Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
--- James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [permanent holy war] Steve Thompson True, but there's a question of the waste of resources and man-years that would come from such a circumstance. All the oil money has been wasted, most of the humans in the middle east have suffered poverty, ignorance, lack of freedom and the unproductive absence of useful labor. Just like the good ol' USA, AFAIK. It's just that the inequities at home aren't limited to those that are a product of the petrochemical industry. All of which is not too different from what I see in the poorer parts of the city I live in: Toronto. All my life, people have been proposing to solve this problem. Nearly every American president since 1950 announced some big and expensive initiative that would supposedly solve this problem, or make some substantial progress towards a solution. Lately people were talking about PSE/COA topics which make moot much of the bickering and squabbling that is a constant feature of capitalism. We don't hear much about PSE these days for some reason. I suspect that the path from here to there is still too far beyond the planning horizon of too many people. So, if PSE in a recognizeable form represents a rational outcome of current economic progress, then I guess we must wait until it looms nearer before selling it to the world. What is your solution? PSE. And the death of all superstitious nonsense. Of course, there are probably enough people around who like domination games that the elimination of bogus memes such as those attached to theology may prove difficult. Do you have a better idea? And then there's the ethical[1] side of the coin: do the (largely financial benefits) that might come from a civil war in Iraq really justify the consequent standard-of-living for the residents of Iraq? And your remedy for improving the standard of living in the arab world is? Give them more money. Aridrop directv dishes, televisions, and old computers. Hell, I don't know. Winning arab hearts and minds is a topic that is entirely beyond my area of expertise. Steve Thompson Aren't we all about to run out of oil soon anyways? Forty years or so, according to estimates by the more sane and conventional authorities. And then what? What are we and they going to do the following year? And the year after that? I'm sure your military think-tanks have walked through the scenarios and have a good handle on the likely outcomes, but they aren't really talking at this time. (And of course, I wouldn't trust public military think-tank product to correctly predict the sunrise.) James A. Donald: the people who organize large scale terror can be identified, particularly by locals and coreligionists, which is why they have been dying in large numbers in Afghanistan. Steve Thompson Um, what planet are you on? The planet where the Afghans held an election, in which nearly everybody voted, some of them several times, and the Taliban were unable to carry out any of the threats they made against the voters, which indicates that the Afghans have been pretty efficient in killing Taliban. Ok. That may well be true. And it is a step in the right direction. However I would guess that the long-term stable state of Afghanistan is entirely up in the air. Barring coups and such I guess we'll have to revisit the Afghanistan question in a few decades. At that time, and after they've had a little practice with the democratic process, we'll probably have a much better idea of how well their liberation from the taliban went. The people who, as you say, organize large scale terror tend to be protected by virtue of large bureaucratic firewalls, legislated secrecy, misdirection (smoke and mirrors), and even taboos. The average Afghan warlord is untroubled by any of this crap. I suspect that not many of them get to the civilised portions of the Internet all that often. He sees someone who looks suspicious, says Hey, you don't look like you are from around here. What are you doing? If he does not like the answers, he brings out his skinning knife, and asks a few more questions. If the answers make him even more unhappy, he hands his skinning knife to the womenfolk, and tells them to take their time. You gotta admire the hands-on leadership style, at the very least. But perhaps you are not referring to Western terrorists, but are expecting your reader to assume that terrorists always wear turbans, and who generally will live and operate in the Middle-Eastern theatre. Perhaps you have forgotten about the people who planned and executed the operations that helped South-American tyrants form up and train their death- and terror-squads? The parties that sponsored death squads of Latin America, when victorious, held free and fair elections, which they won, and those they had been fighting lost. The death squads were an response to
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
-- On 25 Nov 2004 at 10:10, Tyler Durden wrote: More to the point is that a long term period of chaos and turbulence causes the locals to be willing to open the door to the like of the Taliban, Those who used to mindlessly chant commie propaganda now mindlessly chant islamist propaganda. Just as it was supposedly capitalist oppression and injustice that makes the oppressed masses supposedly warmly embrace their communist liberators, in the same way we infidels supposedly endlessly fight among ourselves. Supposedly that part of the world not under Islamic overlords is Dar Al-Harb (Abode of War), thus leading us to gladly submit to the peace provided by becoming second class citizens under islamic overlords. Dar Al-Islam (Abode of Islam) The violence of which you speak was not warlords fighting warlords, but the Taliban and its predecessor attacking men women and children, for example the shelling of Kabul. The relief that people expected to obtain by submitting to Taliban rule was not relief from fighting each other, but relief from indiscriminate Taliban attacks. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Telq5NhpCgCZDEO1lcOKsyieFYCXtJtqz9XFpas 4FPfkxCbsSj5U8v+827Yg0Rx1b1I/8QU/qUAvToxa
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
