See No Evil
When Admiral Mike Mullen told the Senate that Pakistan directed the attack on the US embassy in Kabul it probably surprised no one. And when the Spectator sadly concluded that the Euro has finally been proved a swindle, probably not many were shocked many either. America has been stabbed in the back by it’s allies; its ‘partners against terrorism’. And Europe has been misled by its leaders. So ho-hum.
Did anyone expect the US to reorient its position away from Afghanistan and confront Pakistan? Does anyone believe the EU will give up the Euro, even if it is manifestly ruining them? Policy is no longer the art of doing the right thing. It is the craft of carrying forward a narrative.
Mullen said that “with ISI support, Haqqani operatives planned and conducted that truck bomb attack, as well as the assault on our embassy,” and “we also have credible evidence that they were behind the June 28th attack against the Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul and a host of other smaller but effective operations.” Most tellingly he added “the Haqqani network acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency.” Pakistan attacked the national territory of a country at which it was at peace, that had supported it in the past diplomatically and from which it receives billions of dollars in aid. It was an act as perfidious as the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Nor is this the worst of it. It is not inconceivable to think that al-Qaeda was also a “veritable arm of Pakistan’s ISI, though perhaps with assistance from the Middle East.
Of the Euro, Peter Osborne and Francis Weaver at the Spectator write:
Very rarely in political history has any faction or movement enjoyed such a complete and crushing victory as the Conservative Eurosceptics. The field is theirs. They were not merely right about the single currency, the greatest economic issue of our age — they were right for the right reasons. They foresaw with lucid, prophetic accuracy exactly how and why the euro would bring with it financial devastation and social collapse.
Meanwhile the pro-Europeans find themselves in the same situation as appeasers in 1940, or communists after the fall of the Berlin Wall. They are utterly busted.
But just as the appeasers have now about abolished the last remaining justification for national self defense and as the Left continued to operate on the Western side of the Berlin Wall in the guise of their transnational schemes, nothing in recent history indicates that being correct about an issue settles anything. Being right has nothing to do with politics. It’s what you can sell that counts. The price of keeping those product lines going was on full display on the world markets today. Stocks plunged all over the world, the 10-Year Treasury yields hit their lowest level since 1940s.
A weak reading on manufacturing in China contributed to the slowdown fears. Adding to the grim mood was a lack of appreciable progress in containing Europe’s debt crisis, which has weighed on markets for months.
The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index shed 37.20 points, or 3.19%, to 1129.56, after touching its lowest intraday level since early August. The technology-oriented Nasdaq Composite slumped 82.52 points, or 3.25%, to 2455.67. Among New York Stock Exchange-listed issues, decliners outnumbered gainers by just over 7 to 1, while the Nasdaq losers outpaced rising issues by about 6 to 1.
All blue-chip stocks finished in the red, as did all S&P 500 sectors. Materials and energy stocks were hit hardest, falling as investors acted on their economic slowdown worries and in reaction to the fast rise of the U.S. dollar.
“They’re selling literally everything,” said Alan Valdes, director of floor trading at DME Securities at the NYSE. “It’s the realization that things aren’t getting better that has traders concerned. They’re selling gold; they’re selling copper; they’re selling everything.”
The market is writing down the value of the world economy. Right across the board. It is making a judgement on what they think the future is worth. By recent numbers, not much. Not just because policymakers have gotten it wrong about the “root cause” of terrorism, or the Euro; but also about “Too Big To Fail”, population policy, multiculturalism, a crippling environmentalism and Global Warming, to name a few. The financial, national security and educational systems of the world are in utter collapse because they are stuffed with lies, which even when they are shown to be obviously false suck up trillions of dollars in their pursuit . And nothing will turn the global elites from continuing their ruinous path until they have spent the last nickle and dime they can lay their hands on. Certainly not the media. As Osborne and Weaver wrote:
One urgent lesson concerns the BBC. The corporation’s twisted coverage of the European Union is a serious problem, because the economic collapse of the eurozone means that a new treaty may be needed very soon — plunging the EU right back into the heart of our national politics.
The problem is that the BBC’s record is dreadful. It simply cannot be trusted not to become part of a partisan propaganda operation.
Neither the BBC nor any of the similar organizations which have jointly created our fantasy world will return to honesty. Not until it annihilates itself into bankruptcy along with all the other causes it touted and supported. The bad news is that by then most of us will have sunk beneath the waves.
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
Ah, Afghanistan. Michael Yon says the military situation is improving. I like Yon. He’s a mensch. But … seriously? I mean, I have no doubt we’re killing our enemies in large numbers. But so what? We’re playing a deadly game of whack-a-mole. We are not going to win the kind of war we’re fighting there. Which is not the same as saying we can’t win the war against terrorism or that we shouldn’t keep fighting even though victory is a long ways off; or even if victory in the traditional sense is not possible.
I invite Belmont Club regulars to speculate on how we might wage war effectively and successfully against our real enemy, Pakistan. All options are on the table.
This is a truly great sentence:
“The financial, national security and educational systems of the world are in utter collapse because they are stuffed with lies, which even when they are shown to be obviously false suck up trillions of dollars in their pursuit.”
Stuffed with lies. An image for the ages.
As can be said of your writing in general, this is so well said that it’s heartening even while it saddens.
The world has gone mad. Even at sober sites like PJM you’ll be banned or severely chastised for suggesting that Islam is directly responsible for the tyranny, depravity, and terrorism spewing forth from the Muslims of Planet Earth. We are lectured by the likes of Spengler that we should be happy Muslims are in the West in their millions. To suggest that the presence of large populations of Muslims will inevitably lead to the subversion of our society, (as it already has done with the over-the-top Homeland Security, and the trillions spent and thousands dead attempting to rectify their horrid disgusting nations…), is to threaten the multicultural narrative that he and others lime Michael Totten have imbibed so deeply.
Even these people cannot bear to discuss the truth about the perils, they’d prefer to attack, ban, and defame, rather than face the facts.
http://nextnature.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/doggerland_530.jpg
The Euro is Doggerland revisited.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECeexe4ceAI&NR=1
This is what a BNP Paribas trader looked like, 10,000 years ago.
I would like us to wage war on Pakistan but that won’t happen until after the election and inauguration on Jan 20, 2013, so there is plenty of time to discuss strategy. There certainly wouldn’t or won’t be any “coalition of allies” (not that we’d need them) but that’s the current way of the narrative.
I truly wonder what the new devastated economic outlook will bring. Maybe hard work and the merit of the individual will be in vogue again. Of course, if the government has anything to do with it, they will see to it that illegal aliens have jobs first because they are little brown people and deserve to be protected from the evil race of the average American. Jerry (Moonbeam) Brown just made it illegal to use eVerify or something to that end. This jackasses will never get it right. I hope the whole world goes bankrupt and everything is dissolved. It sure beat a civil war.
Roughcoat…
The ran their gambit as a profit making enterprise.
So, cut off the money — pretty much across the board.
Make no attempt to save them…
Just let the revolution proceed.
Never forget — this is a ‘nation’ that can’t generate tax revenues — so it’s been shaking us down.
Napoleon once said,” Prussia was hatched from a cannonball.”
Punjabi Generals are 21st Century Prussians. For them the Army is the State.
The ‘national government’ is but a sham — it is mere umbrella for the Crime-State.
America has the full support of its key allies
1/ Members of NATO
2/ Members of ECHELON.
The UK was wise to stay out of the Euro which was a project of the Euro-Socialist.
Pakistan has been a hornets nest for decades and we should pull out of AfPak and firm up our alliance with India.
ISI has always been a loose cannon that is mainly committed to gaining Kashmir and attacking India.
China has a growing influence in Pakistan to protect its energy supplies from the ME and to increase its strategic position against India.
We have 900 military bases in 130 countries–this is unsustainable.
We need to focus upon our long term allies in NATO and ECHELON.
Our so-called allies in the ME take our money and give nothing in return–
as SecDef Gates and CIA chief Gen Petraeus pointed out repeatedly.
Enough is enough.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-09-22/france-s-bnp-socgen-beat-retreat-as-europe-debt-crisis-deepens.html
Check out this BW article…
Which shows just how insanely geared the top French banks are.
The institutions are fleeing these players at Internet speed.
This is why the Bernanke is swapping out USD in mega-buckets.
He’s taking France’s risk off her books.
Blert –
I agree. Cut off the money stream. But, also, keep the drones in the air.
