America Abroad

Look at the US from the rest of the world's perspective.

In the next few days, I intend on showing Americans what the rest of the world thinks of us, and the legitimate reasons for these perceptions.

The US goes to war, with disastrous consequences for others, more than any other nation in modern history. It maintains brutal arsenals of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons capable of destroying our fragile planet many times over, and adds to them with distressing regularity. It has participated knowingly in genocide and mass criminality and dictatorship. It is the only nation which has indulged in using the most powerful weapons available to mankind including nukes and the innocuous-sounding 'daisy cutters'.

But one would assume that such hegemony breeds security. The answer is no for the US (particularly Americans abroad) just as military superiority has not created security for Israel.

This is a great country, but it acts very stupidly overseas and it has foolishly moved to breed very ignorant citizens in an apparently-calculated decision to go with ignorance over information.

We all pay the price as Americans, as we did on 9/11.

Discuss.

3. marjoribanks - 6/11/2002 11:18:17 AM

In light of 9/11, let's highlight one glaring stupidity of America Abroad.

It financed the global jihadis to the hilt during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, it funnelled huge funds to the most radical, most extremist groups, including possibly Bin Laden's Al Qaeda. Certainly, there has been contact over the years between Bin laden and the hapless Yank spooks.

These are the exact same people that the US is now "waging war" against, a group that it helped to grow from a tiny and impotent minority into a much-hyped Global Threat.

4. bubbaette - 6/11/2002 11:21:04 AM

But we MEANT well!

5. judithathome - 6/11/2002 11:22:05 AM

Yeah, we were fighting the Evil Empire, after all.

6. jexster - 6/11/2002 11:23:27 AM

Congrats Margie from the BumbleFucks R US Fan CLub...now where is Concerned?

7. thoughtful - 6/11/2002 11:25:22 AM

Well, it seemed like the thing to do at the time....

8. iiibbb - 6/11/2002 11:28:52 AM

While Europe contiues to idly sit by the wayside without any capabilities of their own... seeing fit to let America play bad cop, while they play good cop...

we will always be forced into positions that are not ideal for our image.

But we know from WW2 that isolationism just means someone will bring the fight to you.

9. judithathome - 6/11/2002 11:28:56 AM

It always seems like the thing to do...back the Shah, back Marcos, back Noriega. I guess we don't have any psych profilers in the State Department who might clue us in that these types are not exactly "good guy" material.

10. marjoribanks - 6/11/2002 11:31:28 AM

I would argue that there is hardly an "evil one" in the world which the US has not backed to the hilt upto a point when it became necessary to exhibit the capabilities of the military-industrial complex against. Judith lists some who fit, certainly the Jihadis are another example.

When will the foolishness end?

11. iiibbb - 6/11/2002 11:32:04 AM

In addition this thread title seems to completely disregard the whole cold war. Much of what we've done in the past were direct countermeasures to what the USSR was doing. Just because we won the cold war, and we happen have more public disclosure, doesn't negate the fact that we were effectivly at war with Russia for political influence in many regions of the world.

12. iiibbb - 6/11/2002 11:36:08 AM

Read a history book... the foolishness never ends. In 2000 years when has there been a significant period of peace?

Someone is always going to come along and try to take advantage of weaker people.

The Jihadists are no better than us, and if they were in our position they would show no hesitation in burying infidels.

13. iiibbb - 6/11/2002 11:36:36 AM

it is human nature... the US is hardly unique.

14. marjoribanks - 6/11/2002 11:37:25 AM

There was no Cold War. The American public was frightened into believing there was one just as it now it is partly being cowed, though resisting (God bless America), that Muslims are a problem for the world.

No, it is amoral, irreligious, hard tack that fuels resentment, rage, and war on our planet.

Absent a few dumb and dumber American policies and I would not have had to watch the WTC towers crumble in front of me as I held my frightened toddler in my arms.

15. marjoribanks - 6/11/2002 11:38:37 AM

The Jihadists are no better than us.

True, very true, and so is the converse.

16. CalGal - 6/11/2002 11:39:04 AM

There was no Cold War.

Ha, ha, ha. That's pathetic.

17. ivan osokin - 6/11/2002 11:41:18 AM

marj:

i just wanted to pop in and congratulate you on your honesty and willingness to title the thread as you did :)

perhaps it will be ignored by the calgal-ites, the "americanists"...the blindly loyal pseudo-intellectual patriots who think they know what's going on because they read the analyses of, as pellenilsson said, second-rate academics (i wouldn't even consider them academics...i'd say propagandists).

18. CalGal - 6/11/2002 11:41:48 AM

True, very true, and so is the converse.

Really? And yet, last I saw, the majority of people in the West support freedom of religion, speech, and employment. They support civil rights. Islamists do not. And by Islamists, I mean those who actively seek to enforce Islam as a political ideology, not Muslims.

I think our political system is infinitely superior to the one they want to force upon the world.

19. CalGal - 6/11/2002 11:43:50 AM

BTW, I see nothing wrong with the thread title. Except it really should have a question mark. I suppose this means I can remove mine.

I'm just wondering how banks is going to explain away the Cold War.

20. iiibbb - 6/11/2002 11:45:36 AM

With the likes of MB

We are damned if we do something
Damned if we don't do something

So we might as well do what we think is best... because we'll never please them.

21. judithathome - 6/11/2002 11:46:11 AM

And by Islamists, I mean those who actively seek to enforce Islam as a political ideology, not Muslims.

I think if you have to explain your term over and over, it might be time to consider one which is more clearly defined.

22. ivan osokin - 6/11/2002 11:46:45 AM

On a related topic:

The Economist, May 25th issue, has a book review of "The World We're In", by Will Hutton. The book criticizes america (foreign policy, domestic situations, etc.)but of course the review was decidedly "americanist". the review had a caption: "America has become a danger to us all, according to a British bestseller. Can such a view honestly be sustained?"

yet, in the same issue, there's an article about europe's perception of bush. only in italy was there a higher number of supporters than detractors. in most countries, there was a majority (some cases overwhelming) of anti-bush sentiment. also, when asked "against whom was the 9/11 attack directed", the 5 eurpoean nations surveyed (britian, italy, france, germany, and spain) ALL overwhelmingly decided it was the US, not "the western world."

so the reviewer may think the view won't hold, but it obviously is there and, if they had included a few dozen other large countries from around the world in the poll, they wouldn't find much difference either.

continued

23. pseudoerasmus - 6/11/2002 11:46:51 AM

Calwhore, it has been conclusively demonstrated through archival research that the Cold War was concocted by multinational corporations and their imperialist stooges in your gummit, in order to sustain the military-industrial-educational complex.

24. marjoribanks - 6/11/2002 11:48:41 AM

Numero Uno:

There is a risible claim being made - "I think our political system is infinitely superior to the one they want to force upon the world."

Utter rubbish. If this political system were superior it would not have to go to war every three-four years. It would not visit the worst kind of military savagery on the Third World on a regular basis, there would be instead an acceptance of unique and superior values.

The US has, instead, delved into the troughs and fought dirtier than anyone else to unconviningly make its argument that its values bear scrutiny.

For shame!

25. iiibbb - 6/11/2002 11:48:53 AM

Whatever

26. pseudoerasmus - 6/11/2002 11:50:18 AM

Without the Cold War, the Yankistani public would never have come to know the existence of Korea, Vietnam, Cuber, Iran, Iraq, or Israel. The Cold War was fought for cartographico-pedogogic reasons.

27. iiibbb - 6/11/2002 11:50:28 AM

You claim we fight dirtier, but do we? Do we compare to communist nations extermination of the educated?

Please...

28. sakonige - 6/11/2002 11:52:25 AM

You are sounding nearly as unamerican as me there, marjoribanks.

29. CalGal - 6/11/2002 11:54:10 AM

PE: so the Soviets weren't spying, buying military and industrial secrets, competing with us in space, arms, and land grabs. Nope. They were just bopping along, minding their own business, and were shocked....shocked, I say! to discover that we'd created this bogeyman out of them. Cuba? They were on vacation, dammit!

Right.

Nonsense. I'm quite sure that there was all sorts of self-interest involved. But it was on both sides, and both sides kept it going. Thus it certainly did exist.

30. ivan osokin - 6/11/2002 11:54:16 AM

In the review, an attempt was made to show how exagerrated the prose was...how far off the mark the author was. The paragraph quoted was so basic and so obvious, it would take a truly blinded fundamental americanist to find fault.

The reviewer comments on Hutton's support for europe, as opposed to the US. Here's a quote that made me laugh hysterically:
"...if Europe is so fond, as Mr. Hutton argues, of "social solidarity", why do its workers spend so much time on strike or in demonstrations while American ones seem to be more contented with their lot?"

WHAT????
1) social solidarity IS reflected by the cohesion of collective labor and unions.
2) its workers spend so much time on strike becuase they are trying to fight the influence of corporate greed (read: Americanism) over society and its campaign to destroy collective labor bargaining.
3) and this is why americans seem more contented...it's because they have no collective voice. divide and conquer. the american worker takes its lumps, gets less benefits and shuts up because they are afraid to lose their jobs.

anyway. i'll have to check out this book. i suspect it won't have any surprising conclusions, but it's nice to read a lone voice in an otherwise dominant mob world.

31. iiibbb - 6/11/2002 11:55:15 AM

The US tried to be Neutral... not only in WW1, but WW2

...but Europe and Asia were the ones who erupted both World Wars... Europe and Asia were the militant ones that set all the gears in motion that have brought us to this point.

If the US is a monster, it's their monster... we've just grown bigger than them and it upsets them.

32. CalGal - 6/11/2002 11:55:36 AM

Banks,

So you think that our existing political system is inferior to the one that the Islamists want to impose?

Have you told your wife? She might not be thrilled about the burqa business.

33. Daniel Sickles - 6/11/2002 11:55:39 AM

it has been conclusively demonstrated through archival research that the Cold War was concocted by multinational corporations and their imperialist stooges in your gummit, in order to sustain the military-industrial-educational complex.

Somebody has been taking classes at the Learning Annex again.

34. ivan osokin - 6/11/2002 11:57:38 AM

cal...nice jab.

and you're not anti-islam, are you? nooooo...

35. marjoribanks - 6/11/2002 11:58:45 AM

No one, ib2b, is upset by America acting idiotically on the global stage. It confirms what the world knows. That is all.

Trying to be neutral? What a laugh.

36. marjoribanks - 6/11/2002 12:00:32 PM

I would prefer, honestly, that CalGal not only be burqa'ed but also beaten and buggered ritually by her husband/owner.

It is my considered opinion that such treatment would benefit humanity.

37. Daniel Sickles - 6/11/2002 12:00:46 PM

ivan

The "bigot" jab is really the easiest of the moves in the ring.

38. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 6/11/2002 12:01:27 PM

Congrats, marj--you go guy!

The end of liberty

Shortly before the twin tower disaster, Vanity Fair commissioned a piece from their favourite author, Gore Vidal. It was returned with a kill fee sometime after 11 September for 'market reasons'. It had, however, already been published in a collection of Vidal's essays by Fazi Editore in Italy under the title La fine della libertà: verso una nuova totalitarianismo.

39. Daniel Sickles - 6/11/2002 12:02:20 PM

marj

I might honestly regret having come in your wife's mouth, but I'm not sure it is relevant to Dumb and Dumber: America Abroad.

40. iiibbb - 6/11/2002 12:02:55 PM

Message # 35 we were trying to be as neutral as possible prior to WW2.

After WW2 that was the cold war...

41. pseudoerasmus - 6/11/2002 12:03:29 PM

Calwhore, Uncle Joe Stalin wanted world peace, world harmony, and world prosperity, but those fascist-imperialist pigs of the military-educational complex in your gummit insisted on educating your public through a "cold war". Amerikkka only goes to war to provide geography lessons to the ruling classes.

Daniel Sickles, this was the subject of my doctoral dissertation at International Florida Union University of Fort Lauderdale.

42. rubberducky - 6/11/2002 12:05:05 PM

sheesh

well, banks, so much for my concern this would end up like the much over-hyped International thread.

enjoy your idiotic thread but i do hope Abs will want her thread back as soon as she sees what you've concocted -honestly, you'd make Rosetta Jesus look like a good thread host.

43. Daniel Sickles - 6/11/2002 12:08:00 PM

Post 41 -

ha ha ha ha ha. Good stuff.

44. jexster - 6/11/2002 12:13:49 PM

Marj...posted a link either Int or AP thread to Pew Research poll...most Americans don't follow foreign policy issues even after 9-1-1 because they find it too confusing...

and then of course there are those who DO follow International issues and are just as confused....



Buenos dias Daniel.

45. marjoribanks - 6/11/2002 12:18:58 PM

I kind of liked the Vidal list of American interventions since 1945 in ivan osokin's link.

46. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 6/11/2002 12:22:11 PM

". . . ivan osokin's link."

I'm crushed!

47. marjoribanks - 6/11/2002 12:25:30 PM

Sorry!

Wizard, I hope you'll make this your home thread as much as you can.

I'm going to have to disengage for a bit, starting now. However, I may return to re-name the thread in a more relevant but still-provocative manner in order to engender debate.

48. Wombat - 6/11/2002 12:49:11 PM

Dumb and Dumber...this thread.

49. CalGal - 6/11/2002 12:51:31 PM

PE--So what? It doesn't mean that the Cold War didn't exist. It just means that the motives weren't pure. Imagine, if you will, my astonishment.

50. Wombat - 6/11/2002 12:53:44 PM

Anyone who quotes Gore Vidal as an authority on anything other than superb novels and life in Italy is in serious need of a shrink. Noam Chomsky is sure to make an appearance as well.

51. pseudoerasmus - 6/11/2002 12:54:15 PM

Calwhore, you're such a credulous idiot.

52. pseudoerasmus - 6/11/2002 12:54:48 PM

I'm amazed even Wombat has fallen for it.

53. CalGal - 6/11/2002 12:56:56 PM

PE--Actually, I did wonder. But you called me Calwhore, which is usually a sign that you're serious.

54. pseudoerasmus - 6/11/2002 12:57:06 PM

This thread is obviously meant to keep certain posters and certain kinds of postings out of the International thread, through deliberately provocative remarks which would bait the credulous. Just look at Calwhore and how seriously she took Marjoribanks's (obviously insincere) statement that the Cold War never existed. I'm just surprised Wombat got caught up.

55. pseudoerasmus - 6/11/2002 12:58:10 PM

But Wombat does have his nationalist auto-pilot side.

56. CalGal - 6/11/2002 12:59:13 PM

Just look at Calwhore and how seriously she took Marjoribanks's (obviously insincere) statement that the Cold War never existed.

It was obvious? Seriously? It's just the sort of asinine remark Banks makes as a matter of course.

57. thoughtful - 6/11/2002 1:00:49 PM

PseuE,

gummit is an exclamation, a euphamism as in Dad Gummit!

gummint is the red neck word for government

58. Daniel Sickles - 6/11/2002 1:01:43 PM

I have to concur with Cal there - marj, uncoated, can come off much as pseudo in gag mode. But I was hoping this thread could become more devoted to sexual sadism.

Which, frankly, might be of benefit to the International Thread as well.

59. Wombat - 6/11/2002 1:04:23 PM

PE:

I knew you were joking! If Marj was being deliberately provocative, then the scariest thing was that people were sincerely agreeing with him.

My main critique of US foreign policy has usually been of the lack of follow-through in its recent interventions: "There, we've knocked down your opressive regime, etc., now put yourself back together!"

60. iiibbb - 6/11/2002 1:12:16 PM

That's a good point Wombat...

Why don't we follow through do you think? I'm not particularly old, but from what I've seen in my 15 years of political consciousness is that public or world opinion makes us back off to soon.

Iraq is a great example... we should have buried Saddam while we still had a clear mandate. But we didn't want to offend our Arab alies I guess. Sure looks like we kept their respect eh?

61. Wombat - 6/11/2002 1:25:31 PM

iiibbb:

There is a lack of political consensus on the merits of following through, which is often reflected in a failure to commit resources afterwards. This is called "nation building," and our current President and his party have explicitly stated that they do not believe in that.

As to Iraq...the first Bush Administration was less concerned about offending our allies in the region than with a divided and weakened Iraq coming under Iran's sway.

Since there was no consensus on the obvious next step after kicking out Saddam (IMO occupying it, rebuilding it and introducing a form of federalized democracy--that pesky nation-building thing again), it didn't happen.

62. thoughtful - 6/11/2002 1:30:01 PM

well, it was fun while it lasted.

63. concerned - 6/11/2002 1:33:58 PM

This has to be the most idiotic thread yet in the Mote. Marjoribanks outdoes himself.

64. godlessclif - 6/11/2002 1:38:07 PM

deliberately provocative remarks which would bait the credulous.

I'm baited hooked and flopping on the beach with my pink lips quivering in the wind.

I agree there was no cold war, or rather I would put it that the cold war was a figment of the British and American Right wings imagination.

Also they convinced the rest of the west that the mirage was real. I do not think there was ever a worldwide planned communist conspiracy aiming itself at world domination.

