A thoughtful look at a man now poised to seize the Democratic nomination through the sheer force of earnestly expressed empty platitudes;
Attempting to discern true meaning from Obama’s speeches gives one the feeling of having been trapped in a sort of verbal quicksand. Hair-pulling levels of frustration await any effort to find any specific meaning. A sensation of lethargic sinking into an abyss of abstract gibberish awaits the mind looking for specifics..
Obama’s public statements, his speeches, even his “present” votes in the Illinois legislature leave one dangerously unsure of his true intentions.
Whatever Obama’s concrete plans are, they ought to aligned with his political mentor, Saul Alinsky, and his spiritual mentor and liberation theology specialist, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Mr.g: In the history of the United States,has *any* White male/female with such a scant political or professional career, EVER gone as far towards the White House as this LESS THAN 1 Term JUNIOR SENATOR from Illinois?
Abraham Lincoln — 1 term in the US House of Reps.
siczela
———————————————
Yeah,very funny siczela,except Lincoln served 15 years in the state legislature of Illinois,half as leader of his party,the Whigs.
As well,he was a Lawyer for twenty years BEFORE he won a seat in the House of Reps. federally.
Oh and just for the record,Lincoln wasn’t smoking dope and snorting coke while in University like B.Hussein Obama.
Me no dimmi
So what?
Clinton didn’t invade Iraq.
Bush did.
Volik:
Yeah we can all rejoice in the wonderful reorc of the Clintons. Certainly terrorists and the PRC politboro does.
And in Osama we have a candidate with all the substance of Homer Simpson and all the integrity of Slick on one of his bad days.
No volik, please try to stay within context. Bush is not going to be in the White House, don’t switch it back to Bush. We are trying to establish if Bill Clinton can fill in for two extremely inexperienced Dem candidates with zero executive experience and little knowledge of geopolitics and the military (as compared to McCain) . This is only about Bill Clinton’s track record as the “weak horse”.
However, I do agree with your description of President Clinton’s idea of retaliation to Acts of War on the several attacks and murder of hundreds of American employees abroad. On Bubba’s watch all that happened was he “shook the trees” then he got back to his other priorities.
We pray that 51% of Americans will choose McCain to keep us safe until such time as the rest of the free world can get its act together and not be so totally dependant upon American determination to fight Islamofascism.
“I’m not looking forward to a rerun of Jimmy Carter in the good old USofA”
Is’nt it ironic?
We are heading towards turmoil with a possible world economic collapse, exorbitant energy costs/shortages + NATO and the UN on it’s last breath…1930’s rerun or (Hopefully) just late 70’s redux?
America (And the world) will need strong leadership and experience more than ever the likes of F.D. Roosevelt or R. Reagan not an inexperienced, bleeding heart, pie in the sky dreamer.
Yep, I can see it now: Obama in the White House with good sheeple Canucks following suit by putting Dion at 24 Sussex….May God have mercy on our Conservative souls.
“This is the end, the very end, my friend…”
The Doors
Well good morning!
I see that this volik creature got itself into a fine lather…….
Last post by volik 1:30 am …..today!
Last post on the matter of it’s lunacy by me 8:44 pm yesterday.
4 hours and 46 minute of braying assness and foaming at the mouth !
Your Reward volik …..
Well … I had a great nights sleep!
Thanks ….
no, volik – you are making an assumption without providing evidence. You are telling us that the invasion of Iraq was on the agenda before terrorist attacks, specifically, 9/11. I think you’ll have to do more than simply say this.
You write: “If they’d thought they didn’t have to do it in order to get the invasion happening, they wouldn’t have. But they did.”
Who is ‘they’ in ‘if they’d thought they didn’t have to do it?
What is ‘it’?
Please clarify, otherwise, the sentence has no meaning.
No, you haven’t presented any facts. You’ve presented EVENTS. Two of them: 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq. You are attempting to link them in a speculative manner; you are attempting to assert that the Iraq invasion was planned and desired long before 9/11 and that 9/11 was just a catalyst. Now, you haven’t provided any FACTS to support this claim.
Just telling us that two EVENTS happened, and trying to make a conclusion about those events – without facts – is illogical.
Yes, it is fallacious to link ‘data’ together about the same subject, if they are not in reality, connected. I can list the population of Iraq and its major tribal filiations. That doesn’t mean that there is any causal connection between population size and tribal filiation.
You write: “It is true many influential members of the Bush cabinet had long agitated for the invasion of Iraq; it is true that a group of them had argued only a “Pearl Harbour-type” event could galvanize public support for such an invasion; it is true that when such an event happened they were quick to use it as a springboard for the invasion.”
No, these are not ‘truths’; these are ungrounded opinions. You’ll have to provide evidence for these opinions – and valid evidence – not web speculative opinions. Valid evidence would include documents that outline the specific arguments made by these individuals.
You write: “It isn’t “fallacious” to link the past history of someone who worked in the government to their present actions within the government.”
This also doesn’t make sense. Who are you talking about?
Another important aspect missing from your assertions, is any examination of why the US would have wanted to invade Iraq in the first place, before any actions of terrorism. Again, opinions are opinions, not facts or truths.
Well nom de blog
You asked about Clinton’s ‘guidance’.
You referred to Clinton’s making US a weak horse.
Clinton ‘shook the trees’ and stopped the millenium bombing of LAX. Pretty good guidance!
It wasn’t Clinton who made the US a weak horse. It was Bush, who did not respond to the USS Cole.
John McCain says he would’ve invaded Iraq even if he knew for certain they had no WMDs (the ostensible reason for the war). McCain also says he’s prepared to stay in Iraq foe 100 years.
And Iraq is/was a secular state so your “Islamopfascism” hooey doesn’t even apply.
OMMAG
Gee you can’t make your argument on its own merits, so now you’re reduced to commenting onthe time of my posts.