--- James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -- James A. Donald: Seems to me that permanent civil war in Iraq provides Americans with the same benefits as democracy in Iraq, though considerably more reliably. Steve Thompson You might be more accurate to say that a permanent [civil] war in Iraq benefits miltiary leaders and civilian contractors with a variety of benefits. [pardon the redundancy] Permanent holy war in Iraq would keep them busy and out of mischief WITHOUT permanent large involvement from American military. True, but there's a question of the waste of resources and man-years that would come from such a circumstance. And then there's the ethical[1] side of the coin: do the (largely financial benefits) that might come from a civil war in Iraq really justify the consequent standard-of-living for the residents of Iraq? People like Tim May might say that the towel-headed barbarians deserve to be killed in a bloody civil conflict, but other people might argue that there are stable states that do not actually require heavy foreign civilian losses. As to who is correct, I cannot say. As a relatively new student of history I am still researching the topic. Plus, of course, they would be pumping oil like mad in order to fund it. Aren't we all about to run out of oil soon anyways? Finding Al Quaeda is hard. Nation building is even harder. Military training covers nation smashing, not nation building. Of course. It's much easier to smash things than it is to create; and smashing requires much less wisdom. On average; depending on how one goes about `smashing' a nation-state. I imagine that nation-building, or nation-`shaping', would be quite hard -- and what if such efforts were to go awry? The consequences might be terrible. But arranging matters so that Al Quaeda is busily killing those muslims it deems insufficiently Muslim, and muslims are killing Al Quaeda right back, seems astonishingly easy. If you've been practising pitting groups of barbarians against each other, as is apparently the case for those involved with the military intelligence community, then yes, I suppose it might be considered `astonishingly easy'. I would also be inclined to suggest that those sorts of arrangements are quite expensive, regardless of their degree of ease. It is like throwing a match into a big petrol spill. Why are American soldiers getting shot putting out the fire? Why are Americans dying to stop arabs from killing arabs? We *want* arabs to kill arabs. When arabs kill arabs, we fear that the wrong side might win - but whichever side wins, it usually turns out to be the wrong side. If no one wins, no problem. I suppose that Americans are getting shot and dying because they are being paid to engage in high-risk operations. The risk-taking probably makes them feel more like manly-men -- until they bleed out all over the desert sand, of course. Is there a psychologist in the house who might shed more light on this kind of risk-taking behavior? Nothing like a long holy war with no clear winner to teach people the virtues of religious tolerance. That is, after all, how Europeans learnt that lesson. You're dreaming. People simply do not learn from history. But we learnt from history. Europe, and Europeans, did learn from the European holy wars. Well, my opinion is such that the major lesson that [a few] people end up learning from history is how to make conflict seem more legitimate to increasingly better educated populations. But there is evidently a long way to go before the enterprise of warfare is perfected. As to other lessons learned from history, it is evident that we as a species have learnt that war remains profitable under all conditions. This is now a matter of the most sacred orthodoxy to high-culture. Do not worry. I will not presume to challenge such a strongly-held belief. Many things would be nice if [group A] were busy killing [enemy B] instead of [group C]. Sadly, this is not a perfect world and the people who need the most killing do not, generally speaking, get it. Perhaps it is a bit of a shame that the kind of broken person who ends up becoming a suicide bomber, a Ted Kaczynski, a Timothy McVeigh, or even a Jim Sikorski, First: Three cheers for Timothy McViegh. How about, Where is Ted Kaczynski now that we really need him? Secondly, the people who organize large scale terror can be identified, particularly by locals and coreligionists, which is why they have been dying in large numbers in Afghanistan. Um, what planet are you on? The people who, as you say, organize large scale terror tend to be protected by virtue of large bureaucratic firewalls, legislated secrecy, misdirection (smoke and mirrors), and even taboos. But perhaps you are not referring to Western terrorists, but are expecting your reader to assume
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
On Thu, 25 Nov 2004, Tyler Durden wrote: When the Taliban came in to power, they seemed to offer some stability, albeit at a price. And I'd bet a lot of people in the shoes of the Afghanis would have been willing to pay that price. An afghani is a unit of currency, worth much less than a penny. The people who live there are Afghans or Afghanistanis or just Afs. I know it's a trivial point, but for those of us who have actually spent some time there -- and to the Afghans, of course -- it grates. -- Jim Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
-- James A Donald wrote... And the problem with a civil war in Iraq is? Tyler Durden And the answer is: 9/11 sucked. Oh wait, I guess I have to explain that. After the Soviets were pushed out of Afghanistan the place became a veritable breeding ground for all sorts of virulent strains of Islam, warlords, and so on. Nothing wrong with warlords - right now they are doing a fine job of keeping the Taliban down. What made it a breeding ground for terrorism was not civil war, but diminuition of civil war. The problem was that the Taliban was damn near victorious. If the US government had maintained the relationship with our former anti communist allies, and kept on sending them arms, we never would have had 9/11 The trouble was that the government abandoned our allies. We should have sent them enough aid to sustain permanent major civil war against the Taliban. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG PKHY56Lv+tILn2Qq0fJACuoHr5UrnHsCHuFRofC7 4B3ZCczFe/KNkguYoDENJrgFm5KZ6pJTV/sIRh7wY
