Rich people who work in business vote Republican. Their ?education? mostly consists of training for business, and they have forgotten the rest.

Thank you for the gratuitous insult, Eric. It makes clear the underlying assumptions of your argument better than anything I could say.

Businesspeople have just as much grasp of art, science, and the other higher aspirations as leftist intellectuals, Eric, and often a better appreciation of the way people react to it in mass. A randomly selected businesman is as likely to know something of physics or history as a randomly selected philosophy professor.

Yes, the so-called 'intelligentsia' often tends to vote Democratic. These are the same people who have spent their life in a classroom or a nice, safe American city, protected by a military force, an intelligence service, a police system, and supported in unsurpassed comfort by a gigantic economy.

They tend, as a rule, to know far less about the real world than businessmen, soldiers, or common laborers.

BTW, there is a difference between the so-called intelligentsia and academia, though the two words are thrown around interchangably. Not all academics are pure dreamers, many know a great deal about reality. The intelligentsia, in this definition, are the people who have broad opinions and little practical experience.

These are the people who insist that the military is a bastion of stupidity and fascism, never have either served in it, known anyone who did, or even bothered to learn anything about it.

These are the people who make up fantasies about how 'ecologically aware' the Native Americans were and are, and ignore the fact that they were responsible for several small and medium scale ecological disasters in North and South America before Europeans even arrived.

These are the people who insist that difference between male and female is entirely learned, and that they can be made interchangable by education and 'sensitivity training' in the face of 5000 years of experience that says otherwise.

These are the people who think that the Nuclear Freeze Movement toppled the USSR (I have actually come across people who make this literal argument The Nation magazine, a bastion of the modern Left, tried to make the case for that a year or two ago!)

These are the people who used to maintain that Alger Hiss was an innocent victim of a vast right wing conspiracy.

These are the people who thought that George McGovern's policies made sense in the real world.

So I'm not all that impressed by the intelligentsia, in this context.

Yes, poorer people vote Democratic too. That means they support public programs and not privitazation schemes like vouchers.

We've been down this road already, Eric. The opposition to vouchers is NOT from the poor!

In California, the attempt to eliminate bilingual education, which has done enormous harm to the students trapped in it, has been fought to the death by educators wedded to the concept.

Get real and stop being obsessed with multiculturalism. It is a fact we live in one world and a multi-racial society. This is an example of what I mean about the red zone. You want to hang on to ?traditional? America that speaks one language, has one culture, and ignores the needs of others so they will just go away. It is a losing battle, Cynic.

Eric, that's one battle that's almost certain to end up going the Red Zone's way.

True, America has the choice of being a single-culture society or breaking up in the long term. That culture can and will change, and will continue to absorb new influences, but a true multicultural society is impossible.

Nobody wants to ignore the needy, Eric, that's YOUR fantasy of us, not the reality.
But if you think you can have multiple, mutually incompatible cultures co-exist for long in a liberal democracy, you're in for some unpleasant awakenings ahead.

It's never worked! You can have multiple cultures under one government, but that government has to function as an empire. Otherwise, the friction produces intolerable tensions. Yugoslavia is probably the best example of a true multicultural society in action, once the central authority breaks down even briefly.

But in fact the multicultural problem does not worry me, since American culture has proven quite adept at absorbing new members and readjusting to their input. They used to call it the 'melting pot', and it's still America's primary operating system.

I used bilingual education as an example, Eric. These are people who know perfectly well that the law and the will of the parents in their districts (including many if not most of the immigrant parents) wanted English-based instruction, since that's the road to opportunities for their kids.

The people supporting bilingual regard the will of those parents and legislators as being irrelevant to their superior will.

Your reference to stubborn superintendents is not something that liberals support. We don?t agree with wasteful and stupid administrators or the high salaries they get, and are fixing this problem.

If so, you're doing it with remarkably little visible activity or effect.

If you're going by TV, that may be true. The media is strongly biased on this subject, and tends to cover it misleadingly.

If there is any bias, it is the overcoverage they give to this stupid Republican shibboleth of vouchers. It?s basis is entirely in ideology and is an excuse to do nothing to fix the schools.

Eric, the national news media are hard-core Leftist for the most part, and their coverage of vouchers and other GOP ideas is almost universally hostile.

As I said, the middle class and wealthy don't like them, but they have kids in better schools anyway.

As I said, that?s 80% of the people. They don?t like them because they depended on public schools for their education, which allowed them to succeed. The poor believe in public programs; a few may be decieved about vouchers, but most aren?t. Whatever polls you saw are wrong.