It’s so helpful you right-wingers have a site that supplies you with cartoons to show how “stupid” and “retarded” the left is.
Your thinking: “Well I guess he’s beating my ass with logic and reason and facts and all that fancypants stuff – I’ll send in this cartoon and show’im!”
Yes. A child’s animated cartoon. How fitting.
volik – surely you aren’t recommending that a nation attack another nation solely because a terrorist group’s members came from that nation?
Should Britain have attacked Pakistan because the London bombers came from Pakistan? Should the US have attacked Saudi Arabia because the 9/11 terrorists came from Saudi Arabia? That would be totally unacceptable. The unique feature of terrorists is that they are not automatically to be defined as under the agential control of a national government.
It took some time (March 2007) before the US govt decided that it was the Sudanese govt that was responsible for the bombing. Sudan is appealing this decision.
As for invading Iraq, in my view, it was the correct decision. Yes, Bin Laden wanted the US to attack the ME, and in particular, he wanted the US to attack Saudi Arabia. That’s because he wanted the SA govt taken out, so that he could move in with a fundamentalist Islamic regime, similar to the Taliban. I’m not sure where you get your information – the web is useful but articles and books aren’t always available on the web. You might want to read Lawrence Wright’s analysis of the emergence of Al Qaeda: The Looming Tower.
It wouldn’t have been very useful to simply move in an take out Saudi Arabia, as Bin Laden wanted, without understanding what was/is needed in the ME to stop Islamic fascism, which is the reason for Islamic terrorism.
Islamic fascism emerged in the 19th and 20th centuries, as a response to the dysfunctional economic and political structure of the ME. The ME structure had been tribal for centuries; tribalism is a mode where loyalties, obligations and actions are all carried out within kinship networks. Tribes are viewed as hereditary and reject interaction with others. In large populations, one tribe may assume dominance over other tribes.
This mode won’t work in populations in the multimillions.
The ME moved into industrialism after the WWars, it used the technology and expertise of the West to extract oil (it had no ability to do this on its own); its population numbers rose exponentially, but, it didn’t move to a civic economic and political structure. A civic mode releases everyone from tribal bonds, develops a flexible middle class and empowers the population to make political and economic decisions. This didn’t happen.
The result – is fascism, a utopian, mythic idealism of an inherent power of The People, which fights for its rights against Repressive Powers (since they didn’t have it in a Middle Class). You might want to take a look at various books on fascism: Paxton, Eatwell.
The tribal elite in the ME pushed this emotive populism out, by defining the Repressive Powers as, not themselves, but the West. And the US.
The tactic of dealing with this, is obvious. The ME has to move out of a tribal mode to a civic mode. Since they aren’t going to do it on their own, because the tribal elite are enriched by oil and maintain themselves in military dictatorships, democracy and a civic mode has to go in, by the back door, so to speak.
That’s what Bush did; he moved into a repressive military dictatorship, that was operating as a groundwork of Islamic fascism, and enabled it to free itself and set up a civic mode. This mode will spread in the ME.
Already, the result is that the terrorist attacks have become internal rather than external. The fascists are fighting other Muslims for power in their own country. That’s the way it should be. It will take time to move from a tribal to a civic mode, but, it’s happening. And, the emergence of a civic democracy in the midst of the ME is affecting the other Arab states; they are having to move into empowering the people.
So- in my view, Bush was exactly right, and we owe him, and the Americans, a great deal for their courage and work.
Thomas Jackson just insulted Homer Simpson.
volik, around page 37 of the New York Slimes you’ll find stories everyday about the stopping of terrorism (like your LAX example) against infidels by Islamofascism. Stopping a crime by the police is not in the same league as the several Acts of War upon US property and citizens that Clinton did not act upon.
The point is, don’t any of us take assurance that a Democrat President having Bill Clinton in the background is going to make up for the lack of executive experience by either of the Democratic candidates. America is electing a War President and the Dems were never up to the job. Here’s a quote by CIA Director R James Woolsey (who resigned out of sheer frustration) who offered this devastating retrospective of Bill Clinton’s overall modus operandi:
“Do something to show you are concerned. Launch a few missiles in the desert, bop them on the head, arrest a few people. But just keep kicking the ball down the field.”
volik is a delusional troll. You all waste your time.
nomdeblog
before 9/11 Bush didn’t do Jack about terror.
Neither did Clinton.
Neither did Bush I
Neither did Regan
Neither did Carter (obviously…)
And each time, from the 79 hostage crisis to the 83 barricks bombing to the first WTC bombing the terrorists pushed their limits. On 9/11 the US finally woke up. With the US, it takes a lot of pushing – political inertia is hard to overcome.
The lesson is that you respond to attacks or invite more of the same but bigger.
Relax Republicans! I watched Rice @ Georgetown last night; she is a class act, made a point that “she is a descendant of an American Slave”.
Well received in the Dems Den
We can still go the high road “McCain & Rice”, and expect to win a trifecta for years to come.
Baseball shame; NYC cop goes to Toronto & gets a Canadian recognized PHD, by Correspondence, from a USA Diploma mill. WOW! sound just like a climate guy.
Oh yes, Warwick
I handed your bloody and beaten ass back to you on another thread.
So come over here and yelp “Volik’s a delusional troll!”, shaking your little fist, with tears streaming down your face.
Boo. Hoo.
Volik: legend in his own mind. The only thing in your hand is what’s making you blind.
Shaw:
Rice would look good on anyone’s ticket. She is class, integrity and brains in one package.
ET
It’s hard to tell if you’re being deliberately obtuse, or if you’re really dense.
A part of me suspects the former, since it’s part of a schtick you guys have. I post facts, and then you say ‘where’s the facts?” So I post them again…and again.
You guys have no answer because the facts don’t support your argument. That’s because your argument is irrational. So you repeat the same questions over and over, trying to wait out the clock so you can declare a ‘victory’ which only you and your fellow fact-challenged brethern believe is real.