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
Associated Press has pre-issued a Thanksgiving Day photo of a former US soldier who lost a leg, participating in a photo op at a military base. Secdef and CJCS issued pre-holiday thanks yesterday to the families of the military dead and to the wounded and maimed in hospitals and on photo op tours. Today Secdef was on Laura Ingraham gushing (slobber not blood) about the AmericaSupportsYou.mil website where red-blooded Americans can participate in thanksgiving the Iraq bloodletting, praising the headless and limbless and scared shitless and McVeigh-mad-dogs yearning-to-frag-backhome-warfighters. AP has nearly stopped showing valorous warriors in combat in Iraq, now its mostly photos of funerals and the dead in cheerful high school pictures and dress-uniformed headshots, oops, head shots are no, no's, except for the hardbitten would-be warriors here sitting fat and happy before the keyboard tapping for more killing, right James, civil war over there is hunky dory, but please not an RPG invading your computer bubble, an IED making your kids into rag dolls. Overseas wars are delightful movie-land fun from over here, Secdef croons -- gobble, gobble, Sergeant York called for the Secdef's curious-head pop-up. Seen the Norwegian site that calls for Bush's head shot? Two URLs, the last vivid: http://www.killhim.nu/ http://killhimwith.bazooka.at/once/
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
-- James A. Donald And the problem with a civil war in Iraq is? John Kelsey At least three: a. The pottery barn theory of foreign affairs--we'd be blamed for making things worse. And if we do nothing, we are also blamed for making things worse: Observe, for example 1. the French assist the Hutus to commit genocide against the Tutsis. Capitalism and America get blamed. 2. The Indonesians massacre infidels. Capitalism, Americans and America get blamed. 3. Saddam massacres his people. The CIA, Americans and America get blamed. 4. Syria invades Lebanon. America and Israel get blamed. 5. Africans massacre each other in the Congo. America gets blamed. (Oddly, for once, the CIA, capitalism, and Jews, are not involved.) (I don't know how much this matters long term, but it would certainly have made life pretty hard on Tony Blair and the rest of the world leaders who actually supported us.) The dogs bark and the caravan moves on. b. We would one day like their oil back on the market. They would like that also. Fortunately all the oil is Kurds, or Shiites - the first areas to be secured once the civil war burns down a bit. c. We would like to make sure that the next regime to come to power there isn't someone we also feel obligated to get rid of, as even invasions done on the cheap cost a lot of money. But it is easy and cheap to remove people. It is installing people that is hard, bloody, and expensive. If the dice turn out badly, just roll them again. Nobody teaches soldiers nation building in basic training. They do however, teach them nation smashing. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG cE8rYUZGiDSDZk4yFeEBDqa3go99WSWJnoTURH4R 4L1KruhmMXw4gVFrzipYHod+HL0bAKAEvFpvwCdUV
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
-- James A Donald wrote... What made [Afghanistan] a breeding ground for terrorism was not civil war, but diminuition of civil war. The problem was that the Taliban was damn near victorious. If the US government had maintained the relationship with our former anti communist allies, and kept on sending them arms, we never would have had 9/11 Tyler Durden Well, that's not particularly convincing. First of all, even during the Taliban's reign there were plenty of warlords that ran some regions of Afghanistan. I seem to recall you lot claiming that the Taliban had successfully restored order - (you see the Taliban being able to massacre civilians unoppose as order) There was some truth in that claim. They controlled 95%. Had their been less truth, the Taliban would have had less ability to make trouble. More to the point is that a long term period of chaos and turbulence causes the locals to be willing to open the door to the like of the Taliban, as long as they offer some kind of peace. So we should therefore make sure they cannot offer some kind of peace. In Iraq, the Pentagon cannot supply peace. Why then should we allow those who wish to destroy us provide peace? If we cannot have peace, no one should. The period between Soviet withdrawal and the Taliban was uglier than practically anything imaginable...one batch of warlords would take over, killing the men loyal to the previous batch and raping the women, Nonsense. The ugly thing about the period before Taliban rule was that the Taliban, or people of much the same ideology, would persistently destroy murder and rape in order to get people to submit to their rule. When opposition largely collapsed, their massacres did not cease, though their rapes became more discrete. Instead, they decided to expand their terror onto a wider stage. The war was not warlord vs warlord, it was radical Islamists vs the rest, the rest being warlords and conservative Islamists. The radical Islamists won, but victory did not appease their appetite for terror. and then another batch would take over and do the same thing. All the big crimes were committed by the Taliban or their ally Hekmatyar. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG iMxmau6gQqD0z0pAMUXMXDaFhYeKeIIMk+RxXM7G 4oThdqbZEnQ5o4UXBwjhmlFI92anV7zx78zQop+f4
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
Thus spake Steve Thompson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [25/11/04 10:17]: : You're dreaming. People simply do not learn from history. People /do/ learn from history. But most people never bother learning history, period, and many of those that do believe that their situation is different. And... : Never mind the fact that the historical record is largely incomplete and : of course written by the victors; what does survive in the history of the : species entirely fails to teach individuals and cultures the errors of : primitive and barbaric ways.
