No mas!
A sea change has come over the situation in Syria. “The French foreign minister said on Thursday there was no sign the Syrian crisis was going to be resolved anytime soon, in contrast to his prediction last month that the end was near for President Bashar al-Assad.”
“Things are not moving. The solution that we had hoped for, and by that I mean the fall of Bashar and the arrival of the coalition to power, has not happened,” Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in his annual New Year’s address to the press.
There are signs that the opthalmologist of the Damascus is off the hook. Abderrahim Foukara, the Washington bureau chief for Al Jazeera International claimed in an NPR interview that President’s inaugural speech signals that Assad can keep his skin. “I should say that if Bashar al-Assad were listening to the speech that President Obama made on Inauguration Day, he would probably have rejoiced in some parts of it. The president said that as far as he’s concerned, the decade of wars is over. And Bashar al-Assad would probably interpret that that the United States is not going to come directly to the rescue of the armed opposition in Syria.”
Foukara gave two reasons for the about face. The first was the steadfast support of Russia and Iran for Assad. They were not backing down. The second was the realization stemming from Benghazi debacle. “The other concern is that the United States has for some weeks now been saying that jihadi groups, as it’s called them, are operating in Syria, having come from Iraq, affiliates of al-Qaida, and giving weapons to the Syrian opposition may end up in the wrong hands. So they will not do that.”
That doesn’t mean Assad won’t implode at some point anyway. But when he does it won’t be where the State Department wants it.
Obama has kept the true import of Benghazi from everyone but America’s foes: it was the moment when the Obama administration realized it had been duped into arming al-Qaeda. The ship of Obama’s state is now beached on the shoals. It’s full back and dump the ballast. He has no appetite for “forward” in international affairs, just “forward” into the taxpayer’s wallets.
What Obama will try to do now according to “the foreign policy expert and former Obama official, State Department official, Anne-Marie Slaughter” is to “find the happy medium between not committing us to a decades-long ground war and choosing not to do anything”. Like referring Assad’s crimes to the international criminal court and similar initiatives. Such PR exercises will appear “bold” to Candy Crowley but they will fool no one in the region. Syria will remain aflame while the administration hunker downs in the firehouse. Foukara added:
this situation in Syria has already festered for two years and the longer it drags on, the bigger the threat to U.S. interests in that part of the world. Syria is really central to the Middle East region, and having Syria destabilized could destabilize Lebanon, could destabilize Jordan, could destabilize some of the Gulf states.
So the United States has huge strategic interests in having the situation in Syria sorted out. How long will it take to get sorted out? Nobody knows. But we know one thing for sure – is that that United States is keen not to alienate the Russians in Syria, and as I said, the Russians are a major supporter of Bashar al-Assad because the United States needs Russian support in dealing with the issue of Iran’s nuclear program.
Benghazi has provided a glimpse on a huge foreign policy debacle that the press is determined to ignore. The Western position in the Middle East has been weakened to the point where the Western alliance itself is showing signs of strain. The New York Times describes the possible departure of Britain from the EU core. “Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain has added to Europe’s malaise, vowing to reduce British entanglement with the European Union — or allow his people to vote in a referendum to leave the bloc altogether.” Note the word “allow”. There has always been resistance to “allowing” the British public to vote on the issue before because surveys suggest that the British public might well vote to up stakes and leave.
Even the United States has injected itself into the matter, with an unusually public insistence that Britain, a close ally, stay in the union, fearing that its departure would heighten centrifugal forces that would weaken Europe as a diplomatic, military and financial partner.
But why should the British get behind an Obama administration which has so far shown no ability to win against anything other than the Republican party? Washington has given away so much of the store to its rivals worldwide that it has become positively dangerous to sail in company with it. Obama like a spendthrift who has run out of money, has taken to passing the dinner check to France. But France has no money either so Britain is tiptoeing for the door before the waiter can find them. It is every man for himself.
That leaves France alone in North Africa and leaves no one in the Gulf and the Levant.
The worst case scenario for the Obama administration is that Syria represents its high water mark; a kind of Stalingrad for the West. The danger is that from here on forces hostile to the West will take the counteroffensive while it can only feebly resist by referring people to the United Nations. But there is worse.
Bruce Reidel at the Daily Beast writes that the world’s “last absolute monarchy” — the Kingdom of Saudi Araba — may be where the next blow will fall. “While a revolution in Saudi Arabia is still not likely, the Arab Awakening has made one possible for the first time, and it could come in President Obama’s second term.”
The same demographic challenges that prompted revolution in Egypt and Yemen, a very young population and very high underemployment, apply in Saudi Arabia. Extreme gender discrimination, long-standing regional differences, and a restive Shia minority add to the explosive potential. In recognition of their vulnerability, the Saudi royals have spent more than $130 billion since the Arab Awakening began to try to buy off dissent at home.
Nor is Saudi Arabia alone in its predicament. Reidel notes the whole area is like a house of cards. The Saudis “have sent tanks and troops across the King Fahd Causeway to stifle revolution in Bahrain, brokered a political deal in Yemen to replace Ali Abdullah Salih with his deputy, and sought closer unity among the six Gulf Cooperation Council monarchies.” But if the Kingdom goes none of the rest can long hope to survive.
Facing the House of Saud is one enemy no king or dictator has ever beaten. Father Time. “Every succession in the kingdom since its founder, Abdel Aziz bin Saud, died in 1953 has been to his brothers. King Abdullah and Crown Prince Salman are the end of the brood.” And they are desperately old. Reidel states the obvious:
For the United States, revolution in Saudi Arabia would be a game changer. While the U.S. can live without Saudi oil, China, India, Japan, and Europe cannot. Any disruption in Saudi oil exports—whether due to unrest, cyberattacks, or a new regime’s decision to reduce exports substantially—will have a major impact on the global economy. In addition, the CIA war against al Qaeda is heavily dependent on the kingdom: Saudi intelligence operations foiled the last two attacks by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula on the American homeland. The U.S. military training mission in the kingdom, founded in 1953, is the largest of its kind in the world. The Saudis also have been a key player in containing Iran for decades.
The other monarchs of Arabia, meanwhile, would be in jeopardy if revolution comes to Saudi Arabia. The Sunni minority in Bahrain could not last without Saudi money and tanks. Despite all their money, Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates are city states that would be unable to defend themselves against a revolutionary regime in what had been the kingdom. The Hashemite dynasty in Jordan would be at risk as well without Saudi and Gulf money and oil. Only Oman is probably isolated and strong enough to endure.
And therefore it is on the Kingdom that any struggle for the region must ultimately center. Even though the Obama administration has obtusely been content to fritter away American strength with a whack-a-mole strategy in Afghanistan, Mali and elsewhere, America’s enemies will have long recognized that the center of gravity, the linchpin of the area, is the money and religious authority of Saudi Arabia. They may do what Obama could never do: focus on the point of weakness, go for the jugular.
There to stop them is the champion with the faked muscles. President Obama’s announcement that ‘a decade of war is now ending and an economic recovery has begun’ will cut ice with no one but his tame press. To America’s enemies it must signal the exact opposite. It must sound like Obama will not be coming out at the bell. He may try to declare himself the undefeated champion of the world and hope he gets away with it, like he got away with everything else. Chris Matthews will hear in those hollow boasts “the Gettysburg Address”. But to others the message will be plainer. “No mas! No mas!”. But at least the boxer Roberto Duran could once count on his manos de piedra. Today all the West has left to rely on is the manos de mierda.
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““the foreign policy expert and former Obama official, State Department official, Anne-Marie Slaughter””
Worthy of Restoration Comedy.
Woulda coulda shoulda. If we had kicked the Saudis after 9-11 and given the Hejaz back to the Hashemites then the maneuvers of the Wahabbis would not matter. The disaster really goes back to Wee Jimmy, one of several candidates for Obama’s father, yanking the rug out from under the Shah. We had the army in Iraq that could have taken out the last Ba’athist in Damascus and Obama sent it away. As i said before when predicting this administration’s actions I look at what would serve other powers interests in the following order; China, Russia, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the EU.
Saving Assad means the Russians get to try and derail bringing rival energy supplies from the Eastern Med online. Israel needs to develop those fields and Europe without them is Putin’s catamite.
Japan needs a reliable gas/oil supply. China is looking to choke off the near supplies in the South China Sea and the far supplies in the Gulf. We are facing a crisis like 1939 only the West, which now includes Japan, is in worse shape with more treasonous leaders.
Yup the wars are over and we lost just like in Vietnam (John kerry served there doncha know!) just like the democrats said way back on 9/12/00 when this nation after being attacked went to war against democrat wishes.
This is what the democrats wanted and by God they worked very, very hard to lose the war and succeeded.
I see the NorKs are now feisty enough to actually state they plan to target the US with Nukes and missiles during their tests.
The NorKs know Obama is a loser.
So do all of America’s enemies, Only the democrats and liberal’s see the POTUS as a Demigod.
Everyone else seeing a pile of bullshit with arms and legs and a well pressed suit.
“In recognition of their vulnerability, the Saudi royals have spent more than $130 billion since the Arab Awakening began to try to buy off dissent at home.”
That’s only Billions with a “b”. Soetero has spent Trillions with a “t” buying compliance from his apparently unreliable supporters. The only significant difference between Saudi monarchs and Soetero is that the Saudis believe there is a higher power.
But all of this hand-wringing is beside the point. If the West had more industrial capacity and less regulation, it could shrug off problems in other parts of the world. We made the wrong choices some decades ago, and the future has been determined. Not in detail, but certainly in outline. Time for EUnuchs to start learning Russian, and Japanese to start learning Chinese. And for little New Zealand to ponder whether it was wise to prohibit nuclear-armed US Navy vessels access to its ports — back in the days when it benefitted from nuclear-guaranteed peace.
Wretchard writes: “Obama has kept the true import of Benghazi from everyone but America’s foes: it was the moment when the Obama administration realized it had been duped into arming al-Qaeda.”
Why stop the condemnations with just the current administration, Wretchard? The guilty parties in empowering our Islamist enemies don’t just reside in the current White House, and a real call for accountability will require the smashing of more than a few plaster saints.
In April of 1983 a truck bomb destroyed the US embassy in Beirut, killing 63 including 17 Americans. Even after the horrific warning, the Reagan administration failed to ensure adequate security precautions and that October, another truck bomb destroyed the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 American servicemen. Most in the Reagan administration suspected Iran was behind the attacks . . . so the response was to sell the terror sponsoring regimes TOW-missiles through the Israelis and then lie about it to the American public. Can anyone explain why Reagan wasn’t impeached for this? Certainly puts Benghazi in perspective doesn’t it? Imagine if it was Obama who did what Reagan had done, what would Wretchard say?
And what of the current Shiite Islamist Da’wa party that rules in Iraq? Maliki’s authoritarian government has been sending funds and fighters to prop up Assad and is closely allied with Iran. How did this happen? Who was the stunning naif who put Maliki, a committed Shiite Islamist, in charge of our hard-won prize — and where was the Belmont Club while it was happening? The BC archives of that halycon era of 2005-8 make for some fascinating reading in art of self-delusion.
Here are the facts: with the tens of thousands of words people have written about Syria, no one ever writes about who’s fighting who, and why.
That’s because they don’t know. The desire to pontificate commonly outweighs knowledge. That is a sure sign we should stay away from this debacle or end up throwing colorless liquid on a fire without knowing if it’s gas or water.
“Do something” just doesn’t cut it. Forget about it.
How did this happen? Who was the stunning naif who put Maliki, a committed Shiite Islamist, in charge of our hard-won prize — and where was the Belmont Club while it was happening? The BC archives of that halycon era of 2005-8 make for some fascinating reading in art of self-delusion.
Why don’t you read the archives then. I called Iraq the “key to Iran”, the place where a rival power Shi’ite power center could be created to rival Teheran. And the military presence in Iraq was to be used as distant cover to promote developments in the region that could ultimately be influenced by Washington. All that is in the archives.
I know that Thomas Ricks saw it differently. That many people thought Iraq was a a mistake. How can we tell which is the truth? One way is by looking at the map. An American force in Iraq could indirectly cast its shadow on Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran. But a decision was made to reverse the position entirely; to put America’s ground force in Afghanistan where it was landlocked by Pakistan, Russia, and Iran. From surrounding them America went to being surrounded.
As for successor regimes, well that’s the point isn’t it? Obama pulled out without ensuring a successor regime in Iraq. He didn’t even think he needed one for Libya. And as for Afghanistan, talks are under way with the successor regime. It is the Taliban. What is the successor regime for Syria and who will ensure it?