Anway: your questions:
“They” in the sentence you cite are the Bush administration (obviously). More specifically the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) a group set up to ‘market’ the war to the public, as sick and Strangelovian as that might sound. They made the connections between 9/11 and Iraq. They obviously felt they needed to make that connection to get the war going.
Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and others in the Bush admin.were signatories to the PNAC paper advocating for the invasion of Iraq. They also said in that paper they would need a Pearl Harbour-like event to launch that invasion.
This establishes that these very powerful members of the gov’t. believed it was necessary for the US to invade Iraq long before the Bush presidency, before 9/11. This isn’t an opinion. It’s a fact. You can look it up.
As well, Paul O’Neill in his book states that invading Iraq was being planned in the first weeks of the administration.
You argue that these documented facts are ungrounded opinions. Do you not believe PNAC exists and that these members of the gov’t. belonged to it? You’re being dishonest.
Unless Cheney, Rumsfeld and others had a dramatic change of heart between advocating the invasion of Iraq in 1998 and taking office in 2001, they still believed the invasion was necessary, and still believed it would take a Pearl Harbour-like event to launch it, according to their own words inthe PNAC paper.
Is that documented enough for you?
But really, ET, with all your big words like “fallacious” and “filiations” (gratuitously used), you should know this stuff. I shouldn’t have to educate you.
At the very least, you shouldn’t try to have conversations about things you don’t know anything about. Unless you’re just being…purposely obtuse…because you can’t win the argument…
ET (your 2ndpost)
Thanks for the lecture and the reading list.
Your lengthy description of what you see as the rationale for the war: if that were the reason for the war, why did Bush not explain that to the public when making his case? If the ideas here were referenced by Bush at the time it as only in the most tangential way.
What was spoken of were: regime change due to WMD, the smoking gun that could be a mushroom cloud.
If the rationale is true, or as convincing as you think it is, why was it not put before the public? Was Bush being dishonest in touting WMD over your little plan?
As well, Wolfowitz admitted that a main reason for the war was oil. Alan Greenspan has said oil was a major factor. How it is that this is not mentioned by you?
Lastly, your ‘theory’ that the war will lead to a more peaceful ME years after we’re dead is only that: your theory. There’s no evidence that it’s coming to fruition at all.
The whole idea is disturbingly similar to Bush’s saying he’ll be proven right 100 or 1000 years from now. When in history has any leader justified their actions by saying “Wait 100 years?” Would you accept it if any other leader said this? ( a Dem for instance?).
Talk about kicking the can down the road! It’s like you justify anything Bush does by saying he’ll be proven right in a million years. It’s mindless, cult-like behaviour, frankly.
no, volik, you don’t provide facts; you provide opinions.
What are the connections between 9/11 and Iraq? Please explain.
Again – You write: “If they’d thought they didn’t have to do it in order to get the invasion happening, they wouldn’t have. But they did.”
You still haven’t explained what ‘it’ is. What is it that they thought they had to do to get the invasion happening?
You’ve obviously been reading the wikipedia outline of PNAC – a disputed article, by the way. So, no, you haven’t provided any documentation.
Just because you assert that there is a connection between a ‘think-tank’ and an action, doesn’t prove that there actually is one. Furthermore, even if there were – so what? Any government action has to be thoroughly researched; it can hardly be ad hoc and random! So, what’s your point?
You still don’t outline the reasons that YOU feel were behind the Iraq War.
I’ve outlined my reasons above – that the cause of terrorist fascism was due to the dysfunctional economic-political structure of the ME. This analysis would have to be intensive and extensive; and the conclusions, figuring out how to deal with Islamic fascism, would have to be very thorough. So, one option, moving into the ME to activate the democratic civic mode of governance, would have to be considered.
After all, you can’t deal with fascism by simply reacting with the Marines, to a terrorist attack each time; the cause is structural – and you have to deal with that. The Bush tactic of changing the political structure of the ME, is, in my view, correct.
Don’t move into personal insults; stick to the issues. And no, you can’t claim that I know nothing about these issues – since you don’t know my areas of expertise.
No, my arguments aren’t irrational! You can’t just assert that – you have to provide reasons for such a conclusion!
‘fallacious’ and ‘filiations’ aren’t ‘big words’; they are part of any educated person’s vocabulary – and therefore, aren’t ‘gratuitously used’.
Now – the fact that you feel that this PNAC group were agential in persuading Bush to move into Iraq (and by the way, it was Congress who approved the decision) – doesn’t explain WHY they felt this way, and what the agenda was.
As I said, I’ve explained my view of the action, and why it was correct. So- what’s your view?
No, volik, my theory isn’t mindless; it’s based on a thorough knowledge of social structures, considering their economic and political infrastructures – and population bases. And a thorough knowledge of the historical changes of societies.
Bush, by the way, has frequently explained his theory of the necessity for democracy in the ME. He’s explained it as the most important agency for change in the ME. I happen to agree, based on my knowledge of societal structures.
I don’t think that, as a theory, it’s easily explained in the popular press, which doesn’t deal in such areas as:
– analysis of different economic modes, eg, agricultural vs industrial
– analysis of different political systems, eg, tribal vs civic
– analysis of population sizes and the types of economic and political systems that are necessarily linked to population size.
– analysis of the class structure of the civic mode – ie, the necessity for a middle class, its nature, and why it was being repressed in the ME
– analysis of the history and causes of islamic fascism
The above are not areas that can be explained in a paragraph or two, or in a half hour TV show. You have to have, I think, a reasonably thorough understanding of societal systems, and most people aren’t involved in that type of research. They may be engineers, scientists, computer specialists, doctors and so on…and don’t know the history and types of social systems.
The WMD idea was valid – Hussein had indeed used WMD on the Kurds, and was, according to various reports, continuing to build them. No, Bush wasn’t being dishonest; both Bush and Blair, according to the reports, were convinced that WMD were there – and – I think both were also convinced that, not regime change, but political structural change was the only way to deal with the emergence and spread of Islamic fascism.