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
--- James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -- James A. Donald: And the problem with a civil war in Iraq is? On 24 Nov 2004 at 2:42, Bill Stewart wrote: Well, once you get past the invalid and dishonest parts of Bush's 57 reasons We Need to Invade Iraq Right Now (WMDs, Al-Qaeda, Tried to kill Bush's Daddy, etc.) you're pretty much left with Saddam tried to kill Bush's Daddy and Replacing the EEEVil dictator Saddam with a Democracy to protect the Iraqi people. Seems to me that permanent civil war in Iraq provides Americans with the same benefits as democracy in Iraq, though considerably more reliably. You might be more accurate to say that a permanent [civil] war in Iraq benefits miltiary leaders and civilian contractors with a variety of benefits. Of course, I am quite stupid about a great many subjects and consequently I may not be able to fully appreciate the benefits that trickle down to the American public from being `part' of a theocratic-military pseudo-oligarchy. Perhaps such an arrangement makes the best of the human condition and I am merely too inferior to appreciate the fact. Chances are that after fair and free election, the majority will vote to screw the minority - literally screw them, as in rape being unofficially OK when members of the majority do it to members of the minority. Well this is to be expected if one studies the field of game theory. And given that reality, there is really no point in using psychology and legislation to mitigate against the dictatorship of the proletariat. Vulnerable minorities might as well lie back and enjoy the inevitable loving attentions of the majority, eh? Nothing like a long holy war with no clear winner to teach people the virtues of religious tolerance. That is, after all, how Europeans learnt that lesson. You're dreaming. People simply do not learn from history. Never mind the fact that the historical record is largely incomplete and of course written by the victors; what does survive in the history of the species entirely fails to teach individuals and cultures the errors of primitive and barbaric ways. Of course this may change in the future. The Christian crusaders, to use but one trivial example, did not have television and the History Channel at the time when they were working themselves into a frenzy in preparation for war. And the worst comes to the worst - well today the Taliban are busy kiling Afghans instead of Americans. Wouldn't it be nice if Al Quaeda was killing Iraqis instead of Americans - well actually they are killing Iraqis instead of americans, but wouldn't it be nice if they were killing *more* Iraqis? Many things would be nice if [group A] were busy killing [enemy B] instead of [group C]. Sadly, this is not a perfect world and the people who need the most killing do not, generally speaking, get it. Perhaps it is a bit of a shame that the kind of broken person who ends up becoming a suicide bomber, a Ted Kaczynski, a Timothy McVeigh, or even a Jim Sikorski, cannot be identified early on by some sort of DNA screening technology and then channeled into an appropriate military program in which they might be trained to use their special talents against truly worthy enemies of the state. Regards, Steve __ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
-- James A. Donald: And the problem with a civil war in Iraq is? On 24 Nov 2004 at 2:42, Bill Stewart wrote: Well, once you get past the invalid and dishonest parts of Bush's 57 reasons We Need to Invade Iraq Right Now (WMDs, Al-Qaeda, Tried to kill Bush's Daddy, etc.) you're pretty much left with Saddam tried to kill Bush's Daddy and Replacing the EEEVil dictator Saddam with a Democracy to protect the Iraqi people. Seems to me that permanent civil war in Iraq provides Americans with the same benefits as democracy in Iraq, though considerably more reliably. Chances are that after fair and free election, the majority will vote to screw the minority - literally screw them, as in rape being unofficially OK when members of the majority do it to members of the minority. Nothing like a long holy war with no clear winner to teach people the virtues of religious tolerance. That is, after all, how Europeans learnt that lesson. And the worst comes to the worst - well today the Taliban are busy kiling Afghans instead of Americans. Wouldn't it be nice if Al Quaeda was killing Iraqis instead of Americans - well actually they are killing Iraqis instead of americans, but wouldn't it be nice if they were killing *more* Iraqis? --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG PwjZ4PipCdWr8EC4cLgzxV3SAw0bWUhhvejdGR8/ 4XrnLDT2Ed8fBlZ0wGPU0dQOOH2GeZ5kbh7h8N4QF