I also think that we have to get India more actively, and visibly, involved.
Roughcoat – “I invite Belmont Club regulars to speculate on how we might wage war effectively and successfully against our real enemy, Pakistan. All options are on the table.”
I think the most viable approach is the least likely to be considered, namely that our approach to everything so far has been a policy of entanglement. Our economy and the world economy. Our military and the Pakistani’s military. It goes on and on. We need to unencumber ourselves and stay home. Crank up the nuclear weapons programs and declare an arms race that we intend to use to protect democracy, first ours then our allies. If you go to Pakistan as an American citizen you lose your US citizenship. Circle the wagons, close the borders, build Americas independence and let it be known to the likes of Pakistan, leave the slumbering bear alone. If you wake us from our slumber we are going to nuke you period. You want to invade Afghanistan? Perfect, leave us alone. Tell China if they invade Taiwan we will will write into our constitution that we will not trade with China or anyone else that trades with China for 100 years.
I guess I believe in disentangling ourselves from all of the a–holes and arming ourselves to the point it is ludicrous. Go ahead, make our day.
“Enough is enough.”
That’s as much sense you have made in a while Victor.
1. Roughcoat: I invite Belmont Club regulars to speculate on how we might wage war effectively and successfully against our real enemy, Pakistan. All options are on the table.
The first thing we already did (and was in fact the casus belli): The United States is suspending some $800 million in military aid to Pakistan amid increased tensions between the two countries since the raid that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Second, get out of Afghanistan so they can’t hold the lives of our troops over our heads.
Third, liaison more closely with India, and sell them everything we’re giving Saudi Arabia.
Fourth, ramp up the drone attacks and special forces raids in the tribal areas to impress the Pakistan military how ineffectual they really are.
Edward Jay Epstein described a meeting he had with the late James J. Angleton. The appointed place was an orchidarium.
Angleton seemed to be saying that lies of the clever and the beautiful could trump those who depended upon stolid food as the currency; yet only for as long there are enough to supply the mundane. At the moment when trade in lies exceeds the trade in food then we see things for what they are.
“The financial, national security and educational systems of the world are in utter collapse because they are stuffed with lies, which even when they are shown to be obviously false suck up trillions of dollars in their pursuit”
“But, it’s all just about sex.”
No. It was always about lies. That’s why hate speech crimes were invented. Liberal lies are very easy to point out. We can’t have that, can we, you racist/homophobe/mysogynist/nazi/fascist? Truth is a very serious disinfectant.
Oh, what tangled webs we weave….
Clinton should’ve opened a textile mill.
“I invite Belmont Club regulars to speculate on how we might wage war effectively and successfully against our real enemy, Pakistan. All options are on the table.” The first step would be to stop giving them thousands of troops nearby as a target. The second would be to start covertly freezing their bank accounts overseas and targeting financial assets held by ISI. Third — announce a big arms sale to India, specifically UAVs and things that can be useful on their common border. Beyond that? I dunno. But Pakistan is the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world. Iran is a very distant third behind the Saudis.
“Angleton seemed to be saying that lies of the clever and the beautiful could trump those who depended upon stolid food as the currency; yet only for as long there are enough to supply the mundane. At the moment when trade in lies exceeds the trade in food then we see things for what they are.”
Angleton was the only spymaster America produced that could hold a candle to the Russkies. And he was not an OB (original bankster) like Wild Bill Donovan, though as Tom Clancy sarcastically noted in many of his books, there are many similarities, and both seem to have a real talent of screwing people. I really enjoyed WFB’s Spytime, and Buckley should have known since he enthusiastically cultivated friendships with all sorts of spooktastic types from Gstaad and everywhere else.
Agree with the previous commenter that at a certain point the only way to deal with it is either to cut the Gordian knot and totally disentangle ourselves from the ISI bastards masquerading as a modern state or simply invade and kill all their leaders as Coulter said. The former is far less costly and more prudent considering they have nukes and believe said nukes have made them untouchable for all manner of treachery.
For a moment I thought I heard Michael Ledeen channeling the late James J. Angleton. But instead it was something better and apropo to the topic at hand, especially the Pakistanis are a tribe of pathological liars, the liberals are perpetuating uncountable interwoven lies, from affirmative action to global warming, and the BBC is packaging all as news in an easy to swallow format, replete with news readers who frown whenever they talk about replblicans and fawn whenever they talk about the achievements of the Left.
Repub =
Demos =
Annoy M. @ 11,
I endorse your prescription. Actually that’s analogous to how I’ve conducted my private life for the last decade, and it feels so right.
“The market is writing down the value of the world economy. Right across the board. It is making a judgement on what they think the future is worth.”
Indeed. Note that what all of these ascendant but failing mythologies had in common was a view that the future did not matter, except to be stopped. To stop AGW, we had to look forward to a future of less of everything except taxes. To promote “fairness” we had to plan for a future in which traditional Western thought takes a back seat to the very people who have time and again shown they can cross thread a bowling ball with little effort. Proven technologies had to be replaced with ones proven only not to work. Capitalism had to yield to the militant mediocrity of socialism. And so on.
The future was the enemy. And now the enemy is ours.
By the way, today Attny General Eric Holder told the Europeans that Gitmo is a terrible place and that he still wants to close it down before the next election….
Would it be tacky to point out the EU leadership has for the bulk of its history come from universities and the political class? My recollection (correct me if I’m wrong) is that typically less than 15% of EU representatives at any given point in time include people with hands-on, real-world business experience. For me, this factoid explains so much about the EU and how it came to be the economic, social and political mess it is today.
The other stupidity is the fact that the Wall Street Journal can publish an article, “Russia: The Enemy” after Litvinenko accidentally poisoned himself while smuggling polonium for some aspiring nuclear power (Edward Jay Epstein’s theories) out of Russia via the UK or was done in by his boss Boris Berezovsky to create a spectacular made for TV death. But we have hard evidence from a three or four star admiral that Pakistan is trying to kill and has killed Americans and the WSJ dares not publish an article by the same name for fear of offending the Republican lobbyists Pakistan has bought and paid for by recycling American taxpayer dollars or with funneled opium profits.
But no, Pakistan has been our friend all along, despite all those NATO convoys getting torched crossing the Khyber Pass and only a few being suffered to pass with massive bribes all around. And Russia, where American troops’ bullets and MREs safely transit via state-owned Russian Railways and Antonovs to the Stans’, is our enemy.
The double standards are simply ludicrous. And until the so-called conservatives call out some of their own for their own bull$^&, nothing will change.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-unwelcome-impact-interventionist-monetary-policy-us
A mathematical way of restating Wretchard’s thesis…
An obsession with papering over…
Leads to confetti.
1. Roughcoat
MILD: Put the various intelligence agencies to work producing a list of Mosques that preach Jihad. Every time there is a terrorist attack, select a random Mosque off that list and flatten it. This would require either withdrawal from the Geneva Convention or a very liberal interpretation of the clause on attacking religious sites. Right now a church can only be attacked if the enemy is using it for hostile actions. Bomb it during Friday service, when it is packed to the eves with the faithful. Tell them ahead of time. Not the precise target but a mosque off a published list. Muslims understand tit for tat. They practise it. Since NO Islamic state can stop the US Air Force, the Agi-prop guys can start a campaign pointing out that Allah is all powerful and if he didn’t want the Mosques bombed, he wouldn’t allow it to happen.
I’ll bet it takes no more then 50 mosques before the terrorist attack dwindle to nothing. Islam will still want to rule the world, but they will find another way.
WILD: Weaponize mumps. Spray the Muslims and make the men sterile. Then wait a generation. No more problem, no radioactive holes in the ground. Better yet, have Sandoz or Dow develop a way to kill X Chromosomes in the sac. I would find it extremely funny if Muslims could only produce female children. That would be a “final solution” I could get my head around.
Torpedo one fired, Sir.
Over The Waves was a very popular waltz of a world long gone. The music remains, but the new waltz is Walt’s, as we are now Under The Waves.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsPwTM223Uc
When Euro you love
It’s the longest dark night of the year
Stars twinkle above
They’re about to go out never fear
Words fall into rhyme
As your holdings so quick disappear
When Euro you love
It’s the longest dark night of the year
Rolling along in the breeze
From a Paki bomb embassy blast
Paki is smiling ‘cause he’s
Got our money and spending it fast
A knife in our back
Paki smiles as he knows it will last
Rolling along with the breeze
From a Paki bomb embassy blast
modernity is already at war with Pakistan and the rest of dar al-Islam, all we have to do is ward and wait. I’m pretty happy pot-shotting them with Predators and the like.