Only the same old rivalry between the Russian Empire and the British empire you can read about in Kipling Novels. We were drawn in by Churchill casting Russia in the role of the red menace to get America help with that Imperial struggle since the US right had been prone to red scares since the 1930s.

65. thoughtful - 6/11/2002 1:38:27 PM

actually...given #63, it was well worth it!

66. godlessclif - 6/11/2002 1:38:48 PM

This is the United States Foreign Policy thread we asked for?

67. concerned - 6/11/2002 1:41:45 PM

I guess so. At least 'thoughtful' appears satisfied.

68. iiibbb - 6/11/2002 1:43:43 PM

I agree there was no cold war, or rather I would put it that the cold war was a figment of the British and American Right wings imagination.

So... when Kennedy took us to the brink of WW3 with the cuban missle crisis... we were just dreaming that?

69. concerned - 6/11/2002 1:45:18 PM

It'll be amusing to watch the 'trash America' crowd make fools of themselves in this monkey cage, however.

70. iiibbb - 6/11/2002 1:48:08 PM

Actually... by not accepting that the cold war existed makes debating pointless. Our conceptual universes are mutually exclusive

71. godlessclif - 6/11/2002 1:50:12 PM

The Bush Regime is making the same mistake in this new cold war. They are fighting the old British East of Suez wars to insure the oil that lights the lamps of London will flow.

Put instead of being honest like a 19th century politcian[they used to be statesmen] the right wing casts the fight as some great holy crudsade, not against us godless communists this time, but against fanatical arabs out to destroy christianity, economic creationism and capitalism.

Clinton was more practical. He said "it is the economy stupid"

Today one might say "It is the oil stupid" A rational power would fight for the oil, or not fight for it facing reality.

Instead we are thrown into a demon haunted world of terrorists and jihads that produces all sorts of undesirable side effects, the first of which is the persecution of American Moslems and Black Muslims. I have already heard a Republican spokesman talking about going after Farakhand like he had something to do with the 9/11 bombing.

72. godlessclif - 6/11/2002 1:56:21 PM

Are we making this a cold war thread? Or a USFP in the present thread?I.B. says,"In addition this thread title seems to completely disregard the whole cold war. Much of what we've done in the past were direct countermeasures to what the USSR was doing."

If you look at it objectively everthing the Russian did was a countermeasure to our moves. Consider the Russian mind set. The Russian had lived next to a modern capitalistic democracy, Germany. The Germans had an economic colapse that really fit Marx's theories. They elected a mad man, Hitler. Dispite all efforts by Molotov to amke peace and non aggression pacts with Hitler, he attacked them and killed 20 million Russians. It is hard to comprehend what losing 20 million people is like, but compare it to how we are acting after losing 3000.

73. godlessclif - 6/11/2002 2:06:48 PM

Now after that traumatic experience the Russian leadership see another power rising in Western Europe. A capitalistic democracy. There Marxist philosophy tell them the America economy will eventaully colapse. We put troops on their borders and announce an anti-Russian policy of containment of any spread of socialism.

They react by creating buffer states the satelite countries between our Armies and their border.

We then develope long range bombers that can deliver atomic boms on their capital. we put the bombers in West Germany and Turkey.

Russia responds by developing thier own atomic bombs and long range Bombers as a deterent.

We then develope the Nike anti-aircraft Rocket to neutralize their deterent. Russia develops ICBMs to create a new deterent. By now we are flying strategic air command bombers carrying atomic bombs to the Russian border every day.

We develope ICBMs, and the Polaris SLBM, remember the missile gap, as a deterent to their deterent.

we start the overkill race to build so many missiles they cannot knock them all out. They respond. We develop Multiple Warhead, the so calle MIRV missiles like the Minuteman three and trident SLBM. I response Russian develope their own SLBMs and MIRVS. In each case they responded to our threat.

74. godlessclif - 6/11/2002 2:19:04 PM

1976 a pause for sanity. Jimmy Carter starts the Salt Talks. Russians quickly agree to reduce strategic forces and abandon their new MIRV missile and do not deploy it.

CIA send muslim fanatics into Afghanistan, Carter is not told. The war in afghanistan is used by the right to blunt the peace initiatives.

Sanity ends back to the evil empire 1980

Reagan tells the Russians to shove it at Iceland peace conference and walks out and repeats the Nike mistake by saying he will neutralize the Russian deterent with a star wars system.

Arms race resumes for eight more years.

1989, once evil empire Ronnie Rayguns is history the Russians take the unprecidented step of supporting German reunification and unilaterlly withdraw from Eastern Europe. George H.W. "Poppy" Bush takes all the credit, the right wing gives Reagan the credit??? for Gorbachev's bold action.

Clinton takes office disarmament accelerates, peace divident balances the Budget for the first time since Nixon.

in 2000 son of a Bush seizes power. W. Bush starts new cold war with Islam.

That is my short history of the cold war. We were always provocative, Russia was reacting.

75. Wombat - 6/11/2002 2:27:18 PM

Back to dumb and dumber, I see.

76. rubberducky - 6/11/2002 2:34:44 PM

check

77. PelleNilsson - 6/11/2002 2:42:25 PM

I think this "Dumb, dumber" stuff has gone on long enough. The forum wanted a thread on American Foreign Policy and that was the thread I created. I don't think hosts should change the subject of a thread without prior discussion with forum members. I have changed the thread title.

78. zojak quafeth - 6/11/2002 2:55:15 PM

hmmm. perhaps we should compare and contrast Us foreign policy with the obviously much wiser foreign policy of our peers out there.

Oh wait. We have no peers b/c we're the only superpower left and can do whatever we want.

OK, let's compare ourselves with those who think are our peers.

During WWII, we should have adopted the French approach to diplomacy and war. I'd much rather be living in Vichy U.S after all.

OK, maybe that's a bad example.

How about all our lovely arabic neighbors in the Middle East. Maybe we should adopt their approach. Let's try to kill off Israel, but be so bass ackwards that we muff it every time.

Hmmm. ok. Maybe not.

How bout them Soviets? They got it right. Let's ask them.

Wait, there are no longer any Soviets?

Shit. Someone get e-mail Fidel in Cuba. Maybe he'll participate as a guest moderator and tell us how to run foreign policy.

79. transient1a - 6/11/2002 3:01:35 PM

pseudoeramus,

Message # 23

UNFORTUNATELY

Your archival research is flawed.

BECAUSE

It neglects the move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation bringing the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marking a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.

80. PelleNilsson - 6/11/2002 3:15:35 PM

How refreshing to see a funny, inane post from transient. He's otherwise always so deadly serious.

81. godlessclif - 6/11/2002 3:21:47 PM

68. iiibbb - 6/11/02 6:43:43 PM

Clif says, "I agree there was no cold war, or rather I would put it that the cold war was a figment of the British and American Right wings imagination."

So... when Kennedy took us to the brink of WW3 with the cuban missle crisis... we were just dreaming that?

Ah yes, the missiles of October.

The United States had begun deploying an IRBM[intermediate range ballistic missile] call the Jupiter-C in Europe and Turkey in 1959. The milles in turkey could reach Moscow and most of Russia ICBM based in less than 15 minutes, another threat to the Russain Nuclear deterent.At the Kennedy-Kruschev summit meeting Kennedy had made a deal. He would remove the Jupiter-C missiles from Europe if Russia agreed not to deploy IRBMs in the western hemisphere[meaning Cuba].

Dean Rusk at the state department was given the job of negotiating the missile pullout. Europe was cooperative but Turkey balked. They said nuclear missiles made them feel safe. I guess Turks think like Republicans. Rusk ever the diplomat entered into interminable negotiations with Turkey.

Kruschev assumed Kennedy had broken his promiss and started to deploy Russian IRBMs in Cuba. It is reported Kennedy was very angry at Rusk when he found out all the Russians wanted was for Kennedy to live up to his bargain to pull the IRBMs out of Turkey. Rusk had dropped the ball and almost ended the world.

Again the Russians were only reacting to The USAs aggressive and provcative stance in deploying IRBMs in Turkey for no good reason.

82. godlessclif - 6/11/2002 3:22:04 PM

It did get the Hotline put in from Washington to Moscow direct.

A funny aside, when the hotline was first brought up cold war paranoia was high. The hotline was not a red teephone like the movies, it was an ASR33 teletype. A test technician typed in "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."

The Russians responded "What does this mean, who are you calling lazy dogs!!!"

It was explained and ironed out. After that they typed ABCDEFG...etc. for testing.

83. iiibbb - 6/11/2002 3:30:23 PM

Message # 71

Godless you are a riot. Stalin was a monster... he killed hundreds of thousands of his own countrymen.

The USSR was not innocently "creating buffer states the satelite countries between our Armies and their border".

I'm sure when the USSR invaded Finland in 1939-40 it was merely in anticipation of conflicts with the West. A jump-start on buffers. Those Russians are very smart you know.

84. iiibbb - 6/11/2002 3:44:02 PM

Stalin had designs on Eastern Europe well before the US posed a significant threat to them. They had the largest army... so how is what they were doing reactionary to the US?

The cold war begins

85. godlessclif - 6/11/2002 3:44:53 PM

Temp Louis Althusser is not my cup of tea. I remember reading that when Jack Kerouac was asked if he was a zen buddist and he replied "No, I am an old fashioned Mahayana Buddist."

I feel the same way about Marxism. I think it is a philosophy, not a science. I am not a Scientific Socialist.

I am an old fashioned Utopian Socialist who's philosophy draws more from Robert Owen that it does from Marx.

The people however do need to take power back from bourgeouise oppressors by using democratic institutions.

86. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 6/11/2002 3:52:00 PM

"Anyone who quotes Gore Vidal as an authority on anything other than superb novels and life in Italy is in serious need of a shrink. Noam Chomsky is sure to make an appearance as well.

Sure wombat, what are your credentials?--I'm glad to see you're not letting your education get in the way of your callowness.


I just love the self-pleased denials of all the counterfeit masters-of-the-universe around here.

America has a maniacal stalker and the gangsters who run the place are more adept than ever at exploiting the situation by convincing hordes of paranoid dupes (indeed, dittoheads & dittoheadettes), that they can once and for all rid the world of those "Un'Murrican God-haters!"

Wheither you deny it or buy it, the fact is that 85 % of the world hates or deeply resents America's foreign polices. The thinking they can destroy its "enemies," Gang Bush will only fuel the flames of terror and mayhem--in the same way Israel and Sharon's thugs are doing.





A window in London (Hampstead) . . .

87. Wombat - 6/11/2002 4:06:54 PM

Gore Vidal thinks the main problem with American society and its policies is that is has fallen into the hands of pushy immigrants (read Jews) and parvenues who are busy corrupting it morally, politically, and internationally. There is not a dippy conspiracy theory that he hasn't hooked onto (even if disproven) from how Roosevelt is responsible for Pearl Harbor to US complicity in the WTC attacks.

I claim no expertise in fictional writing other than enjoying reading it in the form of a novel rather than in the form of political and diplomatic analysis, which are areas that I have some expertise.

iiibbb: Stalin killed millions of Soviet citizens, not hundreds of thousands.

88. godlessclif - 6/11/2002 4:16:15 PM

Oh to have the power to change the thread title. I would call it Bush foreign policy blunders, gaffs and insults to foreign dignitaries.

Like when he called Jacque Chirac, Amigo. In fact the ambassador Bush appointed to France does not speak French. You can do that to Lichenstein but the French don't take kindly to it.

You can see how Bush went ballistic when a reporter asked him a question in English and he took his ears off, then the reporter asked the follow up question to the french prime minister in French. I think it was a Canadian Reporter who was used to bilingualism. Bush freaked.

89. iiibbb - 6/11/2002 4:19:56 PM

The people however do need to take power back from bourgeouise oppressors by using democratic institutions.

That's why it was so important to invade Finland... a hotbead of bourgeouise subsistance animal herders, foresters, and fisherman.

90. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 6/11/2002 4:49:02 PM

Wombat- Please direct me to where, in the links I supplied, Vidal takes up his/your "American society . . . policies" by pushy immigrant/Jews & parvenues (Condi Rice?).

Have you read Vidal's book . . . have you read the links?

Your partiality allows you to discount much--there are a great many cogent points that easily refute your "dippy conspiracy theory." Compelling, it's not!

91. Renie - 6/11/2002 6:20:01 PM

Being new and far less educated I don't want to get involved in the debate. It is a fascinating read for one less versed in these matters. So far I agree with everyone on one point or another. Perhaps I am one of those who really is in the middle. Then again, perhaps I am too stupid to make up my mind!

I do want to thank TheWizardOfWhimsy for the Vidal link. He's been a favorite of mine since my early teens. (Which some days feel as though they indeed were the early teens.)

92. Renie - 6/11/2002 6:21:26 PM

I have no idea where that post just fell. I'm still reading posts numbered in the 40's. Sorry! My reference was to post #38.

93. concerned - 6/12/2002 1:35:23 AM

Re. 77 -

Pelle -

I hope marjoribanks will forgive you for doing so:)

94. concerned - 6/12/2002 1:41:47 AM

godless -

You really ought to post in the International thread more, and up the quality there.

95. concerned - 6/12/2002 2:05:37 AM

That is my short history of the cold war. We were always provocative, Russia was reacting.

Boy. You could knock me over with a feather.

96. concerned - 6/12/2002 2:07:35 AM

It's clear the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan as a reaction to the oppressive foreign policies of the Jimmuh Cahtuh regime.

97. pseudoerasmus - 6/12/2002 2:11:11 AM

Concerned and Godlesscliff are mirror images of each other.

98. concerned - 6/12/2002 2:22:55 AM

Re. 97 -

True. We both post in ways which cause revelations and epiphanies in others. However, mine apply to this reality - his to others.

99. pseudoerasmus - 6/12/2002 2:39:06 AM

It's pathetic, concerned, to have to constantly puff yourself up just because no one will confer upon you the plaudits that you desperately crave.

Neither Concerned nor Godlesscliff ever says anything particularly novel or illuminating. Both typically spew platitudinous formulaic partisan hack matter, GC's being left-wing and Concerned's right-wing.

At this point I would ordinarily end with the caveat that at least GC was amusing, but I think he's not even that anymore. Godlesscliff is really only amusing when he's talking in his half-stoned manner about Christians.

100. concerned - 6/12/2002 2:47:26 AM

Perhaps an arrangement could be made where, for one day each month, a different UN member nation would be handed nominal control of US foreign policy.

That should have some effect on international disapprobation of US policy, eh?

Actually, on second thought, not quite enough time to get the authorization to hit the launch button would be safer than a day.

101. concerned - 6/12/2002 2:56:07 AM

Neither Concerned nor Godlesscliff ever says anything particularly novel or illuminating.

Puhleeze. For just a few examples, I suggested in the Mote, on 9/11, almost the precise response that the US wound up pursuing in Afghanistan. I proposed a multi-stage anti ballistic missile defense years ago in the Fray before anybody else was talking about it. What I posted regarding family structure and social stability in the Fray years ago is generally accepted now.

Only a charlatan or fool would throw away their credibility by suggesting I 'don't have anything to contribute'.

PE, why don't you be a good boy and work to your strong points by filling us in on Allah's three daughters and the 360 deity pagan pantheon from which Muhammad extracted this graven symbol. What's up with Muslims slaughtering livestock and worshiping some fucking rock in Mecca, anyway? Pagans.

102. concerned - 6/12/2002 3:02:26 AM

:)

103. concerned - 6/12/2002 3:08:05 AM

Ok, you got me, PE. I'm a formulaic RW hack. Just scroll right past my posts.

104. concerned - 6/12/2002 3:41:32 AM

If I made stuff like I posted in the last paragraph in 101 public in many, if not most Muslim countries, I would be liable to be sentenced to death. Freedom of speech is truly a great thing. Everyone should be allowed it.

105. concerned - 6/12/2002 3:53:18 AM

Even though it isn't even true I can call Jesus a child fucking murderer and thief anywhere in the world and worry about nothing worse than getting in a fist fight.

106. concerned - 6/12/2002 3:59:07 AM

When I can kick back in Mecca with a girl on my knee and a brewski in my hand and discuss with the locals the possibility that Muhammad porked his momma while eating chitlins, that's when world peace will be getting somewhere.

107. concerned - 6/12/2002 4:05:55 AM

But I was hoping this thread could become more devoted to sexual sadism.

Which, frankly, might be of benefit to the International Thread as well.

Dead goats don't tell.

108. concerned - 6/12/2002 4:07:17 AM

I have to concur with Cal there - marj, uncoated, can come off much as pseudo in gag mode.

Different kind of gag in marjoribanks case.

109. godlessclif - 6/12/2002 5:17:49 AM

You nicely derailed the American Foreign Policy thread with anti-muslim bigotry!

Doug Goddard[Alias Concerned Christian]. Good job of destroying the debate. If you try you may become a major troll of Rosie Jesus/POJ's stripe and cause "The Big Flush" of a whole forum someday.

