The role of trust in politics
Treachery and perfidy are supposed to be war crimes. “Bosnian Serb soldiers wearing stolen UN uniforms and driving stolen UN vehicles announced over megaphones that that they were UN peacekeepers and that they were prepared to oversee the Bosnian Muslims’ surrender and guarantee they would not be harmed.” How dastardly.
Disoriented and exhausted, many Bosnian Muslims fell for the lie. It was only after they had surrendered that they discovered their fatal mistake. For in surrendering, they were going to their deaths. Those whom the Serbs got their hands on were killed by firing squad …
Article 37 of Protocol I states that “acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, with intent to betray that confidence, shall constitute perfidy.” And Article 38 explicitly prohibits the use of “the distinctive emblem of the United Nations, except as authorized by that organization.” It also prohibits the “improper use of the distinctive emblems of the red cross, red crescent or red lion,” which, if used perfidiously, is a grave breach.
They are crimes, that is, however, unless they are legitimate ruses of war. Then they’re alright. “The protocol states explicitly that ruses of war are not prohibited. A ruse is an act that is intended to mislead an adversary or to ‘induce him to act recklessly’ but which infringe no rule of armed conflict and do not attempt to gain his confidence by assuring protection under law.” The difference is something that lawyers can distinguish. Operationally the dead from the one are as dead as from the other.
Truth and war are hard to reconcile. Consider the Paris Peace accords, for which Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho received the Nobel Peace Prize. Less than four months after the signing treaty the North Vietnamese politburo made the decision to return to war.
Maybe they never meant to keep the treaty.’
But it was not as if Nixon hadn’t guessed the North Vietnamese would cheat. He had other priorities. His now forgotten “new American Revolution” was an ambitious program to end the Vietnam war, reform welfare, fix the healthcare system, protect the environment and return federal funds to the states so that they could spend the money more autonomously. In his 1971 State of the Union message Nixon said:
This can be the Congress that helped us end the longest war in the Nation’s history, and end it in a way that will give us at last a genuine chance to enjoy what we have not had in this century: a full generation of peace.
This can be the Congress that helped achieve an expanding economy, with full employment and without inflation–and without the deadly stimulus of war.
This can be the Congress that reformed a welfare system that has robbed recipients of their dignity and robbed States and cities of their resources.
This can be the Congress that pressed forward the rescue of our environment, and established for the next generation an enduring legacy of parks for the people.
This can be the Congress that launched a new era in American medicine, in which the quality of medical care was enhanced while the costs were made less burdensome.
But above all, what this Congress can be remembered for is opening the way to a new American revolution–a peaceful revolution in which power was turned back to the people–in which government at all levels was refreshed and renewed and made truly responsive. This can be a revolution as profound, as far-reaching, as exciting as that first revolution almost 200 years ago–and it can mean that just 5 years from now America will enter its third century as a young nation new in spirit, with all the vigor and the freshness with which it began its first century.
We know now that Nixon’s plans never materialized. But nobody opposed it openly. What finished the “New American Revolution” and made any effective attempt to defend South Vietnam moot was Watergate. In 1974 Le Duan assessed that “internal contradictions” in America would make it impossible for Washington to “aid the Saigon quisling administration” and this fact determined them to make a final push in 1975.
“Internal contradictions” make it possible for the public to decide one thing under the aegis of another. You get sold a box for one thing and when you open it, out pops another. Like the Kosovars who were led to their deaths by the fake UN Peacekeeers, history usually reveals that things are not what they seem. When publics get to where they’re going the mask comes off. They’re are given one reason to embrace a policy but leaders may pursue it for another. In politics there is no rule about truth in packaging.
The Paris Peace accords were not about bringing tranquility to Vietnam, but something altogether different. After all it never stipulated the removal of North Vietnamese forces from South Vietnam, nor recognized its boundaries so you would think that … but Nixon was determined to run the risk to get his “new American revolution”. Ironically what he may have gained by embracing on set of deceptions was taken from him by another.
Perhaps in the long view Watergate will be no different. Maybe it will transpire that the scandal was never about was the burglary of an apartment; that is was never about the ‘truth’; maybe it was about politics. The question is moot now. What matters is they — whoever they are — got away with it. They took Saigon, they got rid of Nixon.
Now if only we could figure out who “they” is.