I don’t get it – what’s wrong with the Euro, that would still be a problem if capitalism replaced socialism, if the Greeks would work to age 65, and such? Right here at home California is pushing to see if it can disintegrate our own society, it’s not a monetary issue. I guess the problem is that the Euro puts the Germans up to paying a tab for the Greeks, but really, does it? I’m not quite sure how. If Greek bonds default – and the Germans hadn’t bought any – how would the Euro tie them in further? If the bonds default and the Germans *had* bought them, what if the Greeks still had their own currency?
I guess I’m not clear how bonds tie to currency. If California defaults on state bonds, does that kill the dollar as a national currency? Well it might, if the Chinese stop buying California bonds, as if they were buying any in the first place. Ten year US bonds under 1.8%. OMG. And my broker talked me out of buying some when they were still 4%. And I listened. Sigh.
The world economy has been the US economy, supported by bubbles since at least the 1991 Greenspan low rate regime. Lots of real growth and progress, too, but you can take anything real and overinflate it, I guess, until it pops. But that’s a poor analogy. Nobody is going to uninvent the iPhone, I hope. Houses will still keep out the rain. The sun will still rise, the grains will grow. These things don’t pop.
I think we’re in a crazy panic, because the gross incompetence of our POTUS, and the complete schizophrenia of the MSM, are getting on people’s nerves.
A lot of analysis of Rick Perry ahead of tonight’s debate, and his weak positions on illegal immigration issues. But I cannot see Mitt Romney as president. I think, in the end, he could lose to Obambus. Perry-Romney ticket? Yeah it even strikes me as a baloney and mayonaise on white bread, but it might do the trick. And a simple return to rationality, would seem like an immense boost in the economy and society right now.
The problem is, the real problems are still there: the unsustainable structural balance with China. Not to mention a billion homicidal (and possibly starving, surprise surprise) goat-herds. Well, we still have a lot of margin, if Bernanke hasn’t twisted it all away by noon tomorrow.
From the Zerohedge link a commenter said:
That is another way of saying that the “time machine” function of the financial system has been used to borrow against the future to put a floor on the present. The financial system is supposed to do that, but only on the basis of real, expected future cash flows.
Thus debt in the present can be sustainably funded by real income in the future. You are just moving discounted money across time. But debt in the present cannot be sustainably funded by debt in the future. At some point the debt, like a recursive function, must resolve to a real inflow, to real income. It has to be “real” at some point and cannot be more and more of Paul Krugman’s stimulus money. It has to be money, corresponding to more actual goods and services.
When present debt is funded by future debt, as seems to be the case now, then all hell will surely break loose when the vig comes due and it becomes abundantly plain that the gold mine they’ve been talking up isn’t there. That unspoken realization may account for the desperation with which the finance ministers of the world are seeking a way out. They are fighting for one more hour of life, one more day in power.
What does Pakistan export besides concrete, rugs, angry people and disease? They have nukes but if they move them then we can spot them and destroy them. The real risk will be the smuggling of some components and technical knowledge. We can blockade Pakistan. After 90 days with no food imports where would they be? We would need to compensate the American farmers and Australian sheep ranchers who would lose a market.
Trillions have been poured down institutional rat-holes that support the Left. If we defund their government and NGO sinecures and reform the tax codes to deny tax exempt status to policy advocacy groups then they will begin to fade away. Finally anything that can lower the cost of energy and increase the supply not subject to enemy control should be the core of our program.
“The market is writing down the value of the world economy.”
The value was never really that much higher. But the prices sure went wild. Now the price and value will be wrenched back into alignment.
Of real estate, the material worth of many types of labor, of the public sector, of do-nothing highly paid CEOs, everything, really.
No more cheap credit. Interest WILL reflect the actual cost of borrowing money instead of an artificial amount cooked up by politicians pulling the strings at central banks so that they can stay in power and keep their income stream and influence intact. Vast swaths of the West WILL be forced to stop overvaluing the material worth of their labor. At that point, they will either reconnect with other things in life that give our existence meaning, or they will wither and perish. The atheist elite that is attempting to rub out Christianity will either bite their tongue and desist – and let these folks find their meaning in that sector – or be swept away and desist, their choice. The time of the bitter clingers is at hand.
No more thirty years of work in an eighty year lifespan. No more subsidizing socialized medicine in Euroland by the U.S. taxpayer, paying for defense that those countries should be funding themselves, freeing up money those countries can spend on cradle-to-grave medical care.
No more arrogant, entitled public sector union thugs having guaranteed income security and a huge pension while sacrificing nothing in return in consideration of the taxpayer during hard times.
The public sector functionaries and rent-seekers and skimmers who not only produce nothing but destroy value and productivity in others and raise prices will be particularly affected negatively by this. Regulators will come to not be seen as a force for good but as the most evil of protection racketeers. Eaters of value will be starved back into their proper position of submission. Many of them know this is now inevitable, and their fear can now be smelled on the gathering wind.
People who don’t produce objectively valuable output are terrified of this happening which is why this great reset button will not be pushed without convulsions (although it will be pushed). Merely being told they will have to be held to measurable metrics or lose their precious, precious perfect income stream security will cause howls at least and more likely violence. Wisconsin on steroids. With PMS and anger management issues.
Interesting times.
“I don’t get it – what’s wrong with the Euro, that would still be a problem if capitalism replaced socialism, if the Greeks would work to age 65, and such?”
Josh, I’m siding with my cherie Marie Claude on this one. According to Simon Black’s dispatch today, the Greeks work the third most hours in the world after the Koreans and Chileans. While that stat may seem suspicious, I suppose the Greeks only count people who are actually working while the U.S. numbers include everyone who is semi or underemployed despite seeking fulltime work for years. The problem isn’t Greek work ethic — some work very hard and do quite well both at home and in the Diaspora — but Greek taxation and accounting honesty. Much like Russians, who were the only scientific power we ever feared competition with since WWII, Greeks have a tendency to use their genius to come up with ever more sophisticated ways to lie and cheat to each other.
James Jesus Angleton was an interesting guy, a chain smoker and an amphetamine addict and a devotee of TS Elliot and the Yale school of Literary Analysis.
He developed a complex paranoid view of the CIA and destroyed the agency in his hunt for moles within moles–he lost the plot.
However he was a good Catholic in his family life.
CIA chief Gen Petraeus realizes that our true friends are NATO and ECHELON
His frame is –What is American Fundamental Interests in any conflict?
He has stated that the current regime in Israel does not further American fundamental interests nor does the current regime in Pakistan.
End aid to both.
Roughcoat #1 I invite Belmont Club regulars to speculate on how we might wage war effectively and successfully against our real enemy, Pakistan. All options are on the table.
My main thought is that first one has to decide if a country is a friend or an enemy. This is really important because if you falsely label a friend as an enemy or vice versa, then misery will come. Personally, I can’t see how Pakistan can be described as a friend, so to me they are an enemy. Western governments can’t seem to make up their mind about Pakistan and that makes them stumble around in confusion.
My single suggestion is to achieve clarity by making up our governmental mind about Pakistan and sticking the ‘enemy’ label on their forehead. Then it would be easy to see the things that we should not do (ie not give them support). Beyond that neglect, we could interfere with their trading relationships and perhaps encourage political instability by sidling up to Baluchistan. Giving arms to India may not be advisable because then India may become a general loose cannon in that part of Asia.
Concerning all the lies in the system, there may no longer be a remedy even if people stopped believing them. Even so, in an epidemic there are populations of susceptible people, infected people, and people removed from further infection (cured, immune or dead). In theory, for an epidemic of a contagious disease to happen, the number of people susceptible to infection has to exceed a threshold number defined by the instantaneous rate at which people are removed from harm, divided by the instantaneous rate at which people are infected. After the (as yet unknown) damage to the economic system is over, perhaps the number of people susceptible to the usual lies will drop below some threshold level, and a second epidemic of infected believers won’t happen.
I knew a lady who ran a battered women’s shelter. She was fascinated by the thought process of a good number of those seeking refuge at her establishment. The conversation would go like this:
Because I still love him. Surely only a deluded person can act this way right? Compare this to a rundown on the economic crisis facing Europe from the Daily Mail.