110. Wombat - 6/12/2002 8:59:40 AM

WoW:

I suggest you read Vidal's American history novels that are chronologically set after 1876 to get an idea of what he feels went wrong with the United States and who is responsible. It provides a useful background to his political essays.

111. iiibbb - 6/12/2002 9:02:39 AM

I sure hope that's not his real name because that is decidely against the rules of engagement.

112. iiibbb - 6/12/2002 9:03:04 AM

msg 109 that is.

113. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 6/12/2002 9:21:27 AM

Wombat- I agree, Vidal is prone to exaggeration and wild leaps of fancy--a David McCullough or Edmund Morris he is not, nevertheless, you evade my point conspicuously. In the links provided, there are many specific details that are difficult to ignore and/or refute.

114. godlessclif - 6/12/2002 9:34:43 AM

That is the name Concerned Christian used on The Atlantic Monthly Forum. If he objects to me using it I will stop just as I no longer use POJ real name because he objected to anyone knowing it.

Meanwhile Wombt and WofW have posted useful on topic comments ans tried to get the thread back on track.

Mark Twain was prone to exageration as well but his stories gave more insight into the real nature of Antebellum Missouri and what was wrong with slavery than any historian of the time I can think of. I admire Vidal for his honesty.

I have read David Willis McCullough's "Tales of Irish kings"

Is that the same guy they keep ahving on talk shows and C-Span, who keeps plugging the book about ten presidents FDR to Poppy Bush? He writes well but is no Tom Clancy.

115. godlessclif - 6/12/2002 9:35:52 AM

That is the name Concerned Christian used on The Atlantic Monthly Forum. If he objects to me using it I will stop just as I no longer use POJ real name because he objected to anyone knowing it.

Meanwhile Wombt and WofW have posted useful on topic comments ans tried to get the thread back on track.

Mark Twain was prone to exageration as well but his stories gave more insight into the real nature of Antebellum Missouri and what was wrong with slavery than any historian of the time I can think of. I admire Vidal for his honesty.

I have read David Willis McCullough's "Tales of Irish kings"

Is that the same guy they keep ahving on talk shows and C-Span, who keeps plugging the book about ten presidents FDR to Poppy Bush? He writes well but is no Tom Clancy.

116. godlessclif - 6/12/2002 9:41:11 AM

Awe shit I double posted

117. Wombat - 6/12/2002 9:50:58 AM

Look, WoW:

If you approach foreign policy from a non-isolationist, non-America-first (in the 1940s meaning) it is very easy to discount almost everything that Vidal writes in the piece that you link to. For example, Roosevelt did not provoke the attack on Pearl Harbor any more than Bush senior provoked Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

Vidal believes that the United States' "original sin" was getting involved with the world, and ultimately attempting to dominate it. I don't.

His list of "interventions" by US forces is ridiculous and dishonest: it includes joint military exercises with other countries' armed forces, it breaks down US intervention in Kosovo and Bosnia into specific operations, as it does in Vietnam, presumably to give the impression that the US has intervened more often in recent years. Imagine breaking down the Korean War or World War II by particular campaign or operation.

The other question to ask, since the implication is that US intervention is a "bad" thing (according to Vidal and the Cato Institute--a fine pair of bedfellows), is whether or not parts of the world are better off for it? Would the world have been a better place had the US not "intervened" in WWs 1 and 2? Would the Korean peninsula be a better place to live had the US not pushed the UN into intervening? Would Kuwait be better off as an Iraqi province? Would the states that once made up Yugoslavia be better off with Milosevic still in power?

Not all interventions were successful or well-intentioned, and few led to results that were exactly as planned if planned at all, but that could be said about most government actions.

118. godlessclif - 6/12/2002 9:55:28 AM

Wombat says:Roosevelt did not provoke the attack on Pearl Harbor any more than Bush senior provoked Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.Some of us beleive both those accusations are true.

119. Wombat - 6/12/2002 9:58:41 AM

Then you should attempt to prove them using something other than assertions by reactionary whackos (Roosevelt), and Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky, and their ilk (Iraq).

120. godlessclif - 6/12/2002 10:01:24 AM

I am sure in 100 years historians will refer to it as the Yugoslavian break-up, The Serbian war, Milosovitch's war or some such name. It is silly to think of the Croatian-Serbian war, the Serbian-Bosnian war, The Serbian-Kosovo war, the Serbian-American war and the Serbian revolution as five different wars.

121. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 6/12/2002 10:20:20 AM

Wombat, all your points are cogent and well argued, but considering the primary thesis of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace -- How We Got To Be So Hated, Vidal's view is still worthy of consideration (if not respect) and not the out of hand condemnation you ascribe.

Isn't he addressing how America is perceived and the blatantly arrogant ignorance in decades of American "leadership?"

Do you really think America can "intervene" when it is hated and resented so vehemently by so much of the world.

It's like a wife-beater saying his intentions are honorable and filled with love even though his actions are perceived otherwise.

I just balked at your refusal to accept any point of Vidal's and I still think it's a mistake, but i very much appreciate your take and response.

122. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 6/12/2002 10:27:30 AM

I don't think Bush Senior "provoked" Iraq, but I do think his lack of a clear message to Saddam contributed to the invasion of Kuwait.

And I also think the "reactionary whackos" of the left are desperately needed to balance the "reactionary whackos" of the right; IMHO, you make a grave mistake in your (Wombat) closed-mindedness.

123. Wombat - 6/12/2002 10:34:47 AM

WoW:

I think a better subtitle for his piece would be "...and How I Came to Hate It."

I would also suggest that the United States is not hated to the extent that you and Vidal seem to think it is (and possibly wish it to be). There is certainly resentment and envy, even from our allies; but when it comes down to actually doing something, there is literally no other country that is capable intervening the way the United States can.

In the case of Bosnia, a good deal of the resentment was due to the fact that the US was not doing enough: our allies had troops on the ground, and the US was refusing to get involved, other than through inflammatory rhetoric. I would argue, and have, that if the US had intervened militarily in Rwanda, as the Hutu genocide was taking place, it would have brought it to a speedy end.

Should the US refuse to intervene in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict because we are "hated?" All sides desperately want the US to do so. How can you call for an end to Israeli occupation of the West Bank and criticize US intervention at the same time?

124. marjoribanks - 6/12/2002 10:37:23 AM

It is a good question to ask.

How many US interventions in global affairs (lets select ourselves to military ones) have been unequivocally for the better.

I see one big one and only one big one - WWII.

And then there have been actual crimes committed in interventions abroad, witness the most disgusting international intervention in recent memory - Poppy Bush's Panama misadventure.

125. marjoribanks - 6/12/2002 10:39:42 AM

If the US bungs itself into the Middle East and forcibly separates the protagonists in the Holy Land conflict - then that will be another.

But I'm not holding my breath as long as mini-Bush continues to run his foreign policy apparently on the basis of winning votes in one state - Florida.

126. Daniel Sickles - 6/12/2002 10:41:28 AM

Korea was certainly better for the South Koreans. Iraq was better for Kuwait, and ultimately the region. Panama, Grenada, Dominican Republic, Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Somalia - none were pristine, but all were probably better for the indigenous populations. Afghanistan will be a plus.

Haiti was probably a wash.

Our failures are Cuba and Vietnam, and the failures were in the failing, not necessarily the intervention.

127. Wombat - 6/12/2002 10:41:31 AM

I think the world would be a better place without reactionary whackos of any political stripe. If that upsets you, I am sorry.

In re Iraq: Had Saddam seized the oil fields that were allegedly the proximate cause for his dispute with Kuwait, and not the whole country, I am sure that the US would have accepted the fait accompli (after a ritual condemnation). Our main miscalculation was that Saddam miscalculated what he could get away with.

128. Wombat - 6/12/2002 10:44:25 AM

Which Dominican intervention? The 1965 one? (bad) or in the 1970s? (good).

129. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 6/12/2002 10:45:15 AM

I would also suggest that the United States is not hated to the extent that you and Vidal seem to think it is (and possibly wish it to be).

Really--I want the world to hate us? Well thanks for the insult and the objectivity. I wonder if the families who still have body parts in NY, PA, DC and all over the globe think America is loved or (even respected) by most of the world.

Your denial and your arrogance are telling and empirical proof of my point.

130. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 6/12/2002 10:47:34 AM

Sorry! Italics and quotes in that first sentence, post 129.

131. Wombat - 6/12/2002 10:48:10 AM

Marj:

The Grenadan government had been toppled by a coup led by people to the left of Maurice Bishop, who then executed him. That was a "bad" intervention?

Panama: Noriega had just quashed an election that would have driven him from power. That was a "bad" intervention?

132. Daniel Sickles - 6/12/2002 10:48:55 AM

Wombat

The 1965 intervention was messy, but even then, we got a coalition government by September 1965. Less than a year later, elections and political stability.

The alternative might well have been a massacre and protracted civil strife.

133. marjoribanks - 6/12/2002 10:49:23 AM

Sickles,

Perhaps you should look up the word 'unequivocally'. Let's just say that it means something like 'unimpeachably'.

"Korea was better for the South Koreans", etc. don't qualify.

I think Haiti is acceptable as unimpeachably for the better.

134. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 6/12/2002 10:51:36 AM

X?tB?failures are Cuba and Vietnam, and the failures were in the failing, not necessarily the intervention.

Utterly ridiculous--especially in light of our present relationship to Cuba, Vietnam and China. "The Red Scare" dies hard with paranoids.

135. Daniel Sickles - 6/12/2002 10:52:13 AM

marj

In the worlds of foreign affairs, and adult conversation, unequivocally has little place. Take it to Lollipop Lane.

Any jackass can impeach. But, on balance, every one of the interventions I cited were for the good.

136. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 6/12/2002 10:53:20 AM

"X?tB?" What's going on here?

137. Wombat - 6/12/2002 10:53:25 AM

WoW:

The insult was gratuitous (in your case) and I apologize. Vidal has stated on numerous occasions that he hates what the United States has become, and consideres himself an "exile."

I suspect most of the 9/11 victims' families may wonder why Bin Laden hates us, but at the same time can take comfort in the sincere expressions of sorrow and sympathy from all over the world, including from countries that according to you must "hate" us.

138. concerned - 6/12/2002 10:53:42 AM

Re. 115 -

godless=liar

I objected because I have never posted in the Atlantic forum under any moniker. I have indicated how you can prove that to your own satisfaction, yet you are afraid to do so. That makes you a coward, also.

139. Daniel Sickles - 6/12/2002 10:54:37 AM

X?tB?

Don't curse at me.

140. marjoribanks - 6/12/2002 10:54:42 AM

Panama was and is a glaring example of mass state-sponsored terror inflicted on a whole national populace to pursue limited goals which were irrelevant and undesired by the locals.

In fact, since the US helped create (and massively supported) Noriega in the first place, and then burned entire Panamanian neighborhoods in pursuing him - I submit the Panama example provides us a useful template in Dumb and Dumber US foreign policy activities - enriching and benefitting no one, cyclically destructive, meaningless but terribly destructive nonetheless.

141. Wombat - 6/12/2002 11:01:09 AM

Oops! Back to "dumb and dumber."

So the US should not rectify its errors because they made them in the first place? Or because times/situations change? As I recall, one neighborhood in Panama City was burned in the course of the initial fighting.

Let me know when "dumb and dumber" is gone from the thread title. Then I will participate in this thread again.

142. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 6/12/2002 11:02:19 AM

Wombat- Thanks. "Must" is your word and your exaggeration, but I do think hatred and resentment has grown to the point of terrorist actions as a daily occurrence throughout the globe . . . and any refutation of that fact is denial and nothing else.

[Your poseur persona always brings out the worst in me, Daniel.]

143. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 6/12/2002 11:03:39 AM

Doctor's appointment--ciao.

144. marjoribanks - 6/12/2002 11:06:53 AM

Wombat,

I have no idea why you would want to leave a provocatively titled thread where your presence is both desired and valued.

Reconsider. Why is US foreign policy, according to you, not easily qualified as error compounded on error, short-term thinking devalued by the long-term picture, etc.

How many times has the US first supplied and supported an entity which it has then spent billions destroying abroad? Look at the global jihadis as the most pertinent example - and please tell us what you would do to correct this destructive cycle.

145. Daniel Sickles - 6/12/2002 11:15:00 AM

marj

Your submission is rejected. In fact, it is borderline ignorant. By most measures, from political expression, to economic indicators, to security for the Canal, to tourism, to exports, to imports, to deaths at the hands of the government, post-Noriega Panama is better for both the United States and Panama than Panama under Noriega. Yet, you focus on El Chorrillo.

Perhaps we can agree on a list that would measure the health of Panama, and then compare Panama under Noriega and Panama now?

146. Absensia - 6/12/2002 11:20:59 AM

Marj,
Congratulations on how you are handling this thread. You and others are engaging in thought provocing discussions and it's withinin the scope I imagined, when I backed the idea of having such a thread. The title is so appropos...it says what many countries and their citizens feel, and have for a long time. You address the issue of why American seems so hated by many many countries, and scorned by yet others.

147. marjoribanks - 6/12/2002 11:21:20 AM

I might consider that, Sickles.

I also consider any number of sets of evidence about the misguided and wrong-headed destruction of vast swathes of Panama conducted to detain a man who until almost that point had been on the US payroll.

A pointless, destructive, exercise. That's what Panama was in my thesis, one which could have been avoided by not paying and propping up Pineapple-Face in the first place.

148. marjoribanks - 6/12/2002 11:21:57 AM

Absensia,

Please elaborate, preferably with specific examples.

149. Daniel Sickles - 6/12/2002 11:30:36 AM

marj

Your unsupported presumptions on Panama are probably enough for a cocktail party, but you'd better re-fill your drink quick.

I suggest you find a way to gracefully withdraw from defending your statements on Panama, and I assume I might consider that, Sickles is your first move.

Well done.

150. marjoribanks - 6/12/2002 11:32:03 AM

Sickles,

Let's see your evidence, buddy.

151. pseudoerasmus - 6/12/2002 11:35:45 AM

Message # 101

"Puhleeze. For just a few examples, I suggested in the Mote, on 9/11, almost the precise response that the US wound up pursuing in Afghanistan. I proposed a multi-stage anti ballistic missile defense years ago in the Fray before anybody else was talking about it. What I posted regarding family structure and social stability in the Fray years ago is generally accepted now."

See what I mean ? Concerned must constantly trumpet himself, his prophetic visions and his analytical grandeur, in the never-ending attempt to remind the world of his worth, because no one else does and no one else ever will.... He even thinks he upstaged Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

"Only a charlatan or fool would throw away their credibility by suggesting I 'don't have anything to contribute'."

Concerned has absolutely nothing to contribute. In fact, Concernd could commit suicide right now and no one would notice the least difference.

Shit, I've lost all credibility.

152. Daniel Sickles - 6/12/2002 11:36:11 AM

marj

Let's agree on the measuring criteria, pal.

How about we measure the following, 1989 and 1999.

1) Political stability
2) Crime
3) Employment
4) Investment
5) Export
6) Import
7) Foreign Aid received
8) Freedom of the Press
9) Civil Rights
10) Utilization of Democracy

153. pseudoerasmus - 6/12/2002 11:39:22 AM

Message # 106: "When I can kick back in Mecca with a girl on my knee and a brewski in my hand and discuss with the locals the possibility that Muhammad porked his momma while eating chitlins, that's when world peace will be getting somewhere."

Concerned is projecting his experiences as a child-sex-tourist in Southeast Asia. Concerned in Bali:

154. marjoribanks - 6/12/2002 11:39:26 AM

Is this a set-up Sickles? What do you take me for?

Is this frigging Amateur Hour all over The Mote.

Table your evidence, and let's go from there.

--

Pseuder,

What do you have to say about Panama, you who have traditionally been a fervent apologist of US interventions abroad?

155. marjoribanks - 6/12/2002 11:40:41 AM

I have to admit I lauged hard at the trusim in ----because no one else does and no one else ever will....

156. Daniel Sickles - 6/12/2002 11:44:41 AM

marj

The set-up was by your own doing. Feel free to add to the criteria (to subtract would be desperate, but I don't put it past you, especially after your doleful plea to pseudo to save your bacon).

You made ill-advised, ignorant and sweeping statements based on little knowledge but loads of outrage over prior U.S. support for Noriega and an article you probably skimmed in The New Yorker about how the U.S. military wrecked a slum in 1989.

Remember, the point is to come to an informed conclusion, not to save your ass from stupid statements.

157. marjoribanks - 6/12/2002 11:53:35 AM

Blah. Blah. Sickles, where is your detailed evidence?

I'm willing to see it, I'm willing to evaluate it, bust it out.

158. Daniel Sickles - 6/12/2002 11:59:26 AM

marj

Sorry, pal. You've shown that you speak out of your ass. Neither I (or pseud) should be tasked with educating you or cleaning up your intellectual feces. When you can speak with some authority to back up your ridiculous claims, I'll be happy to correct you.

But since you can't, you won't, and you'll further seal your reputation as a well-spoken lightweight.

159. Daniel Sickles - 6/12/2002 12:00:04 PM

Marj's Lament

There was no Holocaust. Prove me Wrong!