After all, this Islamic fascism had been around since WWII; it was increasing in the 70s and 80s and 90s. How should the West deal with it? The West took a long time to move out of dealing with it as criminal activities of one or two groups or individuals, and instead, considering it as a cohesive phenomenon, Islamic fascism, caused by the dysfunctional political structure of the ME.
Because Wolfowitz said that the war was ‘about oil’ doesn’t mean that it was about oil.
Certainly, oil revenues meant that Hussein could maintain himself as a military dictator, while another country without that resource, wouldn’t have the money to maintain their dictatorship. In that poorer country, the people could possibly rise up and take out the corrupt leaders. It’s not possible in the ME – the oil revenues enable the dictators to maintain power. The ME was, politically, frozen, because its dictators were maintained by oil.
Certainly – no-one can seriously believe that the US went to war to OBTAIN oil! That doesn’t make sense. The oil nations of the ME have nothing else to sell; they haven’t developed any industries, haven’t developed themselves educationally to provide new technology, service industries, etc. They are dependent on selling their oil. No-one needs to go to war to get it.
Yes, leaders have to look at the long range effects of actions. It’s called ‘la longue duree’ (Braudel); you don’t just look at what’s happening tomorrow or next month. You have to focus on long term results, and, after all, societies are long term structures. You have to consider the effects of ‘this generation’s actions’ on the next generation..and so on. You don’t just live for the day!
After all, when you study history, you see how deep infrastructural change can take many generations to emerge and strengthen.
ET
This is really getting silly. You are literally asking the same questions over and over, after I’ve answered them.
The ‘it’ they thought they had to do to get the invasion happening was to link Iraq to 9/11. As part of the 935 documented lies they told to get the war happening, as was recently reported (i.e., claiming Al Queda was working w/ Iraq, claiming as Cheney did that Mohammed Atta met with Iraqis)
When they did not infer connections between Iraq and 9/11, they used the fear 9/11 had caused to get the public to support the invasion.
If Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz signed off on a paper stating the necessity of the US invading Iraq, then invaded Iraq, there is the connection.
You can claim there is no connection, but that’s like saying if OJ Simpson wrote a letter saying he had to kill his wife, then he killed his wife, there’s no connection between the two events. That’s just silly.
Iraq was invaded as part of the PNAC plan to insure American hegemony. It’s oil fields were necessary for the maintenance ofthe US’s superpower status – couldn’t let that oil go to China. The plan was to set up permanent military bases in Iraq and pinwheel out to the neighbouring countries.
The plan is to maintain power. Oil is power. As Cheney, Rice and Bush, all former oil co. employees well know. The plan was to privatize Iraq’s oil.
That’s my view of the action.
Your idea that the idea was to establish a Middle Eastern middle class is, I suppose, laudable, but a bit far-fetched considering that no such thing has ever been accomplished in the history of the earth.
There is no evidence that it’s even possible, so it stretches credulity a bit that anyone but a madman would willingly bet unlimited numbers of US casualties on a grand petri dish experiment whose hypothesis won’t be proven or disproven for years after we’re all dust.
Especially when the real reason is staring us all right in the face.
Oil.
ET
I suppose the beauty of the ‘structural change’ theory, for you, is the idea that you can continue to support the war and Bush, and it’s left up to the history books of the future to pronounce you right or wrong.
But where does your faith come from that your ‘theory’ is correct? How can you be calm about sending people off to die – nearly 4000 so far – just to support a theory which ‘might’ come true?
After all, it’s not as though Bush can be seen as infallible – there are few who would argue that his presidency has been a success, even in – or especially in – his own country, where 70% of the people have disapproved of him for nearly 3 years now.
Again: this radical reconstruction of one society by another has never happened before, so where does your faith come from? Is there a limit to the amount of casualties you believe can be accepted for such a goal?
If you believe in the idea so strongly, as you seem to, are you willing to give your own life for it?
volik – again, you are presenting your opinions, not facts.
YOU may think there are ‘935 documented lies’ but your (or other’s) stating this doesn’t make it a valid fact. What YOU think is a lie, is not necessarily a lie.
I’m not saying that there are no connections between Iraq and 9/11 (fascist terrorism); to the contrary, I’m saying that the whole ME economic and political infrastructure is the causal basis for the emergence and nurturance of Islamic fascism. That includes Iraq.
To reduce this analysis to three (or any number) of individuals (Wolfowitz) etc, without explaining the analytic theory about the causes for the emergence and maintenance of Islamic fascism is irrelevant. It’s the THEORY about the causes of Islamic fascism that is important, not the individuals who advanced that theory.
I disagree, strongly, with your view that the ME was invaded for US control over oil. You don’t, by the way, provide any descriptive or analytic proof of this. The oil couldn’t go to China or any country unless it was paid for, so, since China can’t buy all of it, and doesn’t use all of it, the ME countries must sell it to a diversity of buyers.
I also disagree with your opinion about the military bases and selling the oil to other countries. You’ll note that this hasn’t happened; the US doesn’t control Iraq oil. Iraq does.
No middle class has ever been established? Good heavens – then, how did the current middle class ever emerge on this planet? In Europe, the middle class developed from about the 11th through 15th centuries. It was a traumatic and violent era that moved Europe out of a tribal(feudal) infrastructure and developed a market economy run by a middle class – who achieved political power via creating a parliament. It took over 400 years.
Japan developed a middle class after WWII broke down its tribal infrastructure…
Russia developed a middle class after the breakdown of the communist system;
China is currently developing a middle class;
so is India. So are the United Arab Emirates.
No, the ME changes are not ‘petri dish’; they are quite real. The analysis of the difference between tribal (two class) and civic (three class) systems is well-known and has been studied in such disciplines as political science, anthropology, and history for many years. It’s even in Aristotle!