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
James A Donald wrote... What made it a breeding ground for terrorism was not civil war, but diminuition of civil war. The problem was that the Taliban was damn near victorious. If the US government had maintained the relationship with our former anti communist allies, and kept on sending them arms, we never would have had 9/11 Well, that's not particularly convincing. First of all, even during the Taliban's reign there were plenty of warlords that ran some regions of Afghanistan. More to the point is that a long term period of chaos and turbulence causes the locals to be willing to open the door to the like of the Taliban, as long as they offer some kind of peace. The period between Soviet withdrawal and the Taliban was uglier than practically anything imaginable...one batch of warlords would take over, killing the men loyal to the previous batch and raping the women, and then another batch would take over and do the same thing. When the Taliban came in to power, they seemed to offer some stability, albeit at a price. And I'd bet a lot of people in the shoes of the Afghanis would have been willing to pay that price. Such is the long-term consequence of an ill-thought out invasion by the US in Iraq OOPS I mean the Soviets in Afghanistan. They bet that all their power and their ultimate inevitable desitny as freers of the workers of the world should easily overcome the local will to control their own destiny (plus a few stingers of course). -TD
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
-- James A. Donald: Seems to me that permanent civil war in Iraq provides Americans with the same benefits as democracy in Iraq, though considerably more reliably. Steve Thompson You might be more accurate to say that a permanent [civil] war in Iraq benefits miltiary leaders and civilian contractors with a variety of benefits. Permanent holy war in Iraq would keep them busy and out of mischief WITHOUT permanent large involvement from American military. Plus, of course, they would be pumping oil like mad in order to fund it. Finding Al Quaeda is hard. Nation building is even harder. Military training covers nation smashing, not nation building. But arranging matters so that Al Quaeda is busily killing those muslims it deems insufficiently Muslim, and muslims are killing Al Quaeda right back, seems astonishingly easy. It is like throwing a match into a big petrol spill. Why are American soldiers getting shot putting out the fire? Why are Americans dying to stop arabs from killing arabs? We *want* arabs to kill arabs. When arabs kill arabs, we fear that the wrong side might win - but whichever side wins, it usually turns out to be the wrong side. If no one wins, no problem. Nothing like a long holy war with no clear winner to teach people the virtues of religious tolerance. That is, after all, how Europeans learnt that lesson. You're dreaming. People simply do not learn from history. But we learnt from history. Europe, and Europeans, did learn from the European holy wars. Many things would be nice if [group A] were busy killing [enemy B] instead of [group C]. Sadly, this is not a perfect world and the people who need the most killing do not, generally speaking, get it. Perhaps it is a bit of a shame that the kind of broken person who ends up becoming a suicide bomber, a Ted Kaczynski, a Timothy McVeigh, or even a Jim Sikorski, First: Three cheers for Timothy McViegh. Secondly, the people who organize large scale terror can be identified, particularly by locals and coreligionists, which is why they have been dying in large numbers in Afghanistan. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG G5IWMfReu/by3/JCAyrz14Fcz3P/3Cx5EC8D4Nds 4uM10QNnx/FK6otz8rAXMHEfD++OcHoiD5mO/tqBW
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
At 10:02 PM 11/23/2004, James A. Donald wrote: And the problem with a civil war in Iraq is? Well, once you get past the invalid and dishonest parts of Bush's 57 reasons We Need to Invade Iraq Right Now (WMDs, Al-Qaeda, Tried to kill Bush's Daddy, etc.) you're pretty much left with Saddam tried to kill Bush's Daddy and Replacing the EEEVil dictator Saddam with a Democracy to protect the Iraqi people. Pulling off the latter requires that you leave them with something better than a civil war, though it's not clear that what they're getting right now _is_ better than a civil war.