160. marjoribanks - 6/12/2002 12:09:40 PM

Such piffle, from a man purporting to carry evidence.

Sickles, you gave us an embarrasingly long list of criteria to consider with regard to Panama. I'm open to new evidence, even better analyzed evidence. Give it to us, man.

Where is it?

161. Daniel Sickles - 6/12/2002 12:17:34 PM

marj

When you make even a minimal deposit in the good faith intellect bank to support your asinine statements, I will be happy to educate you further.

But I find it bad policy to reward excited and ignorant utterances with learned attention.

162. Absensia - 6/12/2002 12:17:40 PM

Elaborate with specific examples....Marj, I shall...but going out the door right now. Can you think of any country that things the US is just "swell"?

163. judithathome - 6/12/2002 12:26:55 PM

America.

164. godlessclif - 6/12/2002 12:31:37 PM

The Sickles elite plays the holocost card. I would site the case Mermelstein vs The American Spotlight to prove the holocost happened Sickles. A USA court ruled correctly in that case.

Major I Banks never claimed anything about the holocost.

iiibbb played the same holocost card on me when made the simple statement that Israel seized the Golan Height from Syria to get the water rights to the mountain streams that feed the sea of Galilee.

The mildest critisizm of Israel seems to bring out this holocost card. Even if your critisizm of Israel has nothing to do with the holocost. This holocost paranoia will cost israel a lot of friends.

165. Rama - 6/12/2002 12:39:58 PM

Can you think of any country that things the US is just "swell"?

With the economy appearing to be the most important issue for the majority of the respondents, the US was seen as the most admired
country, twice as popular as second-place Japan.

I'm not sure how one judges if a country thinks another country is "swell".

166. zojak quafeth - 6/12/2002 12:41:20 PM

Daniel -

I must agree with marj. You should provide the support he seeks immediately.

Because 50 years from now, it might be helpful to have the support of an ignorant blowhard on your side in a completely different forum based on completely different paramneters and issues.

Don't make the same mistakes the US made Sickles.

167. Daniel Sickles - 6/12/2002 12:42:41 PM

Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Very good.

168. godlessclif - 6/12/2002 12:42:47 PM

Now to an issue closer to the thread topic. Panama the movie.

There are those who beleive the media show and there are those who learn what really happenned in Panama. The "Operation Just Because" was one of the most media exposed and at the same time media restricted wars in history.

Marines landed on Panama beach only to see movie lights go up. It is a credit to Marine discipline that they did not kill the ABC camera crew.

But for real reporting of the mass graves and civilians killed in the war for Bush to get control of Pinochio Noriega, the American puppet who cut his strings, nothing was allowed to be reported.

The fact that the real purpose of the war was to void the Carter treaty that would have returned the canal to the people of Panama was never once mentioned on the Networks. They concentrated on Noriega's skin condition instead.

The fact that the CIA controled the drug trade in Panama until Noriega muscled in was not covered either.

169. Ms. No - 6/12/2002 1:08:20 PM

To All Hosts:

I regret to inform you that the privelege of changing thread titles at will is now revoked until further notice. Most of you this will not affect at all so I apologize for the interruption to your thread.

170. iiibbb - 6/12/2002 3:43:51 PM

My holocost remark was a sarcastic response to your previous unsubstatiated statement that it was about water. You did provide a link... however I read it... not only did it talk about water but it talked about the history of Syrian and Arab aggression toward Isreal.

Your dismissiveness of common knowledge and unwillingness to admit the Arabs have had any roll in how Isreal came to its posture is dishonest and lame.

Hence the sarcasm...

It's like saying there was no cold war. That the USSR was acting innocently. Ignoring Stalin... Ignoring the USSR's aggressive land grabs after WW2... Ignoring their military advantage as well as their aggression toward it's neighbors.

All of these things well before the US ever ammounted to a significant threat to them.

But you dismiss all that...

...never happened...

Your views are so off the wall, who can blame Sickles or I for responding in kind with all due sarcasm.

171. godlessclif - 6/12/2002 7:22:21 PM

Glad to hear it Mrs. No. I would rather have the priviledge of picking ignorant racist thread titles revolked, but it is a step in the right direction to not let people change the approved thread titles.

172. godlessclif - 6/12/2002 7:32:05 PM

iiibbb: "It was just a joke, I was being sarcastic."

Whenever anyone tells an ethnic joke, and calling someone an anti-semtic Nazi is equivalent to calling someone a commie, nigger or kyke, the defense is always "I was only joking"

I remember when Reagan Secretary of the interior was complaining about affirmative action in hiring in Washington and he made the famous statement "Because of affirmative action my staff consists of two jews, a nigger and a cripple" His first response when he knew he was in trouble was "It was just a joke"

In fact I have been guilty myself of calling people fascists because they are on the nutcase right. I am seriously thinking about stoping that behavior, just as I stopped calling libertarians, looneytarians a while ago.

Of course I will still have to call supporters of the homeland security department fascists, because in that case it is literally true. Maybe we can discus Bush bonehead foreign policy now.

Sickles is an elitist, all you ahve to do is go to his "21" closed chat where he only allows his "intelectual equals" like Cal Gal to post so he does not have to bother with pseudointellectual trash like me.

173. Max Macks - 6/12/2002 7:33:54 PM

first time to this thread which has appeared in the last year ..
godless. could not agree more with your post 168
I saw that documentary on PBS.

But I dont think it was seem by a large
segment of the USA.
Old Bush loved to make war ...I forget how
many . HIs last was in Somalia , creating
a mess that Clinton got blamed for in his
attempt to clean up the shit ole Bush made
The Bush Gang is once again in power.

174. Max Macks - 6/12/2002 7:35:14 PM

And last I heard Bush's buddy Noreiga
sits in jail ( safe from certain murder had
he remained in Panama) sitting in a General
uniform !!!

175. Max Macks - 6/12/2002 7:37:03 PM

What happend to my long reply to godlesscliff

I agreed with his post 168.

My computer has been disconneting for some
odd reason .
I said that I saw that documentary about
the Panama invasioin on PBS
but I dont think it was seen by majority
of Americans.

176. Max Macks - 6/12/2002 7:37:58 PM

oh , thats right Mote has posting window
in the middle of a thread.

177. iiibbb - 6/12/2002 10:52:20 PM

I didn't say it was a joke... I said I was being sarcastic...

...but your denial that the cold war happened in my mind is as ludicrous as saying the holocost didn't happen.

i.e. only a fool would believe neither or the other happened.

178. iiibbb - 6/12/2002 11:00:45 PM

Don't misconstrue my strongly worded response... it's part of debate after all. If you were completely unworthy (as you say)... I wouldn't bother with you at all.

And I already apologized for the holocost crack... a moment of weakness as I haven't been in the Mote for quite some time.

179. iiibbb - 6/12/2002 11:04:52 PM

You will note... sarcasm is not a tool of humor. It was used precisely as intended. You took it much like I took your crack that I was a republican.

I doubt that my views, taken as a package, would jibe with any party's platform.

180. godlessclif - 6/13/2002 8:39:34 AM

That unreconstructed bastard John Kassich(R-OHIO) is pushing the Bush neo-nazi homeland gestapo bill

I must mention again the case of Florida congressman Sam Gibbons(D-Fl) retired.

In 1996 Newt's new group included John Kassich was new to the power of congressional committee chairman.

Kassich was pushing an amendment to the tax bill that would allow millionaires who renounced their American citizenship betray America and pay no capital gains taxes.

Kassich did not want the amendment discussed before C-Span cameras because he was ashamed of the Kassich Amendment.

Thus he gagged Sam Gibbons and would not let him speak to the issue.

Gibbons asked for an exception for personal priviledge since he had spent 25 years as a florida congressman and thought he would be allowed to speak to the issue because of his seniority. Kassich refused Gibbons request to speak to the issue abusing his power as chairman.

Kassich is a mother fucking bastard.

Congressman Sam Gibbons said that he landed on Omaha Beach so people like Kassich would not be in charge. Sam has retired, we got rid of Newt, but that prick Kassich is still in the congress pushing the fascist agenda.

181. godlessclif - 6/13/2002 8:48:48 AM

The Campbell kid, heir to the Campbell soup fortune, is the best beneficiary or the Kassich Amendment.

Campbell sold almost two billion dollars in Campbell soup stock, renounced his American Citizenship and moved to Monaco. He avoided 300 million dollars in capital gains taxes because of Kassich. He gave John Kassich(Republican-Ohio) 2 million dollars in soft money campaign contributions

182. Daniel Sickles - 6/13/2002 10:08:24 AM

"Because of affirmative action my staff consists of two jews, a nigger and a cripple" is what Godless heard.

"I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple"
is what Watt said.

Who called anyone an "anti-semtic (sic) Nazi"? I used the Holocaust denial reference to underscore marj's making assured, unsubstantiated claims about Panama under Noriega and thereafter and then trolling for others to set him straight factually.

183. Indiana Jones - 6/13/2002 11:48:47 AM

But that prick Kassich is still in the congress pushing the fascist agenda.

No, he's not.

184. Raskolnikov - 6/13/2002 12:46:20 PM

"That unreconstructed bastard John Kassich(R-OHIO) is pushing the Bush neo-nazi homeland gestapo bill"

Huh? Indy is right. Kasich retired from Congress. He left just as Bush became President.

185. Daniel Sickles - 6/13/2002 12:50:07 PM

You right-wing fascists just have to insist on factual accuracy, don't you? Typical.

186. Indiana Jones - 6/14/2002 11:26:40 AM

Why is American Foreign Policy so inefficient, so basely hypocritical, and such an exhibition of compounded ignorance?

As far as "hypocritical" goes, that implies a pretense of being something that one isn't or, in common usage, espousing a principle one doesn't practice. Throughout most history and even today the true underlying first principle of foreign policy is national self-interest. Hence, if the US espouses a set of principles in its dealings with the rest of the world but says national self-interest is the highest ranked of those principles, then favoring self-interest when it conflicts with another isn't hypocrisy.

The US, of course, isn't always consistent even within the above parameter. Still, one can avoid charges of hypocrisy simply by being ruthless. So vulnerability to charges of hypocrisy isn't an entirely bad thing.

Whether American foreign policy is inefficient and an exhibition of compounded ignorance, I wonder if the host could list perhaps five nations that have historically demonstrated superior efficiency and intelligence in pursuing their foreign policy goals. I ask for five because for the US to be such a slipshod example of statesmanship would certainly imply less than a top five ranking.

187. Wombat - 6/14/2002 11:29:41 AM

A basis for comparison would be countries that have held a similar hegemonic position to that of the United States.

188. ronski - 6/14/2002 11:31:09 AM

Like Sweden a long time ago, not in the last century, and so on.

189. marjoribanks - 6/14/2002 11:32:06 AM

A recent editorial from the UK's Independent:

---

George Bush's presidency is shrinking. Having stepped up to the responsibilities of history in the days after 11 September, acting with restraint and speaking of patient justice, he strikes an increasingly desperate note as the campaign against terrorism runs into the sand.

For a while, the military campaign in Afghanistan lent a coherence to the American and international response to one of the most heinous acts of terrorism. That small war was a worthwhile venture, not least for the people of Afghanistan, although Mr Bush showed little understanding of how its conduct would feed Arab and Muslim resentment of American power.

But now, nine months after the collapse of New York's famous landmark, it is if anything less clear than ever who was behind it. Osama bin Laden may well be dead, but this week the Americans identified Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as possibly more directly responsible for organising the attacks. Mr Mohammed is believed to be a Kuwaiti-born Pakistani member of al-Qa'ida still at large on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

190. marjoribanks - 6/14/2002 11:33:27 AM

The fact that Mr Mohammed is said to be related to Ramzi Yousef, who tried to blow up the World Trade Centre in 1993, returns the investigation to hypothesis number one. Within hours of the attack it was speculated that this was a piece of unfinished business. It is curious that it has taken the US authorities so long to arrive where their investigations first started.

Yet the measures announced by the Bush administration this week do little to inspire confidence that either the US or the world is safer than it was. Worse than that, the timing and the tone of them speak of a concern with presentation rather than efficacy. The announcement of the new department of Homeland Security came on the day that hearings opened into the failures of the FBI and the CIA to use and share information last year.

In one breath the President was complacent. "I do not believe anyone could have prevented the horror of 11 September," he said. It is true that if the various warnings had been taken more seriously it would have made little difference. But it is quite possible that if airport and aircraft security had been tightened, in ways that were proposed but successfully resisted by America's bankrupt airlines, more of the hijacks might have been foiled. Even now, remarkably little change has taken place, either on internal US flights or international ones.

In the next breath, his tone was one of paranoia, saying: "We now know that thousands of trained killers are plotting to attack us." From the leader of the most powerful nation on earth, this is almost comical. It betrays the basic confusion in American thinking between internal and external security. Physical, as opposed to ideological, threats have always been assumed to come from outside. Hence the impractical notion that the enemies of the state can be stopped at the ports and airports by taking their fingerprints.

191. marjoribanks - 6/14/2002 11:34:13 AM

On the other hand, the focus on domestic intelligence in the new department is sensible: the trouble is that Mr Bush proposes no mechanism for ending the farcical competition between the CIA and FBI to prove that each provided the information that was most ignored.

More fundamentally, the President has failed to look forward to the nature of the threat over the coming years. He wants the new department to "imagine the worst", which is a useful intellectual exercise, but it is no substitute for trying to understand the motives of America's enemies. Nine months on, the President has done far too little to help his baffled fellow citizens understand where the threat is coming from.

192. marjoribanks - 6/14/2002 11:34:53 AM

Toys?

193. marjoribanks - 6/14/2002 11:41:46 AM

Okay,

Hence, if the US espouses a set of principles in its dealings with the rest of the world but says national self-interest is the highest ranked of those principles, then favoring self-interest when it conflicts with another isn't hypocrisy.

Sorry.

It hasn't even been national self-intest that one could point to with authority and say that is why the policies have been conducted.Look simply to the 9/11 events, where jihadis (America helped greatly in founding and abetting the global jihadi movement with hundreds of millions in cash) ultimately turned against the sponsor.

There are other very short-sighted, silly, measures underway in US FP. One that comes to mind immediately is the blanket support for the Sharonists .

I will be back to continue this.

194. ronski - 6/14/2002 11:54:07 AM

Blanket support is too strong a term. It is clear there is difference of opinion between Bush and Sharon (though perhaps not a great as the gulf between Bush and Powell).

195. Indiana Jones - 6/14/2002 12:03:34 PM

It hasn't even been national self-intest that one could point to with authority and say that is why the policies have been conducted.

Yes, I conceded that one couldn't blanket all examples with self-interest. But not knowing one's self-interest falls under the category of ignorance, rather than hypocrisy. What I'm addressing in the first part is the charge that America espouses principles and then doesn't practice them. And my points are 1) IMO it's better to at least espouse and attempt to practice principles in addition to self-interest, even if one is then left open to charges of hypocrisy--rather than being merely ruthless; and 2) although not all examples of possible hypocrisy are thus eliminated, many of them are, if one posits that the highest principle of all for a nation state in its conduct of foreign affairs is its self interest.

196. Indiana Jones - 6/14/2002 12:06:54 PM

A basis for comparison would be countries that have held a similar hegemonic position to that of the United States.

Well, I thought about that, but rising to a position of hegemony seems self-evident proof of at least some success in a nation's foreign policy.

197. Indiana Jones - 6/14/2002 12:16:35 PM

ronski: To which period of Sweden's history do you refer?

Given the circumstances he faced, I've always read that Bismarck did about as well as anyone in conducting a foreign policy, but he was ruthless and didn't have the domestic handicaps that a democracy does.

198. ronski - 6/14/2002 12:24:57 PM

I was thinking of the 17th c. expansion period.

199. Ms. No - 6/14/2002 12:24:59 PM

Look at the US from the rest of the world's perspective. Is America venal and hypocritical or noble and virtuous?

I think in part this depends on what country you're from and what your status is. In any case it's simplistic to think a single label describes the US. It's not a case of "good witch or bad witch". That's for the terminally naive.

200. Indiana Jones - 6/14/2002 1:13:45 PM

Sweden's great power century

The only part of this I was previously familiar with was Karl XII's reign, and that via Massey's biography of Peter the Great.

201. PelleNilsson - 6/14/2002 1:40:33 PM

Indiana

I'm devasted to learn that you haven't read my History of Sweden.

202. RustlerPike - 6/14/2002 1:46:27 PM

Indy:

Pelle's real name is Mike O'Leary (he doesn't mind people knowing). He adopted Pelle Nilsson as a nome de plume for his History of Sweden and it has stuck ever since.

If you already knew this - never mind.

203. RustlerPike - 6/14/2002 1:49:18 PM

Actually, Phil McNeil is a better name for someone who changes his name to Pelle Nilsson.

Yes, that was his name: Phil McNeil.

204. concerned - 6/16/2002 11:54:00 PM

So, what put a stop to marjoribank's thread titling idiocy? A frontal lobotomy?