And therefore …
So the answer to the problem is more of the same. Sigh. Because whatever “Europe’s” defects are, he still loves them, even if it means the destruction of the global economy.
“Angleton seemed to be saying that lies of the clever and the beautiful could trump those who depended upon stolid food as the currency; yet only for as long there are enough to supply the mundane.”
Yet despite all their cleverness and cunning, there’s little danger that orchids will manage to crowd out the other more productive plants. They can manage to survive as long as they remain what they are – a useless, frivolous plant that gets by through the inattentiveness of those they depend on. The only place where they are in the majority is in the artificial environment of the orchidarium, and that is a fragile construct. In the end, the more prosaic plants will win. Nobody has to build a dandelarium, after all.
Thanks to all contributors for your thoughts on how to deal with Pakistan. Interesting stuff.
To answer the question on Pakistan, I have to ask if there is anyone else for them to shake down once we leave the region? I can’t believe that China would put up with it although I suspect that the Paki leadership is thinking about whatever way they can present themselves in a useful light to the Chinese.
As an aside, it is very calming to be able to share thoughts at the BC here, particularly after wild days like today.
I came across this beautiful quote earlier this week. It’s by Russian – American poet laureate and Nobel winner, Joseph Brodsky. The context is: Brodsky is taking to task Czech novelist Milan Kundera for his too pessimistic feelings about Dostoevsky’s writings. Seems Kundera saw in them a darkness fometed by a too close relation with the irrational; feelings over reason, etc…as follows:
“Sounds grand and tragic, but it’s pure histrionics. Culture dies only for those who fail to master it, the way morality dies for a lecher. Western civilization and its culture, Mr. Kundera’s qualifier included, is based first of all on the principle of sacrifice, on the idea of a man who died for our sins. When threatened, Western civilization and its culture always finds enough resolve to fight its enemy, even if it is the enemy within. In many ways, the last war was Western civilization’s civil war. Shedding blood is no joy; it may not even qualify as a small imitation of Christ; but as long as man is prepared to die for his ideals, those ideals are alive, civilization is alive.”
20. RWE: By the way, today Attny General Eric Holder told the Europeans that Gitmo is a terrible place and that he still wants to close it down before the next election…
Thus revealing Obama’s re-election strategy in 2012: to run against himself. And his base is stupid enough to buy it.
31. Victor: End aid to both.
We already terminated $800 million in military aid to Pakistan in July. That’s what this little temper tantrum is all about.
27. Wretchard: When present debt is funded by future debt, as seems to be the case now, then all hell will surely break loose when the vig comes due and it becomes abundantly plain that the gold mine they’ve been talking up isn’t there.
US exposure to Greek debt via credit default swaps is only about five billion dollars, so we should be fine until the Eurozone periphery dominoes start to fall, where US exposure is more like $250 billion. That is likely because there’s no circuit breaker in place. Quite the opposite, EU policymakers are doubling down. Greece is too big to fail. But just remember, it’s all Bush’s fault. Bush is responsible for everything bad that happens for the next century.
I’m not suggesting this, but how different would our financial earthquakes look if our enemies were assisting in the turmoil? Isn’t it possible that underlying our own self-inflicted financial woes, there is also an organized, deliberate cabal to augment and magnify events?
It is often touted that China, for example, which owns about $800 billion of Ameica’s debt, would be loathe to see us default. But that sum would be a pittance if it brought China and ME our destruction and their hegemony. The combined debts held by China and the ME are not even two year’s military expenditure for the USA. Those enemies would be required to spend far more than $1.5 trillion to compete annually and conventionally with our power and influence… That isn’t even possible… But deft manipulation, and the prospect of expending $1.5 trillion to collapse our power would seem like a fantastic deal.
How many times in the last decade have our markets been roiled, with many rumblings that subterranean forces also have played a significant part? Would default on our debt to these avowed enemies (China and ME) really be so bad? Again, if they were conniving our demise, would it look any different?
“Fourth, ramp up the drone attacks and special forces raids in the tribal areas to impress the Pakistan military how ineffectual they really are.”
This is incompatible with point 2 getting out of Afghanistan. Drones can be controlled from the USA on recon missions, but to put weapons on a target, the time delay is to great. Most strike missions are controlled from inside Pakistan, according to what I have read. That might be a maskirova. Remember, the PAF has F-16′s. Since they know where the targets are, it would not be difficult to put a cap (Combat Air Patrol) over the targets and shoot down the drones when they show up. Even with low serviceability rates the PAF could keep a flight over any one spot when needed.
An administration with larger testicles would provide air support for the drones but I just can’t see the Obamination doing that.
Torpedo two fired sir!
“That is another way of saying that the “time machine” function of the financial system has been used to borrow against the future to put a floor on the present”
The way I see it, and I was struck thinking about it today, is that we are dealing with a certain kind of delusion. One that is possessed by a person who does well enough but wants to do better. Makes a million but would be more happy with three million. They bet a reasonable amount on red and lose so they bet another reasonable amount on black and lose. Confused they double the amount they put down before on black again to regain their losses and on and on until the money they had stock piled until a rainy day has gone down the drain. So now they take the money that they have to pay their mortgage and gamble that and lose it as well. So they run up their credit cards but their bad luck continues. They are desperate so they call up an old friend and tell them they had a spot of bad luck and needed to borrow some money, not that much really but I’ll pay you back when I am back in town, you know I am good for it, and on and on it goes. In the case of a gambler you can challenge the odds but you cannot make your own good luck, only bad luck. These jerks in Washington, in Brussels, in government in general are a bunch of compulsive gamblers. Like putting the general fund in the mutual fund market that Orange County did some years ago and lost it all. They are playing with other people’s money the same way that Jimmy Hoffa used to play with his members pension funds; criminals one and all. They need to be stopped and if they don’t stop on their own accord then forced to stop and incarcerated. Failing that, bum rushed and strung up to a lamp post. I do not like the Red Chinese very much but can see the value of lining up corrupt government officials and putting a bullet through their head and selling their organs. That would keep you focused.
stoicheion – “Even with low servicability rates the PAF could keep a flight over any one spot when needed.”
Then it would be time to send in the CAV’s. That ought to be fun. Your manned fighters up against one g coffee swilling, turn taking, pilots in air-conditioned offices flying aircraft capable of sustained 20 g’s. Ought to be real interesting.
I think it was when primitive man looked at his children and realized their survival meant more than his own that the idea of something larger than himself was born. We call this notion in its various forms, “meaning”. Of all the qualities which are necessary to survive in this world, including “fitness” and “deceptiveness”, none is so important in my view as the ability to act on the dictates of meaning.
Some years ago a security guard in Israel grabbed a hold of a suicide bomber and pushed him outside where the detonation took place. In that split second, it might be asked, “why did he do it? Why didn’t he run and save himself?” Was it for the sake of the minimum wage he was paid? Was it the fear of some punishment which could never surpass the death he chose? Or was it the instinct of having to protect something larger than his life?
Perhaps the worst damage the modern left state has inflicted on society was to rob it of its sense of meaning. It has encouraged us to laugh at the faith of our fathers; and indeed at our fathers themselves in exchange for handful of benefits and some subsidies. “I’ll give you a welfare check if you play the victim game. I’ll give you a grant if you will take this or that line.” Sell your birthright for a mess of pottage! And we did, how we did.
In their inner hearts the Left knew better; knew the value of what they consciously destroyed in others. They alone would keep the advantage. Within their circles they celebrated their secret saints, esoteric messiahs and clandestine martyrs, so they might have the cohesion that others had been stripped of.
It seemed like a good plan. But in so debasing society they’ve undercut themselves. For they lived on the labor of those they despised. Now they preside over a wasteland of their own making. They have public housing full of people — who may only be vaguely related to each other; they have whole cohorts of ‘cool’ followers many of whom are completely inutile; they have economies based upon a sham and — wait for it — nobody to give a damn.
Nobody to give a damn.
And this is how this particular leftist episode is going to end. From a lack of supply. From resource starvation. From the inability of their populations to act outside the fake narrative they themselves have created. They are ultimately trapped, as liars always are, in the confines of their own fantasy.
#43, Wretchard:
Amen
why is victors continued antisemitism allowed here?