No, Eric, they aren't wrong. And yes, those middle class parents grew up in the school system before it was broken. Many of them, even now, don't realize how badly broken some parts of the system have since become.

The poor, however, do know. The polls are very consistent on this. Even many poor and minority parents who identify with the Democratic Party and side with it on almost everything else in these same polls keep coming up with majorities in favor of school choice and vouchers, or similar ideas. You may not like that, but it is a fact.

... from statitics gathered over 30 years of attempts, and from anecdotal evidence as well, that most rehabiliation efforts fail. The recidivism rate for all crime is high. It's especially high where drugs are involved.

Recidivism is caused by prison itself, just as you acknowledged that prisons are training grounds for crime. There is no rehabilitation and hasn?t been for decades. If you are correct you are not talking about current times. As far as drugs are concerned, that is just where some pilot programs are working best. Several states have passed laws to treat drugs more as a disease. They will work, because it is a disease and not a crime. Drug users have no business being in jail in the first place.

That depends on the circumstances. Some do, some don't. But even those test programs that are showing promise usually require a combination of carrot and stick.

As for drug recidivism, it has more to do with brain neurochemistry than it does with the nature of prison.

It's true that if a criminal already wants to go straight, state efforts can be of great assistance. But the offender himself/herself must first desire to go straight, or it's futile.

Yes, as they say, can a psychologist screw in a lightbulb? Yes, but the lightbulb has to WANT to change. You don?t think that criminals can be persuaded to go straight?

Not by outside effort alone.

If you're saying that our drug laws need to be revamped, I might agree with you.

I wish more Republicans did.

Another reason for the difference is that the rich and middle class, if they commit a crime, are likelier to get off. I agree here that the system is nearly broken.

So if you're saying we need to revamp our system of public defense, I might go along with you there.

Yes we might agree there.

The purpose of the Second Amendment, Eric, is not to protect hunters
or ranchers or farmers, but to maintain an armed population to held keep the government in check. It was written precisely as a check on the power of the Federal authority.

But that would be the only valid reason for it. An armed population can?t keep a government in check. I?ve gone over this with Bob Butler and others. The government will win, as at Waco and Ruby Ridge. You can?t speak of your respect for law, and then say we need an Amendment to make it possible for people to fight the law. Your argument is for anarchy; it is false. Most scholars know that the purpose of the 2nd was to provide for a militia, since the US didn?t have an army then.

Yes, an armed population, in large numbers, can keep the government in check. The government will always win against a small group such as at Waco. An armed populace, though, makes it that much less tempting to try to do something deeply opposed by either a majority or a large minority.

Yes, you can respect the law, without regarding it as possessing automatic legitimacy. The law itself can at times become the enemy of civilization, just as even a legal government can nevertheless be illegitimate morally.

The Second Amendment is NOT an argument for anarchy, any more than the First Amendment is, with its restrictions on government action in speech, religion, and expression.

And no, the 2nd Amendment does not exist to provide an army, this is demonstrable nonsense. The United States had an Army, it's provided for in the Constitution under Congressional prerogatives, seperately from the mention of the militia.

The 'militia' referred to in the 2nd Amendment refers, in fact, to the able bodied male population of the several States, and is NOT synonomous with the Federal Army. The well-regulated part merely means that the militia refers to civilized, decent men, not outlaws, and yes, it DOES acknowledge (not grant, acknowledge) the right of the individual to be armed.

The writings of the men who wrote it make that QUITE clear.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: HopefulCynic68 on 2002-02-28 22:47 ]</font>

On 2002-02-26 16:44, Tom Black '58 wrote:
I found the following article on Stratfor.com. I think they've had a pretty good track record with their political and military analysis. If they're even close to correct about this, then the administration has (quietly) shifted into a totally 4T mindset. Mike Eagan, given your background, I'm particularly interested in your take on this.

A lot to take in Mr. Black and then spit out an answer that will satisfy every one (a task I know to be impossible as my old pen pals Messieurs Butler and Meece are already weighing in on it). Also, let me say at the outset that unlike a lot of people who post here, I don't bend over backward to divine 3T or 4T nuggets from world events. That said, I will try to give the Reader?s Digest version of what has transpired in the last year or so, so that you may all understand the sort of policy discussions that have been taking place before November 2000 and since September 2001.

In the months leading-up to the election, the Joint Staff (and yours truly) and the services were engaged in preparations for the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) that by law, was supposed to take place within the first months of the new administration (regardless of who won). The results were supposed to be reported out at the end of September 2001. Obviously some things got in the way in September, but not the obvious ones. All of that preparation we were doing was based on the majority of the policy people, both uniformed and civilian, betting on the come that the basic national security strategy of global engagement would remain in place, albeit with tinkering at the margins, again regardless of who won.