205. godlessclif - 6/17/2002 6:56:09 AM

Just raw power Doug. They got Cal Gal to put a question mark on her "Islamists Global Threat?" which is what started it all and now only the grown-up can change thread names. I still object to using the word Islamists, it is right out of Orwelian double speak dictionary, it means arabs and has a bad connotation attached for propaganda, but then is defined as not an attack of the relgion of Islam, which it obviously is.

It is exactly like saying Mexicanists are the lazy, drug using webacks that sneak across the border, steal our jobs, all carry knives and refuse to learn English. and then say because it has "IST" on the end it is not a racial slur against Mexicans.

This is the stupidest linguistic thing Republicans have done since they refused to call the opposition party Democratic, and started calling it the ungrammatical "Democrat Party".

Using the word Islamists means you can hate arabs and not be called a bigot for hating them just because they are arabs. I am not buying it.

Just like they are calling this religious crusade against Islam Bush is running the "War on Terror" The Office of Strategery Information is alive and well.

Kill abroad lie at home and remember Arabs with money like the Saudi's who actually financed the attack on the Twin Tower and made up 90% of the Suicide Bombers [which OSI wants you to call Homocide Bombers BTW] are not Islamists for some reason. Because they do business with the Carlisle Group is most likely.

206. Wombat - 6/17/2002 8:49:38 AM

I had in mind Britain, for starters. For a microcosm on inconsistent decision-making, lack of planning, no long-term policy, expedient alliances that backfired, cultural insensitivity, etc. Britain's role in the Indian sub-continent from the 18th through the 20th Century will do fine.

207. Indiana Jones - 6/17/2002 8:55:53 AM

Wombat: Do nicely for what?

If you mean as a comparison to the Bush administration's policies, 200 years versus approximately nine months (or, at the outside, a year and a half) makes the comparison less than obvious.

Or do you mean US Middle East policy since [fill in the blank]?

208. godlessclif - 6/17/2002 9:02:29 AM

I did like the clever way the Brits got Pakistanis and Indians fighting over religious differences before they left India, as well as partitioning in such a way that fighting would ensue by dividing the Kasmiri/Sikh buffer state so neither nation could claim it as a province.

This meant India would have a lot of trouble emerging as a superpower because of perpetual wars with Pakistan.

Not as effective at the Iraq/Kuwait partiiion to insure there would be no new arabian superpower, but then there was no way they could landlock the Indian subcontinent. Creating Israel was an act of genius solving the jewish problem and leaving Egypt also with a perpetual enemy.

209. Wombat - 6/17/2002 9:09:35 AM

Indy:

For a hegemonic power's foreign policy over time.

Cliff:

Nothing happens accidentally in your world, does it? Despite facts to contrary, such as the Emir of Kuwait, then an Ottoman province, requesting the protection of the British in the mid-19th Century. Or the fact that Britain opposed the creation of the state of Israel.

210. godlessclif - 6/17/2002 9:16:16 AM

I thought some British Lord named Balfour came up witht he idea.

I am no historian however. Being Irish I see British Puppeteers everywhere. I know Brits started the Irish religious war by giving the Protestant minority special priviledges.

In fact 3wasn't putting Christian Ibo's and Moslem Youruba in Nigeria as one nation and giving the Ibo minortity special priviledges also an British idea?

What are we doing now to assert control in the Phillipines? Starting a religious war?

211. Indiana Jones - 6/17/2002 9:35:15 AM

Wombat: Okay, but I'm looking for examples of adroit foreign policy.

The Raj is not something I'm knowledgable about...but consider that Britain maintained its rule over India to one degree or another for basically centuries, despite the greater population and land mass of the latter and the distance between the two during a time of slow transportation and communication. Moreover, much of that time Britain was opposed by other continental powers and involved in several "life or death" struggles within Europe itself. So maybe Britain's long rule of India required some measure of competence, even if historical trends meant its inevitable longterm doom.

Again, it's not a subject I know much about in detail but am commenting on only in terms of the big picture and the impression that gives.

Tuchman's March of Folly uses the loss of the American colonies as another example of what you're describing, but I think that case is different in that it might have been possible not to alienate the "locals" given the demographic similarities and origins. India would have been much more difficult--I would think--to hang onto, no matter what sort of policy Britain pursued.

212. Wombat - 6/17/2002 9:49:01 AM

Indy:

I would suggest that all hegemonic powers, particularly those that are democratic, are prone to the sames problems that Marj criticizes, and that it is not possible--and probably not desireable--to live in Marj's world of a consistent, sensitive, altruistic, and adroit foreign policy by a hegemonic power.

Some of the United States' most successful, adroit and sensitive foreign policy decisions came as the result of a horrendous foreign policy failure several decades before. These decisions were expedient, contributed to ongoing problems, and could have been done better (in hindsight). They were also successful.

213. Wombat - 6/17/2002 10:00:40 AM

Clif:

Almost every country's rulers, hegemonic or not, is guilty of using divide and rule to a greater or lesser extent.

The British were very successful--and efficient--in cultivating elites in their colonies to run them. It certainly was superior to Spain's method of colonial domination (slaughter as many as possible, enslave the rest, and convert them to Catholicism), France's (coopt their culture, convert them into little bits of France).

214. Indiana Jones - 6/17/2002 10:02:12 AM

[I]t is not possible--and probably not desireable--to live in Marj's world of a consistent, sensitive, altruistic, and adroit foreign policy by a hegemonic power.

Agreed.

215. godlessclif - 6/17/2002 10:02:55 AM

Or as British Comedian Eddy Izzard said, "British took over India by clever us of flags"

British explorer sticks the British flag in the ground; "I claim this land for the Queen of England"

East Indian Native, "You can't do that, we live here and there a 500 million of us"

British Explorer "Yes, but do you have a flag?'

216. Wombat - 6/17/2002 10:09:23 AM

Oscar Wilde was quoted as claiming that Britain acquired its Indian possession in a fit of absent-mindedness.

217. godlessclif - 6/17/2002 10:16:35 AM

more toys

218. marjoribanks - 6/17/2002 10:28:28 AM

I would suggest that all hegemonic powers, particularly those that are democratic, are prone to the sames problems that Marj criticizes, and that it is not possible--and probably not desireable--to live in Marj's world of a consistent, sensitive, altruistic, and adroit foreign policy by a hegemonic power.

I would like to spend more time on this very question.

1) No one ever said (let alone me) that power play between states should have an element of altruism in it. Altruism does not belong in foreign affairs.

2) It seems to me that US policy, however, is exceptionally short-sighted and costly in certain key parts of the world. This country has repeatedly built up individuals and regimes only to then spend a great deal of our cash getting rid of them. Examples are myriad.

3) Consistency is the watchword I'd like to inject into that list of my presumed desirables. The lack of which is the number 1 cause of resentment and even hatred in the rest of the world towards the US.

Sigh. More later.

219. godlessclif - 6/17/2002 10:37:58 AM

Clinton's smartest policy was to stop setting up puppet dictators that we would end up overthrowing later. It worked well we fought fewer wars.

What are we doing now selling weapons to both sides in Pakistan and India. That is nuts. Clinton embargoed them both and he was right.

Even if the dictatorship is successful like Pinochet's in Chile it leaves us looking bad being associated with these war criminals. And for every Pinochet, Duvalier or Marcos there are a lot of Noriegas and Saddams that turn on us. Or Shah Palevis, No Dien Diems and Somosas that turn the country they rule against us by repression that inspires revolution.

220. Wombat - 6/17/2002 10:40:55 AM

I think it could be argued, going back to Rome, that consistency in a democracy's foreign policy is a virtual impossibility, given the political process. There may be some overarching agreement on broad issues, the Glory of Rome, Rule Britannia, the Red Menace, etc..., but how the broad aims are advanced is subject to considerable political jockeying and policy reversals.

As to its desirability...If the United States was to have a consistent policy of military intervention to rectify gross human rights violations among ethnic and/or political minorities by other states, we would currently be fighting Russia, China, Turkey, and most countries in the Middle East.

221. godlessclif - 6/17/2002 10:46:43 AM

What about Clinton's policy. He did not run off to Ruanda. He did not fight in Haiti But he did not overthrow democracies and put in puppet dictators. Clinton said he would stop genocide when it was in our interest, and at least no support it.

Who sold Ruanda all those machetes anyway?

222. Wombat - 6/17/2002 10:57:26 AM

Cliff:

Actually, the machetes came from China, if the Canadian in command of UN forces there is to be believed. Personally, I think it was a bad thing that the US did not intervene in Rwanda.

Again, I apologize for inserting factual information into your rhetorical flights.

Saddam was in no way a US creation (we can blame the Soviet Union and later the French for supporting his regime and propping him up during his mostly self-inflicted difficulties).

223. Raskolnikov - 6/17/2002 11:27:33 AM

"2) It seems to me that US policy, however, is exceptionally short-sighted and costly in certain key parts of the world. This country has repeatedly built up individuals and regimes only to then spend a great deal of our cash getting rid of them. Examples are myriad."

I think this is less of a settled question than you imply. Yes, the US had indeed sponsored despotic thugs only to be bitten on the ass by them. Examples included Saddam Hussein, Noriega, elements of the Mujahaddin, and Stalin. These are the most prominent examples usually mentioned, but let us look at them:

Saddam Hussein: US support was extremely meager (Iraq was primarily a Soviet client state for most of the cold war), done in the context of the Iran/Iraq war, and it is extremely hard to argue that this US support created the situation in 1990.

Noriega: More US support here, but getting rid of him wasn't a huge problem.

The Mujahaddin: Considering recent events, the choice of the specific groups supported here does look particularly blinkered.

Stalin: Lots of support in WWII, but I don't see how we had much choice, given the circumstances.

On top of this, consider US support for third world tinpot dictators where there the regime did not turn on us: South Korea, Taiwan, Chile, Philippines, El Salvador, Guatamala, Pakistan, etc.

Not that all of these choices were necessarily smart ones, but I think it is simplistic to imply that the occasional "own goal" scored by the US repudiates the general policy we had in the Cold War, where strong democratic allies simply were rarely available in the third world.

Given the end of the Cold War, expedient reasons for supporting dictators are less common, but they do arise. Simply pointing to a few foreign policy failures as evidence for refusing to dirty our hands might leave the with several worse foreign policy disasters on our hands.

224. Raskolnikov - 6/17/2002 11:44:09 AM

Also, I posed this question over at Guardian Talk, and had a lot of fun with it: "What is a morally acceptable way for the US to deal with oppressive regimes?" I argued that is impossible for the US to behave in a manner that would meet with the approval of the European left, as the US is criticized no matter how it behaves toward oppressive regimes. If we trade with them, we are enabling Human Rights abuses in places like China. But we get criticized if we try to use trade sanctions to leverage internal domestic changes (Cuba). If we leave them alone, we are negligent (Rwanda), but if we militarily intervene, we are imperialists (Iraq, Yugoslavia).

Not that US policy should be amoral (I disagree with Marj's curious claim here that "altruism does not belong in foreign affairs"), but that pragmatic considerations are unavoidable, and prevent any sort of real ideological consistency.

225. Wombat - 6/17/2002 11:47:41 AM

In Rask's "tinpots who didn't turn on us" collection, most of those countries now have democratically elected governments.

226. godlessclif - 6/17/2002 11:56:05 AM

I thought we were on Saddam's side in his war with Iran? That was why everyone was surprised when we found out Reagan sold missiles to the Ayatola.

227. Raskolnikov - 6/17/2002 11:56:20 AM

A hell of a lot of them certainly do. I remember reading an argument by Jeanne Kirkpatrick back in high school that one of the main reasons why US/USSR actions were not morally equivalent is that US sponsored dictatorships had a much greater tendency to convert to democratic regimes. I sneered at the argument at the time, but in retrospect I see she was right (at least in enough important cases to win the "moral equivalence" argument).

And what was the alternative? Few people condemn US support for Stalin during WWII, who was far more brutal than any right wing dictator supported by the US. Moral fastidiousness on the part of the US during WWII possibly could have led to a German victory. Same in the Cold War, only the result would have been more North Koreas, and fewer South Koreas.

228. Raskolnikov - 6/17/2002 12:00:00 PM

"I thought we were on Saddam's side in his war with Iran? That was why everyone was surprised when we found out Reagan sold missiles to the Ayatola."

The US saw Iran as a greater threat than Iraq, so there was some support given to Iraq during the Iran/Iraq War. But it wasn't substantial or decisive in the conflict, and it didn't "create" Saddam Hussein.

229. godlessclif - 6/17/2002 12:04:39 PM

They turnedinto democracies because of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. As I recall Clinton had to bitch slap the CIA for trying to keep Sidras in power in Haiti and spreading false rumors that Aristide, who got 80% of the vote was nuts.

230. godlessclif - 6/17/2002 12:06:41 PM

O.K. so Saddam just growed like Topsy. I guess it happens. The CIA has set up so many dictatorships it is hard to keep track.

231. godlessclif - 6/17/2002 12:12:23 PM

What was our vital interest in Rwanda?

Like Rask says, we get slammed both ways. Clinton gets blamed for losing in Somalia, event though Bush planned the war. Kennedy gets blamed for the bay of pigs even though it was planned before he was elected and the CIA did not tell him anything.

Now the Bush babies want to blame Clinton for 9/11 even though Bush had a one month warning to stop it. It is just partisan bashing.

They even critisize Clinton when he wins like in Kosovo with no casualties. Bush snatched defeat from the jaws of Victory in Iraq, but he is a god and the media kisses his butt.

232. godlessclif - 6/17/2002 12:15:20 PM

I guess China would be the cheapest place to get steel. Thye were shipped as agricultural tools. Not beheading swords. One article said the Hootoo killing rate perday was more than the Nazis, because they did not stop to burn the bodies. They just chopped up Tootsies[not correct spelling] and moved on.

233. Raskolnikov - 6/17/2002 12:17:05 PM

"They turnedinto democracies because of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. As I recall Clinton had to bitch slap the CIA for trying to keep Sidras in power in Haiti and spreading false rumors that Aristide, who got 80% of the vote was nuts."

This is a very simplistic view of how democracies arise. Just as simplistic as right wing claims that Reagan was responsible for the collapse of the USSR. It is also counterfactual, as many of these transitions occurred under the watch of GOP Presidents. Spain, Portugal, and Greece made the transition under Ford. The Philippines and South Korea transitioned under Reagan. Chile transitioned under Bush.

234. godlessclif - 6/17/2002 12:17:18 PM

Churchill said he would make a deal with the devil to beat Hitler and I guess he did.

235. Raskolnikov - 6/17/2002 12:21:18 PM

Not that Ford, Reagan, and Bush had any significant role in these transitions to democracies either. The point is that such transitions have a strong tendency to occur through internal domestic forces in the types of regimes supported by the US (where capitalist economies create sufficient economic growth to enable things like literacy, education, and a middle class that seem to be necessary precursors for a successful democracy).

236. Raskolnikov - 6/17/2002 12:22:05 PM

I think the quote went "If Hitler invaded hell, I would make at least one favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons".

237. godlessclif - 6/17/2002 12:33:41 PM

As simplisitc as saying Reagan was responsible for the collapse of the USSR.

Jesus I hope I am not that simplistic. The analogy I like to use when that comes us is to the American Revolution.

Saying King Louis XIV was solely responsible for the American Victory in the Revolution because he told George III to "tear down that cornWALLis"

I think that just as George Washington, Ethan Allen and Alexander Hamilton had something to do with the victory in America, Revolutionaries like Lech Wolensa and Vaclave Havel had just a little bit more to do with the fall of the Wall than Reagan did.

238. godlessclif - 6/17/2002 12:37:43 PM

Or when the dictator dies.

239. godlessclif - 6/17/2002 12:39:08 PM

I guess you could say Vietnam transitioned to democracy under Ford too. Transitioned is such a nice word. You get the no spin award for saying it that way.

240. Raskolnikov - 6/17/2002 12:44:02 PM

"I guess you could say Vietnam transitioned to democracy under Ford too."

No, you couldn't, as Vietnam wasn't (and isn't) a democracy. But I understand your broader point to be that such transitions can happen *in spite of* the US, rather than *because of* it. I agree. My point was not to give Ford credit, but to point out that you similarly can't give much credit to Clinton and Carter. They happened for reasons independent of who happened to President at the time.

241. Wombat - 6/17/2002 1:03:00 PM

That would be Louis XVI.

You could argue that French intervention in the US Revolution was decisive (and incredibly lucky). When Rochambeau's force landed in New England it was equal in number to the Continental forces, and better trained and equipped. The French also included a train of seige artillery, which the American forces also lacked. De Grasse's appearance at the mouth of the Chesapeake, and his avoidance of defeat at the sea battle off the Virginia Capes (the only time the Brits didn't defeat the French) was fortuitous, and sealed Cornwallis' fate. Had the French not intervened, the British may have eventually been defeated, but the circumstances and the peace settlement may have been more adverse.

242. Daniel Sickles - 6/17/2002 1:09:30 PM

The more you read cliff, the more you lament the failures of public education coupled with the evils of Time magazine as a primary source of information.