#45 f47
I was wondering the same thing. Notice how Victor never misses an opportunity to snarl and snap at Israel. Jew hatred is a sickness that the anti-Semite can never really hide; it always has comes out; it’s almost like he can’t help it. The only consolation for us philo-Semites is that an anti-Semitic can’t be intelligent; the moral rot of irrational hatred eats out his mind.
In regards to Victor, he represents 1 billion anti-Semites in the world. In my opinion, banning him would be a waste of time when you can learn from him or educate him for taking the trouble to come here and air his views.
He claims: “CIA chief Gen Petraeus …has stated that the current regime in Israel does not further American fundamental interests”
That is not antisemitism in itself, why doesn’t someone ask him for sources on this claim. Personally I doubt it is true. A quote would be nice.
am @ 47: Petraeus made a few comments like that about a year ago, then denied them, then repeated them. Along the lines of the Israelis should stop stirring up the volatile Moslems for no good reason. Apparently its OK to kill them, but forbidden to irritate them. It’s at that point I started wondering majorly about the general.
Roughcoat@1: “I invite Belmont Club regulars to speculate on how we might wage war effectively and successfully against our real enemy, Pakistan. All options are on the table.”
The ISI. From everything I’ve been able to gather, the ISI is the main problem not only in Afghanistan but also with India, the Cashmere mess and every other stinkpot that Pakistan has its fingers in.
So if all options are truly on the table…just tell Pakistan that we will nuke them to a sheet of glass unless they hand over every single member of the ISI. We then execute them on worldwide TV and put it on PPV to help defray the expenses. If we’re not willing to do that (and we apparently are not) then we should entirely withdraw. From Iraq, from Afghanistan, and all other foreign theaters. We need to close enough overseas military bases so that you can count them on your fingers and turn the Department of defense into basically a research outfit combined with a nuke maintenance facility.
Seriously. We have people fighting and dying to protect people who hate those fighting and dying to protect them. Why? To what eventual purpose? I’m done. DONE. Our heroes should be brought back to a country where people appreciate their sacrifice. It makes me sick that these young men and women are risking and in many cases giving their lives to a “cause” that our illustrious politicians have no intention of seeing through to any kind of fruition. Those same dirtbags preside over a system where those heroes get substandard health care from the VA…probably even worse that what we’ll all have if Obamacare isn’t repealed. My dad and all my uncles on my dad’s side were/are vets. Some of them saw combat in WWII. I KNOW this stuff, and I KNOW the politicians are the ones to blame for the disgusting misuse of our armed forces.
But to Roughcoat’s point…I don’t think we have the national will to prosecute any truly effective war, against Pakistan or anybody else. Even minor military skirmishes are likely to have the moonbats walking giant puppets in the streets and hassling people and crying about “the children” and generally gumming things up. Until the whole idea of PC is entirely and completely discredited in some way, we’re better off with a quasi-isolationist approach to pretty much everything. And I don’t see PC going away any time soon.
48. Josh
regarding Petraeus, he is a liberal politician. One does not rise to his rank and not know which way the wind is blowing. If he had any gumption, he would have resigned when he saw how this admin made a dog’s breakfast trying to appease the various muslim killers of our soldiers. There were all sorts of excuses made for him. if he were conservative he would have been giver his walking papers, not a promotion.
I do not think Victor is an anti-Semite. His perspective on world events is interesting.
Remember listening to the shortwave broadcasts beamed to America in the 1970s? The opinions of someone who lives in a culture completely unlike our own. Just different that is all.
43, Wretchard,
“ultimately trapped, as liars always are, in the confines of their own fantasy.”
Verily!
42. Annoy Mouse
Got bad news mate…. It doesn’t matter how many G’s they pull.
90+% of aerial kills NEVER see their killer. That fact is what led to the development of stealth as a concept. In WW1 the Germans covered a Fokker E-III with cellophane. That didn’t work because the cellophane wasn’t strong enough to take the load at G’s
Besides, it isn’t G’s that limit an aircraft’s turning radius, but the lack of lift created by airflow across the wing.
Right now UCAV’s are science fiction. They are called Cylons and are the villlians in Battlestar Galactica.
http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Portal:Cylons
A UACV is an expensive target drone. So far no target drone has ever shot down a fighter. Fighters have shot down thousands of target drones. Hanging a missile off the wing of a target drone will not change that.
Right now the Navy is the only buyer for armed target drones (X-47). That is because the fools didn’t think about the F-35 melting holes in their flight decks. So now they are scrambling for something with wings to replace the F-18, which is worn out, falling apart and has an extremely high RCS. So Grumman/Northrop is working a full court press to steal billions of tax dollars building target drones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_X-47B
Aerial combats are won by diving on your enemy, blowing it out of the sky and climbing back up to do it again. If Mars is happy with you that day you can do it with a missile. What’s important is
1). Finding the enemy first
2). Speed to get into position
3). Altitude to control the energy envelope.
Boom and Zoom wins! Throughout history, the fighter that out maneuvers it’s opponent has almost always lost.
Torpedo four fired admiral!
49. Agoraphobic Plumber : “We need to close enough overseas military bases so that you can count them on your fingers and turn the Department of defense into basically a research outfit combined with a nuke maintenance facility.”
You need to remember that the reason our military forces are the best in the world is in large part because of their operational tempo. You can’t simulate experience, you have to have been there and gotten the T-shirt. It would be like having two NFL teams play Madden all year then play the Superbowl only. It would be ugly. It is truly in our best interests to have a military in use often. Exercises are okay but nothing focuses the mind like a bullet snapping overhead.
#1 Roughcoat
I invite Belmont Club regulars to speculate on how we might wage war effectively and successfully against our real enemy, Pakistan. All options are on the table.
ALL options? Not that anyone has thought about it in any detail [certainly no nice people] but as a start, how about:
9 warheads. Means of delivery to be determined later, however it is noted that this is well within the technical capabilities of one (1) Trident II D-5 missile with W88 MIRV’ed warheads; however due to arms treaty restrictions on the number of MIRV’ed warheads carried per missile to 4, it would require 3 missiles. That is 12 1/2% of the loadout of just one of our missile submarines. Our enemies depend on our restraint.
I wonder what lesson other nations of the Ummah would take from that scenario? The above being a purely theoretical exercise, of course.
Subotai Bahadur
51. Mark_B I do not think Victor is an anti-Semite.
when someone, regardless of topic, spews his ‘defund the zionist regeme, they are a liability’
scat, how else would anyone regard his tripe?
“Pakistan attacked the national territory of a country at which it was at peace, that had supported it in the past diplomatically and from which it receives billions of dollars in aid. It was an act as perfidious as the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Nor is this the worst of it. It is not inconceivable to think that al-Qaeda was also a “veritable arm of Pakistan’s ISI, though perhaps with assistance from the Middle East.” Wretchard
I was blissfully unaware of those events in Afghanistan, and the apparent public conclusion that Pakistan has sponsored the attack on U.S. territory (i.e. US Embassy). My guess is that this is part of Pakistan’s response to the US Bin Laden operation.
This is war, and demands a like response.
“I invite Belmont Club regulars to speculate on how we might wage war effectively and successfully against our real enemy, Pakistan. All options are on the table.” – Roughcoat
my suggestions follow at the end of this post …
“Pakistan has been a hornets nest for decades and we should pull out of AfPak and firm up our alliance with India. ….We have 900 military bases in 130 countries–this is unsustainable. We need to focus upon our long term allies in NATO and ECHELON.” Victor
Yes on India. No on “allies” in general. U.S. policy must be about national security first; anything else a distant second. America must be faithful to faithful allies, but that cannot be the primary guide for national policy. That is because, quite frankly, allies are like having a tart for a girlfriend; one simply cannot trust them to be there when you need them, because they too are guided by sovereign national interest.
I think the most viable approach is the least likely to be considered, namely that our approach to everything so far has been a policy of entanglement. Our economy and the world economy. Our military and the Pakistani’s military. It goes on and on. We need to unencumber ourselves and stay home.” – Annoy Mouse
Actually, Victor’s view point is too expansive, and A.M.’s, respectfully, too isolationist. There is a quite-happy-middle ground for national policy short other than socialist “nation building” in 100 countries of the world and reactionary isolation. Namely, NATIONAL INTEREST.
I am quite in sympathy with the argument that America should just “come home”, husband it’s resources in terms of treasure and precious, irreplaceable human resources. As a reaction to the last 65 years of US national policy since WWII, it’s a very natural reaction to draw back from being the international doormat of nations. However, power abhors a vacuum. America truly cannot leave international events to the internationals, because the end result is warfare on U.S. territory. I prefer fighting “over there” rather than some place closer, such as the front of my house.