Operating in the background were some other studies and exercises that, in the parlance of the Pentagon, served to "inform the QDR." What they were and who was doing them while germane to the issue is not something I?m comfortable discussing here. There was also one very real world event, the attack on the Cole that also served to inform the QDR. Once the preparation phase was competed, the execution of the QDR was delayed, first by the contested election, and then by some new preliminary studies that Secretary Rumsfeld ordered to be conducted by independent panels made up of retired senior military officers and noted academics. These panels covered the gamut from personnel readiness to force structure to homeland defense. You may recall that the Secretary caught hell for this from the uniformed side because he kept the results close to his vest. Likewise, when the QDR did start, he kept the activities of those conducting it close to the vest as well. What we were hearing is that there was some significant thinking "out of the box" particularly with regard to force structure (how many planes, trains and automobiles are needed to execute the national military strategy). Then August 2001 rolled around and your faithful corespondent transferred to his current job in the wilds of Arizona (yes there is a naval presence in Arizona).

Now, why did I take you on this trip down memory lane? Because ladies and gentlemen, a constant in every discussion was WMD and homeland security. It was the conviction of virtually every member of every panel (including me) that we were going to get hit, and hit hard. No clear idea of who the perpetrators would be or when, just that it was only a matter of time. Lots of reasons for this, not the least of which are the many already mentioned by others - - hunger, poverty, disease, etc. Be that as it may, getting people to take the threat to the homeland seriously seemed to be difficult. I don?t know this for a fact but that was my impression. Then came 9/11 and the world as we knew it ceased to exist.

Now, I have no real idea what kind of discussions have taken place between policy makers in the Pentagon since 9/11. I haven?t been there and it isn?t something one discusses on the telephone. However, I can guess at what is at the core of the emerging strategy. Simply, it is that of all the rights, duties, and privileges wrapped up in the "penumbras and emanations" (I?ll forever be grateful to Mr. Saari for pointing that one out to me) of the Constitution is that little ditty about providing for the common defense. No President, regardless of party, can stand by and allow the nation to be attacked, especially if that attack could include WMD. We absorbed the first blow and responded exactly the way I would have thought we would. Standing by and listening to all the pundits (none of whom know a damn thing about warfighting) going on about how it didn?t appear to be working, while everything I was seeing told me it was doing just fine gave me great pleasure. In fact it was one of the few times I found myself agreeing unreservedly with David Hackworth. Moreover (and I?ve said this in previous posts), the Commander-in-Chief was pretty explicit from day one about the goal of all future operations - - to wipe out terrorism, period. He also stated pretty clearly at that time that countries that weren?t with us were going to be considered to be against us. Why that part keeps being forgotten puzzles me. It?s almost as if a press corps accustomed to parsing sentences in order to determine what the meaning of "is" is doesn?t understand plain talk. I can only conclude that they didn?t believe he was serious.

At any rate, in light of what I know to have occurred before, the strategy as proffered by STRATFOR strikes me as being sensible if one buys into the defense of the homeland as being paramount. I?m pretty sure that most of you don?t want to be at the next ground zero. I?m equally sure that the President?s advisors (and these are some pretty sharp people) cannot countenance another 9/11. Therefore, since our seas no longer protect us, the next best thing is to create a defense in depth by carrying the fight to the enemy in his various and sundry backyards. Are there risks? You bet. Huge ones. Do I wish this weren?t so? More than most of you. After all, I?m one of the poor dumb bastards that has to make the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. However, the prospect of defeat is unimaginable. And make no mistake, turning the other cheek is defeat in the eyes of al Qaeda and others like them.

For those of you concerned that this strategy will be all stick and no carrot, I think we will begin to see more carrots as the basic force protection situation improves. We don?t want NGO personnel ending up like Richard Pearl.

Hope I answered the question to your satisfaction Mr. Black, and as always folks, these are my opinions and not intended to represent official DoD policy.

On 2002-02-25 02:33, Eric A Meece wrote:

No, I remember perfectly well the way successive Democratic-controlled Congresses refused to cut (or even slow the rate of growth of) spending between 1981 and 1988.

The Republicans controlled Congress during much of Reagan's term.He is completely to blame. He should not have assumed that the Democrats would cut all the programs we need and which the people they represent wanted.