Japan and Germany were occupied for 10 years following the Second World War until a successor regime was good and emplaced. This was the standard method for stabilizing a country for all of the Cold War — until Obama decided he could up stakes and try something new.
Maliki could have been our Shi’ite. And if we didn’t like it we could have changed him with the means at hand. But where are the means. I would be pro-Teheran if I were Maliki. What consequences need I fear? Iran is right across the border and America is — where?
You want something for the archives? Here it is. As time goes by it will become acknowledged by historians that Iraq was the right strategic place for America to be and Afghanistan entirely the wrong one.
Perhaps I’ve hit the spot but I’m not worried about the long term verdict. History’s judgments are all the better because they become clearer over time. Revisionism doesn’t work with history. It will judge Obama and judge him harshly. People will read the archives of the Belmont Club and draw entirely different conclusions from what you think.
I think people will then see clearly that America had an existential stake in the region turning out a good way. That the choices were never between staying out and staying in, but in staying in to win or in staying in to lose. There is of course now the last alternative. Staying out and losing.
Place, date, event: St. Stephens Chapel, November 12, 1936, Winston Churchill speaks about the state of rearmament in Great Britain in the face of Germany’s rearmament, and his belief that there is an urgent need to institute a Ministry of Supply (excerpt):
“…The First Lord of the Admiralty in his speech the other night went even farther. He said, ‘We are always reviewing the position. Everything, he assured us is entirely fluid. I am sure that that is true. Anyone can see what the position is. The Government simply cannot make up their minds, or they cannot get the Prime Minister to make up his mind. So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent. So we go on preparing more months and years – precious, perhaps vital to the greatness of Britain – for the locusts to eat. They will say to me, ‘A Minister of Supply is not necessary, for all is going well.’ I deny it. ‘The position is satisfactory.’ It is not true. ‘All is proceeding according to plan.’ We know what that means.”
Yes, three-quarters of a century later, we do. All is going according to The One’s plan — in the Middle East, in North Africa, in Eastern Europe, in the Caucasus, and in the South China Sea.
Have faith. Several million low infos cannot have been wrong. Coming next, in a brilliant stroke, he returns from a conference in Tehran and stands on the tarmac at Andrews, waving a piece of paper …
wretchard @ 6 said:
“You want something for the archives? Here it is. As time goes by it will become acknowledged by historians that Iraq was the right strategic place for America to be and Afghanistan entirely the wrong one.”
I agree with Wretchard. After 9/11, bin Laden wanted us to attack Saudi Arabia. Fortunately George W. Bush saw through bin Laden’s strategy, pulled our few remaining troops from Saudi Arabia and went after Saddam. Doing so showed considerable tactical cunning. Too bad Obama does not have a clue.
By the way, there are no good guys in Syria. Assad is the classic Middle East tyrant but unfortunately the Islamic Fascists are poised to fill the power vacuum should Assad fall. The Arab Spring has proven to be a fiasco.
Wretchard: What Obama will try to do now according to “the foreign policy expert and former Obama official, State Department official, Anne-Marie Slaughter” is to “find the happy medium between not committing us to a decades-long ground war and choosing not to do anything”…. It must sound like Obama will not be coming out at the bell.
Tell me. Exactly what can he do? The U.S. is much too bankrupt to run “decades-long” ground wars. We can have a Nanny Welfare State, or we can have a World Policing Empire, but we cannot have both.
It was Spengler who has been so critical of the Iraq liberation, thinking it was a dumb move by Bush, at least trying for something like “democracy” there.
I agree that Obama pulling our troops out of Iraq was a terrible move with long-term negative consequences we’re only now seeing come to pass.
I’ve long held that AQ’s big goal is the kingdom that is now called Saudi Arabia. With that oil resource and the population of Egypt, the Islamist counter-attack against the West will gain great power.
One can imagine what country is working very hard behind the scenes to ensure that Japan’s nuclear power plants remain shutdown. The Chinese would welcome the Japanese weaking themselves and the Russians will enjoy a long-term and growing market for their Siberian LNG.
Whitehall @ 10 said:
“It was Spengler who has been so critical of the Iraq liberation, thinking it was a dumb move by Bush, at least trying for something like “democracy” there.”
Spengler is knowledgeable, intelligent and wise but not always correct (Who is?).
Taking down Saddam and occupying Iraq was a strategically correct response to 9/11. Pursuing that strategy required the United States to promote democracy in Iraq. It is an open question whether George W. Bush privately thought that Iraq was ready for democracy despite saying as much publicly.
Ignominious @ 9 said:
“Exactly what can he do? The U.S. is much too bankrupt to run “decades-long” ground wars.”
Depending on how you run the numbers, the U.S. is indeed bankrupt. However the cost of these foreign wars would be insignificant compared to the economic damage resulting from an Islamic fascist nuclear assault against a major U.S. city.
What’s fair value for insurance? You calculate the cost of a potential catastrophe and multiply the number by the likelihood of the catastrophe happening to get expectation value. What’s the expectation value of a hypothetical Islamic fascist attack against the U.S., e.g. a 9/11 based upon nuclear weapons? I suspect that number is much greater than the amount currently being spent on containing Islamic fascism. The real question we should be asking: What’s the most cost effective way to contain Islamic fascism? I suspect that going into “Ostrich mode” with our heads in the sand (or up our behinds) is not the most cost effective approach.
Meanwhile, Chinese power continues to expand:
China buys Russian bombers:
“China is to purchase Tupolev Tu-22M3 bombers through
a contract with the Russian Federation for 36 aircraft.
The agreement calls for 12 bombers to be delivered
first and the other 24 coming in a second tranche.
The Tupolev Tu-22M3 is a supersonic, swing-wing,
long-range strategic and maritime strike bomber
developed by the Soviet Union. A number the bombers
remain in service with the Russian military — as of
2010, the Russian air force fielded 93 Tupolev Tu-22s
and the Russian navy 58 — and represent a
significant upgrading of the operational abilities
of the Chinese air forces.”
See:
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/China_buys_Russian_bombers_999.html
Wretchard: “As for successor regimes, well that’s the point isn’t it? Obama pulled out without ensuring a successor regime in Iraq. He didn’t even think he needed one for Libya. And as for Afghanistan, talks are under way with the successor regime. It is the Taliban. What is the successor regime for Syria and who will ensure it?”
First, this ignores that the SOFA agreement for the major withdrawal from Iraqi cities in ’09, and a complete withdrawal in ’11, was signed in 2008 by President Bush. After that executive agreement, Obama had very little room to maneuver when taking office.
Second, Obama could not ensure a successor regime because the Maliki had already assumed the thin veneer of legitimacy necessary for international diplomacy under the Bush administration, and even if Obama declared war (covertly) on Maliki, he had no suitable candidate or party to replace him with. You still don’t get it, do you? If you want to ponder historical counter examples then you should name your satrap, your strongman. Chalabi? The Iraqi Awakening? Please. There are no Iraqi Washingtons or Jeffersons with a political base of their own, and there was no way Iraq was going to be reconstructed as a secular, liberal regime, amenable to US interests. That fantasy cannot be maintained among honest people.
Wretchard: “Japan and Germany were occupied for 10 years following the Second World War until a successor regime was good and emplaced. This was the standard method for stabilizing a country for all of the Cold War — until Obama decided he could up stakes and try something new.”
An amazing exercise in amnesia. You forget that this war was NOT sold as a major occupation that would require decades of reconstruction and trillions of US dollars. It would be fast (Donald Rumsfeld: “Six months at most”) and cheap (Paul Wolfowitz claimed before the US Senate that the war would be financed by Iraqi oil) and we had ready allies to step in and rule (Ahmad Chalabi and his hollow INC), not babysit a new democracy for a half century or longer. It was not Obama who would try something new — it was the Bush administration’s very basis for selling the war to the American public. Do you even remember the name Jay Garner? Paul Bremer?
Truly reconstructing Iraq and Afghanistan would have been a massively bureacratic, liberal, phenomenally expensive, state-building projects on a grander scale than the post-WWII reconstruction of Germany and Japan. Those countries were ethnically homogenous and already advanced industrial states, and America had no experience with navigating through the quicksand of tribal politics, let alone calming Sunni/Shiite religious tensions. You cannot both advocate for smaller government and engage in the largest government reconstruction project since WWII — even larger if it was to have actually succeed.
Of course Obama didn’t secure an end-state in Libya! What a disaster if he had occupied Libya and raised taxes to finance a true reconstruction effort. Are you really claiming he should have? The casualties at Benghazi would have been nothing compared to American troops trying to futilely establish peace in what is not a viable nation-state.
George W. Bush was a Republican. Almost by definition, he did things by halves. He made many mistakes, but that ought not to blind us to the things he got right. Harry Truman made a hash of the early Cold War. He let the Iron Curtain drop down over Eastern Europe. He “lost China”. His Secretary of State may have caused Korea by leaving it out of a speech. He fought Korea to a near-loss draw.
Yet for all of that Truman was strategically right about the Cold War. It was about containment and finding alternative, nonnuclear ways to topple the Soviets. He did the right strategic thing in Berlin, 1948 and again in Korea, 1950.
But it took Eisenhower to see it. Eisenhower essentially continued Truman’s policies and by so doing, made it bipartisan. Forty years later the Cold War was won.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened if a Democrat instead of Republican had been in office on September 11, 2001 and responded by invading Iraq. If a Democrat had started off on the right foot, a Republican successor, who by definition goes along, might well have continued the policy. Iraq might in the end have been a comparative Japan or Germany in the Arab world. And the public would have thought no more about garrisoning Iraq than they did about garrisoning Germany, where bases remain to this day.
Iraq was the right move not because GWB thought of it, but because it was the right move, just as going up against Nazi Germany was correct even if Hitler never had a WMD program going, even though Roosevelt thought so and actually brought the Atomic Bomb into the world thinking so. There were other reasons why the Third Reich had to go. Saddam had to go from strategic necessity, whether he had WMDs or not.
Harry Truman, btw, was the last American president to have only finished high school. The last non-Harvard, non-Yale, non-West point, non-Hollywood leader of the modern age. He was a Democratic party hack. FDR met with him only twice as vice president. He probably met the janitor more often. He was a haberdasher. He had thinning hair. He wore glasses. But set against all these defects was one great asset. By luck or by judgment he was strategically right.
The Cold War could have turned hot. That it did not was not due to the mellifluousness of Truman. It was due to his being correct. And we live as a consequence.
I have not accused the esteemed commenter of amnesia or defects of that nature. But I remember enough to recall the unremitting opposition to the Iraq strategy; and if it was frustrated and left incomplete, lets give the Democrats the credit where credit is due. If we are willing to blame GWB for going in open ended, spare a thought for those who wanted him — insisted that — he leave it empty handed. But ultimately we should leave things to posterity. You have written yours. I have written mine. Let’s see who’s right.
Are we to take this seriously? Or Syriasly? Are we to believe the Obama administration has taken the lesson of Benghazi to heart, drawn the proper conclusions, and are now prepared to draw up a serious foreign policy that serves the interests of the United States? Seriously?
To say that they are serious
Is to seriously weary us
They have no interests but their own to serve
Giving guns to Muslim killers
Is to them just stocking fillers
So to say Benghazi caused them all to swerve
Is to say their stripes have changed and
All their goals are rearranged and
They are looking out for us from now on in
They still sing the same old song here
Nothing new just move along here
‘Cause the policy is what it’s always been
I always find that presidents have “room to maneuver.” It’s whether they choose to, informed from their vision and by their subsequent policy.
It’s why six months went longer, because they decided to change their policy to feedback from reality. They did not blame Clinton, arrest Gary Busey, and then say “what difference, at this point, does it make?” because that wouldn’t align to their vision or to their policy goals.
What is Obama’s vision, policy, and goal? What affect will it have, historically, not just to the US, but to the world? I think that’s a pretty obvious theme from these last posts.
Re. # 8. Eggplant
“After 9/11, bin Laden wanted us to attack Saudi Arabia. Fortunately George W. Bush saw through bin Laden’s strategy, pulled our few remaining troops from Saudi Arabia and went after Saddam. Doing so showed considerable tactical cunning. Too bad Obama does not have a clue.”
Obama is following a script started by his predecessor. Bush squandered the opportunity created within few weeks of initial campaign by engaging into “building democracy” idiocy. As if modern pluralistic state can be magically brought into existence by purple fingers or Hamas elections.
None of this really makes any difference as long as Mecca exists. The proper response to the aggression that culminated in 9-11 was nuclear, and it still is, and it may take a while but we will more than likely get there yet. The three conjectures are almost off the table and the golden hour run out.