My theory of structural change is hardly confined to me; it’s based on extensive research by many into societal structures. There’s no point in listing bibliographies, which would include books and articles, but the areas of analysis include:
-ecology (you have to understand the carrying capacity of the local environment);
– population demographics: births, deaths, migration patterns, family size etc in an area
– economic mode (non-industrial types, industrial)
– political mode
– kinship structure
– legal
It isn’t a radical reconstruction of a society; it’s releasing a population from a dictatorship to allow it to operate in a functional rather than dysfunctional manner. This takes time; it isn’t easy changing from one deep infrastructure to another.
This was done, by the way, in Europe after WWII, when the Marshall Plan was put into effect, and when the US military stayed there for a generation. Europe, however, already had a middle class; in Germany, it had been repressed.
Japan was occupied from 1945 to 1952, and the agenda was to transform Japan from a feudal, tribal system to a modern democratic system; this greatly empowered the people (rather than the nobles), it gave the franchise to women, etc. This transformation enabled Japan to enter the world as an industrial power.
The transformation in China, from a peasant/elite to developing a middle class is enabling that country to ‘explode’ on the international economy. It takes time, but democracy will inevitably move into China.
The problem in the ME, was that oil revenues enabled the elite tribe to maintain dictatorship and prevent the mass of the population from having any power in their own political govt, economy, society. That led to islamic fascism. And that’s why the US had to go in, and break up one country, Iraq, the easiest one to break down, and enable the people to set up their own democracy. That’s what is happening, and it is, and will continue, to spread to the other Arab countries.
Your suggestion that my analysis is only viable if I die for it, is ridiculous as a proof of the validity of my analysis. Analytic theories don’t depend for their validity on whether or not the analysts are willing to die for them.
I don’t think that, for example, the validity of Aristotle’s, Mill’s, Darwin’s, Newton’s, Einstein’s theory would be based on whether or not he would be willing to die for it. Its validity is based on subsequent proof.
The validity of the theory I am outlining, can be examined by what is happening, right now, in the ME. Iraq is moving into democracy, its tribes are moving into collaboration rather than adversarial hatred; the economy is becoming a market economy – and freedoms are slowly spreading into the rest of the ME.
Oh – and Islamic fascism is becoming an internal conflict in the ME.
And, more and more Muslims are confronting it and rejecting its violence.
And, the West is starting to reject multiculturalism and reject islamic fascism.
So, Bush was right. Democracy works.
ET
Again, you’re presenting your opinions as fact. YOU may think the West is rejecting multiculturalism (or that Iraq is moving into a democracy etc.)Because YOU think it’s true doesn’t make it true.
That’s the way you argue with me, ET. And it isn’t honest.
It’s not my opinion that a board said the Bush admin told 935 lies in the run-up to war. It’s a fact. You might disagree with the board. I merely said what had been reported. It’s not my opinion.
The ‘935’ were tangential to my central point that lies were told. Such as: Cheney said Mohammd Atta met with the Iraqis in Czhekoslovakia. This was disproven and Cheney famously denied he ever said it.
You dishonestly misrepresent my point when you say I said “no middle class has ever been established” when it’s clear I was saying no county has ever forced the establishment of a middle class on another.
Do you real feel you have to misrepresent me to score illusory points? Do you think others are taken in by this?
No country has radically re-formed another country in the way you claim. Your comparisons with Japan and Germany are absurd. The US bombed Japan resulting in over 200,000 casualties. Doyou prescribe this for Iraq too?
The US was at war with both countries and had to fight them to the ground. It wasn’t the sort of pre-thought out experiement which you claim is taking place in Iraq. There’s no basis for comparison whatever. Either you don’t know your history or you’re being dishonest again. I’m not taken in by it.
It is not true that I suggested your analysis is only viable if you’re willing to die for it. I simply asked if you were. It is one thing for a person to claim democracy is coming to Iraq against all evidence, and to speak as though their theory had already come to fruition.
And it’s entirely reasonable to ask how many deaths oneis willing to consider reasonable to bring this theory to pass – as it’s reasonable to ask the theorist – who’s demanding others to die for his theory – if he himself is willing to take onthe great honour of dying for it, too.
Because the thing is, ET, Einstein and Darwin and rest,of course did not have to die to have their theories proven. But they didn’t ask others to die for their theories either. You are.
As well, their theories were based on observable laws of physics and gravity. Yours are based on a “Wouldn’t it be nice?” philosophy. Wouldn’t it be nice if a country could invade another and create a middle class, etc. Again, such a thing has never happened since the beginning of the earth.
My asking if you were prepared to die for the theory, as you demand others to do, was simply to say that there are real costs to such an undertaking, that it’s not all theoretical and academic as you seem to think. And yes, it is entirely logical that if you propound a theory which demands others die, you must be willing to die for it as well.
Finally, it is laughable that you keep accusing me of presenting my opinions as facts when it is I who have cited facts and you keep presenting these unsubstantiated theories.
You even go as far to say that Bush has already been proven ‘right’ when that’s not the case at all. It might be what you’d like to happen (and according to your own words it might not happen for 100 years). But Bush hasn’t remotely been proven ‘right’. You’re giving the impression that you’re so wrapped up in your theorizing that you’re not seeing reality.
I see two other disturbing trends in your thought:
1) You claim the ‘middle class creation’ was the main reason for the war, and WMD too, but not as much. You say the ‘middle class creation’ is difficult to make people understand in a 1/2 hour TV show, especially if they don’t have a ‘thorough knowledge of societal systems’, so in that you seem to agree with Wolfowitz that WMD was settled on as the thing to push to the public as a reason ‘people could understand’.
But your theory isn’t so hard to understand. And if it was the main reasonfor the war, is it not dishonest to give the public another, at least partly spurious reason?