Perfidy in politics is not a violation of the Geneva convention. Today the New York Times is all a-twitter with the story that President Obama has invited Mitt Romney for lunch to the White House. “In his victory speech on election night, Mr. Obama praised Mr. Romney’s legacy of public service and said that he looked ‘forward to sitting down with Governor Romney to talk about where we can work together to move this country forward.’”
Perhaps it is an attempt to bury the hatchet. Or equally probable, an attempt to bury the hatchet in someone’s back. Maybe the real distinction between treachery as a crime and as legitimate ruse of war is whether it is committed by the victor. If the Bosnian Serbs had won, their deception might be celebrated by some Virgil.
After many years have slipped by, the leaders of the Greeks,
opposed by the Fates, and damaged by the war,
build a horse of mountainous size, through Pallas’s divine art,
and weave planks of fir over its ribs:
they pretend it’s a votive offering: this rumour spreads.
They secretly hide a picked body of men, chosen by lot,
there, in the dark body, filling the belly and the huge
cavernous insides with armed warriors …Then Laocoön rushes down eagerly from the heights
of the citadel, to confront them all, a large crowd with him,
and shouts from far off: ‘O unhappy citizens, what madness?
Do you think the enemy’s sailed away? Or do you think
any Greek gift’s free of treachery? Is that Ulysses’s reputation?’And if the gods’ fate, if our minds, had not been ill-omened,
he’d have incited us to mar the Greeks hiding-place with steel:
Troy would still stand: and you, high tower of Priam would remain.
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While I’m sure we’ll never know what is truly spoken over their sandwiches, I’m sure it will be turned into another opportunity for gloating and leverage for GOP to “get with the program”, regardless of what Romney may say afterward. This event may cement forever any hope of GOP distinguishing themselves as something other than a more conservative wing of Democrat party.
Mitt Romney is a decent man, and his honor probably prevented him from declining an invitation from the president.
But he should have.
Love him or hate him you got to hand it to Obama. He doesn’t care if he sends out Rice to lie on 5 talk shows one after another on the prime time Sunday news talk circut. He knows full well that big media won’t call him on it. As they say, Bengahazi is a “PR” failure. And as long as he can get people like the 64% that lined up to vote for Jesse Jackson Jr. to continue to vote for him…really who can stop him?
Bipartisan usually means that a larger-than-usual deception is being carried out. – George Carlin
I grew weary of the campaigning along about mid September….I grow wearier as it continues today.
Mitt is a dimwitt if he falls for Obama’s s#it.
The photos will surely make me sick.
Re. “Perhaps it is an attempt to bury the hatchet. Or equally probable, an attempt to bury the hatchet in someone’s back. ”
Or, may be just an acknowledgement that election was fixed from the beginning.
“Like the Kosovars who were led to their deaths by the fake UN Peacekeeers,…”
You mean Bosnia, I guess. The U.N. was never in Kosova and never even santioned the Monica War. Nor were any of the mass graves holding 100,000 victims ever found, and those alleged deaths were a key factor in getting us into the war.
And, of course, after we went to war and afterwards found it was all pretty much a lie, no one in the U.S. went to jail or even as much as had his repuation besmerched. However, at least one leader from the people we were supposedly helping was charged with War Crimes.
Supposedly, Obama was proposing that Mitt become his Business Czar and have the responsibility of creating jobs. This is the old game of “Heads I Win, Tails You Lose.” I hope Mitt Romney spit in his eye and then said “Now, if you will excuse me, I am late for my daily shooting practice at the gun range.”
It’s simple, Obama the first black president in US history would get two and possibly three terms as the Best President America ever had!
No matter what reality and history have to say about the events and agenda.
Romney was in on the fix, he never actually planned on becoming President, nor cost Obama the election, especially the First Black President of the United States who could not fail, twice!
So Romney/Ryan/republicans took a dive for history, for the black children’s self esteem in the future and to promote the now discredited racial harmony in The United States today. Romney sure is calm with the idea someone used massive voter fraud and computer hacking to steal an election from him.
As it is seen by me the whole shebang has become incomprehensible It appears Washington D.C. has gone bug house crazy, Milling about barking orders, siding with whomever saying anything and everything that should not be spoken but mute on the items that need to be discussed.
I don’t know if they are smug arrogant fools who think we are fools also in believing they can fix or even patch the rupture in the Nation.