I went along with 82nd Airborne into Iraq in 2003…we didn’t jump in as we initially planned to do, but drove up in our soft-side humvees and borrowed Kuwaiti school buses. Granted I was something of a REMF, but it was obvious Iraqis were waiting for full flower of US might to rain DVDs and iPods down on them. When mission was left entirely to the military because GWB couldn’t get state department or other civil service types to sign up for the cause, it was surely doomed. I believe like Wretchard it was correct strategic choice. If Bill Clinton had finished the fight he started with Saddam in 1998 (which GHB was entirely unable to do in 1991 for same reasons as his son), Iraq might have turned out entirely different.
As if modern pluralistic state can be magically brought into existence by purple fingers or Hamas elections.
You might well be right and it may prove ultimately impossible to bring anything like modernity and rationality to the Islamic world. But think of what this means. It ultimately means the world of the Three Conjectures. That is a world where Iran gets the bomb, the KSA arm up buying stuff from Pakistan, the regimes fall and terror groups get the nukes and biologicals and chemicals and remain unreconstructed jihadis.
That is the world we are bound for now. And if left unchecked it will lead to a huge, huge tragedy. If the Islamic world cannot coexist with the rest of humanity, at some point the West will have to choose between survival and total, horrible victory.
Maybe that’s the way it is. That nothing any President could have done would have made a difference. But what I dislike most about Afghanistan is that it has no chance. Not even the ghost of a chance. Even the criticisms leveled against Iraq do not address it’s key virtue. It had a chance, however slim, however long the odds. Was there anything else that held out even the slightest hope of alternative?
At this stage the opportunity may already be past us. The “Golden Hour” I talked about in the Three Conjectures may have come and gone. Just what exactly does the hegemon staying in the firehouse mean when a region with trillions of dollars in oil goes nuclear and erupts into a sectarian civil war? What will it mean for Israel? Or Europe just across the Med?
We shall see.
Per 1, 6 and 14: “But ultimately we should leave things to posterity. You have written yours. I have written mine. Let’s see who’s right.” Well said. If anyone should be taken to task over what was written in recent years that did not prove correct, it should be some of our esteemed commenters who were certain that ‘Pootie Poot’s’ tanks would keep rolling into Tblisi and onward to Talinn or even Warsaw.
There were those who opposed Iraq for fundamentally sound and patriotic reasons, and those who opposed it for simple partisan hackery. The apparent death of the antiwar movement once Bush left office — despite the excellent and Congressionally unauthorized Libya adventure plus Afghan/Pakistani theater deaths spiking — suggests more of the latter than the former. And our boys dying in Afghanistan cannot even be said to be dying for a ‘peace with honor’ that Nixon promised when winding down Vietnam — the same people we chased out in 2001 are going to end up running most of the country again save for a rump around Kabul, perhaps.
Per comment one, Russia already faces growing, stiff competition in the EU natural gas market from a neighbor…Norway. Even RT is reporting this. And this is all taking place before U.S. LNG comes online or the EUropeans have constructed any major LNG processing facilities to take in either American or Qatari gas (they prefer to pipe in from Algeria via Gibraltar Straits, for now). Hence Russia is likely to switch the mix from gas to oil, cranking up its own fracking in the gigantic Bazhenov Shale near the existing pipeline infrastructure of Western Siberia.
And yet…the neocons, in their strategic foolishness and enthusiasm for any carrot they think in the short run will spread ‘Arab democracy’ and hurt Oceania’s biggest strategic competitors, have outsmarted themselves once more. Just as China and…France and Russia ended up with big stakes in the Iraqi oil fields. Instead of getting a gusher of cheap Libyan light sweet crude and gas piped right across the Med via Sardinia for that holy grail of repeating the 80s bankruptcy of the Evil Empire, the Obama war they embraced and only criticized for not involving the U.S. enough has set North Africa alight. And now it threatens to spill over into oil rich West Africa too. Meaning that bitterly cold but safe and insurgency-free Siberia starts looking better as a supplier all the time while pipelines keep blowing up from Algeria to Nigeria to Libya (the Libya ‘incidents’ being used to justify Morsi’s looming ‘peacekeeping’ oil grab for a bankrupt Egypt):
http://johnhelmer.net/?p=8491
As Spengler wrote, it’s no wonder Ralph Peters and other ‘conservative’ commentators confess that they are dolts compared to the evil supergenius Putin (“Americans Play Monopoly, Russians Play Chess”.) The problem is like any judoka athlete Putin is simply letting the momentum of Anglo-American foolishness and hubris send his opponent sprawling on the mat. Putin isn’t tossing America with all 5″4 of his strength, no matter how much time he’s spent with rythmic gymnists of late.
Well there are two questions, one is what is the proper US response to the world, and the second is why can’t we even have a rational debate about it.
The press, the libtards – but I repeat myself – simply can not and will not question anything that comes out of the mouth of the Obamanation.
The more I consider the Hildabeast one-beast performance yesterday, the more she demonstrated exactly the sanctimony that caused the problem in the first place. Senator Rand should have thanked her for demonstrating for them exactly what went wrong in the first place, and what must be changed to save future lives.
But not even the opposition seems to be able to see that, or say that, much less the press which after all is supposed to be at something like arm’s length from the issues, even if they come down as advocates after all.
As to the first question, what SHOULD we be doing – I remain ambivalent.
Mecca is important in Islam. The Moon is even more important in Islam. The Moon has been part of Islamic insignia since early Islam, it is part of many Muslim flags, and it is watched to calibrate the beginning of Ramadan. The Moon is central to Islamic identity. And what did the United States do? It went there, put its shoe prints on the ground, and left. And the United States has never returned.
It is fundamentally disrespectful toward Moon worshipers to treat the Moon is a strategically frivolous manner. The symbolism of going to the Moon must be given the gravity it deserves. When Iraqis complained that “You went to the Moon, but you can’t keep the electricity on,” that complaint was a key to understanding victory in this entire war. They saw us as a space faring civilization reduced to playing “whack a mole” against our enemies in the Middle East.
I think the principal reason why Barack Obama pulled the plug on returning to the Moon was precisely because it might mean psychological victory over Muslims – a victory that he has gone to great lengths to avoid. I am coming to think that this war in the Middle East really began with the end of the Apollo missions, for that is when the United States threw away its psychological advantage.
We can win this war. Returning to the Moon is central to military victory over our Muslim enemies.
The two hundredth anniversary of America’s victory over Algiers is coming on July 3, 2015. We need a commemorative stamp. We need to celebrate that victory in every way we can and we need to push the federal government into celebrating that victory too.
If Congress could get a bill commemorating that anniversary passed, President Obama would be forced to either sign it into law or vetoing it. Celebrating America’s victory over Algiers – will he or won’t he?
Wretchard said “That leaves France alone in North Africa and leaves no one in the Gulf and the Levant.”
Russia?
B
If the United States won’t celebrate the 200th anniversary of its naval victory over Algiers, it cannot be reasonably expected to confront the center of gravity in this present war – Saudi Arabia (and by extension, Iran).
Somewhat o/t but related, I was wondering recently how France was taking care of internal security since it stuck its big toe into an Islamist fight on another continent. Seems they’ve issued assault weapons and spiffy hats to the gendarmes:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21156500
#20: You might well be right and it may prove ultimately impossible to bring anything like modernity and rationality to the Islamic world. But think of what this means. It ultimately means the world of the Three Conjectures. That is a world where Iran gets the bomb, the KSA arm up buying stuff from Pakistan, the regimes fall and terror groups get the nukes and biologicals and chemicals and remain unreconstructed jihadis.
That’s exactly right. That’s just what it means.
Wretchard, maybe you should turn BC into a Bible-study blog. It’s high time everybody get right with God.
#28
This is where humanity sorely needs the frontier.
Without a frontier one is trapped in a closed system. Given an unremitting antagonist there are only two outcomes. Him or you. This is why the intransigence of fanatics is so dangerous. It is him or you and you have no choice in the matter.
When the world was bigger there was a third option: escape to the frontier. The “huddled and tired masses yearning to breathe free” could squirm out of the steel cage death match scenario by moving to Australia or North America.
But now the world is small. The fanatics have caught up. There is no more escape from the Necromongers who have come to convert everyone to, as the president says, “collective action.” The Borg are here. Here for your gun. Here for your crucifix. Here for your big gulp coke. Here for any vestige of remaining freedom you might imagine that you have.
If we are not to fight the Borg to death we must ultimately get beyond their reach. Of course those who want to stay and duke it out with the Borg are welcome to try. We could probably win over the Islamic world. But would we like what we saw in the mirror after we had done what was needed to win? Recently there was James Bond movie in which the villain explained what happens in that scenario.
At the end of the 3 conjectures that’s all you’ve got left. The super rats. I kinda hope the rover finds water on Mars so the frontier comes back. Then insofar as I am concerned I will gladly leave the world to the headchoppers and PC busybodies. To Islam and the Left. I would leave them to each other. They want what they want and you can’t keep it from them.
Re. #18 Old Surfer: That might have worked if done on 9/12. Now, Mecca won’t be enough; Medina and Qom will have to be included.
Taking the nuclear option off the table, what we should have done is give bin Laden what he wanted and make him choke on it. Take Saudi Arabia, most especially including Riyadh; drag the King of Mordor out of his palace and shoot him through the head on live TV, then demolish said palace after throwing his worthless carcass onto the nearest landfill. Establish a controlled corridor from some convenient seaport to Mecca, in which no weapons are allowed. Take over (colonise) the only part of SA of any interest to the West, namely the oil fields. And freeze and confiscate every last penny of the oil money and any real property owned by any Saudi individual or organisation.
Nuking Mecca, Riyadh, Qom, Najif (?), Medina….all the philosphical and ritualistic centers of Islam. Technically, it could easily be done.
How would it make you feel? How would the remaining 1 billion Muslims feel, about life, the West, the world at large, America (if we did the deed), etc.?
As Wretchard supposed, in the end there will be cannibalistic super rats, feeding off each other in a post-apocalyptic Dystopian nightmare.
And people wonder why “they” cling to either their guns, religion, or the silliness of Barack Obama and his neo-fascist visions. People can viscerally sense that things are coming apart.
Chaos is already everywhere, in little doses, like people just getting a little taste of heroin. Chaos is scary but intriguing. Feared, yet exciting. The tickle of terror yet the thrill of an adventure where the frontiers are closed.
Visit the cores of our rotted out cities. Our fellow citizens are there, existing in the hulks of cities that 40 years ago seemed vibrant. In my lifetime.
In my youth I visited Detroit with my family. Visited the River Rouge plant (Ford). Incredible place. But the chaos has overcome Detroit. Wouldn’t go into that city if you paid me. Chicago is following. Gary is there, as are a host of older cities. The chaos is well and rolling. Living theme parks of chaos.
Chaos is now part of the social fabric of our lives. Seems like the America of 50 years ago would have found this unthinkable. All the futuristic Utopian dreams of the ’60′s smashed to little bits.
Obama, he comes to fulfill the final prophecy of total Chaos. It’s not so much that he is a master of tyranny, but a master of “what difference does it make”, in fulfilling the hopes of smashing the America I was born into. Order and reason are out the door, a fool’s errand. Like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, summoning things he cannot control, while bluffing his way along.
Every spin of the chaos engine helps him to his goal. Nuke Mecca? Sure, more chaos. Break NATO? Chaos again. Get everyone fighting in the Middle East? Chaos for fun and profit. Renouncing “10 years of war”, almost guarantees there will be more war in the very near future. The madness is spreading. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
Whether it is by design or just flat out airtight stupdity and invincible ignorance, the result is the same.
There is no answer, really. I recall the statement by Gandalf speaking to Denethor in the Hall of the Stewards, “Did you not know that I am a steward too? If even one blade of grass survives this darkness, then in part, I will have succeeded.”
I think this is something to consider. Or perhaps it is our failing by resisting too much.
“Obama like a spendthrift who has run out of money, has taken to passing the dinner check to France.”
Reminds me of a joke.
“McDonald’s has just announced its new ‘Obama Meal’: order anything you want on the menu and the guy behind you has to pay for it.”
Bad news for Obama: the day is rapidly approaching when he’ll place his order as usual, turn around…and nobody will be there to pick up the tab.
wretchard @ 29 said:
“Without a frontier one is trapped in a closed system. … The “huddled and tired masses yearning to breathe free” could squirm out of the steel cage death match scenario by moving to Australia or North America. … I kinda hope the rover finds water on Mars so the frontier comes back.”