Do you agree with philosopher Leo Stauss’s theory of the ‘noble lie’ in which it’s ok to mislead the people for their own good? If so, is it alright for every leader to do this? Or only those of the Right? Or only Bush?
Because it seems rather obvious. If your theory had been given to the people as the real main reason for the war, they wouldn’t likely have gone for it. A little too ‘pie-in-the-sky’ to say the least.
So the WMD was needed to clinch the deal: convince they were in danger right after they’d been traumatized by 9/11.
Do you approve of this? Again, do you grant dispensation for such manipulation to all leaders? Or merely Bush?
And 2) You haven’t answered how many casualties are reasonable for your theory to be considered a success. Is there a cut-off point, ever? Or does the killing just go and on with the hope or faith, that one day, maybe, the theory will be proven true?
If there’s no cut-off point, does that mean you’re willing to demand an endless amount of people die simply because you *believe* that Bush is sincere, simply because it’s your considered *opinion* that he’s thought this thing through, and darn it, he’s so smart, there’s no way it won’t result in the creation of an Iraqi middle class.
I’ll ask you again to remember that contrary to your final sentence, Bush has in no way been proven right. That’s merely your opinion – perhaps an understandably rash one, since you already consider him a leader with special dispensation to mislead his public, as well as to ask endless amounts of his people to die in the service of a whimsical “Wouldn’t it be nice?” theory.
volik –
The way I argue with you, is to present data and analysis. You may disagree with me. Because YOU think that your opinions are true, doesn’t, equally, make your opinions true. Because YOU say you are presenting ‘facts’ doesn’t make them facts.
Because someone ‘reports’/writes/says on Wikipedia or anywhere that 935 lies were made, doesn’t make that ‘report’ a fact or a truth.
‘Force’ the establishment of a middle class? Why should I think that you would mean that? The US is not forcing the establishment of a middle class in Iraq. Just as it didn’t do that in Japan. It is enabling the emergence to power, economically and politically, of a middle class. Such a class could only emerge if the population were already very large, urbanized and within an industrial economy.
You are ignoring this basic ‘readiness’ that was being repressed by the dictatorships in both countries and was causing fascism.
Actually, the US knew very well that Shinto Japan had to be transformed from a feudal mentality to a modern political and economic perpsective. The analysis of the ‘Japanese’ perspective was carried out quite extensively during the War years (see R. Benedict, for example).
And, the analysis of the tribal/civic differentiation, and the role of the middle class, is a basic political science area of research. (eg, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Weber).
Yes, democracy is emerging in Iraq. I hope you aren’t ignoring their constitution, their elections and their actions of tribal collaboration with each other rather than the old isolation and fighting.
Aristotle, Mill and other political and social scientists (Hume, Locke, Hobbes, Weber, etc) aren’t ready to die for their theories. Such unwillingness doesn’t prove their theories invalid.
Again, your suggestion of the viability or validity of a theory being related to whether one is willing to die for it, is not only a red herring but is deeply amoral.
I am not asking anyone to die for my theory; you are. You are insisting that IF my theory has any validity, THEN, people ought to be ready to die for it. I refuse such an unethical perspective.
After all, suicide bombers and fascist leaders promote such ‘dying for the cause’; that doesn’t make that cause valid.
Real costs to a theory? Who is denying that? The transition from one societal structure to another is never without ‘real costs’.
You don’t understand that societal structural change is always violent; it never happens easily. The movement in the West from a feudal to civic state took over 400 years and was a violent 400 years. The Japanese switch took a generation of violence (WWII). Whether the efficient or proximate cause was another country’s invasion in retaliation for , eg, Japan’s invasion, or whether it was due to massive repeated famines and plagues (West) – the real cause was the dysfunctionality of the feudal system.
There certainly are ‘real costs’; the old system of peasant and noble land holdings had to be destroyed, the old kinship political elitism had to collapse, the old redistrubtion economic system had to collapse to enable a market system.
If my theory is easy to understand, then, why do you reject the notion of enabling the emergence of a middle class, a democracy, to inhibit and prevent fascism? You call it ‘pie in the sky’. Why?
You don’t understand the role of a middle class, you don’t know the history of the emergence of the middle class – otherwise, you would never say that it had never been ‘imposed’. It was never ‘imposed’; the people were freed and enabled to move into a middle class. You don’t undertand the importance of a middle class and you obviously don’t understand the history of economic development.
But, Bush DID, repeatedly, talk about the need for democracy in the ME. As for the WMD, that was the ‘proximate’ cause, ie, the immediate cause, and both Blair and Bush felt that they existed. But, the ‘functional cause’ was the need to move the ME out of its totalitarian dictatorships, to stop fascism.
You may say that Bush hasn’t been proven right, but you, yourself, provide no evidence of your opinion. My evidence is the enormous change that is already evident in Iraq, with the people assuming power, collaborating with each other, moving into control over a dynamic economy – and with the spread of these changes to the other Arab countries.
Actually, a society will move into a new infrastructure, by itself if it can, or by the force of other nations attacking it – when its old infrastructure becomes too dangerous, either for itself or for others.
The ME nations, because they were oil funded military dictatorships, could not move out of the old and into the new, on their own. To maintain control over the people, was extremely costly. The number of people Saddam Hussein murdered, to keep control, was in the hundred thousands. Do you agree that he should have been allowed by the international world to maintain control this way?
The ‘cancerous’ nature of their old infrastructure was revealed by the emergence of Islamic fascism. Islamic fascism was externalized by the ME, to divert the people’s desire for change, from the real cause of oppression, their own govt, to the West. How long could the West support the terrorist bombings of the West? Do you think Islamic fascism should have been allowed to continue to kill people in the West?
Therefore, the West had to move against the real cause of Islamic fascism – the tribal systems of rule, in the ME.