As far as overseas military bases, as Victor suggests, we do need far fewer, more strategically located bases, for both military and diplomatic purposes. U.S. assets and resources are spread willy-nilly all over the world, and in the case of Afghanistan, positioned in tactically reckless areas with indefensible supply lines. As any military trained man knows, war and military security is all about logistics and supply lines. Only a complete fool would place so much of our forces in landlocked Afghanistan.
Which brings us about “what to do” about Pakistan. Remove all of the political correctness. Put a real President into office, rather than the current foreign-born charlatan. Let’s just use plain, ordinary logic.
A country has attacked America conventionally. America is sovereign only because it acts the part, and by doing so, other nations respect that sovereignty. That is why “war” is the response demanded by war.
Now, that response can mean anything from all out warfare and absolute annihilation of Pakistan, or could simply mean cutting off funds and hurting Pakistan in lots of diplomatic ways that the Democrat left loves to think of as “strong stuff” internationally. The beauty of being both the aggrieved party and the USA is that the range-of-options are so truly infinite.
If I’m President, here’s what I do:
* I have my Vice President take a trip over to Pakistan to have a little heart to heart with the Pakistani P.M. (or President, big Indian Chief, whatever), and other top civilian political leaders. My VP would be a lot like Dick Cheney. When he spoke, I guarantee they’d be listening. My CJCS and JSOC would be there talk the Pakistani military counter parts. By the way, the meeting would be “over there”, but on U.S. controlled territory, like maybe a U.S. Aircraft Carrier
* The conversation would be short. The goal would be a complete and absolute data dump on just about anything we want to know about the ISI, Haqqani operatives, China, Iran, you name it, we’d get it. Then the CIA and FBI would escort several hundred or even a thousand Pakistani operatives involved with the attacks on America to Guantánamo Bay.
* Now, if the past is any guide, the Pakistani’s would feel that they can roll us, since “negotiating” is a sign of weakness in that part of the world. So, at the same time that they’re refusing cooperation, I’d be before a hastily scheduled address to the US Congress, requesting a declaration of war on Pakistan, citing the attack by Pakistan. I’d ask for a free hand to do whatever is necessary to win the war, but promise that it would be short, swift, and totally unrestrained in pursuit of American interests.
* Next comes the order of battle. Full air and sea blockade. Prepare for war. Redeploy our military assets; negotiate bases accepting the same constraints American did during WWII, ramp up our military supply lines to full mobilization. Pakistan would try to use the U.N., international opinion, U.S. Democrats, etc. to stop the USA. Ignore them; issue terms for immediate and unconditional surrender, including the information and persons of interest required earlier. It’s all or nothing, submit or go to hell.
* MAKE CLEAR to the people of Pakistan that we’re playing by the worlds rules, by the rules of history. We will win the war and leave the Pakistani’s to their resources. They should expect there to be NO post-war nation building, NO US relief missions, NO post-war help from anyone at all, if they continue the war they began.
* When ready, demolish every major military facility, ports, airports, major roads and mine navigable waters. Destroy their political institutions in Pakistan. Bomb any “elite” neighborhood. Seize every WMD that can be found. Destroy Pakistan financially.
* Pakistan MUST be immediately forthcoming on it’s WMD’s. Any noise from them about deploying their nukes means a lot of Pakistani’s are going to die from nuclear strikes. I’m sorry, but America is not “GOD”, and can only guarantee American’s safety through a nuclear first strike. That means destroying Pakistan to destroy their nuclear capability.
Yes, killing millions of civilian’s with nuclear weapons is “unthinkable”, but only to America. The Europeans, Chinese, many other nations of the world have regularly killed millions. It is only unthinkable in America.
America’s response, war, must be unrestrained.
And when that war is over, I’d invite the Iranian President, Mullah’s, and leading politicians and military men to another little meeting. And after that, continue the “good will” tour to Saudi Arabia.
29. no mo uro
“No more thirty years of work in an eighty year lifespan.”
Your point brought to mind the book I’m currently reading about Darth Vader and the travails of some of his forebears growing up in the 19th century:
“For seven generations the family lived in and around Massachusetts, but in the middle of the nineteenth century, Samuel Fletcher Cheney broke the mold, moving west to Defiance, Ohio. Right after Fort Sumter he signed up to defend the Union, and he served all four years of the Civil War. He was at Stones River and Chickamauga and in the campaign for Atlanta. He marched with Sherman to the sea.
“Samuel had remained unscathed through thirty-four battles and had managed to avoid the terrible sicknesses that plagued most and killed many of his comrades. But not long after he returned home to his wife and two daughters in Defiance, Ohio, he stumbled into a circular saw and lost all the fingers of his left hand.
“In 1883 as the country struggled through a long economic depression, the sash and door factory he co-owned had to be sold to pay its debts. At the age of fifty-four, Samuel Cheney had to start over. He gathered his wife and his four younger children, all sons, and moved eight hundred miles west to a homestead claim in Buffalo County, Nebraska.
“The Cheney’s built a sod house, planted trees and crops, and slowly began to build a new life on the Great Plains. Within two years, they had proved up their 160-acre claim and acquired an adjacent one to plant trees. The properties flourished until the early 1890s when drought struck. Then the crops withered and the trees died, and finally, in harder economic circumstances that had driven them under before, Samuel found himself unable to pay his debts. As he testified, despite his excellent record, “The banks will not loan to anyone at present.” In 1896, he saw all his possessions auctioned off on the steps of the Kearney County Court House.
In 1904, after spending several restless years cooped up in Omaha, he claimed a second homestead in the Nebraska Sand Hills. A friend who fought beside Samuel at Stones River had written that “Cheney is clear grit,” and he showed it to the very end. He proved up the Sand Hills homestead before he died in 1911 at the age of eighty-two.”
Aside from the Ten Commandments which I carry in my wallet to remind me when I’m (too often) totally out of bounds, I carry this right next to it remind me that real men don’t whine:
“I never saw a wild thing feel sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a baugh
Without ever having felt sorry for itself.”
— D. H. Lawrence
My sense, as I ponder the times before us, is this:
Soon, we won’t have to look back to our forebears for insight and guidance…
We’ll have to look up to them.
#46 #47 I don’t think that Victor should be banned. He is making himself quite visible with his comments and his anti Israel – pro Turkey theme. Better to be aware of that thrust than oblivious to it. His comments usefully prove the existence of his agendas. If you look at the Pajamas Media guidelines that are placed before the comments section, I don’t think you could make the case that he is violating those guidelines.
Scrolling past his or anyone else’s comments is a free choice.
Wretchard 33. “Because I still love him. Surely only a deluded person can act this way right?” In a manner of speaking. Battered women tend to come from households in which they were battered and saw their Moms and sisters battered. For these poor creatures beatings became associated with love. A child must believe that he or she is loved; their physical and psychic survival depends on it. So whatever they get is love, it must be. The difficulty in trying to get these women to separate from their violent partners is that when you try it you are taking away their love. They don’t like the beatings, but they can’t live without the love. It would be interesting sometime to examine the etiology of the mind parasite that is Leftism.
Dr. Mabuse 34. “[Orchids] – a useless, frivolous plant that gets by through the inattentiveness of those they depend on.” The vanilla bean is an orchid seed pod. Try taking your girl to the prom without an orchid corsage and see what you get.
f47.
The man is clearly an Atheist. He has been posting here since at least the invasion of Georgia. He is not one of the Jew haters who trolls PJM searching for the keyword Israel. So I do not think anti-Semitism is his motivation for posting, however wrong he may be!
47. Annoy Mouse
“That is not antisemitism in itself, why doesn’t someone ask him for sources on this claim.”
I did ask him, in the “Frame” thread:
49. Sgian Dubh
32. Victor
Gates and Petraeus have made it crystal clear that the current regime in Israel does not further fundamental American interests and, in fact, undermines American interests in the broader region.
That’s really a new one on me, but I don’t get out much.
Link, s’il vous plaît, Kimosabe.
He never answered back.
Iran is not the problem. Pakistan is not the problem. Afghanistan is most definitely not the problem. Saudi Arabia is not the problem. Islam is the problem. And it is a problem because of the stupidity of many Western countries, the USA being the worst, over the better part of a century regarding Islam and particularly the malignant strain of this particular disease that is Wahabism.