Or are they the evil ones spoken of who will tear down our country from the inside while the dumb American doesn’t have a clue.
My greatest fear is none of these people have any idea what is going on, don’t know what to do so they provide theater politics to hide the fact they don’t have the brains to piss holes in the snow and we are all gonna die.
It’s like watching all the three stooges at the same time all five of them.
Whoa, lets back the truck up for a moment. There’s a substantive difference between a ruse and treachery. A ruse is defined by Merriam Websters as “a wily subterfuge”, a subterfuge may be deceptive or rely upon gullibility or ignorance to succeed but it does not rely upon a betrayal of trust.
While treachery relies entirely upon a betrayal of trust, its success relies upon the betrayed having a reasonable expectation of trust. They’re not the same at all. Clever, skillful strategy in war is not the same thing as reliance upon blatant lying. And the failure of the world to prosecute the Serbs no more absolves them of the guilt than it does the Nazi’s who escaped capture.
Ideally, rules of war have been formulated to lessen the brutality of war, otherwise it’s the law of the jungle, where no mercy exists and its a fight to the death with the men killed and the women enslaved. That can only be supported if one argues that there’s no difference between civilization and barbarism. That way lies genocide and the precept that might makes right.
#8, “Romney sure is calm with the idea someone used massive voter fraud and computer hacking to steal an election from him.”
I suspect his judgement is that civil war is to be avoided if possible. He’s also probably aware that millions of conservatives didn’t vote and had they, the election would have been his. Those conservatives have made the judgement that in the end there’s little difference between the country dying of a ‘sudden drug overdose’ or of ‘sclerosis of the liver’…his reaction appears to be “as you wish”…
Some lessons are only learned the hard way and 47% have chosen the hardest of ways. May they reap what they’ve sowed (not out of revenge but so that the lesson is learned) and may God have mercy on our souls (we sure don’t deserve this).
So when the North Vietnamese decided to sign the Paris Peace accords knowing they would not abide by it, or when Hamas declares a ceasefire intending to re-arm is it a ruse or perfidy?
If its perfidy, how come the North Vietnamese and Hamas never get accused of War Crimes. How about Iran’s insistence that it is building only peaceful nuclear facilities? Or Obama’s insistence that Benghazi is all about a video. It’s for a good cause isn’t it?
Where I think it gets a little difficult is whether anyone is really deceived. If I were the NV or Hamas, I would say, “why is treachery involved? You didn’t really believe we would tell the truth, did you? Were you that stupid? So we weren’t really lying.”
I would expect Hamas to be treacherous. Which they will be. What would really astound me is if they kept their word. Which they won’t. Yet we pretend … but do we pretend because we believe them or do we pretend for reasons that are almost akin to madness?
Consider the drive to oppose voter ID, which was explained as a campaign to “end discrimination”. Who really believed this? I don’t think even the Democrats believed it. Maybe the Republicans did, but not even they could have been so gullible.
It is neither treachery nor a ruse. For that implies credence is involved. I really don’t know what to call it. Maybe Rusechery or Treacheruseity is a good word to coin. The closest behavior to it is that exhibited by Charlie Brown.
He knows almost for certain that Lucy will fool him again, yet Charlie Brown keeps trusting, trusting and trusting. So is Lucy guilty of perfidy? Or is Charlie Brown just stupid?
The first reports are starting to filter out of federal court in New Orleans on the arraignment of 3 BP employees regarding the Deepwater Horizon accident. As with the one prior indictment, government prosecutors have once again engaged in making demonstrably false charges.
http://tinyurl.com/bmwrg6b
http://tinyurl.com/cjq58pu
So with no indication on the surface of any flow for the first few days, the government is trying to sell an initial flow rate of 62,000 barrels per day.
Yeah right!
CHU LIED, DOLPHIINS DIED!
Pay particular attention to that May 24, 2010 date in the indictment. It was immediately before the start of the “top kill” operation that Chu subsequently aborted before it was complete. http://tinyurl.com/7vbhsyn
As for the telephone call between Vidrine and Mark Hafle on shore, there is video from the Coast Guard-MMS hearings (where Hafle actually testified without invoking his Fifth Amendment rights) which shoots a huge hole through the government’s “too few cetralizers” meme. http://tinyurl.com/87yron8
Ed Markey (D-MA) should come out of this hiding his head in shame like a typical perp doing the perp walk.