He's a conventional wisdom, mutated bromide machine. He makes a factual misstatement every post, but they are the kinds of mistakes people can more readily accept because they are often repeated by a lot of fools, or they are in Oliver Stone movies.

And then there are the whoppers - Watt said "nigger", Kasich is in Congress, the CIA told Kennedy nothing about the Bay of Pigs. I'm attributing those to a delusion of how cliff remembers things.

243. zojak quafeth - 6/17/2002 1:10:42 PM

(the only time the Brits didn't defeat the French)

Dontcha mean the only time anyone at all didn't defeat the French?

Why limit it to the Brits?

244. Wombat - 6/17/2002 1:23:17 PM

Frankly, Daniel, in terms of disseminating conventional wisdom and bromides, you more than hold your own. I cannot speak for your educational background or your weekly news magazine choice.

Cliffie's howler quotient and general world view puts him in a league by himself.

245. Daniel Sickles - 6/17/2002 1:30:12 PM

Wombat

Keep your beak out of this, mutton. Cliff has the value of being a creation, a parody.

You have no such excuse.

246. godlessclif - 6/17/2002 1:37:23 PM

Well that give Louis XVI more claims to winning the American Revolution than Reagan has on winning the cold war. Regan did not even send a Lafayette to Eastern Europe, much less an Admirals De Grass and De Bareass [I note Americans joked Bareass would be a more appropriate name for an American soldier.]

I don't beleive history books even since I read in third grade that we won the battle of Bunker Hill.

I think Vietnam is a free country and the people have the guy they want in charge. That is good enough for me.

Are you saying it is not a Democracy because there is only one party?

That is rapidly happening here if Bush has his way with voter registration. If not they will just buy enough Democrats for the VRWC to still run things.

We have an echo, not a choice in our elections.

247. Raskolnikov - 6/17/2002 1:48:11 PM

"I think Vietnam is a free country and the people have the guy they want in charge. That is good enough for me. Are you saying it is not a Democracy because there is only one party?"

It is not a democracy because it doesn't meet any definition of democracy that I have ever seen. Elections are not free in that only candidates approved by the Communist party are allowed. Criticism of the party or the government is not allowed, and dissidents are imprisoned or harassed.

As to your claim that the people have the government they want, it is pretty hard to confirm this in a country without free elections, but I would be happy to look at your evidence.

248. Raskolnikov - 6/17/2002 1:50:32 PM

Human Rights Watch's report on the lack of freedom in Vietnam:

http://www.hrw.org/wr2k1/asia/vietnam.html

"The twenty-fifth anniversary of Vietnam's reunification saw the government maintaining tight control over freedom of expression and other basic rights. Highly publicized steps to liberalize the economy, including the signing of a landmark trade agreement with the United States and the establishment of the country's first stock exchange, were not accompanied by rights improvements. Authorities continued to take strong action against those who criticized the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) or spoke out in favor of democratic change."

249. ronski - 6/17/2002 1:52:09 PM

Can it be that cliff is Gerald Ford, who thought Poland free?

250. Daniel Sickles - 6/17/2002 1:52:56 PM

Gentleman

You are being played by none other than Ace of Spades.

251. Raskolnikov - 6/17/2002 1:53:59 PM

No, Ace would have called me a fuckhead by now.

252. zojak quafeth - 6/17/2002 1:54:46 PM

Rask -

That's just propaganda from the republicans who want you to think there's sumpin screwy goin' on in 'Nam.

I'm with Clif. The Vietnamese are a free people. Cuba is rich. The problem with too much money is well, it's just too much damn money.

And if you're not sure Vietnam is free, let's just get rid of the the Vietnamese Grand Poobah (isn't that what they call him Clif?) by firebombing the whole country. Hell, it'll give McCain something to do.

253. ronski - 6/17/2002 1:56:08 PM

The worst Ace ever called me was a liberal. And he retracted that slur, eventually.

And he told me he loved me.

I miss him still.

254. Daniel Sickles - 6/17/2002 1:57:27 PM

Ronski, Rask

Ace is in shape. This is his return. It is both insidious and brilliant. Read cliff. each post.

Then tell me it is not Ace.

255. godlessclif - 6/17/2002 1:58:58 PM

Nike executives are raping the women who make sneakers too I know.

Bad stuff happens here too.

I just do not see socialist states as that toxic. It can't be a communist country is they have a capitalist economy.

A lot of these state you call free are one party states. Haiti is a one party state, 80% of the people support Aristide. You call that free.

You call the Phillipine free, but the Moros would disagree. In Vietnam where are the revolutionaries is they are oppressed. Where are the Buddist monk setting htemselves on fire. Let face it they got their shit together in Vietnam.

256. PelleNilsson - 6/17/2002 2:01:02 PM

Daniel

He is not writing well enough, and his spelling ...

257. joezan - 6/17/2002 2:02:04 PM

Clif is Clif, Sickles. He spells the same, get's excited about the same stuff...plus, there was that little test I gave him, which he passed with flying colors.

It's him, I tell you - our own beloved village idiot.

258. zojak quafeth - 6/17/2002 2:02:56 PM

That's right clif. 'Nam has it right. They walk around barefoot, because they ain't gonna wear no tenny shoos from no woman rapin' comp'ny like Nike.

Sheeaat. Nike's a greek word anyway. You know them Greeks. Can't trust 'em.

259. zojak quafeth - 6/17/2002 2:03:51 PM

Bomb NIKE!!! I'm sure we'll get that friggin' executive.

260. zojak quafeth - 6/17/2002 2:04:15 PM

It's the only moral thing to do.

261. Raskolnikov - 6/17/2002 2:06:14 PM

" I just do not see socialist states as that toxic."

Nowadays, since they have given up on exporting misery to their neighbors, they are only toxic to their own people, so I have less of a problem with them.

"It can't be a communist country is they have a capitalist economy."

I didn't call it a communist country. I just said it wasn't a democracy. Same with China. However, I find it funny that you are defending the freedom in a one party capitalist country.

"A lot of these state you call free are one party states. Haiti is a one party state, 80% of the people support Aristide. You call that free."

*You* called Haiti free, claiming it was free because of Clinton. I said nothing about it. (Although I find it weird that strong support for a President is a sign of a lack of freedom.)

262. PelleNilsson - 6/17/2002 2:09:24 PM

But if clif is clif how could he possibly have gained the attribute "legendary"? How could people here have longed for his return? I have but vague memories of him from the Fray but all I see now is a neo-Chomskyite hack.

263. Raskolnikov - 6/17/2002 2:12:43 PM

Daniel: But Ace is an impetuous, fast-writing, puppydog, so impatient in his debating style that he quickly constructs straw men in order to have someone to argue with while his opponents are framing their replies. He has never had the patience to play such games for longer than 15 minutes, before he would be overcome with the urge to claim proper credit for his trickery.

264. Wombat - 6/17/2002 2:18:48 PM

Pelle:

Clif was that all along. Perhaps absence made the heart grow fonder for some here.

265. godlessclif - 6/17/2002 2:21:20 PM

I am as confused a Cher is about why my fame comes and goes.

One day I am a god, next day a hack. Do you conspiracy theorists think I am spelling[actually it is bad typing], spelling wrong on purpose to imitate some legendary Clif of the past.

I had not explored Chomsky when I was on the Fray. Is that what is bothering you? Neo-Chomskyism? Or pseudochomskyism?

It could be worse, it could be Neo-Calvinism like Ashcroft.

Why not get back on topic. You can bash me on Inferno and I will drop in to read it.

I think the topic was Bush's moronic halting confused foreign policy and why everyone in the world hates the USA because of it?

266. CalGal - 6/17/2002 2:26:42 PM

I don't know if Cliff is that Cliff, but he is a better imitation than any other I've seen, if so. He almost certainly isn't Ace. Ace wasn't in the Fray before it went pay, which means he didn't know Cliff, and this strikes me as far too accurate to be a lucky guess. Also, in one of Ace's previous monikers he pretended to be a liberal for a week or so, and it was very different.

267. zojak quafeth - 6/17/2002 2:31:36 PM

Yo, everybody. Clif is right yet again. Let's get back on topic.

What were we talking about Clif?

Wasn't it how bin Laden lost his diplomatic immunity after the carpet bombing of Iraq because the leader of Free-Vietnam discovered that bin-Laden had invested in that evil woman raping corporation, Nike, thereby becoming a mini-failed-capitalist-non-country leader in and of himself?

268. godlessclif - 6/17/2002 2:32:47 PM

one "f" it is clifton not clifford.

269. zojak quafeth - 6/17/2002 2:33:57 PM

Clif -

Relax about the name, they're just "f"ing with you.

270. godlessclif - 6/17/2002 2:36:52 PM

That's why I though a trip to inferno is called for.

271. zojak quafeth - 6/17/2002 2:38:24 PM

Yep. You should burn them all Clif. You're bound to get the person who started all this that way. And it's much more moral than just gunning for one person.

272. pseudoerasmus - 6/18/2002 3:44:26 AM

Message # 261: "Same with China. However, I find it funny that you are defending the freedom in a one party capitalist country.
"

Over 80% of China's output is still produced in the public sector. Only about 5% is derived from a purely private sector in the western sense; and less than 15% is produced by joint ventures between public enterprises and foreign private enterprises.

The real story of China's economic explosion has taken place in the public sector --but with a twist. The fastest growing part of China's econony is not the central-government-owned state enterprises, but the enterprises owned collectively or communally by village & township governments.

273. godlessclif - 6/18/2002 4:17:06 AM

I am all for communally farmed land. We need more of it in the USA, however agribusinesses have driven everyone off the land.

So is it the private sector or the public sector of China that sold the Ruanda genocide forces all the machettes?

But that is off topic.

This Bush regime's policy toward China is schizophrenic. The Bush Regime loudly condemns them for being Godless Communists[ like me I guess].

He condemns China for suppressing mind control cult like Falun Gong. ???

The Bush regime has such provocative suveilance activity that one of our surveilance planes collides with a chinese airspace defense jet.

Bush says we will go to war to stop the return of Taiwan to China and threaten them with Nuclear anihilation. He refuses to support Tibetan independence.

The Bush regime supports most favored nation status for China. Open trade and investment. Bush put tarrifs on Japanese, Brazilian, and Turkish Steel all US allies. I see no steel tarrif on China.

Out of one side of his mouth he is about to go to war, and build a missile defense, if it ever works, to neutralize the Chinese deterent. Then he wants to play soccer with them and have their help fighting terrorism[ meaning fight islam]

Don't be fooled by the name change.

Normal trade relations is the new name out of the Bush's ministry of truth, but the legal language of that bill is identical to most favored nations status for China.

Bush should decide if China is an enemy or a friend, after all The Bush Regime policy is "If you are not with us you are against us." So we can't have any middle ground moderate foreign policy.

274. godlessclif - 6/18/2002 4:24:39 AM

The fastest growing part of China's econony is not the central-government-owned state enterprises, but the enterprises owned collectively or communally by village & township governments.

So are we calling farm Coops and Manufacturing coops communism because they freeze multinational corporate power out, like the rapist sweatshop managers at Nike.

Or are they free enterprise because they are not centrally planned. Maybe we could have a new thread to address this ideology discussion.

"The Ideology thread." Or "What is capitalism, what is communism , what is something completely different".

"Is globalization economic terrorism or are the Green party members the evil ones" is another possible topic.

275. jexster - 6/18/2002 10:06:56 PM

Why are villagers in the Aceh province of Indonesia worrying about contributions from Exxon Mobil to George W. Bush and the Republicans?

Judging from all The Texas Twang I Heard at the Jakarta Hilton -They've Good Reason - Guhd Buhdday

276. pseudoerasmus - 6/18/2002 10:27:11 PM

Godlesscliff is not intelligent enough to have a discussion on ideology.

For a brief summary on China's TVEs (township- and village-owned enterprises), see here.

277. godlessclif - 6/19/2002 7:13:32 AM

Pseudoerasmus: I know you regard me a greatly inferior to you in intelligence. I am the pinky to your brain,narf!

Doesn't that insulting post belong on inferno?

Why don't you list the I.Q.s of all the Moties and determine which are not intelligent enough to talk to you P.E..

You could have a Mensa thread in true Shocky Eugenics fashion and only discus things with your equals.

I might ask if you think I am intelligent to reproduce or do you feel people of my ideology should be sterilized like the charector played by Montgomery Clift in Judgement at Nuremberg?

278. vw - 6/19/2002 7:57:00 AM

Is there ever going to be a real discussion in this thread ... you know, the exchange of information that is then compared and contrasted with principles and tenets from various disciplines with the end result hopefully being a greater understanding or at least a clarification of opinion?

And before someone whines at me about just commenting rather than contributing; I don’t believe I have enough knowledge to have formulated a rational opinion yet and was hoping that listening to folks who had spent some time forming rational opinions might be worthy of my time. I know not chiming in with a half-assed comment is alien to some of you, but try to remember that some of us lurkers actually enjoy reading some of you knowledgeable folks when you’re NOT being insulting wankers.

279. pseudoerasmus - 6/19/2002 7:59:07 AM

Godlesscliff, in my universe, you would not be sterilised. I reserve eugenics for paedophile right-wingers like concerned. The Godlesscliffs of the world would be shot and buried in concrete walls.

280. Wombat - 6/19/2002 9:25:47 AM

VW:

A lack of knowledge on a subject hasn't stopped anyone from expressing their opinions on this thread. Take clifton...please.

Please chip in with whatever opinions and insights you might have. If they serve as a point of departure for an informative discussion, so much the better.

281. sakonige - 6/19/2002 9:27:55 AM

You know, you are cute when you are being an insufferable prick.

282. sakonige - 6/19/2002 9:28:36 AM

PE, that is, not Wombat.

283. sakonige - 6/19/2002 9:29:31 AM

I don't think Wombat is ever an insufferable prick, although he is a dick sometimes.

284. godlessclif - 6/19/2002 9:45:26 AM

Wombat is just in love with P.E. so he feels a need to slam anyone who confronts P.E. Like me.

285. godlessclif - 6/19/2002 9:54:21 AM

VW: Yes I was told the idea of the thread was an exchange of information, but since I was informed by P.E. that he knows everything and I know nothing

I am in the position of a starving Angolan asking a multibillion dollar american argibusiness to feed me when I have nothing to give in return.

Myths about the starving who have nothing to give

Fortunately he is a mercy killer and will shoot everyone to the left of Goldwater, like me, and bury them in the Berlin style wall Bush plans to build along the American border designed to keep the poor out.

286. Wombat - 6/19/2002 10:37:21 AM

Clifton:

I feel a need to slam you because you give what passes for the "left" on the Mote a bad name with your almost uniformly contrafactual ravings. You are Concerned's straw man "lefty" come to life.

287. marjoribanks - 6/19/2002 10:37:42 AM

Now, now.

Let's avoid silly personality-based arguments and stick to the thread topic.

I'd like to know, Godless, why you think the Clinton (or Democrat) foreign policy is any different from the other alternative.

As someone deeply involved and interested in one region of the world more than others - South Asia - I can say quite unequivocally that Clinton was no better and in many ways worse than the Republicans. Since Sept 11, particularly, Bush has been better than any president in history in his relationship with the region and specifically India. Clinton, by contrast, didn't even name an ambassador for well over a year.

288. vw - 6/19/2002 11:05:33 AM

Bush has been better than any president in history in his relationship with the region and specifically India.

If true, is this due to a more far-sighted policy or just simply that now more than ever we need everyone playing as nice and quiet as we can manage?

IOWs, if 9/11 hadn't happened do you believe that the current administration would have a policy significantly different from the previous administration's policy?

289. CalGal - 6/19/2002 11:11:25 AM

Exactly.

One area where Bush differs significantly from Clinton is in his readiness to impose tariffs, and it's not 9/11 driving that difference.

290. marjoribanks - 6/19/2002 11:24:00 AM

It is hard to tell, now, the way the Bushites would have gone without 9/11. They certainly showed their hand by avoiding international treaties like the Kyoto Protocols.

However, embedded in the Bush regime was Condoleeza Rice, who has openly espoused for years the idea that the US should have relations with strategically important countries (including India) and mostly ignore the rest.

The Republican Right has been on india's side for some time.

Summation: This would likely have been the most engaged and positive US administration wrt India in any case. The circumstances have made it more so.

291. marjoribanks - 6/19/2002 11:25:44 AM

The Republicans have in any case put professsionals on the job internationally as opposed to the Clintonian amateurs.

Hey, I voted for the guy twice, but it must be admitted that Clinton was mostly a forgettable disaster for most of the world.

292. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 6/19/2002 11:26:56 AM

. . .and it's not 9/11 driving that difference.

It's simple-minded zealotry and extremism everywhere, that's making this world so bleak.

The Hindu call to arms

293. marjoribanks - 6/19/2002 11:30:24 AM

Wiz,

That is a nonsensical little pamphlet which is ignored by the great majority of Indians.

294. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 6/19/2002 11:38:13 AM

If only we could ignore Bush in the same way marj. Now they have him reading War and Peace and de Tocqueville--regardless of Condi Rice, this git will decide everyone's future.