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
James A Donald wrote... And the problem with a civil war in Iraq is? And the answer is: 9/11 sucked. Oh wait, I guess I have to explain that. After the Soviets were pushed out of Afghanistan the place became a veritable breeding ground for all sorts of virulent strains of Islam, warlords, and so on. Iraq would likely denigrate into the same, eventually launching similarly nice little activities. -TD
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
From: James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Nov 24, 2004 1:02 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report .. And the problem with a civil war in Iraq is? At least three: a. The pottery barn theory of foreign affairs--we'd be blamed for making things worse. (I don't know how much this matters long term, but it would certainly have made life pretty hard on Tony Blair and the rest of the world leaders who actually supported us.) b. We would one day like their oil back on the market. c. We would like to make sure that the next regime to come to power there isn't someone we also feel obligated to get rid of, as even invasions done on the cheap cost a lot of money. --digsig James A. Donald --John
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
At 1:05 PM -0500 11/24/04, John Kelsey wrote: effective guerrilla warfare against US troops. Uh, huh...Just for fun, see the title of this thread. ;-) Cheers, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
The current war against western civilization started in the 1920's, when Qutb started writing his Moslem triumphalist blather in reaction to the complete collapse of the Turkish Caliphate in the wake of World War I. Eh? OK, I wouldn't have expected you to have heard of Uthman dan Fodio and the Fulani Jihad, but you really ought to have some distant rumour of Muhammad Ahmad the so-called Mahdi, a generation or two earlier than the fall of the Turkish Empire. ()If only because it would be rather hard to make any sense of whats going on in North Africa without) It'll be finished when the residents of its modern equivalent has property rights and personal freedom. Sometimes I wonder if the would would be a better place if most Americans learned anything about history that happened east of New Bedford or west of the San Andreas fault. Or that hadn't been filtered through a right-wing journalese dumbing-down small-c-conservative small-l-liberal consensus. But some miracles are too much to hope for.
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
R.A. Hettinga wrote: Apparently, understanding the recursive minutiae of the Levant, et al., the old-fashioned received, regurgitated, OxBridge way didn't help y'all too much when it came to Fabianizing yourselves back to the stone-age, either, since we're on the subject of neo-feudalist totalitarianism. So that's why you guys are behaving exactly like we used to?
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 At 11:13 AM + 11/23/04, ken reached out from his Birkbeck student digs to make September Forever once again on the cypherpunks list: Muhammad Ahmad the so-called Mahdi Sayyed Qtub is who every model of a modern major islamofascist likes to point to as his ideological source, so Qtub's good enough for, heh, government work. Qtub is the person whose various manifestoes were used to found Egypt's Islamic Brotherhood, for instance, and Al Qaeda is, ideologically, just a branch of that. At 11:13 AM + 11/23/04, ken wrote: Sometimes I wonder if the would would be a better place if most Americans learned anything about history that happened east of New Bedford or west of the San Andreas fault. Or that hadn't been filtered through a right-wing journalese dumbing-down small-c-conservative small-l-liberal consensus. Yawn... Yes, yes, War is God's way of teaching Americans about geography, to quote Ambrose Bierce. Meanwhile, consensus is the final rhetorical refuge for socialists who can't even get the mob to agree with him anymore... Apparently, understanding the recursive minutiae of the Levant, et al., the old-fashioned received, regurgitated, OxBridge way didn't help y'all too much when it came to Fabianizing yourselves back to the stone-age, either, since we're on the subject of neo-feudalist totalitarianism. It took a whole *bunch* of American right-wing journalese, plus the odd rescued City academic or two, filtered through a mere bourgeois shopkeeper's daughter to drag you lot, kicking and screaming, back to the 20th century. ;-) Cheers, RAH - -- - - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaNDksPxH8jf3ohaEQLPXgCfaXE9A2lWr5C8iAbeHoq5XKPKxUcAn0Q4 GKol4ptORgONffTxzIAeGzry =g7Jz -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 At 4:41 PM + 11/23/04, ken wrote: So that's why you guys are behaving exactly like we used to? Yup, since you can't anymore, having dropped the ball, a long, long, time ago. Monopolarity is a bitch. See Churchill, below... ;-) Cheers, RAH - -- - - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ...our claim to be left in the unmolested enjoyment of vast and splendid possessions, mainly acquired by violence, largely maintained by force, often seems less reasonable to others than to us. -- Winston Churchill, January 1914 -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaNwrMPxH8jf3ohaEQKhbwCeJfWxYVxqOZceIldNF/uDxOtQ4tQAn0Vb kn2P1ZqGByUw54RQmr+NzxP6 =VwfI -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 At 8:26 PM -0800 11/21/04, John Young wrote: Jesus, Bob, this and the Schwartz hosannah for Free Fallujah are about as bad a puke as anything you've posted. and... BTW, Bob, what's your draft status? Born in 1959. One of two years in most of the last century that were draft-exempt. :-) By the way, John, did you know that Bush Is Going To Revive The Draft??? Or was it that Bush Lied and People Died??? Or maybe, it was that John Kerry Was In Viet Nam??? One man's puke is another man's original thought, apparently. Cheers, RAH - -- - - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaFN2MPxH8jf3ohaEQKAkACfX125eCH0tKyejTciP+hCk0tCNq8AnjEh i7Mmc/ovoC/038TBcXvzozCs =DL6t -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