No, I don’t believe in lies, noble or otherwise. I also don’t believe in debating issues with people who don’t have the background of expertise, historical and theoretical knowledge to understand an issue. For example, I don’t know anything about medical issues; if a medical expert tells me that such and such symptoms and tests show such and such disease, then, I’ll have to TRUST his judgment. I don’t know anything about financial issues; if an expert tells me that such and such shows that interest rates must be changed, I’ll have to have a certain element of TRUST in his judgment.
Again, I reject your claim that the change isn’t beneficial and that Iraq isn’t changing for the better. I think that all signs, economic and political and societal, point to the opposite conclusion – they are doing very well now.
ET
I don’t know why you continually misrepresent what I say, especially when I have explicitly explained what I’ve said. Beyond your dishonesty in doing so, it damages your argument: if you feel you can’t defend it without using falsehoods, it kind of gives the sense that you don’t have much confidence in it.
As well, for you to state falsehoods on the very page where they are easily disproven points to a behaviour that isn’t just dishonest. It’s irrational.
You claim I suggest that a theory’s validity is determined by the willingness to die for it. I explcitly said I did not believe this. Now you say it again.
When you are asking for your theory to be implemented you are asking for people to die for it. There’s no way around it. Your theory may or may not be valid: whether it is or not isn’t determined by whether you yourself die for it or not.
Since you consider your theory to be already proving to be a success, you obviously consider all the people sacrificed for it to be worth it. It’s not a preposterous question to ask then if it would be worth it for your own life to be sarificed for it. Your death wouldn’t prove or disprove your theory. It was simply a question I asked – and which you still haven’t answered.
You set up a silly – and revealing – false arguemnt when you say that if your theory is so easy to understand as I said it was, why then do I reject it? Your conviction that only one who fails to understand your theory could reject it is indicative of your blinkered, self-deluding way of looking at the world.
There is simply no precedence for the monumental feat of social engineering you are describing. Countries like Japan or Germany, destroyed by war, aren’t valid comparisons. The US didn’t nuke Japan into submission in order to create a middle class, no matter what your fellow theorists might have written. It nuked them because it had to destroy a country that was prepared to fight to the last man.
Your “you don’t understand that structursl change is always violent” is uncomfortably close to the old “you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette”. You’re remarkably calm about the casualties absorbed for a theory that – despite your OPINION – has never been proven in the past and shows no evidence of being proven now.
You also give yourself the escape hatch of saying “heck, it might take 400 years” – you’re obviously up for absorbing limitless casualties for your theory. That’s disturbing and weird.
You can go on about your expertise all you want. But there really is no rational foundation for what you’re saying. You seem to have insulated yourself into a self-satisfied conviction that your theory is not only right but has already been proven right!
Where is the evidence that Iraq is going well? The constitution, the elections don’t automatically mean anything. The ‘surge’ is cosmetic, merely bringing the deaths down to 2006 levels. They aren’t close to a poltical soluton. If things are going well why doesn’t the US trumpet it? – then maybe the majority of their people wouldn’t disapprove of the war.
Do you fault the US for not being more successful for publicizing its great success in Iraq, as you see it? How else do you explain that so many see it as a disastrous failure, rather than the success you’re so heartened by?
For you must see that you’re the only person I’m aware of that feels the war has been a success, who feels Bush has been proven right. The reasons you describe it as a success seem always rather general and vague.
Finally you wrap up your whole argument by saying you’re so knowledgable on the subjectyou shouldn’t have to even discuss it with anyone else; that others should only trust you and your kind, and should gladly sacrifice their lives for your theories because *you* know better, and others should blindly trust you for that very reason – because *you* say so.
Beyond its dishonesty as a debate tactic – you’re saying ‘forget all the arguemnts, just trust what I say because I know better’ – it’s distasteful and cowardly. Prove your argument on its own merits. Don’t tell the rest of us to blindly accept what you say based on your supposed ‘expertise’.
Your viewpoint is disturbingly close to neo-con philosopher Leo Strauss, who feels the public can be lied to and shut out of debate and that all power should rest with the initiated elite.
In summation: You’re wrong because:
1) You argue dishonestly, repeatedly claiming I’ve said things I didn’t, and ignoring me when I’ve corrected you.
2) You act as though an unproven theory has been proven. You speak with certainty about the inevitability of something occuring which has never occured before in the history of the world. You’re simply not grounded in reality.
3) You’re prepared to accept an endless number of casualties (but not your own!) and give an endless amount of time for your theory to be proven – that isn’t a plan based on rational thought. It isn’t a plan at all. It’s a cult-like devotion to an idea that has no grounding in reality.
4) In the end you claim you don’t have to defend or discuss your theory at all – others should simply accept it because you say so.
The last point is just your way of shutting down an argument you can’t win. Further, it displays that you aren’t and haven’t been arguing in good faith.
You aren’t arguing in good faith because it’s not possible to defend your theory by doing so. That’s because you’re really just acting out of a *feeling*, a cult-like devotion to an idea that you have faith in – it’s simply your *opinion* that Bush has peen proven right and that therefore endless amounts of casualties can be absorbed.
Your lying, and your attempt to shut down debate by claiming only ‘experts’ like yourself are worthy of debating it, are byproducts of the fact that you know your theory is only a *feeling* and a *faith* on your part that can’t be defended logically in a debate.
A strange feeling and faith which demands that unlimited numbers of humans be sacrificed for it…
I think, volik, we aren’t getting anywhere in this ‘debate’. Certainly, nothing you have written convinces me that you know anything of the economic, political or societal nature of the ME. Your focus seems to be merely anti-Bush and anti-American, and your data base from pop sites on the internet.
First, when I am suggesting a theory of societal change, it does not mean that I am asking people to ‘die for it’. After all, this would mean that any analysis of history, of societies, of people, would be ‘asking people to die’ for it.
After all, your theory that ‘oil is the cause’ would have to be, according to you, asking people to die for that theory.