Actually, the Mars Phoenix lander imaged water-ice directly under the vehicle and also watched the ice sublimate. The geological data from MER-B (Opportunity) and MSL (Curiosity) leave little doubt that there is signficant amounts of water on Mars.
Speaking as an aeronautical engineer, getting people to Mars is not that difficult. You place a version of the International Space Station (ISS) in a heliocentric orbit that is resonant between Earth and Mars using a scaled up version of the solar electric propulsion system used for the Dawn spacecraft (Dawn is currently on its way to the asteroid Ceres). You then transfer colonists from Earth to this space station with biconic entry vehicles and they ride it to Mars (takes about 4 months assuming a fast transfer orbit). The biconic entry vehicles then takes the colonists to Mars from the space station through either a skip enty or aerocapture maneuver (you need to keep the peak deceleration under 4g for humans who have been in zero-g for over 4 months). Supersonic propulsive deceleration slowly lands the colonists on Mars (airbags and parachutes are not options when the payload is frail human bodies).
I’ve just described the “easy part”.
For the colony to be successful it must construct habitats using in-situ resources. Fortunately most of Mars is covered with iron ore that would be of commerical grade if it were on Earth. A necessary technology is converting that iron ore into steel plate. You have to build steel mills and machine shops on Mars. The Martian atmosphere is carbon dioxide and by heating it, one gets carbon monoxide that can be used for reducing iron ore into steel. The big problem is energy. Fossil fuels like coal are not an option on Mars. Nuclear fusion remains an unsolved problemed except as a weapon/explosive. Solar voltaics are even less effective on Mars than on Earth. You are really left with only one energy option: nuclear fission. Initially this is no big thing. You merely ship lots of old plutonium bomb pits to Mars and use them as an energy source. However eventually you’d run out of bomb pits and would need a local supply. That’s the big “gotcha”. Where do you find thorium or uranium ore on Mars that is in concentrations suitable for mining?
Bottom line: For a Mars colony, water is NOT the issue. The real issue is finding exploitable deposits of uranium or thorium ore for energy production.
The other day someone put it to me that Jesus was a loser. “The maxim that the meek shall inherit the earth,” he said, “buys you a one-way ticket to a crucifixion.”
“Sure,” I replied. “But why stop there? If the meek are losers then the logical thing to aspire to be is a headchopper. That is at the heart not only of the debate between Christianity and radical Islam, but that which divides humanity in general. Is it really smarter to be Jesus or Momo le Nain; Mohammed the Midget, the dwarf executioner of Algerian al-Qaeda?”
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I don’t know the right answer but essentially we we all wake up on earth to find that puzzle staring us in the face. There’s two checkboxes and no instructions. God’s trick question. And in a way we wonder who set it. The God of Jesus or Allah? Is it pick one of two answers? All of the above? Can we switch answers depending on the situation? Who would you like to be?”
I think that most people — Christians and Muslims — are neither Christ nor Momo Le Nain. They fit themselves somewhere in between, neither unconditionally giving nor completely given over to victory at any cost. And that is perhaps as it should be. I suspect we are not meant to choose of one of two answers, but to be wise as serpents when indicated and yet as gentle as doves when possible.
wretchard @29
Amen to that.
I also pray for an empty hinterland frontier in which to escape the crushing benevolence of our would be masters.
At least there still remain great swathes of tropical sea with sufficiently inconvenient coconut-fringed communities that are too insignificant and backward for the ‘urban’ Midgard Leviathan to bother [completely] devouring…Just yet.
Alas, the promise of freedom in interplanetary spaces is a dream worth dreaming for our grand-children’s grandchildren – should humanity be so lucky to enjoy them; though I strongly suspect the powers-that-be will never tolerate the emergence of any community of men who would dare live outside the long arm of their bullsh!t.
Wretchard @ 34 said:
“If the meek are losers then the logical thing to aspire to be is a headchopper. That is at the heart not only of the debate between Christianity and radical Islam, but that which divides humanity in general.”
The ugly truth is that Mohammed invented Islam about 610 years after the birth of Jesus. Islam was originally designed as a replacement religion for Christianity. When Mohammed was born, various forms of Christianity were the dominant religions in Northern Africa and Asia Minor. Alexandria, Carthage and Constanipole were major Christian cities. As a “Religion of the Sword”, Islam pushed Christianity aside and took its place. Through the Crusades, the Christian world tried to push back against Islam but for the most part was unsuccessful. Fortunately, Christianity does have its success stories concerning Islam. After centuries of bitter combat, the Moslems were driven out of Spain and partially driven out of the Balkan peninsula. However this reclaimed territory is quite minor when compared to what was lost.
Islam was originally designed as a replacement religion for Christianity.
And yet Christianity, at least as it historically evolved, had certain conceptual advantages over Islam. It’s emphasis on the discoverability of the truth was far more conducive to science and economics than was Islam. Indeed at the start of the 19th century Muslims themselves regarded Islam as an antique, hoary and loser religion. Kemal Ataturk was one leader who felt the mental chains of Islam weighing on him.
Strange as it may seem, for the longest time Jesus was beating the headchopper. Winston Churchill put it succinctly “Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”
Islam might raise up fearless warriors. “But whatever happens we have got the Maxim gun and they have not.”
But the story turned again when we re-embraced the old gods. The deities of the forest; the tales of the Mother ship; the idea that you could print money and that there was no right nor wrong, no objective truth to cling to. When we forsook that path then the West lost its edge on Islam. And here we are.
Philip Bobbit in his book the Shield of Achilles notes that it is not the sword but custom and truth, science and commerce that make a civilization strong. And is that not another way of saying that perhaps the “meek shall inherit the earth” indeed provided they don’t forget the rest of scripture, notably the part that says, “and the truth shall set you free.”
The contest between Jesus and Momo le Nain is a closer match than it might at first appear.
d @ 31: How would the remaining 1 billion Muslims feel, about life, the West, the world at large, America (if we did the deed), etc.?
Just about the same, but hopefully a little more hesitant to act on it.
Maybe even liberated, even motivated to convert to Christianity.
Chaos is now part of the social fabric of our lives. Seems like the America of 50 years ago would have found this unthinkable.
Y’know, life was never *really* as idyllic as on Leave It To Beaver, but what has changed is our leadership, as we’ve gone on about so many times here on BC, the gatekeepers have stopped keeping the gates, and example numero uno is this flatulence we call our present POTUS, and example numero dos is the challenger who lost to him. A leader sets an example, that’s part of their job, like the Queen of England, but they also have to *perform*, at least a little, or they become like the Queen of England, just actors, posseurs, figureheads, entertainers, Barack Hussein Kardashian. Sound familiar?
Wretchard #6, Eggplant #9:
In my opinion, what Bin Laden wanted was for the US to send ground forces into Afghanistan in attempt to root him out and generally subdue the country. This would return him once more to those thrilling days of yesteryear in which he singlehandedly brought down the USSR. Aside from that, it would solve his friends in Pakistan’s most pressing problem, that of no one giving a rat’s rump about them. On the front lines of a new war, Pakistan would once more strut on the world stage – and be able to extort untold billions in aid as well.
Read “Kill Bin Laden” by the commander of the Delta Force unit sent to get Bin Laden in early 2002. The conditions were impossible. Our local “allies” made the Keystone Cops look good. A simple attempt to look to see what was over the next hill resulted in our troops running into a “toll booth” consisting of a couple of teenagers with AK’s demanding money. You could either pay them or shoot it out with all of them. And of course, Pakistan offered no obstacles if they chose to flee that way.
Going after Iraq in an attempt to change the dynamic of the region – a Counter Value effort- while doing a Counter Force effort in Afghanistan limiting to taking down Al Queda and the Taliban – were indeed the right things to do. It is a matter of wonder that Obama managed to exactly reverse these successful actions and do just what Bin Laden wanted. Whether this was deliberately treasonous or merely inept will be debated for a very long time.
Eggplant #33:
To that I would add developing a real, actual, practical RLV, and methods to assemble ships in orbit. But I think before sending men you would send advanced robotic explorers capable of building a settlement before people get there. Aside from the ability to ensure the success of the colony, the spin offs from such capabilities would be tremendous – and will probably happen anyway. And I like the idea of catching some snowballs and sending them crashing down to Mars to help add some water, too.
Beautiful stuff, Wretchard.
I did not intend the above comment to antagonize the usual suspects who call me the resident Lubyanka plant (SVR no longer needs the old dept. store boys, it’s now next to Detski Mir or Moscow’s largest toy shop).
Russia still has deep problems though I think had Putin left after two terms he’d go down as the greatest Russian modernizer since Peter the Great (who himself remains a controversial figure in Russia, if you can find an Old Believer to ask). Unfortunately for Putin he’s going to stick around after the Sochi Olympics long enough to be blamed when the EUro crash and the sinking dollar drag down the ruble and Russia’s economy. On the other hand perhaps he has an escape plan of sorts, perhaps after the Sochi games are over in a couple years’ time he’ll appoint the Tuvan Ghenghis Khan-descended Sergey Shoigu as his successor and head for that multi billion dollar villa he supposedly has on the Black Sea. Then we can hear about how Russia is still raaaaaaacist when the man who leads it has a true Eurasian face and is leading Russia towards its destiny as the Canada to China’s America.
Either way we can be thankful Russia’s culture warriors who seek to have their rrrrriiooots in Church are a minority of a minority. Even the Russian liberals didn’t like what they did, there were only those Russophobe fanatics mindlessly enthusiastic for anything done in the name of ‘spiting Pootie Poot’ even arming Syria jihadis to the teeth to go find some non-evacuated Russians to kill.
As for Russia supposedly being doomed, doomed, demographically — Nicholas Eberstadt of AEI did not account for thousands to tens of thousands of Greeks, Spaniards and even out of work Italians all relocating to the Motherland in the greatest Western European migration to Russia since Catherine the Great had her architects and craftsmen from Germany and France marrying the local girls.
Anarchis @ 13,
What of Rumsfield’s “Long, hard slog?” Noone predicted a cake-walk.
You are not remembering the entirety of the record.
Good fluency, though!
-S
Re # 29. wretchard
“I kinda hope the rover finds water on Mars so the frontier comes back. Then insofar as I am concerned I will gladly leave the world to the headchoppers and PC busybodies.” Unfortunately I am too old for that. And anyway water over there is not enough: there should be something the present power elite desperately wants to. Like unimaginable riches of overseas lands for Isabella and Ferdinand.
So far there is nothing outside the Earth they are interested in.
“And people wonder why “they” cling to either their guns, religion, or the silliness of Barack Obama and his neo-fascist visions. People can viscerally sense that things are coming apart.”
Yep. The evidence is all around, but the people who are supposedly in charge, and those who supposedly watch those in charge, are telling us all is well.
I thought this would be appropriate here. I know it’s not the first time it has appeared on this site:
“”She [Athena] was the goddess of metis, which means cunning and craftiness. . . . The word that we use today to mean the same thing, is really technology. . . . Instead of calling Athena the goddess of war, wisdom and macrame, then, we should say war and technology. And here again we have the problem of an overlap with the jurisdiction of Ares, who’s supposed to be the god of war.
And let’s just say that Ares is a complete asshole. His personal aides are Fear and Terror and sometimes Strife. He is constantly at odds with Athena even though — maybe because — they are nominally the god and goddess of the same thing — war.
Heracles, who is one of Athena’s human proteges, physically wounds Ares on two occasions, and even strips him of his weapons at one point! You see, the fascinating thing about Ares is that he’s completely incompetent. . . .
“So insofar as Athena is a goddess of war, what really do we mean by that? Note that her most famous weapon is not her sword but her shield Aegis, and Aegis has a gorgon’s head on it, so that anyone who attacks her is in serious danger of being turned to stone. She’s always described as being calm and majestic, neither of which adjectives anyone ever applied to Ares. . . .”
“Let’s face it, Randy, we’ve all known guys like Ares. The pattern of human behavior that caused the internal mental representation of Ares to appear in the minds of the ancient Greeks is very much alive today, in the form of terrorists, serial killers, riots, pogroms, and aggressive tinhorn dictators who turn out to be military incompetents. And yet for all their stupidity and incompetence, people like that can conquer and control large chunks of the world if they are not resisted. . . . Who is going to fight them off, Randy?
“I’m afraid you’re going to say we are.”
“Sometimes it might be other Ares-worshippers, as when Iran and Iraq went to war and no one cared who won. But if Ares-worshippers aren’t going to end up running the whole world, somebody needs to do violence to them. This isn’t very nice, but it’s a fact: civilization requires an Aegis. And the only way to fight the bastards off in the end is through intelligence. Cunning. Metis. . . . Do you know why we won the Second World War, Randy?”