(1) Rules are for the little people, and for them alone.
(2) The Ultimate Rule is that thou shalt not mention the fact that the emperor has no clothes.
If you don’t know that then nothing is known.
Wretchard @ 11: “If its perfidy, how come the North Vietnamese and Hamas never get accused of War Crimes.”
Because, to the the Left, there are no enemies.
Actually, those of us in uniform have long wondered why our government never called the North Vietnamese out on things like this. And once you let one enemy get away with it, others take notice, and this crap becomes the new normal.
tcobb @ 13 – Tag line from A Beautiful Mind
“The Only Thing Greater Than the Power of the Mind is the Courage of the Heart”
THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE!
LIVE FREE OR DIE!
LIVE THE TRUTH!
“And if the gods’ fate, if our minds, had not been ill-omened [...]”
And if Priam had ignored his priests’ advice and listened instead to Hector’s steely warning…
Priam’s priesthood unwittingly ran interference for Ulysses’ trickery. This and Priam’s idealistic idolatry, not Argememnon’s bellicosity, are what ended Troy.
Question is, What priesthood is enabling Obama’s ruse?
(Machiasprivateer’s #12 hints at the church in question, Environmentalism.)
#15 MachiasPrivateer
I know I should not do this, but I freely admit that I’m an a**hole and I will repost what I said on the previous thread:
THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE!
Only rarely. Being in prison for a crime you know you didn’t commit really doesn’t get you much of anywhere. And speaking the truth can be very dangerous; typically it tends to get you indicted or crucified.
Its sort of like letting your thoughts roam free. There’s no harm in that at all, until that point where they start leaking out of your mouth. That can cause intense trouble. I know that from personal experience.
The truth does not set you free. It merely gives you the location and schematics of the prison in which you reside. Escaping it is a totally different problem.
… and with my apologies to Wretchard and everyone else, I will bid you all good night.
What form of Ruse, Perfidy or Deception is Abbas’ UN bid set for tomorrow?
Using the title of this post ‘The role of trust in politics’, are the majority of UN members who will surely vote approval of the ‘Balestinians’ simply acting like Charlie Brown or cynical antisemites looking to undo their 1947 mistake?
Will the 0bamii follow through with his threat and the US Congress resolutions to withhold monies from and withdraw from UN agencies?
I’ll leave it for others to enlighten me.
Romney is a fool if he goes to the meeting. O does not do anything that does not involve some calculated move to destroy his enemies.
O won the election
rigged to hellfair and square. Now he owns the presidency and the good, bad and the ugly, especially the deficit from hell™. Romney needs to stay away from this toxic Wormtongue. It’s a basic survival skill.Being good to and forgiving of sociopaths is a fool’s game.
Only a few months ago, I thought I was being run off by a gang of simpering liberals at this “club” for being an extremist. Now, I see that every other comment is more extreme than anything I ever wrote here.
Has no one ever read of the accomplishments of Augusto Pinochet? Why do we no longer recognize him as one of the great democratic leaders of the 20th century? Ohhh, Yes, precisely because he overthrew a bunch of elected communists. Condor! We need no O’Bamby, no Romby. We need our Pinochet.
10. Geoffrey Britain
…his reaction appears to be “as you wish”…
His reaction is remarkably similar to that of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Perhaps both woke up with a friendly Dressage horses head under their gentle covers.
Who was it that said evil prevails “when good men do nothing?”
So far I haven’t seen many good men in the elite clas; I wonder how many Belmonters are GOOD MEN…
Many I would surmise, but I don’t think it will much matter going forward.
Virgil’s song was of the rise of Rome through the efforts of Aeneas. The telling of the Trojan Horse deception was to set the contrast between perfidious Ulysses, a Greek hero of low character, and Aeneas, a Trojan man of tremendous character. Virgil constantly refers to him as “pious Aeneas”. Thus Rome has a virtuous founder while the Greeks are slime balls. With this in mind, Rome’s invading and taking over Greece was simply the triumph of a virtuous way of life over a slimy one.
Was Virgil being perfidious in the Aeneid?
Is Oliver Stone being perfidious with his TV history of the U.S.?
Romney and his coterie of RINO fools love to be punching bags.
The truth is Romney had no real program to rein in the deficit. He talked of raising revenue through the use of pruning deductions, and he refused to say what he would cut.