I agree about Clinton, but sometimes no action is better than stirring the pot.

295. ronski - 6/19/2002 11:55:06 AM

Wonder what he read at Yale.

296. marjoribanks - 6/19/2002 11:58:16 AM

Eh, I'm not that afraid of what Dubya can do. I see him as a mostly hamstrung, limited, character.

The people around him are very good, by recent standards, but I have a hard time believing that even they can re-elect this President.

297. ronski - 6/19/2002 12:04:06 PM

marj,

He will carry more than 40 states in a landslide. Barring something really weird happening.

298. bubbaette - 6/19/2002 12:05:16 PM

I don't think so. He's coming across as more and more bumbling and ineffectual.

299. Raskolnikov - 6/19/2002 12:05:33 PM

From Pseudo's 276, I see that World Crossing is where most of the TT folks disappeared to. Serves me right for not asking questions.

300. bubbaette - 6/19/2002 12:06:50 PM

The better half was practically apoplectic at GWB on the tv last night brokering a deal to give the palestinians a home state. Where does it say in the constitution that the U.S. pres. gets to divvy up land in other countries?

301. ronski - 6/19/2002 12:14:51 PM

bub,

I've never taken you for a strict constructionist.

302. bubbaette - 6/19/2002 12:24:22 PM

I don't rant at the t.v. -- that's my hub who's quite a bit more conservative than I am. But it does seem like Bush is overreaching a bit on this issue when he can't even seem to make out which side he's on.

303. ronski - 6/19/2002 12:26:27 PM

I thought he was more libertarian than you.

304. bubbaette - 6/19/2002 12:33:26 PM

Libertarian, conservative, same diff rouncheer.

305. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 6/19/2002 5:45:46 PM

Bush to World: "Kick Me"

306. stostosto - 6/19/2002 6:01:55 PM

Look at the US from the rest of the world's perspective. Is America venal and hypocritical or noble and virtuous?

Here is a perspective I have noticed. The USA's national football (that's soccer to Murcans) has made it to the quarter finals. This is a big surprise as US is not a great footballing (er, soccering) nation. So what is people's reaction here? Surprise? Excitation? Approval? After all, we're talking an underdog, football (soccer) wise, and rooting for underdogs is universally popular. But no. The reaction is more like, "damn those Americans. They dominate everything and now they want to dominate football (sigh, soccer) too. I hope the Germans whup their asses" (Germans, mind you, are probably the least popular here as most anywhere).

And, true to form, they have been showing some clips with American soccer fans breastbeatingly proclaiming that "we're gonna take over soccer too, just you wait, no one can stop us when we get going" and stuff like that.

It goes down very badly.

Also, I noticed, much to my surprise, that South Korean police feared big anti-American student demonstrations at the World Cup. That's South Korea --- that country which the USA saved from communism during the Korean war. They don't strike one as particularly grateful. Why is that, I wonder?

There is, quite simply, a huge gulf between the self-image Americans have and the one that is perceived abroad. And the more Americans celebrate their self-image, the more negatively they're perceived abroad.

Personally, I think both perceptions need adjustments.

307. jayackroyd - 6/19/2002 6:05:23 PM

Personally, I'm rooting for a Senegal, SKorea final.

308. Rama - 6/19/2002 6:13:17 PM

He will carry more than 40 states in a landslide. Barring something really weird happening.

This is, of course, true. He has extremely high approval ratings, even among Democrats, the economy is runny the right way, he is fighting a war the people generally approve of, and he is already actively campaigning in the areas where he is weak (hence the Democratesque steel protection, farm subsidies and catering to hispanic voters). The people who dislike him can only point out that he is a Republican and they think he looks funny. And they don't like him or approve of anything he does. None of which are likely to add any voters to their side.

309. stostosto - 6/19/2002 6:17:12 PM

Rama, do you like Bush?

310. arkymalarky - 6/19/2002 6:18:00 PM

I get a lot of that from exchange students, and I've had them from literally all over the world. They seem to enjoy being here among Americans (they like us as individuals, it's just the culture as a whole....), but don't like our casual, nonchalant, as-though-it's-just-an-obvious-fact air of superiority without seeming to know a lot about what goes on in the world. They seem to find the ignorance of American students wrt world affairs astonishing (they haven't ever said what they think about their teacher in that area ;-)). They also don't like the fact that it never seems to occur to us as the remaining world power that our actions impact their countries in ways they can't do much about and if they deign to comment they're ungrateful "allies" or whiners.

The Spanish exchange student I had last year was particularly candid about that sort of thing. It always interests me since I teach American history and all exchange students are required to take it. Bob's German student was much less critical of US attitudes, but she found US culture somewhat disappointing. Of course landing in the heart of rural Arkansas, what can I say? But she didn't really like the mall/Wal-Mart/fast food routine of the American teenager.

Oh, and they don't like the assumption that you're a Christian or a heathen--take your pick. Whether it's that way elsewhere in the US, much of the South and Midwest is like that. They don't care whether or not you go to church as long as they don't know for a fact you're not a Christian. It's sort of a don't ask/don't tell policy.

311. arkymalarky - 6/19/2002 6:18:49 PM

That was to Sto's #306.

I'm getting too lazy...summer mode for me, I guess.

312. stostosto - 6/19/2002 6:23:47 PM

"..don't like our casual, nonchalant, as-though-it's-just-an-obvious-fact air of superiority without seeming to know a lot about what goes on in the world. They seem to find the ignorance of American students wrt world affairs astonishing "

Exactly. I think, it's really quite provocative to virtually all non-Americans the way Americans take their preeminence in all areas for granted, typically without any substantial knowledge of conditions in the rest of the world.

313. Rama - 6/19/2002 6:25:40 PM

This is a big surprise as US is not a great footballing (er, soccering) nation.

I think it would be more accurate to say that the US does not prioritize international soccer. Huge numbers of Americans play soccer. But soccer, and particularly international soccer, have very stiff competition from other sports.

After all, we're talking an underdog, football (soccer) wise, and rooting for underdogs is universally popular.

I don't think so. I don't think it is possible for Americans to be the underdogs in anything.

And, true to form, they have been showing some clips with American soccer fans breastbeatingly proclaiming that "we're gonna take over soccer too, just you wait, no one can stop us when we get going" and stuff like that.

Yes, honesty is a virtue.

It goes down very badly.

Sure, there are very few places in the world that deal with cross-cultural differences as well as it is done in America. In most places, the fact that Americans act like Americans is viewed as bad, because they don't act like the locals. Someday, when they catch up with the cosmopolitan and American virtues, they will get over that. Because in the long run, they will all eventually become Americans.

Also, I noticed, much to my surprise, that South Korean police feared big anti-American student demonstrations at the World Cup.

I'm surprised you are surprised. South Korean students don't like the establishment, and the establishment loves the U.S. Army (as long as it stays out of town). See Kipling: "Tommy"

314. arkymalarky - 6/19/2002 6:26:58 PM

Hahahaha!

And as if on cue.....

315. Rama - 6/19/2002 6:32:18 PM

Rama, do you like Bush?

I voted for him, if that is what you mean. I would probably vote for him again rather than any of the candidates who are likely to run against him.

I do like the way he has staffed the government.

316. stostosto - 6/19/2002 6:33:50 PM

Rama is on cue alright. I don't know if he's serious in his soccer remarks, but there is absolutely no reason to fear (or hope for) an American dominance in soccer. They are indeed, and will likely remain, underdogs in that game, but it's the nature of this particular game that underdogs have a relatively good chance of scoring surprising wins now and then.

317. arkymalarky - 6/19/2002 6:36:38 PM

Maybe because we worship the individual so much here, but it's a common American attitude that the individual perception is objective reality (see Exhibit A, above) and anyone who doesn't see the same is an idiot. Americans often try to objectify things that are clearly subjective. I find that tendency very irritating, yet I do it myself, especially irl.

I think it's why we argue so much. I've noted that a lot of people from other countries find us contentious with eachother, and some cultures really find that stressful to be around.

I never will forget when Bob and I were discussing something when we went to Europe a few years ago and a student from Singapore was with us, and she asked us to please stop yelling. We both looked at her puzzled. At home Bob and I in discussing something wouldn't be perceived as talking emphatically, much less yelling. I thought if she ever got to see us in a real argument she'd have a heart attack.

Excuse me if all that is belaboring the obvious.

318. stostosto - 6/19/2002 6:41:03 PM

Sure, there are very few places in the world that deal with cross-cultural differences as well as it is done in America.

Agreed.

In most places, the fact that Americans act like Americans is viewed as bad, because they don't act like the locals.

You mean insufferable ignorance and stupid loud bragging is "acting like Americans"? What do you mean, by the way, by the remark "they don't act like the locals"? Nobody acts "like the locals". But most don't stir animosity with "the locals" like Americans do.

Someday, when they catch up with the cosmopolitan and American virtues, they will get over that.

??? "cosmopolitan and American virtues" -- you say that as though they are separate. I think that is accurate, but was that your intention?

Because in the long run, they will all eventually become Americans.

In what sense?

319. stostosto - 6/19/2002 6:44:25 PM

Re #315

I find it interesting the way you load your endorsement with caveats.

320. stostosto - 6/19/2002 6:48:17 PM

Arky,

I think Americans are generally loud people, and that that can be quite annoying, but I also think they have become less loud than they used to be. I think, judging by Americans in Europe, that they are maturing. I like that.

321. arkymalarky - 6/19/2002 6:55:19 PM

I know I tend to have loud voice, and I hate it. It's something I try to work on. Bob is quiet, but he and I both try to be conscious of that sort of thing in international company. I try to be aware of it all the time (not very successfully, I'm afraid).

322. arkymalarky - 6/19/2002 6:55:42 PM

a

323. Rama - 6/19/2002 7:10:54 PM

I don't know if he's serious in his soccer
remarks, but there is absolutely no reason to fear (or hope for) an American dominance in soccer.

Really, all it would take is the belief that there is money to be made in soccer, and America would field teams with the healthiest, strongest, best trained and best maintained soccer teams in the world. There is no society in the world better suited to the production of sports teams.

324. stostosto - 6/19/2002 7:11:13 PM

Rama, South Korean establishment "loves" the U.S. Army? Well, they may. But read this:

South Koreans bristle at "Axis of evil" speech

325. stostosto - 6/19/2002 7:13:07 PM

Some time ago, I typed a Chinese perspective on America in the International thread. It was a quote from a Chinese textbook. Quite telling, I think.

Excerpts from Chinese textbook on the USA, courtesy of sto in the Int'l thread

326. stostosto - 6/19/2002 7:16:06 PM

There is no society in the world better suited to the production of sports teams.

Well, Cuba does quite well, I should say. If only there were money in boxing...

327. CalGal - 6/19/2002 7:17:11 PM

Everyone--even Americans--operate based on perceived needs. Europeans aren't well informed and multi-lingual because they long ago decided that this was the superior method of living, designed to win affection and adoration from the global community. They just aren't where the action is, and need the tools to be able to play in that game. Americans don't.


I really don't understand why this is so difficult to grasp--that until and unless there is an advantage to caring about the world more than we do, we won't. And the way to convince us that there's an advantage is to actually sell the case.

The lectures won't cut it, though. The notion that all other countries are bastions of self-awareness is just a total non-starter. It's not like the Danes and the Swedes are valued throughout the world as sweet, concerned, caring global citizens. It's that most countries outside Europe don't even bother to form an opinion about you because you aren't that important to them.

Given that reality, what relevance are all these reports of anti-Americanism? Where is the loved and adored global power to compare us to and demonstrate the glorious heights we could achieve?

328. stostosto - 6/19/2002 7:17:31 PM

all it would take is the belief that there is money to be made in soccer

Are you familiar with the earning stats of European top players?

329. Rama - 6/19/2002 7:21:38 PM

You mean insufferable ignorance and stupid loud bragging is "acting like Americans"?

Everybody is ignorant on more topics than they are knowledgeable. Loud bragging is an art form. Being afraid to speak because one isn't an expert is not the sign of a free people. Calling loud bragging stupid is a culturally conditioned evaluation that is demonstrably untrue.

What do you mean, by the way, by the remark "they don't act like the locals"?

The locals are the people who live in the local area (in this case, not America). What an American would call foreigners. Cosmopolitan people realize that people from other places have different social patterns, and don't find this offensive.

But most don't stir animosity with "the locals" like Americans do.

I happen to know this isn't true. There are very few places in the world where the worst nationality to be is American. Most countries have several nationalities that "stir animosity" much more than Americans do. It happens that Americans are probably on the list of nationalities that annoy people in more countries than any other (and surely on more lists than, for example, Nepal), but that has more to do with the role of America on the world scene than the nature of American culture.

330. sakonige - 6/19/2002 7:23:20 PM

I wonder if Americans can be terrorised into caring what the rest of the world thinks of them?

331. Rama - 6/19/2002 7:24:39 PM

"cosmopolitan and American virtues" -- you say that as though they are separate. I think that is accurate, but was that your intention?

They are and it was. There are advantages to both, and one or both will eventually prevail in all areas as the world gets smaller.

In what sense?

In the sense that the only viable alternative is becoming French.

332. stostosto - 6/19/2002 7:25:12 PM

Right, Cal, chalk it up to envy.

Your functionalistic explanation for American ignorance may well be valid, but that doesn't make it any less irritating to foreigners.

What relevance are all these reports of anti-Americanism?

Well, the title of this thread is "America Abroad" and the subtitle goes "Look at the US from the rest of the world's perspective. Is America venal and hypocritical or noble and virtuous? "

I was just providing some of that "rest of world" perspective for you to ponder. But, by all means, feel free to dismiss it.

I'd like to note that I do not share most of the anti-American sentiment I relate here. I just think it's interesting to discuss the reasons for this widespread attitude, and contrast it with the seemingly complete obliviousness to it on the part of Americans.

333. CalGal - 6/19/2002 7:26:31 PM

We have a very strong grassroots program and have for at least 15-20 years. But when kids finished AYSO, they had nowhere to play but college, and the college programs are abysmal, and there is very little interest as well. Now, we have kids who are world class--not a lot of them, yet, but it's only been a generation--and they are bypassing college and going straight to the pros. I believe that a fair amount of Americans are playing overseas now.

We should have used baseball as a model, rather than basketball and football. It's our emphasis on college education that steered us wrong.

334. Rama - 6/19/2002 7:26:39 PM

I find it interesting the way you load your endorsement with caveats.

Why?

335. Rama - 6/19/2002 7:28:06 PM

I think Americans are generally loud people, and that that can be quite annoying, but I also think they have become less loud than they used to be.

Yes, Americans tend to be loud, but seldom louder than Italians.

336. Rama - 6/19/2002 7:30:02 PM

Rama, South Korean establishment "loves" the U.S. Army? Well, they may. But read this:

Yes, they do. They would prefer to have the Army without the U.S. foreign policy that comes attached to it, but it doesn't come that way.

337. stostosto - 6/19/2002 7:33:31 PM

Why

Well, if the common position is that people are supporting Bush "for lack of a better candidate" his lead wouldn't seem quite as unassailable as you make it out to be.

338. Rama - 6/19/2002 7:33:59 PM

Are you familiar with the earning stats of European top players?

Those are employees. I am referring to money, not the chump change of a Micheal Jordan.

339. stostosto - 6/19/2002 7:39:16 PM

Rama #329

Everybody is ignorant on more topics than they are knowledgeable. Loud bragging is an art form. Being afraid to speak because one isn't an expert is not the sign of a free people. Calling loud bragging stupid is a culturally conditioned evaluation that is demonstrably untrue.

A valiant defense of stupid loud bragging.

The locals are the people who live in the local area (in this case, not America). What an American would call foreigners. Cosmopolitan people realize that people from other places have different social patterns, and don't find this offensive.

Really? What's your average cosmopolitan's attitude to stoning or bride burning?

I happen to know this isn't true. There are very few places in the world where the worst nationality to be is American. Most countries have several nationalities that "stir animosity" much more than Americans do. It happens that Americans are probably on the list of nationalities that annoy people in more countries than any other (and surely on more lists than, for example, Nepal), but that has more to do with the role of America on the world scene than the nature of American culture.

Point taken.

340. stostosto - 6/19/2002 7:43:48 PM

Cal #333

I am actually rather excited about the prospect of a breakthrough of football in the USA. But even if it breaks big, we won't see the US win each and every World Cup from now on. Such things just don't happen in that sport. Which is part of the attraction of the game.

341. CalGal - 6/19/2002 7:46:11 PM

Point taken.

Well, nice to see that you got it when he said it, since you completely missed it when I said the same thing.

It's kind of like Juno gloating that AOL has 400% more customer complaints.

342. CalGal - 6/19/2002 7:48:30 PM

I don't think Bush is by any means a given for re-election. Approval ratings don't translate to votes, and apart from vote whoring in Pennsylvania, he hasn't done anything significant to alter the independents. The trade tariff has been widely regarded as a bad move.

The real problem is whether or not the Dems can muzzle Nader, and I think they should do so with open threats to his constitutencies, rather than making nice.