“Because we built better stuff than the Germans?”
“But why did we build better stuff, Randy? . . . Well, the short answer is that we won because the Germans worshipped Ares and we worshipped Athena.”
w – When properly understood and translated ‘meek’ implies educable. Those that are able to learn shall inherit….. or maybe go to the stars, the new frontier.
To someone whose memory is faulty above (I do not worry about your name, it proves to be inconsequential), GWB was smarter than you may know. Look at a flippin’ map. Exit Afghanistan to the west and where do you end up? Exit Iraq to the east and where do you end up? i ran ? Well, your Massiah did, he ran. GWB negotiated the SOFA but did not finalize it and left it to his successor to implement the details which The Massiah failed to do. He just forgot or did not care or ………….
If we had a good SOFA there and could remain ‘The Strongest Tribe’ there all would be much, much different. GWB was an oilman first and knew what was coming for the US here at home and that we would have untold wealth coming our way. He knew and knew he did not need Iraq’s small store but that they did.
The Progs memories are as short as their equipment. Progs and Classical Libs s.u.u.u.u.u.u.u.c.k. at math and rational thinking.
w – “The Three Conjectures” was prophetic AFAIAC. Yup, just that good. Your were not wholly wrong at any point just may have had some small inaccuracies. It is being proven out daily but I doubt it is any small comfort. Watching the functional equivalent of the prophecy of Har Megiddo come to pass is un-nerving at best.
Did ya’ll know that half of the people are below average? In all ways? PC dictates that the Progs and Libs now gasp and call me names rather than chuckle lightly to themselves. Oh, and that lower half are the natural constituency of The Massiah. #1of535 is not too bright hisself.
Not Uncle Joe
how do you explain that Russia voted the 2085 resolution on Mali, and didn’t object to the french army taking the first role there?
hmm, looks like your John Helmer is paid for launching BS, and certainly he isn’t a gospel for analysing how geopolitics are perceived in France
As far as Cameron discourse saying that UK would leave the EU, it’s mere obfuscation, he is trying to hide his weakness.
Cameron his loosing his pants in UK with the pression of the UKIPERS, he is just trying to get rid of the baby and pass it on to us.
The referendum will never happen.
Very interesting discussion. But the facts remain — the Western Titanic is going down, having already smacked into the iceberg of printed money & endlessly-proliferating regulations.
For those among us who want to nuke Mecca etc, try to spend some time in a Muslim (specifically Arab) country. Most people there want to live their lives, have big families, enjoy the sunset. They have the burden of a very small minority who want to stir up trouble with the West, whether driven by genuine religious beliefs or cynical calculation.
We Westerners, on the other hand, have the burden of a very small minority of Reds who want to stir up trouble internally, whether driven by genuine Marxist beliefs or cynical calculation.
Men in the street in Cairo and Copenhagen have much more in common with each other than either has with his own ruling clique. And so there is no avoiding the coming Time of Troubles.
Wretchard #34: I think that most people — Christians and Muslims — are neither Christ nor Momo Le Nain. They fit themselves somewhere in between, neither unconditionally giving nor completely given over to victory at any cost.
True, but as the world continues to get smaller and smaller, the tendency will be to line up behind either Christ or Momo Le Nain. (The way the Bible has it, most will choose Momo in the end.) If you’re going to do what you have to do to survive, you’ll choose Momo. Yet Jesus insisted that “whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” There’s your last frontier: life beyond life on earth, the only escape from the closed system.
While I was searching why the Chadians warriors are well perceived, as those that have the greatest experience of Desert warfare, they beat Gaddhafi troops. 2000 volontarised for the Malian Campain)
“The pattern of the war delineated itself in 1978, with the Libyans providing armour, artillery and air support and their Chadian allies the infantry, which assumed the bulk of the scouting and fighting. This pattern was radically changed in 1986, towards the end of the war, when all Chadian forces united in opposing the Libyan occupation of northern Chad with a degree of unity that had never been seen before in Chad. This deprived the Libyan forces of their habitual infantry, exactly when they found themselves confronting a mobile army, well provided now with anti-tank and anti-air missiles, thus cancelling the Libyan superiority in firepower. What followed was the “TOYOTA WAR” (LMAO, innaugurating the kind of warfare), in which the Libyan forces were routed and expelled from Chad, putting an end to the conflict.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chadian%E2%80%93Libyan_conflict
#29 Wretchard:
No. I agree about humanity needing a frontier as a general proposition but for now… Nah. It’s nice here. Also, I’m viscerally uncomfortable with standing by and letting feral larcenous scoundrels simply take what they want.
Those Chadian “desert warriors” appear to be a modern equivalent of ancient Numidian cavalry.
It is not recorded that Jesus told any of the centurians he encountered to find some other line of work, at least not any more specifically than he told everyone else to lay down their burdens and follow him. And since the dawn of time it has been man’s duty to defend his lambs from the wolf. The hard question is where do you draw the line between defending your people and pushing your cause.
Yes this is a very interesting discussion and everywhere one looks, the prospects are grim. But being human, the pages in our book of the future stubbornly remain blank. We discuss, we analyze, we forecast and we develop an entire alphabet of plans. Yet as each new day comes we step into the next blank page of the future and by day’s end we humans have created the past.
I guess that means we make our future by making our past.
I enjoyed the stunts in the latest Bond movie but was not convinced by the crazy villain’s rats-on-an-island speech. I don’t for a minute believe that you can turn a rat into so finicky and picky an eater that it will only eat other rats when dead birds and garbage are freely available. Rats are not effete PC dieters who refuse to eat anything not approved by the latest TV food-fad-guru. A rat is a rat is a rat and they will eat just about anything.
Rats are robust in their dietary inclusiveness and humans are equally robust in our humanity. We must make what we can of the unwritten future, filling each blank day as best we can even, should it come to pass, in the midst of Armageddon.
When I look at my book of the future all that I see are blank pages.
Alexis
Chad had a good reason to fight the islamofashists, because of its northern region that is muslim
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ihJ_Mh21QQfn8kFNI4e4RcOvGhNg?docId=CNG.4572cb1b26f54123c55d1dd40ed4406a.1b1
-http://news.yahoo.com/chad-troops-move-toward-nigers-mali-border-face-124535386.html
_http://www.dw.de/chads-role-in-malis-future/a-16346413
RWE @ 39 said:
“To that I would add developing a real, actual, practical RLV, and methods to assemble ships in orbit.”
It worries me that a practical/cost-effective RLV (Reusable Launch Vehicle) might be disallowed by the Laws of Physics. I do not yet believe this but people whose opinions I respect do believe this. People say that assembling hardware in Low Earth Orbit is a nonstarter because it’s too hard to do fine hand work from inside a pressure suit. My snappy come back is to put the hardware inside a large air tight bag, pressurize the bag to 0.21 atm with pure nitrogen and have the technicians work inside the bag wearing ordinary clothing along with an oxygen mask connected to a re-breather. The same approach also works on the surface of Mars.
RWE also said:
“But I think before sending men you would send advanced robotic explorers capable of building a settlement before people get there. Aside from the ability to ensure the success of the colony, the spin offs from such capabilities would be tremendous”
That’s one of Zubrin’s ideas and it’s a good one. A Mars colonist would be seriously screwed up after having been in zero-g for 4 months and then pulling 4-g during Martian entry. For the first week, all they’ll want to do is lay in bed and get used to being in a gravitational field. The habitat needs to be ready to function as soon as the first colonists land.
“And I like the idea of catching some snowballs and sending them crashing down to Mars to help add some water, too.”
Diverting comets to the inner Solar System requires a lot of delta-V. Better to use in-situ water on Mars. There’s probably a liquid aquifer that’s not too deep. The quacks pushing Mars exobiology have been saying this for years and assumed as much in designing life detection experiments. Again, the big issue is finding thorium and/or uranium ore bodies on Mars or cracking the nuclear fusion puzzle. Ma Nature might not cooperate with the nuclear fusion puzzle so looking for thorium on Mars seems the best bet. Thorium has been detected on Mars from orbiting spacecraft but the concentrations found so far have not been interesting.
A recommended URL for following Mars exploration is:
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=9dce2f33b3ce02202b2895a34dfdccf6&showforum=52
Amazing stuff is happening right now on Mars with MSL and MER-B (your tax dollars at work). The geology on Mars is unlike anything on Earth. Mars really is another world.
wretchard @ 37 said:
“… Christianity, at least as it historically evolved, had certain conceptual advantages over Islam. It’s emphasis on the discoverability of the truth was far more conducive to science and economics than was Islam.”
This attitude towards the truth was a consequence of the Renaissance and Reformation. Prior to those events, the Christian world was as ignorant and backward as the Islamic world is today. The Islamic world desperately needs a Martin Luther. However that’s where the difference between Christianity and Islam maybe significant. Islam as a religion rooted in violence may prohibit the rise and effectiveness of a Martin Luther. My suspicion is that Islam can not be reformed as a religion and must eventually be replaced by secularism.
#29 Wretchard:
Thomas Jefferson was asked around 1809 how long it would take to settle the west. He said about 6000 years and 300 generations. How did he come up with that number? He figured it took 200 years to settle the land from the Atlantic coast to Charlottsville VA where Jefferson lived–a distance of about 100 miles. He knew the country was 3000 miles from coast to coast. He did the math. However, he was very wrong. Instead of 6000 years and 300 generations — it took only 100 years and 5 generations to settle the country from coast to coast. Why was Jefferson so far off? He was wrong because two major technological revolutions occurred in the 19th century that brought everything from railroads to telegraphs.
Yellowstone was made a national park in 1871. The railroad came through a couple years later. By the 1880′s the adventure destination for the super rich from New York, San Francisco and London was Yellowstone. Teddy Roosevelt– the son of a New York banker — went there as a young man.After he became president in 1901–he had paved roads built to the park so that the middle class could come. By 1915 –1000 cars per year were entering the park. Today the equivalent of Yellowstone is space. For the last 10 years the super rich have taken 20 million dollar rides into space. In two years, the cost will go down to $100,000. I’m hoping that in 20 years the cost of a tourist space flight will come down to 10,000 and I’ll have the money and health to go for a space ride. By then I’ll be 80.
We’re in the midst of a third massive technological revolution at the beginning of the 21st century. Not only is technology changing but the rate of change is accelerating. Newt Gingrich put it this way in 2007,
The twenty-first century is continuing to build upon the advances of the past 200 years. We are entering a period where nanotechnology and high-speed computing capability, coupled with massive database storage, shape the near-term future. But this is just the beginning; we should anticipate that we will see more technological innovation in the next 30 years than we have seen in all of American history.
This assertion is based on the extensive studies of Alvin and Heidi Toffler, experts at the National Science Foundation, MIT, Georgia Tech, NASA, and elsewhere. http://www.au.af.mil/au/ssq/2007/Winter/gingrich.pdf
In the five years since Newt said this 2 major technological revolutions have occurred. In 2007 laptops sales began to decline and sales of smart phones which are essentially computers crammed into a phone–took off.(within that revolution are dozens of internet fashions like facebook linkedin and twitter.) This hardware charge was lead by apple. The second major technological revolution has been oil fracking developed in the USA–which in the next decade will upend the energy balance of power–in favor of the USA. There have been hundreds of unsung marvels. For example, I just had a heart procedure done that eliminated my case of atrial fibrillation. I walk around amazed every day at having regained my old strength.
Just around the corner a new industrial revolution based on 3d printing and smart robotics.
In my opinion large scale off world migrations will begin sometime after the middle of this century.
The major shock however, in the first half of the 21st century will be that the cost of energy and water will come down so substantially that desert farming will become common. Why? because the major barrier to desert farming is the cost of energy and water.
The technologies to easily turn desert lands into productive farmland on earth will be the major trans-formative act of the 1st half of the 21st century. But then these technologies will be used to turn the deserts of the moon and mars into productive farm acreage. Essentially, the way to the deserts of the moon and mars will be through the deserts of the earth.