That is, if you consider that the reason for the US going into Iraq, is because of oil, then, NOT going into Iraq also means that you are asking people to ‘die for it’. Saddam Hussein would continue to murder his people, and Islamic fascism would continue to grow in the ME and the world.
Are you seriously concluding that a theory is only acceptable as valid, if no-one dies? That is, my theory is that the ME violence exists, because of the lack of a civic political and economic infrastructure in the ME. People are dying in the ME – because of this lack of that structure.
Yet, when I propose a theory to STOP the violence – you complain that it will cause people to die. Well, volik, people are dying in the ME because there is no civic political structure. Why do you want this to continue?
You write:”Your theory may or may not be valid: whether it is or not isn’t determined by whether you yourself die for it or not.
Since you consider your theory to be already proving to be a success, you obviously consider all the people sacrificed for it to be worth it. It’s not a preposterous question to ask then if it would be worth it for your own life to be sarificed for it.”
You are, in the above, contradicting yourself. That is a ridiculous question. How, if I am willing to die for my theory, does that change the value of my theory? You ask if my theory would be ‘worth’ my death. How does that evaluate the value of a theory? Well?
Are you willing to die to maintain Islamic fascism in the world? Are you willing to die to maintain Saddam Hussein’s murderous regime? Are you willing to die to maintain the dictatorships and repressions of the other ME states, such as the Saudi Arabian and Iranian repression of women?
You have given me ample evidence that you don’t understand my theory. Plus, you DON’T LISTEN. I never said that the agenda of the US war against Japan was to create a middle class. I said, that the defeat enabled the creation of a middle class. Japan had moved into fascism because it didn’t have a middle class; the defeat destroyed the elite, and enabled the development of a middle class.
And the US knew perfectly well, post WWII, that Japan had to move out of its tribal and into a civic mode. Its policies during the occupation were specifically geared to such a development.
I repeat, any structural change to a societal system is violent; this includes the 400 years that it took for the West to change; I suggest you do a bit of reading of history. It includes the change from the tsarist to the soviet (which was actually a change from peasant agricultural to industrialism); it includes the same in China under Mao (peasant agriculture to industrialism).
I suggest you do a LOT of reading in history.
It’s not my opinion; the data base for the loss of life during these transitions is well documented.
YOU may say that there is no rational foundation for my theories, but, they are hardly exclusive to me, and that’s just your opinion.
All you have to do is check out the various data on economic developments in Iraq, on schooling and education, on businesses starting up and so on. Check out the pipeline devt and oil production, the strengthened military to prevent the enormous losses from insurgents stealing oil, , the train service devt, the agricultural devt – all of which, by the way, was suffering under Saddam Hussein’s rule.
I didn’t say that ‘heck it could take 400 years’. I said that the transformation of the West from a feudal to civic mode took 400 years, from about 1100 to 1500. That’s a fact; read the history of the West.
I have absolutely no intention of persuading you, and I’m not asking you to trust me; I think you prefer your 935 lies and 12 steps to fascism (both of them, in my view, utterly ridiculous). I’m saying that the research, in books and articles, shows that your views do not hold up to factual analysis.
No, you haven’t proven me wrong. Your 935 lies is hardly proof of anything, etc. Your four points – just your opinion, which you are indeed, welcome to. My argument has nothing to do with ‘faith’ and you are introducing a red herring.
Again, your view that ‘it’s all about oil’ is unsubstantiated. It’s pure opinion, found in your anti-Bush and anti-American web sites, of which there are indeed many – all of them equally nonfactual and emotional.
But, the most serious problem in your outline, is that you have no, absolutely no, understanding of political, economic or societal systems. You don’t know and don’t understand the difference between a tribal and civic mode. You don’t know and don’t understand the nature of and reasons for Islamic fascism. And – you have no knowledge of history.
Cheers, volik. Ignorance is bliss, isn’t it?
ET
“Are you seriously concluding that a theory is only acceptable as valid only if no-one dies?”
Of course I stated, or inferred no such thing. You’ve carried out this purposeful diversion through three posts now. It is a red herring designed to divert from questions you don’t want to answer, or are unable to.
I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt that you’re not dense in repeating the same falsehood over and over: I instead conclude that you are being purposely dishonest.
My question was whether *You* consider your theory worth your death. I explicitly stated such a question has nothing to do with the objective value of your theory. You still haven’t answered the question. And with the obfuscation you’ve engaged in to avoid it, obviously with good reason.
The point is that there is no comparison between Iraq and what was done in Japan or Germany. You claim a specific plan is being carried out in Iraq to provide it with a middle class, beginning with its invasion. The only plan with Japan and Germany was to defeat and destroy them. Your comparison simply doesn’t work.
After lying, setting up red herrings and false comparisons, you still don’t feel you’ve done enough to stave me off, so you go for the old idea that you know more than me – and anyone else who questions your open-ended war of limitless casualties. Why on earth you think anyone would believe you are the self-styled ‘expert’ you claim to be after you’ve dropped so many lies into the discussion is mystery.
But one thing is clear: in the end you’ve reverted to type. Your concluding snipes at my intelligence are no different than the common snarls used by all your fellow posters here when they lose arguments – I was surprised that you didn’t slur “Retard!” since that’s the common phrase used by the other brainiacs here.
It’s sad that you don’t feel adequate to defend your theory and instead go for the adoloscent “Well you wouldn’t understand anyway!” I might add that as with your fellow posters, when they go for the old “You’re a stupid-head!” defense, such insults coming from someone who’s been shown to lack all intellectual integrity are really like compliments to be cherished.
However why should one such as you even stoop to cast aspersions on one of the ‘ignorant’ little people who dares cast aspersions on the endless war of you and your demi-gods, Bush and Cheney? Certainly you must be resting in the secure knowledge that one day grateful Iraqis will shower US soldiers with flower and candy, just as Cheney predicted…no matter how many years or deaths (though not your own, of course!) it takes.