What Democrats and Republicans want

[pbrower2a]

(03-05-2017, 05:24 AM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote: pbrower2a (my contributions in blue)

Rags Wrote:http://listverse.com/2013/05/25/10-dirty...perations/

So what?!   CIA black ops mean the US is a murderer and wants to control other peoples as well.  Try again.  So for Putin...  "because CIA".

But hey, it's all good, for the ends justify the means.  For all power, all the glory, for the Neoliberals, for the NeoCONS, and injustice for all others.

PBrower2a Wrote:Anyone who targets Americans for terrorist attacks can expect that a halfway-competent American leadership will thwart the effort or (in the wake of prior incompetence) exact revenge. Replace "America" and "Americans" with "China"  and "Chinese" could expect much the same thing. Had some real-life equivalent of Lex Luthor staged a 9/11 attack on Shanghai and Beijing, then such a person would not be safe even in Langley, Virginia (home of the CIA) from Chinese retribution. We have set an example for any significant power that has an intelligence network capable of homing in on a target and  special forces capable of striking anywhere.

1. Let's take a walk on the 911 thingie.
a. George Bush Sr. started a military action against Iraq due to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
So far so good.  The mission had a goal, "sent Iraq's armed forces from all of Kuwait, "mission accomplished". Saddam retains power in Iraq proper , but is driven from Kuwait, a sovereign nation. Kuwait oil well fires put out.  That's the end of that war.  Powell doctrine followed.

Saddam Hussein could survive but only as a puppet. The ideal of course would have been that he would have been overthrown in a popular revolution which started -- but he suppressed that, except in Kurdistan. But even with that, his nastiest weapons were removed. (I'm guessing that Mikhail Gorbachev all but insisted on that because he had missiles within range of parts of the Soviet Union, and Gorbachev did not trust him with them. He must have feared revenge from Saddam Hussein).

It was a very bad idea that his 'intelligence' service be caught in a plot against a former president of the United States. Bill Clinton did the right thing by ordering a cruise missile attack on the headquarters of the 'intelligence' service.

Quote:b. A military base is set up in Saudi Arabia proper. A former Mujahadeen person , known as [url= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden]    Osama Bin Laden. [/url]the mastermind did not like this at all and called for Islamic Jihad against said military bases in the "Islamic Holy Land" / "Saudi Arabia".   <-  This is a major decision point.

Saddam Hussein had invaded Saudi Arabia. Some parts of Saudi Arabia, especially Mecca and parts of Medina, are so holy that non-Muslims are denied entry. The oil fields are not so holy. basically the House of Saud gets what it wants and makes such accommodations as it is willing to make on behalf of national security.

Quote:b.  Osama Bin Laden was essentially a CIA go between during the Soviet/Afghanistan war.  <-  Here's the linkage with the CIA with Osama Bin Laden.

He should have never been trusted.

Quote:c. The problem started when the US decided to build a military base in Saudi Arabia.  Osama Bin Laden does not like "Infidels on sacred ground. "

Tough luck to him. He had no political standing in Saudi Arabia. If Saudi Arabia needs defense by non-Muslims, then that is a choice, for now, by the House of Saud. Obviously Saudi Arabia is no democracy, but now the rest of the world must deal with that.

Quote:d. So... The origin of 911 was a combination of the Afghan proxy war along with building a military base on sacred ground.
e. That means a complete misread of whatever variant of Islam , Osama Bin Laden had in mind.
f. A traceback of policy errors are 2.
1. Use of Osama Bin Laden against the Soviets in a proxy war.
2. Lack of knowledge of Saudi politics. Don't just install military bases willy nilly.
f. Conclusion:  Neocons as a matter of policy will use any excuse to expand the number of military bases. : Neocons as a matter of policy look in every nook and cranny to justify the use of military force.  Therefore, I, Rags conclude based on the logic outlined above, blame Neocons for 911.

Blame is easy. Wisdom that can foresee consequences is scarce, and tragically scarce among those who see themselves and even are recognized as the 'experts'. But even at that I put some blame on Dubya for failing to heed the warning that al-Qaeda was showing interest in aircraft, especially jetliners. Had I been President then, I might have expected (as such is the MO of al-Qaeda to so use heavy equipment from automobiles to boats and construction equipment) that it  intended to get jetliners and load them with explosives. I would have interpreted such to have one counter-measure: keep them away from aircraft.

Quote:As for Russia/China.  Yes, both will , like the US use assorted resources to capture natural resources/markets/whatever, just like the US does.
The US is the only meddler that uses "humanitarianism" to justify assorted military actions.  It makes an awesome cover in nation states that have stuff we want like oil.

Yes, it is still imperialism, whatever the ideological guise.

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Quote:On the other side, I have no desire to see a news report of hijacked aircraft smashing into the Kremlin or into any skyscrapers in China.