What are Boehner, McConnell, McCain and Graham doing now? The same thing – raising taxes without through actually having to say they raised taxes, and what of the cuts? Nowhere to be found!
What does this accomplish? It acknowledges that the Pubs don’t really want to shrink government and legitimizes the Fascist Dems movement to grow government ever larger and larger and larger until it controls everything.
What is the Republican program? Who knows? If they cannot articulate one and sell it wholeheartedly Buraq and the Media are going to devour them. It is going to get very ugly.
We are on the brink of a very severe downturn. Millions are going to be thrown out of work. Millions more are going to be cut back to less than 30 hours a week. ( thank you, Obamacare) And tens of millions are going to be paying through the wazzuu for health insurance. The Pubs will be blamed from here to eternity if they are not very careful. If the Pubs are not ready to get real serious and refuse to raise the deficit ceiling until massive cuts are made without any, and I mean any tax increases, they need to stop what they are doing and completely refuse to play the game anymore.
They should give Buraq a one trillion dollar extension on the debt ceiling and vote “Present” on everything else.
Let Buraq and the Democrats own this depression completely. Any cuts the Pubs would get in this environment, unless the Pubs quickly gain some major cajones, would be trifles and not worth fighting for.
The Pubs need to stop trying to make it appear it’s all going to get better if they just play along. It’s not, and it won’t get better until this country recognizes very serious major changes are necessary.
We have replaced Comity with Comedy. Who’s laughing now?
I spoke to a Palestinian friend recently about recent events, and questioned him about the reluctance of his people to honor their word. He smiled and said every Arab knows from birth the difference between treachery, perfidy and a ruse. Not only that, but they memorize it in the following childhood rhyme.
Treachery
Like lechery
Finds minds wherein it lurks
Any ruse
To kill the Jews
Ain’t wrong so long it works
A surfeity
Of perfidy
Will surely make you sick
So be aware
That some will care
Which of these three you pick
AP @ 19: Romney is a fool if he goes to the meeting
Indeed.
Romney held out and never did go on David Letterman. That was a good decision.
This is a bad decision. Still, if it were known he were invited and declined, the Republicans would pick up major static. That’s probably the real reason he’s going, cuz he has to.
But to most people it’s still going to look like he’s going to kiss Obambus’ ring and nether regions. Or worse. And, well, it is.
Unless the republicans (and indeed, everyone who did not vote for Obama) have a collective death wish, sooner or later the necessity of tit-for-tat will come into plan. Perfidy and treachery only work when one side, for whatever reason, chains itself to rules and the other does not. The USA during the Vietnam war carefully obeyed the Geneva convention and the general laws of war – the Vietcong and North Vietnam ignored them. In fact, if I recall correctly, the last enemy the US fought that actually obeyed the Geneva convention on land was the Germans in WWII.
Hopefully, at some point the US will realize that being the only one to obey the rules is a fools pastime. Then perhaps, we will see a return to total war.
As for the domestic policy, you cannot continue indefinitely a situation where one side feels free to cheat in elections and the other side smiles and ignores it. Nixon, for all his faults, loved this country with all his heart. He had ample evidence that JFK stole the 1960 election (see Paul Johnsons superb History of the American People on the subject); but for the good of the country Nixon chose not to challenge the election results. That might have been a mistake, but understandable at the time. Today, it is generally accepted that the democrats always cheat and always get away with ti.
This is the social equivalent of throwing sand in the machinery of society. The machine will continue to run after you throw in sand, once, twicie, even 3 times, but eventually somthing will give.
#11,
“So when the North Vietnamese decided to sign the Paris Peace accords knowing they would not abide by it, or when Hamas declares a ceasefire intending to re-arm is it a ruse or perfidy?”
It’s certainly not treachery and in neither case is clever strategy involved, so defining them as a ruse is inaccurate as well. Therefore neither example is sufficient as rebuttal.
By the time of the Paris Peace Accords this country and the Nixon administration were desperate to get out of Vietnam. The N. Vietnamese knew it and also knew that all they had to do was provide enough political ‘cover’ for Nixon to claim another ‘peace in our time’. Nixon knew it too, that it was all political theater.