Eric, the GOP controlled the Senate from 2001-2002. That's it. The Democrats controlled the Senate from 2003-1994. The Democrats controlled the House of Representatives throughout the Reagan years. To say that the GOP controlled Congress in Reagan's time is nonsense.

Second, he did not call for cuts, he did call for reductions in the growth rate, which the liberals like to call cuts. Instead, the Democrats steadily increased social spending, sometimes on useful programs, sometimes on nonsense. But if control of Congress determines who is to blame or credit for budgets, guess what?

The GOP controlled Congress throughout the years of the 90s surplus, and now that surplus is vanishing as soon as the Democrats regained the Senate! By your incorect logic, that means the GOP is the party of surpluses!!! :smile:

But in fact, the Democrats were the ones who set the spending priorities throughout most of Reagan's terms. Reagan simply didn't have control of Congress to set the priorities. This isn't a matter of opinion, Eric, the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives for decades, all the way up to 1994, and the Senate throughout most of that same period.

The simple fact: under Reagan the debt grew by 4 times. Don't weasal out of it!

Yes, while Reagan was president, the Democrats controlled Congress and quadrupled the deficit. I can't weasel out of that fact! :smile:

Incidentally, after our abject failure in Vietnam, we were indeed left looking proportiately more vulnerable. Our opponents in the world acted upon that belief, and throughout the seventies they were correct in their assessment of our weakness (more psychological than physical).

First, it showed the futility of our war aim "to save face." We spent millions and killed millions to "save face," and it didn't work. We lost face.

I agree, Vietnam was a total botch-up.

Second, the "actions of our enemies" is just Reagan propaganda. Some revolutions happened such as Nicaragua which had nothing to do with Vietnam and should never have been feared or denounced or opposed.

Eric, the perceived weakness of America is why the USSR felt empowered to support and guide those revolutions! No, they were not primarily home-grown, and yes, they had a lot to do with Vietnam!

As for fearing them, when your enemy supports an activity in your back yard, suspicion is appropriate. When that enemy is running death squads (and they were!), fear is appropriate!

(And yes, the ones we supported against them were not a great deal better, but they were slightly better.)

I hate to break it to you, Eric, but essentially every Communist backed or inspired revolution in the 20th century either fizzled out or turned into a waking nightmare!

For the rest, we got out of places like Angola and Vietnam and let events take their course, which is what we should have done.

It may be that we should not have been there, but keep in mind that those events taking their course included mass executions and reeducation camps that were exquisite in their cruelty!

Whether we should have, or could have, prevented this might be debated, but let's not forget the reality of what was happening!

Did the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan happen because we lost Vietnam? At best, that is only an assumption. The Soviets were an imperial power like the USA, and they were merely acting on the same imperial habits as we were. And it had the same result, for the same reasons.

Eric, the USA and the USSR were in no sense morally equivalent! The USA, for the most part, was not consciously backing mass murderers, though we sometimes did it incidentally, and usually tripped ourselves up by this sort of false pragmatism.

Eric, the reason the world today is somewhat freer and more democratic than it was 20 years ago is because America won the Cold War!

World War I was the first shakeout of which powers were serious contenders for global power, and which weren't. The military build ups
were products of this thinking, not causes of it.

The problem was the idea fixed in the minds of leaders and the public which you have just repeated; the idea that international affairs has to be about competing for power.

That is always a big part of it, yes.

That idea was current and dominant at the time, to a far greater degree than at any other time. That was the cause of the war, and the cause of the military build-up and the military attitudes that in turn also caused the war. The politicians deferred to the generals and their plans and priorities.

No, Eric, it was the politicians, and the public they represented, that was the source of the ideas, though in some nations, such as Germany, the military and civilian worlds were fused in odd ways.

World War I was not, by the way, unpopular at first. In those days, it wasn't unusual to have the public shriek for war, and to have parliaments, kings, and general staff officers try to put the breaks on. This idea that military officers universally desire war is insulting nonsense!

The French Revolution was driven in the immediate sense by [i][b]over-taxation[i][b], necessary to finance a bloated aristocratic/clerical elite

But the Crisis was brought on by the expenses of providing arms to the Americans. If you refuse to admit this, you are simply misreading history. This is a fact.

Yes, that was part of the trigger, but the conditions had already been set into place. Had it not been that, many other sparks were ready to fall into the pool of fuel.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: HopefulCynic68 on 2002-02-28 23:11 ]</font>

On 2002-02-25 03:19, Eric A Meece wrote:
Comments on Bush v. Gore. Mr. cynic had a pretty good summary, but on some points I disagree.