Islam is currently a problem because Muslims hold control of resources vital to the West, those resources being oil and the Suez Canal. The USA saw to the latter in the 1950s, by not letting the British and the French deal appropriately with Nasser. And various governments and the oil industry saw to the former, by letting the House of Saud have most of the money from the sale of oil.
There is always the Conjecture option. If the enemy had the option he’d use it, but we would prefer not to. Very well. One possibility; cut down the money tree – by going seriously into research into alternative energy, and not the rubbish that all the money is going into right now but space solar, algae oil and focus/Polywell fusion. Once done; sieze all Mordor’s assets wherever they can be reached, mine the Persian Gulf, blow up all the pipelines leaving the ME and let them rot.
Some other future methods can be thought of, although one (IMHO worthy of an SF story) is a couple of decades in the future. Imagine, if you will, a replicating nanotech “virus” that spreads everywhere and otherwise does absolutely nothing; except that if it’s inside a person and that person recites the Shahada in Arabic then that person becomes immediately and irreversibly sterile. That’s just one.
One more thought, again about a missed opportunity. Sometime today, eight tons of junk are going to be coming down at near-orbital velocity. What a missed opportunity that is…
Subotai: Good OB work on your part delineating exactly what Paki capabilites consist of.
Also: a very good description of an appropriate use of our nuclear capabilities. And a great example of the need to know exactly where to aim.
Most people either think nukes should be outlawed (by whom?????!!!!! using what?????!!!!!) or that large portions of the planet should be rendered uninhabitable.
Myself, I would like to see Uncle Sam use a nuke or three. Entirely too many people have convinced themselves that we are so ashemed of and horrified by Hiroshima and Nagasaki that we will perish rather than repeat. I long to dissuade them of that notion.
However, I do not think that the current Paki SITREP warrants such use. I think it better to focus on logistics instead. Pakistan is a failed state. It can barely feed itself, if that, its currency is useless outside its own borders, and there is no productivity to support its military, WMDs and rogue spooks. Who is paying the bill for all that stuff. Our own aid to a degree but that is not enough. Who provides the rest. Find that out and then monkey wrench the system. That will leave them with a clear-cut and unavoidable choice: either clean up their act (surrender) or try to use that arsenal of theirs. Whichever way they go, we can handle it.
“why is victor’s continued antisemitism allowed here?”
Well, Althouse has got Cedarford, so it stands to reason Belmont Club needs its own personal antisemite, too. Apparently there is some malign force that monitors the internet and doles out these hate-bots, one per blog, as needed.
Mr. parker, I’m antisemitic too. After all, Arabs are Semites.
66. Fletcher Christian: Mr. parker, I’m antisemitic too. After all, Arabs are Semites.
Some Arabs are good Catholics. So I’m more anti-Islam than anti-Semite.
46. Dex Quire: Notice how Victor never misses an opportunity to snarl and snap at Israel. Jew hatred is a sickness that the anti-Semite can never really hide; it always has comes out; it’s almost like he can’t help it
Words have exact meanings.
The State of Israel does not perfectly overlap with Jew on a Venn diagram. It is a colony of Europeans created after World War II when Displaced Persons were not allowed to return to their homes and jobs in places like Poland. So it is possible to disagree with the policies of the State of Israel and not hate Jews. It is also possible for Jews to disagree with Israeli policies and not be filled with self-hatred, as is commonly suggested.
Libertarian Americans have an isolationist streak. The United States is hemorrhaging money and a the top of the list is the 700 bases we have overseas, and the billions of dollars in foreign aid we give. It is particularly galling that we give three billion dollars of military aid to Israel, when they are the fourth largest arms exporter in the world by dollar value. Next down the list is the billion dollars we give to Egypt in hush money because we are giving Israel that money.
There is a permanent victim class that simply cries “anti-Semitism!” when this topic is raised, just as others cry “Racism!” when Obama’s policies are criticized. It’s not rational.
Morton doodslag wrote:
“I’m not suggesting this, but how different would our financial earthquakes look if our enemies were assisting in the turmoil? Isn’t it possible that underlying our own self-inflicted financial woes, there is also an organized, deliberate cabal to augment and magnify events?”
With the internal enemies we’ve got, who needs external ones? Example: Solyndra. half a BILLION dollars ripped off in broad daylight, no shame at all! American taxpayers pushed to the BACK of the creditor line so President Zero’s campaign supporters and donors can get whatever money there is first! And it is already out that they KNEW the thing was headed to bankruptcy BEFORE the money was handed out!
And of course the MSM is trying as hard as they can to bury this, since it doesn’t fit the party line. MSNBC has not carried ONE SINGLE STORY on this since it broke – they are working as hard as they can to try and kill it. They can’t, but they are trying.
This country is literally run by liars, con-men, grifters, and thieves. ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP. And what passes for a “press” would put Pravda to shame in it’s slavish devotion to those in power!
Who needs any foreign involvement when we ourselves have sunk to such a disgusting level of corruption? This will sound harsh, but – for allowing such a disgusting pack of criminals to take power, not only will we reap the whirlwind, but we as a nation DESERVE everything that happens to us. Not only have we done incredible damage to ourselves – our own government CONTINUES to tear this country down every day, every way it can!
For the United States to survive, this government must fall. And fall hard!
57 Old Salt:
Right ON !!!!!!! Load, lock, mount up.
Re: 47. Annoy Mouse, 48. Josh
The media spun Petraeus as saying Israel was at fault, and anti-Israel and anti-Semitic idiots seized on that to attack Israel. So Petraeus clarified his remarks. The idiots assume that we don’t know about anti-Israel media spin or about Petraeus’ clarification, so they continue to cite the General to support their anti-Israel drivel.
The gist of what Petraeus actually said was that some of the people who hate and fight the US give the excuse of Israel existing and the US supporting Israel (among other excuses). He didn’t actually say Israel is causing guys in Afghanistan to fight the US, which would be ridiculous – they fight us because we are the infidel and on their land. Israel is a convenient and politically popular excuse they give to do what they would do anyway. If Israel relocated to Mars today they would still fight us.
Keep in mind that the aid we give Israel is given on the condition that they spend it in America. This has advantages of preserving US jobs and increasing output of our war materiel, decreasing our own per unit costs.
We also help fund their missile defense systems and get use of the technology they develop. Our newer F16s incorporate Israeli designed and tested upgrades, particularly in HUD, electronics, and avionics. We have adapted these systems into other aircraft as well. Our drones are based on the pioneering Israeli designs.
I am unaware of any Turkish or Saudi developed technology in use by the US military.
I know that I don’t know a lot about Pakistan, so I’ll stick to overall strategy: Pakistan is a quilt of tribes and factions, some of which are in near de facto civil war. Insanely, the ISI supports the Taliban which would overthrow the ISI’s own government. We need to encourage these factions to turn upon each other and shred Pakistan to pieces. If any factions are to be found which are willing to be amiable with us, we can ally with them against the rest, or at least help them secure their own borders.
India is a natural ally, but because of the Paki paranoia, we should be the ones taking action against Pakistan, not India. The Paks would go totally gibbering bat-shit insane if they thought India was coming after them.
The Pakistani nuke weapons need to be neutralized, weapons, materials, plans, brains, all of it.
Subotai, as another “not nice” person, I applaud your direct approach. No whining I see about just closing all our bases and coming home to hide in our hole because we can no longer deal with hearing about the courage and sacrifices of those in our military. I’m amazed when I hear comments to the effect that we can’t militarily deal with a pipsqueak country like Pakistan. The reason we haven’t, as opposed to can’t, is that we lack resolve, not capability.
And the lack of resolve and our other domestic problems are due to the fact that we’ve changed our form of government from a Constitutional Republic to a Democracy ruled by a “multitude of fools” who live in a culture where “The financial, national security and educational systems of the world are in utter collapse because they are stuffed with lies”.
“So it is possible to disagree with the policies of the State of Israel and not hate Jews.”
True, and yet so few there be that manage this feat.
I would hazard to bet that many of the lies that have crept into the west are the result of soviet era disinformation and such. Why? Because there is currently a tremendous body of work from the old soviet union that goes
untranslated. This work would shed a tremendous amount of light on the communists work to undermine the west.
……………………
Claire Berlinski
A Hidden History of Evil
Why doesn’t anyone care about the unread Soviet archives?