A second asteroid mining company has launched into operation. They figure that technologies for their work will mature sometime after 2025. http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/01/asteroid-mining
Marie Claude @ 49 – From the same Wikipedia article, but a different paragraph
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chadian%E2%80%93Libyan_conflict#New_French_intervention
“During the period between 1984 and 1986, in which no major clash took place, Habré greatly strengthened his position thanks to staunch US support…”
From the paragraph you cited, on The Toyota War
“This in turn endangered Libyan control over the Aouzou Strip, and Aouzou fell in August to the FANT, only to be repelled by an overwhelming Libyan counter-offensive and the French refusal to provide air cover to the Chadians.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUjGf2Grrus
Allowing your enemy a sanctuary in a “safe haven” in another country is a prescription for failure. Nixon knew that, so he started Operation Linebacker II and drove Uncle Ho Chi Minh to the peace table in Paris! (against the wishes of that TRAITOR JOHN KERRY!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Linebacker_II
John Kerry and the Dragon Lady of the Viet Cong!
http://www.wnd.com/2004/10/26929/
57. MachiasPrivateer
oh that !!!
The Americans weren’t on the Ground, the French were, the Chadians were trained and armed by the French, you forget that the french mirages previously vitrified Ouadi Doum libyan airport in northern mali.
France didn’t lead the Chadian war against Libya, otherwise, the gentle western world would have accused us of making a colonial war, like some still do for the Malian war, it’s a former french colony, therefore we must protect our interests… (ie Germany)
The most important question for anyone is this: Who or what owns you? Are you a slave to work? Drugs? The Chicago machine? Does money own you? Is it fear? The Rich young ruler comes to Jesus and asks if there are any more rules to follow, since he had kept all the ones he knew. Jesus makes a simple demand of him. “Go sell all you have and give it to the poor.” The story says he went away sorrowful. Money owned him. This is not a story about rules, but what owns us. For me one thing is books. I look at over a thousand within 10 feet. For me the paradox is that in order to keep my books, I must be willing to give them up. For each of us Jesus asks if we are willing to sell what owns us.
This is at the heart of what this thread is about. God seeks submissives, the devil seeks slaves. The devil offers golden chains. God offers us freedom to come to Him. Three words sum up being a disciple of Jesus. Fearless, Joyful obedience. Will we join the adventure? This is the secret of joy in the midst of the evil we face. We know who wins in the end. God invites us on a paradoxical journey of intimacy and awe. Our battle is with much more than we can see.
I have just started Dean Koontz most recent book “Odd Apocalypse”. On pages 14-15 are some lines that struck deep. Odd (the hero) says “Stormy Llewellyn, whom I loved and lost, believed that this strife-torn world is boot camp, preparation for the great adventure that comes between our first life and our eternal life. She said that we go wrong only when we are deaf to duty.
We are all the walking wounded in a world that is a war zone. Everything we love will be taken from us, everything, last of all life itself.
Yet everywhere I look, I find great beauty in the battlefield, and grace and the promise of joy.”
Interesting how the words of this book, and Belmont Club tonight blend in a strange mixture that reveals true Hope. True Hope is what we should want. It doesn’t promise success, it simply offers a chance to succeed. It is the torpedo bombers at Midway drawing down the fighters. It is escort carriers and destroyers confronting the Battleships off the beaches. It is Governor Walker confronting Madison mobs. It is Washington crossing the Delaware. It is “Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead.” It is the Marines at a Korean reservoir.
“Be not afraid.” Jesus words ring out. Will we in this time of peril embrace true Hope. To know we are not alone. In this dark hour, certain to get much darker after 4 more years, will we remember and live those words of true Hope & Joy.
Marie Claude @ 58 – Mais oui! THAT, Oil For Food!
Franco-German Solidarity Forever is your motto? How “Vichy” of you!
REMEMBER OHAMA BEACH!
FIRST THE FRENCH SCREW IT UP, AND THEN UNCLE SAM HAS TO FIX IT!
No wonder NATO is ineffective. Remind me again who it was that provided the “no fly zone” over Libya, at the request of France?
60. MachiasPrivateer
stop your tremendous Delirium
Wretchard:
Without getting into the debate of who was right and who was wrong about Iraq (history will make that judgement), I would like to offer my own perspective regarding Iraq and the 3 Conjectures:
The high probability was from the beginning that trying to create a liberal, Western alternative to Iraq would not succeed. Centuries of Islamic culture and history have a powerful inertia, and it was not likely that the USA could change that culture enough by force. Under the best of circumstances, the odds were not in the favor of the USA. Yet, Kemal Attaturk had done something similar. It was worth a try.
Because the alternatives are: total war with Islam, a REAL clash of civilizations; or submission to Islam. The former choice is total war, the latter choice is slavery for all non-Muslums. Bush and the republicans, to their everlasting credit, tried to create a third option. For what my humble opinion was worth, they were right to try. It speaks well of American and Western civilization that they DID try.
But the Left and the Islamists themselves would not have it. Obama has chosen to snatch defeat from what could have been victory. The people of Islam have chosen to embrace Islam and the past, instead of a Western future. What I hate about them is the fact that now I have no choice but to wish for the lesser evil of the 3 Conjectures, because the alternative, the victory of Islam over the West, would be much worse.
No, I will not like what I see in the mirror, Wretchard, if total war happens. But at least I will be able to leave a legacy of human freedom. And, if total war does come, I shall the bitter satisfaction of saying, when, Muslums and Leftists ask me why the West did what it did “you gave us no choice, you fools.”
BattleofthePyramids (#62) wrote “No, I will not like what I see in the mirror” I say brother hold your head high! For you fight for those that we know are now suffering great evil, inhumanity and injustice and for the future generations there and here! Anyone with more than the 15 second sound bite and the PC history book knowledge of our Public school systems know just how evil Islam is, has been and will always be! You know the Lie that there is a moderate Muslim or that Islam will change if it was to see the (en)light(ened way). Let us end this evil once and for all, let it not claim another innocent life.
Marie Claude @ 61 – Have you ever heard of Joan of Arc?
I have. And I also have seen exploding secondary contaiment buildings at Fukushima http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZN7URkabX0 and heard of the threat of radiation sickness to infants in Tokyo and known my duty.
Grab my trusty squirt gun and run back into the Fires of Hell to help others.
We made a Covenant.
I did my part, and those kids are all right.
Eggplant #55:
By RLV I do not mean SSTO. Given current and projected technology, that will at best result in an expensive, spectacular toy that is of no use except as a jobs program – which is all some organizations really are interested in. I mean first a reusable first stage and eventually a reusable 2nd stage. We could have built that in 1975 had we not focused on the Shuttle, an expensive toy designed as a jobs program.
And I would not assemble teeny tiny components in orbit anyway. That was done because the ISS was designed as a jobs program to support the Shuttle jobs program. They had to assemble it using the Shuttle. We have known how to assemble RR trains with a minimum of direct human intervention for well over 100 years now. The Soviets developed automatic docking capabilities in the 70′s. SDI planned on automatic docking of large payloads and DARPA has demonstrated automatic docking as well. It will take a different attitude to do it a different way. See:
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2124/1
It’s a mistake repeated endlessly, in every conflict.
It’s trending in one direction, so observers assume the trend will continue, and utterly ignore the possibility that one side (generally the side things are trending against) will change its strategy so as to change the trend.
59. presbypoet
Money owned him.
………….
I’m not sure that I disagree with this but the turn of phrase but it can be misleading.
Why? The rich young ruler would have believed that he owned his money and not the reverse. The money was his source of his belief that he controlled his destiny — and therefor God is secondary — as in God is my copilot. He thought like many that the sum effect of Jesus would be that he would have to do some new religious practice like fast an extra day or tithe a little bit more. That is justification would come by works and not by faith.
This attitude towards the truth was a consequence of the Renaissance and Reformation. Prior to those events, the Christian world was as ignorant and backward as the Islamic world is today.
Who is ignorant? The people who founded all the great universities of Europe or the people who are incapable of making the connection between these universities and the so called Renaissance?
There is no excuse for being stupid about history. Not any more.
There is a dark overtone in a lot of conservative media. I’m not saying Wretchard is wrong he’s not. I’m saying I feel the ground slipping underneath my feet. Panicked people can make bad choices. There are, to paint a sick portrait, enough white nationalists, Neo Nazis and plain old real Nazis out there raring to take advantage of what they see as their golden opportunity.
People post a lot about Vietnam. The fact is we lost the battle but the US did not end. It was a travesty before we lost and afterwards.
But we won the war with the Soviets. We even put up with Carter. In fact , Carter won too since is an American. Plus we have not, in fact, lost in Iraq yet.
“Without a frontier one is trapped in a closed system.”
This seems to me to miss the biggest of all points. Christianity, maybe any good religion for that matter (which would not include Islam, as far as I can tell), is an ontologically open system.
That is what the cross signifies: despite being locked up in every tempero-spatial sense, Jesus on the cross points to THE way out, the point of openness in the system.
Greg Jaczko of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission resigned in disgrace after Fukushima. It seems he once said something to the effect of, “Don’t bring me solutions”. He really hated the grenade idea!
Page 267 of the FOIA email package pdf, Page 265 of the actual transcript
pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1205/ML12052A108.pdf
As a disciple of Ed Markey (D-MA), he was about as anti-nuke as a guy could be and had been trying to induce panic in the Japanese population with his ever expanding emergency evacuation plans.
HE ENDED UP UNDER THE BUS PRETTY EARLY ON!
Good thing none of the guys with squirt guns listened to him and evacuated!
“Never let a crisis go to waste.”
Wrechard
Your writing is brilliant, concise and a must read every day. Thanks for the forum.
Thank you, Richard, for a brilliant analysis.
Thanks also, for mentioning my one-time hero, Roberto Duran. Although he did have hands of stone, he also had feet of clay.
You make a very apt comparison. The substitution of mierda for piedra sums up the present issues very well.
Kinuachdrach #47:
“Men in the street in Cairo and Copenhagen have much more in common with each other than either has with his own ruling clique. And so there is no avoiding the coming Time of Troubles.”
I wish this were true. It falls into the trap, though, of believing in the Mythical Moderate Muslim Majority. They may have a lot in common but the differences are huge.
The percentage of Muslims who are not terrorists, but will either give them succor or look the other way and be happy with the results of them winning, is not matched in any way by the Christian community living in the West. Well over half the Muslims in the world, from what I can see, would be perfectly content with AQ winning and would be little troubled by living under them.
RWE @ 65 said:
“By RLV I do not mean SSTO.”
I understood that. In graduate school, we all derived the Rocket Equation and were made to understand that SSTO does not work. Why they threw money at X-33 will remain an every lasting mystery (Maybe Lockheed-Martin bought some politicians?). What concerns me is that even TSTO might be prohibited by the Laws of Physics. Again, I’m not yet convinced of this but it’s a worry.
RWE also said:
“… I would not assemble teeny tiny components in orbit anyway. That was done because the ISS was designed as a jobs program to support the Shuttle jobs program. They had to assemble it using the Shuttle. We have known how to assemble RR trains with a minimum of direct human intervention for well over 100 years now.”
If you run the numbers for manned Mars entry, it turns out that very large flying disks are a useful technology (a giant frisbee). You do an initial atmospheric entry at Mars with the frisbee flying edge first for high L/D and high ballistic coefficient, leave the atmosphere into aerocapture, shift your center-of-gravity and then do a final ballistic entry flat side first with low ballistic coefficient and low L/D. The Russians first came up with this idea for their embryonic manned Mars program. They would have launched their flying saucer “Shuttle style” on the side of an Energia launch vehicle. A working concept never got off the drawing board (the Soviet Union’s implosion scuttled the Soviet Mars program). If we wanted to build a flying saucer for manned Mars work, we’d need to assemble the things on orbit (the flying saucers are too big to fit inside a conventional launch fairing). Unfortunately, building a flying saucer on orbit with astronauts in pressure suits is not practical. That’s where my concept of building it in a pressurized bag might be a “good idea”.
no mo uro @ 74 said:
“The percentage of Muslims who are not terrorists, but will either give them succor or look the other way and be happy with the results of them winning, is not matched in any way by the Christian community living in the West. Well over half the Muslims in the world, from what I can see, would be perfectly content with AQ winning and would be little troubled by living under them.”
I vividly remember the Palestinians dancing in the streets with ecstatic joy after hearing of the thousands of innocent people being murdered in 9/11. That’s the true face of Islam, i.e. pointless violence against innocent people supported by mindless hate.
By the way (and totally off topic): Happy happy! With the support of freshly printed Bernanke bucks, the stock markets are now near all time highs. Even the implosion of Apple could not prevent the Federal Reserve and the PPT from pumping the markets to even higher values. We are so totally doomed. Rejoice and be damned!
No Mo @ 74: It is very hard for any of us to know the Big Picture. We each look at the world through our own keyhole, and we all know that modern Western polls & government statistics are somewhat less reliable than Soviet tractor production figures.