I think if the count had gone forward, and Gore had won (which admittedly might not have happened), the Court could have ordered Gore certified. That might have carried more weight than the Legislature arbitrarily interfering.

No, the Florida Supreme Court would have carried no weight at all. Had they ordered Gore certified against the vote of the Legislature, it would go right back to the U.S. Supreme Court, where I suspect they'd unhold Bush, probably unanimously, since Article II is pretty clear.

Unless the count went forward the Gore won a big, CLEAR popular majority in Florida, that is. That would have been his only chance. A handful of votes in a disputed majority would have not done the trick.

The idea that the president was "selected" was not created by "the liberal media." Get real. The Gore supporters came up with this. I first heard the phrase from a caller on a liberal talk show.

Eric

The media were, for the most part, active Gore supporters, so it's the same group.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: HopefulCynic68 on 2002-02-28 23:18 ]</font>

Cynic, Maybe It's Maybelline:

Back for more, eh? I thought you had given up the ghost. You are a glutten for punishment! :smile:

Eric, the GOP controlled the Senate from 2001-2002. That's it. The Democrats controlled the Senate from 2003-1994. The Democrats controlled the House of Representatives throughout the Reagan years. To say that the GOP controlled Congress in Reagan's time is nonsense.

Wrong. Republicans controlled the Senate from 1981 to 1987.

Second, he did not call for cuts, he did call for reductions in the growth rate, which the liberals like to call cuts. Instead, the Democrats steadily increased social spending, sometimes on useful programs, sometimes on nonsense.

Reagan made massive cuts in 1981, some of these cutbacks were never restored. You are right, I call them cuts. The pertinent point is that yes, the Democrats held on to what good programs they could, but Reagan in his mindless way simply didn't account for the fact that they might do this, which would increase spending, and went through with his other plans anyway. Hence, huge deficits. That is NOT good government.

But in fact, the Democrats were the ones who set the spending priorities throughout most of Reagan's terms. Reagan simply didn't have control of Congress to set the priorities. This isn't a matter of opinion, Eric, the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives for decades, all the way up to 1994, and the Senate throughout most of that same period.

How can you get spending through if the president vetoes your bills? Nothing of any real consequence was passed in the Reagan years, except tax reform.

Eric, the perceived weakness of America is why the USSR felt empowered to support and guide those revolutions! No, they were not primarily home-grown, and yes, they had a lot to do with Vietnam!

Your vision is completely mired in 1950s propaganda of reds taking over the world. Ask the Nicaraguans if their revolution was home grown or not. As I pointed out, most of the other "gains" were simply the follow through of what had already been set in motion earlier. We failed to impose our will on Vietnam, so the nations in that area adopted communism-- in that case with Soviet help too. But Vietnam's revolution and the others in the area were certainly homegrown. Our failure to see that was the reason for our failure in Vietnam. Reagan carried on the tradition with his support of terrorists in Nicaragua, and in fact took money from other terrorists in order to support his own group of thugs (the contras)

As for fearing them, when your enemy supports an activity in your back yard, suspicion is appropriate. When that enemy is running death squads (and they were!), fear is appropriate!

Don't understand this. Everyone knows it was the USA who was supporting the death squads in Central America.

It may be that we should not have been there, but keep in mind that those events taking their course included mass executions and reeducation camps that were exquisite in their cruelty!

I am not a fan of communism at all.

Eric, the reason the world today is somewhat freer and more democratic than it was 20 years ago is because America won the Cold War!

We didn't win the Cold War, and nothing Reagan did had anything to do with it. I pointed this out before.

The problem was the idea fixed in the minds of leaders and the public which you have just repeated; the idea that international affairs has to be about competing for power.

That is always a big part of it, yes.

Your kind of mindset is what caused WWI.

.. it was the politicians, and the public they represented, that was the source of the ideas.... This idea that military officers universally desire war is insulting nonsense!

Not what I said. I have been pointing out that military buildups lead to war, not necessarily generals. It was certainly the case in World War I. It led to a spiral of armaments, and huge stockpiles are just an invitation to use them and depend on them to solve problems. And that's just what happened. The ideas among the people (of which your ideas are similar) certainly was the main factor, but the buildups contributed mightily to the outbreak of war; so did the tendency of politicians to defer to military planners and soldiers, which they did.

But the Crisis was brought on by the expenses of providing arms to the Americans. If you refuse to admit this, you are simply misreading history. This is a fact.

Yes, that was part of the trigger, but the conditions had already been set into place. Had it not been that, many other sparks were ready to fall into the pool of fuel.

So you admit my point in part. Yes, I know all about the causes of the French Revolution.