Nor is it widely acknowledged that Communism was responsible for the deaths of some 150 million human beings during the twentieth century. The world remains inexplicably indifferent and uncurious about the deadliest ideology in history.
For evidence of this indifference, consider the unread Soviet archives. Pavel Stroilov, a Russian exile in London, has on his computer 50,000 unpublished, untranslated, top-secret Kremlin documents, mostly dating from the close of the Cold War. He stole them in 2003 and fled Russia. Within living memory, they would have been worth millions to the CIA; they surely tell a story about Communism and its collapse that the world needs to know. Yet he can’t get anyone to house them in a reputable library, publish them, or fund their translation. In fact, he can’t get anyone to take much interest in them at all.
http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_2_soviet-archives.html
If those papers were archived and worked they would probably unmask things that many in the “Progressive” establishment wouldn’t want widely known. No money means no translation. It would be difficult to explain; let sleeping Communists lie.
#64 Dave
Part of my uncouth and impolitic personality, is a disinclination to give an enemy, once defined as such, the benefit of the doubt if it allows them the possibility of a counterstroke against me and mine. I readily grant that attacking Pakistani logistics and their internal economy would bring them to the point of total collapse in the relative short term. However, not short enough. It is almost certain that in the immediate aftermath of such a move on our part, that parts of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal would find their way to hands disposed to use them against us, against Israel, and against Europe. They do not have the PAL’s and safeguards against unwanted detonations that we do. For them, the technical emphasis is getting it to go bang when desired. While they have means to try to prevent theft and detonation; they are far simpler than ours, and I suspect involve the manual entry of codes which would surely accompany any highly exothermic gifts.
The results would be far more untidy than necessary or desirable. Yeah, Pakistan could then be turned into a glass lined crater as a reaction; but if you are going to have to do that anyway, why not just begin with a targeted nuclear strike that disarms the enemy, conserves warheads, and will surely engender the same collapse as the attacks on their logistics and economy?
Once an entire nation is an enemy with which we are at war, there is no reason to stay our hand to try to win the hearts and minds of the survivors; which effort is pointless as the act of being at war with them makes such impossible until total victory is achieved. I also note that an attack on their economic infrastructure would almost surely have a higher risk of casualties on our part.
The Muslim tendency to create fantasy worlds to live in would make any such casualties a “victory” in their minds and later propaganda, q.v. the surrounding of the Egyptian Army and the presence of Israeli forces in a position to attack Cairo in the 1973 war is considered a “victory” in Egypt. Being smote from on high will not allow such. This will magnify any moderating influence on the actions of the rest of the Ummah who are watching.
Subotai Bahadur
Teresita: “So it is possible to disagree with the policies of the State of Israel and not hate Jews.”
Kirk Parker: True, and yet so few there be that manage this feat.
The number who do is growing. If Israel is not a theocratic state, then policy disputes have validity outside of ethnic/racial/religious bias.
The Israeli’s themselves do not make a clear distinction.
Israel’s The Declaration of Independence (1948):
On the 29th November, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel; the General Assembly required the inhabitants of Eretz-Israel to take such steps as were necessary on their part for the implementation of that resolution. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable.
This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.
RE: the Israeli Constitution:
Israel has been unable to adopt a constitution full blown, not because it does not share the new society understanding of constitution as fundamental law, but because of a conflict over what constitutes fundamental law within Israeli society. Many religious Jews hold that the only real constitution for a Jewish state is the Torah and the Jewish law (halakhah) that flows from it. They not only see no need for a modern secular constitution, but even see in such a document a threat to the supremacy of the Torah and the constitutional tradition associated with it that has developed over thousands of years to serve the Jewish people in their land and in the diaspora.
Their opposition is sometimes interpreted as the opposition of traditionalists to modernism or as a struggle between supporters of convention and custom versus supporters of a written constitution as law. This would be a serious misreading of the situation. The most traditionally Orthodox Jews are as convinced that their constitution, the Torah, is law and not custom or convention, as the most ardent supporters of a modern written constitution.
RE: Gates, Petraeus and Netanyahu
Nothing in Return (Sept 5, 2011):
But it was Robert M. Gates, the now-retired secretary of defense, who seemed most upset with Netanyahu. In a meeting of the National Security Council Principals Committee held not long before his retirement this summer, Gates coldly laid out the many steps the administration has taken to guarantee Israel’s security — access to top- quality weapons, assistance developing missile-defense systems, high-level intelligence sharing — and then stated bluntly that the U.S. has received nothing in return, particularly with regard to the peace process.
Senior administration officials told me that Gates argued to the president directly that Netanyahu is not only ungrateful, but also endangering his country by refusing to grapple with Israel’s growing isolation and with the demographic challenges it faces if it keeps control of the West Bank. According to these sources, Gates’s analysis met with no resistance from other members of the committee.
Subotai, except for some animation I did for a certain emergency management agency several decades back, my knowledge of nuclear energy and weapons systems comes from reading generally-available sources, many online.
Does the following information square with your sources?
What I’m seeing about the Trident II D-5 is that its MIRV warheads in one article are described as “thermonuclear” – which I’ve always understood to mean a fusion device, not fission. Another article on the Intermediate yield strategic SLBM MIRV warhead W88 lists a nominal yield of 475 Kilotons, and parenthetically estimates we have 400 of these in service. A third article indicates each of the 18 US 726-class ballistic missile subs carries (standard) 24 Trident missiles, each with 5 MIRV warheads. (Doing the math: 18 subs x 24 missiles x 5 warheads = 2160 warheads! So the W88s only account for a fraction of that total. Also, there are probably some special purpose “conventional” or non-nuke warheads in there, as well.)
I shiver to think of the garbage in this administration sitting in on ANY review of America’s “Nuclear Posture Review.”
Obama’s preference is a simple “bend over and grab your ankles.”
By the way, the cost of each Trident MISSILE appears to be about $70 MILLION, which works out to about $14 million per delivered warhead. On that basis alone, it really doesn’t make sense to me to even consider using a “conventional” High Explosive warhead. Even a cruise missile isn’t THAT expensive… a Tomahawk is supposed to be just over a half-million per unit.
Morton #39, wws #68
Whom would the Chinese prefer as TPOTUS (TP=teleprompter)?
Subitai @ 75: If the decision is mine, I’ll run the risk of US military casualties for two reasons: (1) Public humiliation will be necessary to break their system of continuing denial and (2) nailing their logistics will also
reduce the capabilities of their sponsors who are somewhat more muscular foes.
And besides that: As a people we are obliged to say “Fill your hand, you sonofabitch!” And do so ever so momentarily before opening the festivities.
While this leaves (just) enough time for a preventive strike, it does mean that we cannot rightfully move in time to preclude all risk.
As to the more serious risk of their moving their devices to other hands: A comprehensive logistical effort should employ creative means to insure that the transfers prove ineffective.
Is he related to Eddie Mullen ?
Late to the party – but options to neutralize Pakistani threat include:
1) Use weaponized tobacco mosaic to erradicate poppy crop in Afghanistan, Pakistan – and make sure it spreads worldwide. No need for opium/morphine with synthetic alternatives. Chop the money tree down.
2) Likewise, use our recently developed CYBERFORCE to hack/scramble all bank accounts inside Pakistan/Central Bank records. Their currency just ceased to exist. No clue who owes what to whom so all debt just stopped. They are now at a barter economy. Not a big drop but enough to take them off the table.
3) Place them on the “do not admit” list for US visas. All Pakistanis currently on green cards/student visas/etc go home (or out of the US). Yes – this means a lot of “the good guys.” They can either divert en route elsewhere – or effect change at home when they get there.
That combination should, without overt physical violence, completely change the dynamic of the area. If Foggy Bottom had their act 2% together they could steer the resulting chaos in a direction to the advantage of the US. Timeline to complete maybe 90 days for a motivated group. And of course items 1/2 deniable
Since this is at the bottom of the thread I will make it short.
The euro disaster is going to take pressure off of the US dollar in the short term and cause it to rise. For the average Joe I would recommend selling into the rallies and getting into cash and gold.
For the long term 0bama’s Zero Interest Rate policy and the mounting debt will cause investors to leave the dollar (which could devalue significantly or inflation of consumer necessities – such as gasoline – will crush it).
Hence, keep you powder dry and get into cash and gold. It’s going to be a long 14 months until 0bama is gone (assuming he will be voted out of office).