I would not either.  The way I see it is that Russians as a people make for excellent hosts. I'd assume Russia also has a fear of being invaded for a 3rd time from the west. I think that's why they're not pleased with this NATO expansion thingie.

Deals were made.

Quote:China:   Yes, of course.  While I do think China as a nation , cheats on trade agreements, I do not think that's the Chinese peoples' fault. China features an ancient culture [which should mean China's doing something right]. My impression of Chinese folks, who I know personally is they're pretty damned disciplined. They one's I knew from college were pretty damn hard working.  Since this is just from the ones I know, I can't say this applies to all of course.

Without question. China is not a democracy, so the Chinese people have no say in what their leaders do in economics, military policy, justice, or foreign policy. Your observation of overseas Chinese is practically identical to mine. 


I question whether the United States is a democracy now that Donald Trump is President and acts so dictatorial with the acquiescence of political stooges in Congress.

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ISIS, of course, is really, really bad. It is to the Islamic world what Nazism was to Christendom, and we Americans are going to be pulled into the civil war within the Islamic world. If you want to think of what the civil war within the Islamic world will be like, then consider the European and African theater of World War II as the equivalent of a civil war within Christendom.  Christendom had to choose between Onward, Christian Soldiers! and the Horst-Wessel-Lied.  Onward, Christian Soldiers!is perfectly legal throughout the Christian World. The Horst-Wessel-Lied is outlawed in much of the world.

Uh, why on earth should we choose to get involved in some Islamic kerfuffle? Here is what I think we should do, given the reality of global warming, which is to say, nothing. Most of the "Islamic problem" is in the Middle East, which is due for a severe hammering from global warming.  The way I see it, is that Muslims from that part of the world, either get real or get dead. This is a self solving problem where the best option is to do nothing and let nature take its course. I do not want to see any more US blood shed over some religion stuck in the Ag age.

We may not have a choice. But I can think of one predominantly-Islamic country that can be inundated into oblivion as the result of global warming: Bangladesh. It is not a terrorist haven. It has tens of millions of peasant farmers who would either have to die or go elsewhere. How many Bangladeshis do you want as immigrants?

Global warming that leads to the inundation of huge territory of productive farmland and to mass death is itself genocide.

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Quote:The generational cycle is real. A bad leader like Dubya or Donald Trump can rush it and make it worse. A reasonably-good leader like Barack Obama might slow and mitigate it some, but he can't stop it. It takes a Lincoln, a Juarez, an FDR, or a Churchill to ride and subjugate the historical equivalent of the wildest bronco.

First wave Nomads, [Jonesers} , I think are better actually.  You see there are battles worth a fight, say global warming, while others are just distractions like Mideast
religious nonsense like the "Arab Spring"/2T , which I recall is just utterly unhinged from reality-land.  I really think the outside interference during our 2T would have been a great big huge mess.

There seems to be one unalloyed success in the Arab Spring: Tunisia.  But that is enough of an improvement. Syria and Libya came close to success...

We have yet to have a President born in the 1950s. We had a President more typical of what follows a Crisis: he could slow historical change but not prevent it. He may be the best sort of Reactive leader, someone cautious and respectful of precedent and protocol, someone who creates no problems. (The worst sort of Reactive is the cynical, alienated leader who uses his power to settle real and imagined scores and creates scores that others must settle with brute force at its harshest. H-I-T-... You know the rest).

I see in Donald Trump the worst sort of Idealist, the exploiter who expects to be seen as a benefactor to those whose lives he makes miserable. Among the Transcendental Generation were those who argued that slavery was the best thing that could ever happen to black people. Among the Missionary Generation were those who believed that destroying the cultures of immigrant communities because such cultures were inferior to the WASP way of life was a wonderful choice that needed even compulsory sterilization as a measure.

I look at Donald Trump, right-wing Boomer politicians, and Boomer executives, and I see people who believe that the way to prosperity is mass poverty of all but elites, monopolization of industry, and crony capitalism that will create some super-prosperity that makes inequality irrelevant except as a necessary price of progress. Progress, sure -- in the sense that a carcinoma can get progressively worse.


I doubt that X executives will get away with as much as Boomer execs could. If the last 1T is any indication we might expect high taxes on high incomes to pay off debt, undo damage, and widen educational opportunity. I also expect a decentralization of the economy because of small-scale X businessmen finding niches that bureaucratic monopolies can't fill because there is no room for a cadre of executives entitled to live like a Soviet-style nomenklatura at the expense of everyone else. In medium-sized businesses of the 1950s and 1960s the typical executive was someone who started on the shop floor and showed loyalty and competence at every level... and had a slightly-bigger house than the typical prole and had a Buick or Chrysler (and certainly not a Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, or Bentley) and was putting kids through college when in his late 40s. Today the rigid and low glass ceilings prevent people from rising through the corporate ranks. Those low, rigid glass ceilings are wasting talent of multitudes.