Jesus, Bob, this and the Schwartz hosannah for Free Fallujah are about as bad a puke as anything you've posted. These vomitoria are upchucked by the hundreds by professional writers usually under contract, or angling for one, or in the case of the eye-witness in the propaganda unit of the Corps. Go over to DoD's and the mil departments' and warmongering foreign policy web sites and you'll see a lot of this juvenalia posted urging dads and sons to get hot about serving the nation. Formulaic dreck to generate fodder for the grinding machine. DoD puts on these shows several times a week, and all spokespersons speak the same lingo -- Stepford wiving. On Friday DoD rolled out two vile initiatives claiming to support the troops. Remember that when a military action like Fallujah is completely unnecessary except to display power by hamburgering youngsters and civilians, the glorious war stories come fast and furious to counter the uptick of funerals and VA hospital lifetime inductees. BTW, Bob, what's your draft status? Ready to die or lose your limbs for a mil spin doctors' salary boost? The NY Times today describes a Marine sniper getting his head exploded by an insurgent sniper, a day or so after the Marine predicted it would happen, whistling dixie, narcotized by the Green Cunt.
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
On Sun, 21 Nov 2004, R.A. Hettinga wrote: At 8:26 PM -0800 11/21/04, John Young wrote: % SNIP % By the way, John, did you know that Bush Is Going To Revive The Draft??? Troll -1 Or was it that Bush Lied and People Died??? True +1 Or maybe, it was that John Kerry Was In Viet Nam??? Irrelevant... One man's puke is another man's original thought, apparently. Looks like you came out even there b^HBob ;) -Chuck -- http://www.quantumlinux.com Quantum Linux Laboratories, LLC. ACCELERATING Business with Open Technology The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit. - FDR
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
Hell, the entire Cold War, John. Including your beloved Viet Nam, which was a *battle*, not a war in same. When Castro, and North Korea, etc., finally fall, then the cold war will be over. That war was won (or lost, depending on how you look at it) by the inherent failures of communism itself, not because the US Government was some kind of champion of freedom. As I've gone to pains to point out, I think a good (though not unassailable case) can be made showing that the US probably slowed down free market development in certain places. Hell--East Asian communism might rightfully be blamed on the outcome of World War I and the need to create some kind of anti-western hegemony. A libertarian might possibly look at the US Government and it's legions of Conservatives as being a sort of tag-along (at best) or leech, grabbing a ride on the back of certain industries and (of course) championing them against other technologies (eg, defense, oil, autos...). Of course, neocons will turn red at the notion that they promote a very strong form of government intervention into private industry... As for... Heck, when China's current gerontocracy dies off and has an *election*, the war will be over. They're already starting to have private property. So much for communal ownership. Once property is completely transferrable, the last nail will be in the coffin. Don't count it. Capitalism, like communism, will likely take on it's own particularly Chinese flavor when hitting the high Refractive Index of that culture. China's population will near 1.5 Billion before it starts to shrink again, so don't look for real estate to be a perpetual contract for a century or two, if ever. Private Property in general (outside of real estate) has of course existed in China for decades now. -TD
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
From: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Nov 21, 2004 9:23 PM To: John Young [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report .. By the way, John, did you know that Bush Is Going To Revive The Draft??? I know this is currently known to be false by all informed opinion, but I don't think it's crazy to worry about it. If we want to fight high-tech wars like the invasion of Iraq, lots of conscript troops aren't that useful. If we want to occupy places like Iraq, we need people to do the occupying, and it's clear that there's some strain on our forces now. Conscript troops might very well be useful for that kind of work. Suppose we invade and occupy Iran next. Where will the soldiers needed to hold down occupied territory come from? Suppose we follow up with Syria, which is surely about as repressive and nasty a place as Saddam's Iraq. Three things are very clear about the current situation: a. A lot of people are finding out that their military obligations are going to be longer and much less pleasant than they expected. This is going to have a big impact on recruiting in the future. b. If we just want to hold down what we've got, we have enough troops to do it, but if we want to really go on a democratizing bender in the Middle East, we'll need more troops. c. It's not at all clear we won't be taking some action against Iran in the next year. Hopefully, that won't involve invading them, but it could. Cheers, RAH --John