From what I have seen through my keyhole, it seems doubtful that half the world’s Muslims would be happy to see Al Qaeda take control. There are just too many of them teaching their kindergarten-aged kids to speak English, even Italian or French. Too many sending their precious daughters to universities in the West. Yes, there are lots of Muslims who don’t like our governments; lots of us don’t like our governments either!
The real enemy we face is inside our gates; that enemy is of European heritage and comes from a Judaeo-Christian background, Subotai’s TWANLOC. That is the enemy who is taking us down; not Muslims in far-away lands.
Exactly how does European heritage and Judaeo-Christian background, per se, make a person the enemy? For good measure – the enemy of what exactly?
Kin, seems to me that you’re confusing Christianity with its antithesis, secular humanism.
MachiasPrivateer: No wonder NATO is ineffective. Remind me again who it was that provided the “no fly zone” over Libya, at the request of France?
The French (and, I believe, the British) were the ones who pushed for the illegal and geopolitically unnecessary regime change policy in Libya, that is true, but as Daniel Larison put it the other day:
As for the waging of the Libyan war, it’s true that France agitated and pushed for the war, but the U.S. was ultimately instrumental in making it happen, and it couldn’t have happened without the U.S. Turning it into an official NATO mission and promoting the “leading from behind” idea were useful in order to obscure the extent of U.S. involvement, which was always considerable. Because allied security was never at stake, U.S. support for France and Britain mostly represented an indulgence of our allies’ poor judgment.
Larison
Anyway, it is good news that Assad, as bad as he is, may be able to hold on. Especially good for Syria’s vulnerable Christian population, many of whom are the refugees who were on the receiving end of “liberation” in Iraq.
39 @ RWE
The commander of the Delta Force unit sent to get Bin Laden, who wrote “Kill Bin Laden”, has also written two special op thrillers under the name Dalton Fury. Excellent reads both of them. Right up there with Andy McNab who wrote Bravo Two Zero.
It seems to me what Liberalism and Islamism have in common is that neither theology exhibits a live and let live attitude about others. Laisse Faire in matters of society. Both hold fast to a world dominating belief that all must succumb to religious orthodoxy whether it is blasphemy against the environment or the one true god.
Gay marriage is something that one must believe in and sing its praises or you will be put in jail, or at least, denied a living. The very freedoms that we were guaranteed have been squandered. The minders have followed us into our schools, into our churches, into our bedrooms, and now, into our minds where we are demanded to come out and sign a warrant against ourselves.
I have become skeptical of the great vast cities of the future, magnificent architectures bonding the fruits of society into useful structures. I have become skeptical because of our political leaders who would have all living in the basement while their headquarters were in the penthouse suite. Will they have bussing in space? Will Islamists blow up the launch vehicles? The answer is it is easier to destroy then it is to agree on what to build. Europe didn’t vote on whether Columbus should voyage in search of the new world and there will never be a vote here to go to mars as long as teachers unions must agitate for their growing share of wealth. We are all hostages on this planet now and if we cannot find a unifying purpose to get along then we shall unify in tearing it down and that is why I believe in the dark revisions of the future that show it as a smoldering dung heap. Ironically, the greatest peace and freedom achieved so far was under the aegis of mutually assured destruction.
Only through freedom will the wonders of the future wealth, energies, and health be brought into existence. Managing poverty which is what the misguided liberal is wont to do will only destroy the vessel that we must all live in and too many from the fascist Left to the Islamist right are willing to see it all go up in smoke if they were not to get their fantasy fulfilled.
As stated earlier the new frontier may be the frontier of the spirit. I would like to live in a part of the world without the tyranny of involuntary belief, and if not in the Western hemisphere, then I’d like to live on a continent where I was free to believe and practice what I believed, even though the religious Left might have cause to disagree. And if I could not live in such a region then I’d like to live in a nation that professes the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And if such a nation were not to exist, then I’d like to live in such a state. And should such a state not exist, then perhaps a county, a city, a district where a person could confess that they are skeptical of the arguments of global warming, gay marriage, gun control, central planning, and moderate Islam. And if not a district then a small café and that denied, I shall sit on a hill and think thoughts that I dare not share. Not in the New Fascist State where beliefs are sanctioned by the Media.
Yes I am an isolationist. I want to be left alone in my own bubble. What did settlers want if not to be the masters of their own destiny, to be left alone, to be isolated from their oppressors? And should we settle the uninhabitable regions of the solar system against god’s laws then too expect the orthodoxy of intolerance to follow and colonize that little experiment as well. In the end, there is no escaping our inherent flaws.
Considering the total span of human existence and the numerous religions that have come and gone, I find it difficult to take the leap of faith required to truly believe in any one version. I think the reason Christianity has persisted so well is it champions the common man, the meek, the poor, the afflicted. That my friends is a LARGE voting block. Plus it gives so many reasons to like it, peaceful coexistence and stewardship in the ten commandments and lessons examined within the Bible.
If you want to ‘defeat’ Islam as a religion,you have to attack its center of gravity. The US has been trying to make deals with those in power in Islamic countries which is stupid. The powerful are powerful by binding themselves to Islam and the protections it offers those in power at the time. The ones who want change are: women first and foremost, the least powerful people in the region. The poor and uneducated next. Had we used the WWII model as Wretchard alluded to and empowered those two sub-groups, nuetering the formerly powerful concurrently, we might have seen real change. The Japanese at the outset of the war believed the Emperor to be all-powerful but their defeat killed that argument for all time. Muslims will never let go of that belief until we chove it into their faces.
There are two types of humans, conquerors and the vanquished. We Americans, as we call ourselves now, conquered the native americans and rebranded ourselves. It was a battle of ideology and the most advanced culture outgunned the losers. That is the unvarnished truth of it, but how many current day Americans are afflicted enough by that truth to pack their bags and sail back to their country of origin? We believe in our hearts we, as a people are better in the end. And a short inventory of our accomplishments, inventions, contributions to all humanity I BELIEVE shows much more on the positive side of the ledger than the negative.
Q: So who is right?
A: Who is still standing?
In defense of Kin – I took what he wrote as to say that despite their Judeo-Christian backgrounds- many among us have become TWANLOC. I did not read it as an indictment of Judeo-Christian beliefs.
For my two cents, as I also know Muslims, is that there are many who just want to live their lives. It is only recently, when via the internet, that many of more intolerable and evil Koranic verses have become translated from Arabic have become known to the normal muslim population as attested to by Hirsi Ali.
That said, I think it is pretty obvious that the Muslim environment is much more, by a factor of at least ten, conducive to creating the anti-social Jihadi/Twanloc personality.
81. Annoy Mouse
I find it amusing you use same sex marriage as an example of being a dictated offense. So who is dictating that you get married to someone of the same sex? Try looking at that issue from a different perspective. How are you hurt if two men or two women get married? Is it simply that you don’t approve. Okay, you don’t have to approve, no law in the world can make you approve. But laws can prevent you from pushing your judgement onto others.
I am not gay. I could care less if two men/women get married as long as they are law abiding, good people.
Judgements? Isn’t that reserved to God alone?
This is where Republicans push people, voters, out from under the conservative tent. By doing that which they accuse the progressives of doing, dictating trivial behavioral rules, they alienate a large portion of the population. We should pick our battles more carefully. Abortion is a better battle. That requires depriving the weakest of humans to the basic protections guaranteed by our Constitution, namely the right to live. I don’t recall anything about marriage in the Constitution.
This is why Obama was able to get re-elected after such a poor first term, the alternatives were not substantially better. I voted Romney but I no longer identify with the Republican party. And I am not alone, not by a long shot.
East side London …Sharia Police in Action:
EP@75
‘ That’s the true face of Islam, i.e. pointless violence against innocent people supported by mindless hate.’
http://youtu.be/-2y5n-hAnUE
SE@84
‘I am not gay. I could care less if two men/women get married as long as they are law abiding, good people.
Judgements? Isn’t that reserved to God alone?’
http://youtu.be/8OOkEL0RiNE
enjoy
SF
Speakeasy – “But laws can prevent you from pushing your judgement onto others.” This is right and true but the fact is that “Gay marriage is a fundamental right” meme is being taught under the threat of law in schools in California and it smacks of fiddling while Rome burns that we are subject to being indoctrinated into the aberrant belief system of others why so much is wrong with our economy. “Aberrant” you say? Yes, aberrant. The world didn’t come into being through the singular fixation with homosexuality and it is noticeably absent in the flip side to modern progressivism in that Islam is against it all together and violently so. I am more libertarian than anything, at least in principle. I am registered independent and plan on remaining so.
I could care less what people do and what they call it but to call it marriage mocks nature and frankly I am sick of the constant drumming and indoctrination. Gay marriage was just a small example of liberal orthodoxy being shoved forcefully down our throats as you have unwittingly demonstrated. Global warming, abortion rights, blah blah blah; It’s not even the specious argument that offends, is the from on high lecturing that I must agree with that I share no common interest.
My moment of antagonization happened when the homosexual activists set out to evict the Boy Scouts of America out of the city park because they would not advocate homosexuality within their leadership. A group of people wanted to protest this hate based exclusionary methods, as in, intolerance on the side of gays by marching as the “Normal” people’s contingent in the cities gay pride parade. We were sued by homosexual activists and the judge ruled against us from participating in the city event. Homosexuals in politics are fascists hate mongers who will destroy everything that stands in their way.
Who’s dictating what? I professed a belief. You are to tell me that I cannot have those beliefs? The difference is that I am not advocating the state (or the Republican Party) promote my point of view and require it taught in schools. That would be wrong and that is what the fascists are doing. We have been discussing problems in the world and all you seem to care about is that some sexual deviant bullies who have push themselves into the top of the victim hierarchy ahead of all other minorities not have their agenda questioned. I am not putting forward a political platorm. Gay marriage advocates do that.
Unsk @ 83: “In defense of Kin – I took what he wrote as to say that despite their Judeo-Christian backgrounds- many among us have become TWANLOC.”
Thanks for putting it more clearly than I was able to.
There was not a single Muslim in the Senate when the Democrats looked at the Impeachment case against Bill Clinton, shrugged their shoulders, said what difference does it make when the President abuses his office & lies?, and voted to let him carry on. Not a single Arab either.
We need to name the enemy. And we don’t have to look outside the borders of the US to do that.
c @ 56: For the last 10 years the super rich have taken 20 million dollar rides into space. In two years, the cost will go down to $100,000.
Well not really, $20m got you to orbit at 18kmph and a tricky reentry, $100k just gets you five minutes on a ballistic arc at 2kmph and an easy reentry.
Takes almost 100x more energy to be expended and then dissipated, to get to orbit. Actually the $100k is the one that is too high, can’t imagine why that is more than $10k. Makes a short orbital jaunt about $1m. Doubt anyone will do much better than that for ten years.
#79 jules
from your link: “France is potentially less secure now than it was two years ago thanks to Sarkozy’s adventurism.”
but here, warning doesn’t concern French people, but Americans, Brits, and Germans
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/world/africa/britain-warns-of-imminent-threat-to-westerners-in-benghazi.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0
Libya war was more a test on how to make a war without boots on the ground, that wasn’t counting with the international jihadism, though I doubt that the brains in Pentagon and or in France and UK ignored that.
BHL said that Libya war hasn’t any cause for the Mali islamist unrest. Gaddhafi was agitating the “islamists” when it was convenient for him to gain a argument with the western world
http://www.lepoint.fr/editos-du-point/bernard-henri-levy/non-la-libye-n-est-pas-responsable-du-mali-24-01-2013-1619554_69.php
MachiasPrivateer
http://www.acig.org/artman/publish/article_360.shtml
Annoy Mouse #81: And should we settle the uninhabitable regions of the solar system against god’s laws then too expect the orthodoxy of intolerance to follow and colonize that little experiment as well. In the end, there is no escaping our inherent flaws.
That’s what has always made me wonder what is so great about moving to Mars (or wherever, but Mars appears to be the least unsuitable, as no place out there could really be called suitable for human habitation).
I don’t think it could ever be done, but if I’m wrong and it is done (or attempted) one day, what would it be like? It’s a drag having to be dependent on the power grid right here on earth. Imagine having to be completely dependent on a wholly artificial apparatus for everything, for every breath you take. One little glitch in the operation and it’s curtains for the colony. You’d never see green grass or trees or a beautiful sunset over the water. You couldn’t so much as take a simple stroll outside without burdensome gear hanging all over you, if you even wanted to do such a thing, which you probably wouldn’t with all the hassle and nothing much to see and not even the possibility of taking in a bit of fresh air. It would be like living in a prison. But never mind all that, even assuming a continual perfection of the life support system, what’s going to happen when eventually another Hitler, or another Lenin, or another Muhammad is born in the colony, grows up and gains followers? Then the whole bloody battle starts up all over again.
