Posted on 09/07/2009 11:56:17 AM PDT by neverdem
Again. If America is attacked its in our best interests to react accordingly. The Constitution grants our elected and appointed officials the power to protect and defend the people. So, on that we can agree.
The problem always arises when peoples good intentions cross the line and get in the way of common sense values.
Following WWII, Japan and Germany were a thoroughly beaten people who where left with nothing. They had the capacity, however, to understand the choices they faced. Continuing to follow an historic course of extreme nationalism, based on imperialism and fascism was not an option. The same can't be said for Islam.
There is no comparison between Japan and Germany, and the followers of Mohammad's Islamic religion. Islam is based on 1400 years of religious fanaticism. In fact, Muslim's for all intent and purposes are still living in the 7TH century AD. Clearly, they have a long way to go.
The Founding Father supported nation building. As in the expansion of America --- aka. manifest destiny. But I seriously doubt they would support the USA getting involved in nation building as general policy. And I'm quite sure they wouldn't support America being the policeman to the world either. That is part of the liberal philosophy and in stark contrast to conservatism and the Constitution.
The NHL might be playing in Hell this season, but I have to admit I agree with you.
Not to a bunch of 6th century, unshaven kooks living in caves.
Japan and Germany were advanced nations at the time. Comparing them to the Middle East is specious.
It's time to bring our troops home and start drilling for oil here and stop allowing Muslims to immigrate here and spread their noxious beliefs. Isolate the Middle East completely.
Particularly, but not exclusively, in fact, Western influences are johnny-come-lately when it comes to the foundational conflicts in Salafism. Those are ethnic: Arab versus non-Arab, specifically the Turks.
That is one reason Salafism isn't quite the monolithic opponent McCarthy is portraying it here. The halcyon days of the Muslim explosion in the 7th Century for which the Salafists yearn were the last time the Arabs had unalloyed charge, that being diluted by the Persian character of what became Shi'ism later in that century. In that sense even the Turks were johnny-come-latelies by nearly half a millennium.
It doesn't actually boil down to the simplicities put forward by either McCarthy (whom I generally admire) or Will; it doesn't boil down at all. What we actually have is a toxic brew of religious fundamentalism, anti-Western propaganda in tropes and techniques that originated in the German and the Soviet police states, and high-technology weaponry that enables a small, determined group of fanatics to exercise a destructive capacity disproportionate to their actual numbers.
It was actually the last of these that brought us into conflict in Afghanistan. The Taliban's enthusiastic hosting of al Qaeda training camps and subsequent refusal to disband them were the major - nearly the only recognizable - strategic objectives behind our attack on that country. I'll have to qualify my "small group" characterization there - by conservative estimates those camps consisted of some 70,000 combatants, many of whom we met later on the sands and in the cities of Iraq. But understand that this was a War on Terror in the limited meaning of the word - no "root cause" nonsense, no nation-building, but a direct engagement of people who had attacked us and meant to do so again.
What has succeeded that both in Iraq and Afghanistan is a body of theory so fraught with abstractions that it can make one's head spin. "Neocon" this, "Democracy" that, "Colonialism" whatever. Many of the people who earnestly use these terms appear to think they know what they mean by them but none of it suffices to provide much strategic guidance. That remains - "How do we best punish the people who attack us and prevent them from acquiring the means to do so at whatever arbitrary scale we decide is our benchmark?" We won't be able to prevent a single fanatic, a Sirhan Sirhan, from acquiring a pistol, for example, but we may be able to prevent a small group of them from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Or not, depending on who, how, and where. It is those latter decisions that must be made and promulgated by civilian leadership. And at the moment ours isn't doing it.
Is this related to Afghanistan anymore? In one sense, yes, at least if a re-accession to power on the part of the Taliban means a rebuilding of the terror camps. In another, not necessarily - the people who man those camps are elsewhere at the moment but certainly engageable should that become a strategic priority. It is they on whom we should focus, IMHO, no matter where they are - Waziristan, Iran, Somalia, back in Afghanistan, wherever. This will inevitably bring us into conflict with the current governments of those areas, one price they pay for providing sanctuary to our implacable enemies. Those issues are the real War on Terror, and if current American civilian leadership prefers to wave vague platitudes at the thing and attempt to shove the responsibility onto the military without the means to exercise it, we really will have Vietnam all over again.