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
The Selective Service website unctuously declares there is no draft foreseen at the moment and lists defeat of recent congressional efforts to institute the draft. However, it emphasizes that the agency is required by law to remain at the ready to immediately institute a draft upon notice. As part of this responsibility It polls educational instutitions every 18 months requesting updated information on draft-age youngsters who are receiving federal funding, the most recent of these polls here: http://cryptome.org/sss110404.txt A single harsh attack on US interests could precipitate a draft, and override public opposition in a flash. The military has nearly exhausted it National Guard and Reserve options, and will not give up the long-standing strategic policy of being able to fight two major wars at once. Thus most military resources are tied up not in the Middle East but in pre-positioned locations determined by the 2-wars policy. Whether the US military should forego its 2-war policy and use its forces in ways more appropriate to current threats will be determined by those interest groups who benefit from the horrifically expensive and magnificently wasteful 2-war boondoggle. Two generations of military personnel have been trained for the 2-war threat, and almost none have faced actual combat. This inexperience shows in unconventional warfare. again and again. Big war planners throw big war resources are small targets, take the applause for the phony war show, as in Fallujah, and discount lives lost because the do not show up on big war statistical-casualties diagrams. Big wars expect big losses, far more than volunteers can provide. Indeed, volunteer military personnel -- officers and enlisted -- are careful to throw conscripts into the breech as if they are expendable ammunition, the more thrown the higher the credit obtained in charts of capacity, not charts of smarts. Recall Kennedy embraced the counter-insurgent tool with support for Special Forces, but these forces remain a marginal part of the military, not least because they do not require much material and political resouces to do their duty. Big defense, and never forget, big intelligence to feed the need for big defense, are far superior ar generating contracts, jobs, careers and campaign contributions. The US is totally addicted to profligate, wasteful ineffective big war policy, primarily because there is little risk in parading might, bragging about it, threatening with it, compared to using it. Every application of US military might since WW2 has failed. STF up and pay your taxes, asshole, encourage your sons and daughters to sacrifice for the nation -- well, not really just tell the poor fuckers the military is a good safe job. Don't get drafted, that's for losers. Any road, killing the big war planners at home where they feel safe, is sure to come for their mighty military does not how to fight that war so busy is it parading forces against imaginary wargame-type evil empires of the day.
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 At 11:21 AM -0800 11/22/04, John Young wrote: Every application of US military might since WW2 has failed. Korea. Yes. Korea. Hell, the entire Cold War, John. Including your beloved Viet Nam, which was a *battle*, not a war in same. When Castro, and North Korea, etc., finally fall, then the cold war will be over. Heck, when China's current gerontocracy dies off and has an *election*, the war will be over. They're already starting to have private property. So much for communal ownership. Once property is completely transferrable, the last nail will be in the coffin. Just because, like some ancient techtonic seafloor, your political compass ossified in the general direction of Moscow, ca 1965, doesn't mean that the magnetic pole's there anymore, John. Heck, that pole's actually flipped polarity, last time I looked. The current war against western civilization started in the 1920's, when Qutb started writing his Moslem triumphalist blather in reaction to the complete collapse of the Turkish Caliphate in the wake of World War I. It'll be finished when the residents of its modern equivalent has property rights and personal freedom. As for the the article that started this thread, I'm merely pointing out that we're entering a period of *Republican* triumphalism. That it has gotten completely up your nose is no surprise, of course. Cheers, RAH - -- - - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaI/cMPxH8jf3ohaEQIWSACdFGd11vOhNiHxP95Cg/Aulmqjk7sAoJhT gr46RwVQgpaBsW3ILgZ3jjOy =s5VA -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 At 10:38 AM -0500 11/22/04, John Kelsey wrote: we need people to do the occupying, I'm pretty heretical about this. I think if we had decapitated Iraq, went after our military objectives, like securing what was a threat to us, including Iraq's senior military and political leadership and their weapons stockpiles, and left political order to emerge there on its own, like we did in Afghanistan, we could have done it with Rumsfeld's original 50,000 troop estimate. No. Seriously. :-). Cheers, RAH - -- - - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaI/dMPxH8jf3ohaEQJ5LgCg+nsmLf5Kb2RNVxkE9RswdxKydq0AoL1z TF3QBcMshgCaqfzRPyzXgyNj =rPJH -END PGP SIGNATURE-