The trouble with the Move-to-Mars idea is that it does nothing to solve man’s problem. At best, it would be a temporary respite for a few. Not good enough.
Mars is still inside that closed system.
Annoy Mouse, to be clear, I did not bring up gay marriage, you did in post #81. You said in post #86 that gays marrying ‘mocks nature,’ but marriage is a human construct, not a natural one. Procreation is a natural construct and THAT is threatened by gay marriage but only for those entering into it, I don’t think we have too few people yet.
We are more closely akin I believe than opposing. My main point was if we try to tell everyone how to live their lives, issues that are OUTSIDE the Constitution, we as conservatives will find it hard to win any more elections. I don’t want anyone, progressive or conservative, micro-managing my life. I think people are becoming much more wary of extortion tactics like those used on the BSA, but remember- the only reason that worked was a blue state city government folded, not the public at large. Same with the gay agenda in schools, that is governments and unions. But look at what happened with Chick-fil-a, it back fired and HUGELY. So there is hope.
Enjoyig the discussion and keep up the good fight.
92. SpeakEasy
Orwell’s NewSpeak Dictionary
crimestop – “The faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. In short….protective stupidity.” NewsSpeak Dictionary
Denying human nature, that human beings were created male and female, would be a prime example of crimestop. That Islam is a religion of peace and that the human fetus is not a human person would be a couple other good examples of crimestop.
The trend toward total cultural debasement is not going to stop and reverse by avoiding the truth. If there is not enough of a Remnant to stand up and speak out for Truth, Beauty, Virtue then the country deserves whatever it gets at the end of the tunnel.
Marie Claude @ 90 – What I was working on at Grumman in the summer of 1969 was the A-6E Intruder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-6E#Specifications_.28A-6E.29 , designed as an all weather attack plane. During Ronald’s Reagan’s Operation el Dorado Canyon in 1986, that plane was successful in KICKING THE ASSES OF LIBYANS IN BENGHAZI!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_United_States_bombing_of_Libya#U.S._forces_and_targets
Jamahiriyah (Benghazi) barracks
7× A-6E – 84× Mk 82 500 lb RDB 6× bombed 1× abort on deck 70 HITS 2 MISSES
Benina airfield
8× A-6E – 72× Mk 20 500 lb CBU – 6× bombed – 60× Mk 20
24× Mk 82 500 lb RDB – 2× aborts – 12× Mk 82
HITS 72 OUT OF 72 = 100%
NOW THAT IS AIR/GROUND SUPPORT!!!
THE GRUMMAN IRON WORKS
ONCE AGAIN, WE DID IT!
Pete, I never said anything about denying nature created men and women, I said the institution of marriage was a human construct vs. Natural one. Disagree with me all you want but please don’t twist my words. By the way, if God created everything than he also created homosexuals.
I think homosexual attraction is like dyslexia; your sexual tendencies get sort of reversed. If you have ever had a close family member who is homosexually oriented you would most likely be able to understand it is a natural occurance. Naturally occurring does not mean normal either. An objective individual HAS to see that homosexuality will not result in procreation. Therefore it is not the intended process for that it was intended to produce, offspring. And we certainly don’t discriminate against the Dyslexic, like not allowing themto marry now, do we? Of course your mileage may vary.
El Dorado Canyon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_El_Dorado_Canyon
For the Libyan raid, the United States was denied overflight rights by France, Spain and Italy as well as the use of European continental bases, forcing the Air Force portion of the operation to be flown around France, Spain and through the Straits of Gibraltar, adding 1,300 miles (2,100 km) each way and requiring multiple aerial refuelings. The French refusal alone added 2,800 km total, and was imposed despite the fact that France itself had been the target of terrorism directed by the Gaddafi government in Libya. French president Mitterrand refused its clearance because the United States refused to give to the French army all details about the operation and he did not want to authorize any foreign operation that couldn’t be analysed by French authorities.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUjGf2Grrus
That does help explain one reason why we need carrier strike groups (CSGs), unreliable “allies”.
Action in the Gulf of Sidra
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_in_the_Gulf_of_Sidra_(1986)
The first air strikes occurred around 19:26 when two A-6 Intruders from VA-34 found a French-built FACM Class La Combattante IIa patrol boat; the ship was first disabled by a Harpoon missile fired by one of the A-6 Intruders from VA-34 (the first combat use of the Harpoon) and then destroyed by Intruders from VA-85 using Rockeye cluster bombs.
The blustering “Duck of Death” got a message
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Burning_Libyan_Corvette.jpg
Re # 62. BattleofthePyramids
“Because the alternatives are: total war with Islam, a REAL clash of civilizations; or submission to Islam.”
Not sure that only binary approach is available. How about quarantine? Or something variation(s) of a cold war scenario? With these you have a continuous spectrum and given the build-in weakness of any rigid ideology and a unique technological backwardness of Islam-controlled societies it should take much less than 50 years. What such approaches do require is wise elite that wants to stop the nonsense but unfortunately present elite in power of society doesn’t seems to want stop it. May be they think it is wise, but I am not sure it is.
Machias Privateer/94: I love your stuff. It sounds as if you’ve seen a lot of the hard side of things. Congrats on building an excellent aircraft. I know the A-6 only by reputation but from all I’ve learned, it served us very well indeed.
Great Britain has also sold naval vessels to countries that later became enemies of the USA.
They met a similar fate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bild-Prayingmantis5sahand.jpg
SH*T HAPPENS
But Uncle Sam still cleans up the mess.
QED
oMan @ 98 – We did Route 80 too, AKA “The Highway of Death” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_of_Death#Highway_80
But I prefer building LEMs and helping save children in danger.
So when do we start the “Chicken Bomber” airlift? Many of the “soldiers” in Africa are hungry little middle school age boys.
Re #85, SF
Thanks for the video links. I can’t help wondering if the British police would be as feckless if normal people started having vigilante efforts in other parts of town to ensure no person wearing a burqa or shalwaar kameez appeared in public. “This is a British area. Get out now, and move faster.”
beeJ@100:
not exactly vigilante but police in France doing some handling:
http://youtu.be/CCRZVObUK-o
enjoy
SF
Eggplant #75:
So make the Attack Mars flying saucers inflatable. There should be polymers available that can do the job, although aluminum was used as a blimp skin back in the 1930′s. And remember, the Atlas with its SS balloon skin – it did 1.5 stages to orbit in the 1950′s.
Annoy #81: As I like to put it, the dedicated fanatical Islamists are the types who can quite easily cross thead a bowling ball. Take a look at pre-US Invasion Afghanistan if you want to see what a country run by them looks like. Even enabling them to continue with their beliefs in their own countries is throwing away an unnacceptable amount of resources. Funny how the Finestines and Panettas of the world want to tell us what we “don’t need” and should be prevenetd from having but do not seem to be upset by what other people have and propose to use against us.
And someone should ask Fiensten how she feel about people owning jet fighetr aircraft. Cira 1973 there were 114 such aircraft in private hands in the US and now there have to be far more. A fighter is far more lethal than an “assault weapon” so why are they not concerned, and who needs one anyway?
http://www.wnd.com/2013/01/sabotage-key-iranian-nuclear-facility-hit/
Some timely allegations WRT enrichment troubles.
They are rounding up the usual suspects, of course.
==============
It would also appear that Iran is going for the plutonium, implosion, design.
They are casting enriched ‘plates’ for their research reactors/ plutonium converter reactors.
==============
Before getting too excited, one must consider the source: WND.
It needs confirmation.
Speakeasy:. “My main point was if we try to tell everyone how to live their lives, issues that are OUTSIDE the Constitution, we as conservatives will find it hard to win any more elections.”
Speakeasy, I believe you miss the point of many who revere the Constitution on this issue.
The Constitutionalists are not denying civil unions of gays; they are opposed to marriage of gays. There is a huge difference.
Marriage was first and has always been a religious ceremony. It has always been between a man and a woman.
To force the acceptance of gay marriage, forces many to go against the traditional doctrine of the sanctity of marriage of many of our Judeo- Christian faiths, as well as Islam, and as such is a violation of the First Amendment right to worship as one sees fit.
The gay marriage crowd is demanding that their marriages between two gay people be elevated to equal status legally as heterosexual marriage, with all the rights and benefits afforded therein. There are multiple problems with this, not the least that ,as you point out, gays cannot biologically procreate.
Therefore, the State is then being asked to tell you how should think, and then act with respect to gay marriage. This is a gross violation of our rights, just another body blow to our Constitutional freedoms and another milestone passed on the descent into Fascism.
“find the happy medium between not committing us to a decades-long ground war and choosing not to do anything”
Reminds me of the most intelligent thing Peggie Noonan ever said. Describing a hypothetical Kerry Administration in 2004 she said:
“He would surround himself with very bright people and they would study every problem very carefully. And then they would do nothing, because they would conclude that what they should do would be what Republicans would do and they could not do that.”
And now we are about to have a real, sho nuff “Kerry Administration.”
At FRIDAY NIGHT VIDEOS there’s something for everyone…
http://www.commoncts.blogspot.com/2013/01/friday-night-videos.html
Peace Speakeasy.
I think we are indeed arguing the same from a different perspective. I believe in diversity of lifestyle and hold no grudges as to what consenting adults do. Never have really. I pick out some sore subjects because I am tired of being maw maw’ed for not tipping my hat so to say to certain beliefs. And with all the crap going on in the world and I see people not content to live their lives without the forced respect of their neighbors. They want big government to validate them because they are feeling paranoically rejected by their ancestors.
But it is the way of the gangster, or in this case, the fascist that demands that I approve of their lifestyle and in the end, I don’t give a flying fig but am incensed that I am made to indulge it less I be censored.
Respect. That is what is earned in life but on the street it is demanded and any gang banger or mafia don will tell you if you do not respect them they will kill you. I don’t like that kind of respect. It is a respect demanded under implicit threat of punishment. That is how it is doled out. I don’t expect nor desire that these lifestyles be legislated against nor to the contrary, legislated for and that is where I’d like to see government butt out, but especially the federal government.
I can decide to live on Castro Street and enjoy it or not but I cannot immigrate to a sanctuary nation because there isn’t one. I would not be safe to drive up and down the street in Mexico City with an American Flag while blasting American Pie on the stereo but, by golly, you’d see it here in LA all of the time, except it is the Mexican Flag and some really loud, Smoltzy polka music. But I can move to Peoria right?
It is incumbent on descent people to respect the rights and sensitivities of others and not make a lifetime of moral exhibitionism.
PS – I am not sure what a conservative is anymore.
Russia will do just fine. But then, they’re much more of a free country than is the US, so I cannot begrudge them that.
China is developing its military and will go wherever they need to go to get their energy. And then they’ll demand their US debts be paid for in US oil. We’ll have to start drilling here whether we like it or not. They’ll do just fine.
Japan and the EU have depended too much on the US. Bad move.
India? They are heavily infested with Muslims. That’ll be a problem for them.
If I don’t live up to every bit of the Christian law, I’m a HYPOCRITE!!! and should be shunned, not even allowed to keep my job.
On the other hand, if I am Muslim and don’t live up to every bit of Islamic law, then I am that marvelous creature, a MODERATE MUSLIM, and the only thing I have to worry about is my co-religionists chopping my head off if I open my mouth.
Fine! No double standard there.
And about meekness.
As my daddy explained it to me, meekness was controlled strength, like humility. Just because you COULD knock a guys block off, didn’t mean you had to do it, or even let anyone know that you could…”and you don’t have to go walking around like an 800# gorilla just because you have Ranger tabs.”
BHL said that Libya war hasn’t any cause for the Mali islamist unrest.
BHL is a proven liar. Libya was fine under Gadhafi. He gave up his nukes and was helping against AQ. That’s when the French and British (and later the Americans) decided to go after him. The message sent to the Muslim world was very clear: Never give up your nukes and do not befriend the West as it will stab you in the back.
Jules
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/mali/9829099/Revealed-how-Saharan-caravans-of-cocaine-help-to-fund-al-Qaeda-in-terrorists-North-African-domain.html
-http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/mali/9829132/British-cocaine-users-helping-fund-Islamic-terror-groups-behind-Algerian-siege-and-Mali-conflict.html
96. MachiasPrivateer
poom poom poom
did it occured to you that France had good diplomatic reasons ?
the end of Libyan/Chad war just was settled with a peace agreement, is one of the major reasons