Heh? What about Marc Levin ? Is he a neo-con? He argues that we are there because it is in our national interest. He says it is not in our interest to leave until we are reasonably sure these lands wont become bases against us. I agree with that.
If it were up to me, we would have installed Chalabi as President of Iraq in 2003 and we would stick in some Warlord confabulation to run what they can of Afghanistan , and go from there. Thats the way we used to do it. Totally pragmatic , realistic and in the national interest. (But I guess that doesent "look " good.)
There are few democracy project nation building types out there now with any power or influence, if there ever were. Its all clever cover for acting in the national interest, IMO. And with due deference to Bush, all that "democracy" talk was just so much BS (pablum for the masses).
The best way to determine any individual persuasion is to google the individual's name plus neocon. You can usually tell quickly by reading the headers. If the individual doesn't seem to fit as a neocon, redo the google search with the individual's name plus Realist.
As for Chalabi, they didn't have enough troops on the ground to support him. He probably would have been assassinated.
We defanged Germany and Japan, but Germany was a western nation and in Japan, did not the Emperor, practically a god in Japan, tell his people to cooperate with the US?
Is there any Islamic leader in Iraq or Afghanistan whose cult is the equivalent of Hirohito? that would extend even to Iran and the rest of the Islamic world?
Bush’s presidency and Republican congress was horribly wasted on many things, among them the idea of bringing democracy to Islamic nutjob nations with the blood of the best of America.
The biggest threat to the USA is not Islamic terrorism anyway; it’s the national socialism of the Democrats and the nation cries for a leader with the charisma and the guts, and smarts to press a full court press against the Libturds and media lackeys on behalf of the working people
>>> As military officials described it to the New York Times, “the overriding goal of American and NATO forces would not be so much to kill Taliban insurgents as to make ordinary Afghans feel secure, and thus isolate the insurgents. That means using force less and focusing on economic development and good governance.” THIS is consistent with the delusional belief that terrorism is caused by poverty, corruption, resentment, Guantanamo Bay, enhanced interrogation tactics, Israel — in short, anything other than an ideology rooted in Islamic scripture. (my emphasis) <<<
“This” seems consistent with standard US counter-insurgency strategy. McCarthy is showing either his ignorance or his dishonesty.
Overall, what a worthless collection of sophistries and special pleading. If McCarthy is any indication, it looks like NRO is playing footsies with those poltroons the paleocons.
Neo-con Jew Mark Levin Rants Against Ron Paul On His Radio Show
Is that your source of information as well?.. I would presume then that Free Republic is just crawling with neo-con sympathizers, since Levin is very popular here.
So why do you hang around? Wouldnt you feel more comfortable somewhere else..say Stormfront?
Ah yes, the paradox of Free Republic. The NeoCon sympathizers at FR hated the NeoCon candidate McCain.
Don't you get it? You can't shove people neatly into little preconceived boxes. Things are more complex than that. The world is not made up of paleocons and neocons and nothing in between. That's the kind of dogmatic paranoid thinking observable with those like the Taliban and Wahabis. You vs. us.
The closing paragraph is excellent:
Instead of worrying about democracy in Afghanistan, we need to worry about democracy in America. The surge we need is at home: to roll back Islamism’s infiltration of our schools, our financial system, our law, and our government. In addition to not being universal, the “values of the human spirit” are not immortal. If we don’t defend them in the West, they will die.
>>> In addition to not being universal, the “values of the human spirit” are not immortal. <<<
So the signers of the _Declaration of Independence_ were incorrect when they asserted that:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”
Our foolish Founding Fathers! I wonder what else they got wrong. / sarc
well said.
You can bring an Islamist to democracy but you can’t make him free.
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