Israel’s hands are politically tied, both out of US and International pressure and internal division with Israel’s left and liberals playing the same game that America’s do here. Hamas knows it and Israel knows, that Hamas knows it. Hamas is the weaker but possesses the utter ruthlessness of the fanatic and so is engaged in a terroristic guerrilla war, its strategy is to gradually exhaust Israel and create emigration levels that cause Israel to eventually capitulate. Though Iran having nuclear capability will be a game changer.
Israel is desperately ‘buying time’ gradually annexing more and more of the Palestinian territories, hoping that eventually Islam will tire of the conflict, which is self-delusion on the Israeli’s part but given the circumstances, the best they can do, at least until the overall paradigm changes.
Hamas commits war crimes continuously, the unwillingness of the left, the MSM (both domestically and internationally) the UN and its members to properly make that charge, changes the objective truth of that charge, not in the least.
There is treachery involved in the opposition to voter ID but the treachery is not aimed at republicans and conservatives who understand the issue but rather to the half-asleep, gullible American public who nevertheless have a right to expect a minimum level of trustworthiness from their elected officials and fellow citizens.
Lovable as he is, Charlie Brown is stupid and Lucy is a b**ch.
Abbie Normal 14. “Because, to the the Left, there are no enemies.”
The Left always makes sure it has plenty of enemies, both home grown and confected; it NEEDS them. Their enemies are all those who stand in the way of their assumption of totalitarian power, all those over whom they wish to exercise power, and once that power is cemented domestically, external enemies as foils to focus the rage, envy and disappointment of those they hold in thrall. I only wish that they pursued America’s external enemies with the same ruthless vigor with which they pursue Republicans, Conservatives, the Tea Party, advocates of traditional marriage, opponents of abortion, proponents of voter ID, et cetera ad nauseam.
# 21,
Comparing Romney’s grace in losing to the evil that prevails “when good men do nothing” is unfair and a disservice to a man who manifestly did try to do something, more than once and at great expense. He’s earned the right to lay down his ‘sword’.
You remember the 2000 election when for the next 8 yrs many of those who voted for Gore claimed that the election was stolen from him? Is it really so hard to imagine that Romney judged that a repeat of that fiasco would be, for the country as a whole, a case of the cure being more harmful than the disease?
This country is far closer to the precipice of another civil war than many imagine and any who think it ‘high time’ need to reflect upon the deeper meaning of Gen. Sherman’s statement that “war is hell”. Brother against brother, father against son, daughter against mother, cousins against cousins…nothing is as societally destructive and psychologically devastating as a civil war.
And this time, we have nukes.
What these fools don’t recognize is that they are nibbling away at the very basis of that which gives them power. Sure you can lie to gain power, you can manipulate events to your heart’s desire. Then you realize that your sphere of influence shrinks.
The US is in rough shape. Unemployment is high, people are getting less well off. The government gravy train is about to end; this fiscal cliff thing in a month or so will have very little effect on any of the numbers; the costs are already parabolic. They will have to do the same thing every month for the next two years to get things under control.
The nasty thing is that Obama gained power by promising things. The reality will become clear that those things are going to get smaller and smaller while the cost in real money personally will get higher and higher. The reach of government will shrink as they have no resources to allocate to actual governing; all of it will be going to rent seekers and sinecures who will be the last to fall off the gravy train.
We saw some remarkable things in Canada when we went through this. Politicians, federal elected cabinet ministers were putting great shows, ribbon cuttings, announcements for piddly couple hundred thousand programs. They shrunk before our eyes. The greatest thing I ever saw. We saw unsanctioned economic activity grow. There weren’t police to do the job, laws and regulations became meaningless claptrap out of some fools mouth, easily ignored at no cost.
The fools that insist on leading us down the same road as before will be lucky to keep their heads by the time all this is through.
“They will have to do the same thing every month for the next two years to get things under control.”
No, kicking the can down the road just makes the collapse more painful. It’s far past ‘control’. Sovereign bankruptcy, with the election of Obama… is now mathematically inescapable.
“The reality will become clear”
Not to that 47% it won’t. The Fed will just continue to print money and, when inflation starts to roar, they’ll just blame Bush, etc. all over again. Obama’s going to keep the shell game going until he’s either out of office or the entire house of cards collapses. And if sovereign bankruptcy occurs, he’ll declare martial law, suspend constitutional guarantees and seek extraordinary constitutional powers.
“The fools that insist on leading us down the same road as before will be lucky to keep their heads by the time all this is through.”
Would that our experience parallels Canada’s, hope does spring eternal after all.
But…there is that little matter of when our fiscal collapse occurs, there will be no America to lend us money till we get our house in order…
A “gracious loser” is first and foremost a loser.
The last of the GOP’s balls went into the ground with Lee Atwater.
Battle of #27:
“In fact, if I recall correctly, the last enemy the US fought that actually obeyed the Geneva convention on land was the Germans in WWII.”
They did, usually, but – only if you were from a country that held some of their troops as POWs. If you were from an occupied country, you were treated much worse.
One of the tragedies of Vietnam was the inability to articulate honestly what America was fighting for — capitalism and economic freedom instead of communism.
America was fighting against communism.
Those against the war noted, correctly, that America wasn’t quite fighting for democracy; in fact, had there been democracy in 1956, Ho Chi Minh, commie anti-French anti-imperialist successful general, would have won a full Vietnamese election victory.
Those against the war were, unfortunately, supporting communism instead of capitalism — including communist genocide.
All against the war were third type friends of communism, and communist genocide.
This is the 60s & 70s truth that cannot be discussed, and allows the various anti-American lies to continue to be spread. And poison the minds of those afflicted with PC.
Obama is doing to America exactly what Reagan did to the USSR: bury the bastages in debt.
Obama is providing payback for his True Love and what is coming is the “flexibility” he promised his daddy, Vlad – “after the election.”
How is it only one of us knew his intentions in 2008?
30. Geoffrey Britain
# 21,
Comparing Romney’s grace in losing to the evil that prevails “when good men do nothing” is unfair and a disservice to a man who manifestly did try to do something, more than once and at great expense. He’s earned the right to lay down his ‘sword’.
Perhaps you’re right, but I’m a tad tired of always picking the loser in this fight. Perhaps Romney is a good man – I thought that at least of him when I voted for him, but so many of the things he tried to excel at (and was right on the facts) got snookered by Obama, who was clearly running an evil (not sporting, old boy) campaign and was inside Romney’s OODA loop from the gitgo. He beat Romney with pure crap in an election that “should have been” a landslide. An election that jsut might spell the end of us.
Be happy for Romney – I am – he’s rich, don’t you know…What me worry?
Nukes? My, my, that was an interesting introduction. I lived through the Cold War in uniform. I saw the “exchange plans” in case somebody thought testing “MAD” wasn’t all that risky. You know the part I liked best? OK, let’s say the Soviets get through first. We launch as soon as we can to make them pay and take out whatever hadn’t been shot on the first salvo. Now the best part: Wait two weeks until the food was gone in their underground shelters and they start to crawl out and see what their stupid leaders did to them. And about a week later, unleash the SSBNs to exterminate the lot of them.
Nukes you say. War is Hell, yeah I believe that. But, do you mean that a civil war would be bad because our government would use nukes to kill those supposedly planning an uprising…using nukes to kill the “homegrown terrorists?” And what of the collateral damage done to those who still respect the government?
Do you think living under that government – a government that would nuke its own people – is preferable to dying in a fight to end that government?
I think we used to call that philosophy “Better Red than dead.”
Count me out of that formulation. I may be too old to fight, but I am not too old to resist and cantankerous enough to protest – even if we are now growing young bucks whose finest moment is breaking the glasses of old men and knocking them to the ground.
We are in the process of fundamentally transforming America to Amerikka and if you, sir, are content enough to go along with that…then sleep well.
Obama beat Romney because he used a populist strategy that always works.
“You have problems. But they aren’t YOUR fault. You are hard working, virtuous, deserving people, and your problems are the fault of the (insert target population du jour). They are greedy, and evil, and they need to be taught a lesson! They took all your stuff! Support me, and we’ll set things right, and we’ll punish them for all the bad things they’ve done to you!”
It’s worked for leaders for a long, long time, in places around the world. It’s always effective.
“how come the North Vietnamese and Hamas never get accused of War Crimes”
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They are supported by the Vatican/CIA mafia. They are there to induce and prolong conflict to advance a false political dialectic and an agenda of war profiteering and genocide of “heretics”. When you look at who controls the propaganda narrative on the propaganda outlets, who controls the CIA/military complex, who controls the banks and corporations, who sits in the Vatican, it’s the same people the same mafia. Full-spectrum dominance they call it.