343. stostosto - 6/19/2002 7:49:21 PM

Well, nice to see that you got it when he said it, since you completely missed it when I said the same thing.

Ah, Cal, don't be so bitter. You know I love you.

344. CalGal - 6/19/2002 7:59:57 PM

Right, Cal, chalk it up to envy.

I said nothing about envy. In fact, I think it's an arrogance that makes Americans look humble in comparison.

I just think it's interesting to discuss the reasons for this widespread attitude, and contrast it with the seemingly complete obliviousness to it on the part of Americans


But your reasons offered all begin with several flawed assumptions. First, that the attitudes are inherently valid. Second, that the existence of more people hating Americans is evidence that America is doing something wrong. Third, that America is actually different from other countries in terms of its priorities and decision making processes, rather than just the most powerful country in the world.

Also, why would you "contrast" the attitude with American obliviousness? In the first place, you are quite wrong. Americans were vaguely aware that other countries didn't like them before 9/11. They now understand that we are hated. Not just by the Mideast, but by Europe as well. So banish the notion that we are oblivious to the hatred.

345. CalGal - 6/19/2002 8:00:11 PM

cont'd.

I would instead contrast the attitudes with American reaction to the hatred. American and European relations are widely reported as being at an all time low, pegged from the moment that Americans "got" that much of Europe hated us (or says that they do until they need more money). The response wasn't concern, or a wondering what we did "wrong" (excluding the devoted left). The response could best be characterized as contempt--maybe utter disdain at best. Granted, there are whole pockets of the country that think it's arrant nonsense to hate the finest country in the world. But that's not the whole story. I think a large portion of the center is astonished and scornful that Europeans and Asians would have the gall to make the judgments that they do, given that they are not all that different, certainly no better, and in many ways a great deal worse. I have read and heard these sentiments echoed in the media as well as in conversations.

I wonder if it is just standard global positioning for pecking order? If the ancients, wise in the ways of the world, convince the global upstart that he's a baaaaaad boy, maybe they'll get more consideration than they would otherwise? I dunno. Certainly Americans are naive in comparison.

346. arkymalarky - 6/19/2002 8:15:42 PM

Americans tend to think that if other nations demur in their support of what Americans do that affect issues outside America that they're "hated." We have a fondness for hyperbole that way and it makes it easier to justify our own attitudes. And we don't generally take criticism well--though that's a human trait as opposed to an American one.

Americans also tend to ignore or forget the broad international support they do get and have gotten in much of their international activity, moreso than almost any other nation in the world.

347. stostosto - 6/19/2002 8:20:01 PM

Cal #344:

But your reasons offered all begin with several flawed assumptions. First, that the attitudes are inherently valid. Second, that the existence of more people hating Americans is evidence that America is doing something wrong. Third, that America is actually different from other countries in terms of its priorities and decision making processes, rather than just the most powerful country in the world.

????

Where do you get this from? You're obviously the one starting out with false assumptions.

And where do you get the idea that the USA is "hated" in Europe? We just don't like gung-ho flagwaving militarism/jingoism, and have learned the hard way to restrain ourselves in that respect. Americans are indeed oblivious to that. It's not just American jingoism which is seen as suspect, it's German or French or British as well. See this quite perceptive article by Anne Applebaum: Soccer, the last acceptable form of nationalism

348. stostosto - 6/19/2002 8:20:27 PM

Excerpt from above link:


In Britain, even what Americans would consider to be ordinary patriotism is often suspect. When Tony Blair first entered the prime minister's residence in Downing Street, in 1997, he staged a little parade of well-wishers, all of whom were waving the British flag, the Union Jack. The British chattering classes howled their disapproval of this unsightly show of nationalism—one friend told me that the Union Jack always made him think of right-wing extremists—just as they had earlier howled their disapproval of the Blair campaign's brief (and quickly withdrawn) use of the traditional British bulldog. This summer's Jubilee, the 50th anniversary celebration of the queen's reign, has been accompanied by some flag-waving—but some opposition, too. One Independent columnist wrote that her friends are "studiously ignoring the event," since national symbols such as the queen and the flag "bear uncomfortable overtones of racism and colonialism." Patriotism, she went on, is seen as "profoundly down-market, like doilies and bad diets."

349. stostosto - 6/19/2002 8:22:43 PM

Also, where do you get the idea that Europe asks for money from the USA? You have said so often, why?

350. stostosto - 6/19/2002 8:33:54 PM

If the ancients, wise in the ways of the world, convince the global upstart that he's a baaaaaad boy, maybe they'll get more consideration than they would otherwise? I dunno. Certainly Americans are naive in comparison.

I would like to convince America to employ its power according to international rules and/or international consensus within democratic nations. Like it did when it worked to establish the post-war order of inernational free trade, NATO, UN, IMF, World Bank, OECD, or even the freaking Nuremburg processes, etc.

Now, it seems every international principle that might hinder the unfettered unilateral use of America's power is inherently sissy and their only function is to be broken in order to demonstrate America's strength and resolve.

In short, when you ask: Where is the loved and adored global power to compare us to and demonstrate the glorious heights we could achieve?, the answer is post-WWII America. A benign hegemon focused on free trade and human rights.

351. stostosto - 6/19/2002 8:37:25 PM

So, actually I do subscribe to the view you say I begin by assuming above: America is actually different from other countries in terms of its priorities and decision making processes, rather than just the most powerful country in the world, only I would say it's not so much that it's different from other countries as it is different from what it used to be itself -- which was indeed quite unique.

352. Ms. No - 6/19/2002 8:46:47 PM

Sto,

I wouldn't call it envy, but I don't think one can successfully argue that there is not a certain amount of resentment because of the power the US wields.

The French are arguably the most fervent Nationalists on the planet and yet we don't hear the rest of Europe grousing about how the French are always talking about how great they are. Part of this is proximity----they're old neighbors, "one of us". The other part of it is that however much the French look down their noses at other nations, none of those nations believes in France's superiority nor are they required to acknowledge it on the world stage.

353. Ms. No - 6/19/2002 8:48:42 PM

well, fuckety, I was slow to post and notice that I've stated something that you just mentioned yourself.

354. stostosto - 6/19/2002 8:52:59 PM

The French are arguably the most fervent Nationalists on the planet and yet we don't hear the rest of Europe grousing about how the French are always talking about how great they are.

I don't know why you don't hear that. I hear it all the time.

however much the French look down their noses at other nations, none of those nations believes in France's superiority nor are they required to acknowledge it on the world stage

No, these French attitudes are borderline pathetic. However, there was a big uproar over French unilateralism when they exploded nuclear bombs in the Pacific in 1995.

355. Ms. No - 6/19/2002 8:54:39 PM

I would like to convince America to employ its power according to international rules and/or international consensus within democratic nations. Like it did when it worked to establish the post-war order of inernational free trade, NATO, UN, IMF, World Bank, OECD, or even the freaking Nuremburg processes, etc.

Devil's Advocate Question:

Why should we?

356. Ms. No - 6/19/2002 8:56:24 PM

I don't know why you don't hear that. I hear it all the time.

For the same reason that you don't hear about New Yorkers grousing all the time over not being able to smoke in LA.....Because I live 6,000 miles away. ;-)

357. Ms. No - 6/19/2002 9:02:30 PM

No, these French attitudes are borderline pathetic.

Because they are delusions of grandeur. If France had the kind of power that the US has how much worse do you think they'd handle it or be regarded than the US?

358. Ms. No - 6/19/2002 9:07:01 PM

I'd better quit picking on France or Alistair's liable to come kick my ass. ;-) Time for the evening commute any way.

Have a good night!

359. stostosto - 6/19/2002 9:11:50 PM

Why should we?

Because it's the best long term way to promote and maintain international stability, peace and prosperity.

If France had the kind of power that the US has how much worse do you think they'd handle it or be regarded than the US?

Ineresting question. I don't think the answer is a given. Historically of course, France's record is hardly impressive (Vietnam, Algeria). But I have already stated that I think America has abandoned its own previous principled agenda, which demonstrated that there are indeed other possible ways to exert hegemonic power than raw unfettered unilateralism.

360. arkymalarky - 6/19/2002 9:40:20 PM

Because it's the best long term way to promote and maintain international stability, peace and prosperity.

Yes.

Actually, we have more reason to consider the international mood and attitudes toward us than anyone. We're the only country for whom world opinion has any relevance to what our own international goals are because we're the only country who can wield that kind of influence, and we're not immune to the impact of world events by any stretch. We don't have the luxury of political isolationism, even now. Especially now.

And if an Arky hears that stuff about France all the time, I can't imagine other Americans don't.

And no, I'm not just talking about here in the Mote.

361. arkymalarky - 6/19/2002 9:41:09 PM

Maybe it's because Americans are always telling foreigners, "If you think we're snotty, well what about the French?" ;-)

362. Wombat - 6/19/2002 9:56:55 PM

Ask Napoleon how he handled hegemony.

363. ronski - 6/19/2002 10:26:35 PM

sto,

I agree, in that I believe the U.S. long ago abandoned a policy of staying out of other peoples' business and serving as a beacon of freedom.

But I do not agree -- if that is your implication, and I have no idea if it is -- that the U.S. is acting in an hegemonic fashion because it does not sign on to the silly Kyoto treaty or because it wants to renegotiate nuclear treaties with Russia.

364. ronski - 6/19/2002 10:27:50 PM

sto,

Btw, is your son doing okay? I recall you had some concerns, which some of us tried to allay. I hope all is well.

365. godlessclif - 6/20/2002 8:00:49 AM

Napoleon had his continental economic system and for a long time Ameircan had it's hemispheric political system. Now the Bush Regime is trying to make it a global political-economic-religious system that forces everyone on earth to live like the Residents of Waco, Texas.

Maybe we could call it "The Waco Hegemony"

366. Rama - 6/20/2002 9:25:28 AM

Well, if the common position is that people are supporting Bush "for lack of a better candidate" his lead wouldn't seem quite as unassailable as you make it out to be.

Oh, it is certainly not unassailable. But the lack of a better candidate is fairly definitive. What passes for the left in the US has completely collapsed, and in the struggle for the middle there is nobody on the scene to challenge Bush.

You would have to have something very odd happen, like having Senator McCain switch parties.

367. stostosto - 6/20/2002 9:42:04 AM

Ask Napoleon how he handled hegemony.

Do you have his email?

368. pseudoerasmus - 6/20/2002 9:53:41 AM

You mustn't pay too much attention to SchmuckMuckMuck. The European idea of multilateralism is that Yankistan would consult Europe on important international matters. As long as Europe is consulted by Yankistan, and even if the rest of the world continues to get neglected, you would no longer hear the bitter puling from the likes of SchmuckMuckMuck.

369. Daniel Sickles - 6/20/2002 10:00:28 AM

Consultation occurs - with Britain.

370. pseudoerasmus - 6/20/2002 10:05:48 AM

(I don't even know why SchmuckMuckMuck bothers. Doesn't he realise by now that any foreign criticism of Yankistan always results in nationalist defensiveness and repeated strenuous protests that they don't care?)

371. marjoribanks - 6/20/2002 10:15:41 AM

Good man Sto's arguments, however, are completely reasonable and valid, particularly the comparison between the US today and the country immediately after WWII.

372. Raskolnikov - 6/20/2002 10:29:38 AM

"Good man Sto's arguments, however, are completely reasonable and valid, particularly the comparison between the US today and the country immediately after WWII."

What specifically are you referring to here? Is this just a kvetching about some of Bush's recent unilateral actions (which have been heavily criticized domestically as well), or a broader comment about a time period longer than the past 18 months?

373. marjoribanks - 6/20/2002 10:40:02 AM

Rask,

You're asking for a very coherent, massively-footnoted, argument. And I simply don't have it and can't generate it right now.

However, it does seem to me that the US has become a more unilaterally-acting nation in the last 20-25 years, less engaged with the world and more interventionist. It has stopped generating compelling global visions and instead acts and pursues naked self-interest in most instances.

Plus, there is this whole military development which has taken place in an increasingly safe world for Americans. I heard someone reliable say yesterday that the US spent more on armaments last year than the next fifteen countries combined. This is an awful lot, completely divorced from any global reality, and has a logic and application all of its own.

Further, the populace at home is deprived of anything but the most rankly simplistic and (in my view) useless idea of what is happening in the world, and America's role abroad.

All of which is a move towards dangerous ground, in my view, especially since Sept 11, which events in my opinion are being cynically used now to manipulate the populace into a kind of cowed, uninformed, defensiveness.

374. Raskolnikov - 6/20/2002 10:41:17 AM

I ask because of two things:

1) While Bush's unilateralism has pissed people off, this doesn't seem a sufficient explanation for anti-American sentiment in Europe. Clinton hadn't done squat on global warming either, and I can't imagine that Europeans really give a shit about the ABM treaty. Additionally, European commitment to free trade is very weak, to say the least, so complaints about Bush's tariffs sound hypocritical (not from Sto, however). Also, anti-American sentiment has much deeper roots that the past 18 months.

2) While Bush's actions are more unilateral, I don't see that grave of a departure between US foreign policy in the immediate post-war era, and the foreign policy that followed it. There has been an evolutionary change in how the US views the effectiveness of foreign aid (Marshall Plan good, Alliance for Progress, failure), but even in the late 40s and 50s we were supporting third world thugs, interfering in the internal affairs of other countries and generally throwing our weight around.
If anything, I would argue that US foreign policy in the last 12 years has been *more* moral in its actions, as we haven't had as much interest in expediency due to the end of the cold war.

375. marjoribanks - 6/20/2002 10:41:39 AM

I've previously said and admitted that there is no real difference between the Dems and the Repubs in terms of foreign policy towards my region of interest, the slight difference coming because of circumstance and because of one solitary ideologue currently ensconsed in the WH staff.

376. CalGal - 6/20/2002 10:46:26 AM

Doesn't he realise by now that any foreign criticism of Yankistan always results in nationalist defensiveness and repeated strenuous protests that they don't care?

That's not true. For example, he could bring up the tariffs and the hypocrisy of the US in blathering on about free trade while imposing trade restrictions in the name of vote whoring. There would be a fairly strong chorus of agreement across the political spectrum. Oddly enough, I don't remember Sto even mentioning it.

377. Daniel Sickles - 6/20/2002 10:46:42 AM

Unilateralism stems from two things: disparate power and a greater sense of separate interests. Who disputes that the gulf between the US and Europe -politically, culturally, and strategically - is now wider than it was between WWII and the Cold War? Moreover, Europe is certainly less of factor in terms of power and will remain so unless it can become internationally cohesive.

As such, while the standard decrying of multilateralism is, well, standard, I've yet to read a compelling argument that United States foreign policy should be modified to align with the various tribes of Europe, where France refuse to allow overflights for some operations and Britain steadfastly supports the United States in that same action.

Consultation is proper and smart. But multilateralism is letting Europe in on the ultimate decision.

Why?

378. Daniel Sickles - 6/20/2002 10:48:36 AM

As for not caring, certainly, the American foreign policy establishment cares about Europe's role. The American public does not care (not about consultation, not about tariffs), but near 50% of the voting populace doesn't care to vote for president, so I'm not sure what such indifference demonstrates.

379. Raskolnikov - 6/20/2002 10:50:41 AM

"However, it does seem to me that the US has become a more unilaterally-acting nation in the last 20-25 years, less engaged with the world and more interventionist. It has stopped generating compelling global visions and instead acts and pursues naked self-interest in most instances."

Again, I don't see much of a change. The Gulf War was more multilateral than even Korea, and the Somalia, Balkan, and Afghanistan interventions were far more mulilateral than Vietnam.

"Plus, there is this whole military development which has taken place in an increasingly safe world for Americans. I heard someone reliable say yesterday that the US spent more on armaments last year than the next fifteen countries combined. This is an awful lot, completely divorced from any global reality, and has a logic and application all of its own."

This is an irrelevant issue to the subject at hand. US military spending may be excessive (although I would argue that it is more grossly misallocated than excessive), but it isn't as if we are using our military to intimidate Europeans.

"Further, the populace at home is deprived of anything but the most rankly simplistic and (in my view) useless idea of what is happening in the world, and America's role abroad."

Sure, but when have Americans *ever* been well informed about the world? I don't see much of a change here either.

380. marjoribanks - 6/20/2002 10:53:00 AM

I'd say that Americans in 1955 were more aware of global issues than the same populace in 2000.

But in any case, why are we continually talking about multilateralism as represented by a Euro/Yank understanding. What about India and China and Indonesia and Brazil? What about Japan?

381. Daniel Sickles - 6/20/2002 10:53:19 AM

Rask is correct regarding Vietnam and the Gulf War. I think you can make the argument that we've become more unilateral with regard to Europe, but that is natural, as Europe's influence and power has decreased and our common foes (the Nazis, the Communists) have been defeated or have retrenched.

382. Raskolnikov - 6/20/2002 10:53:42 AM

"That's not true. For example, he could bring up the tariffs and the hypocrisy of the US in blathering on about free trade while imposing trade restrictions in the name of vote whoring. There would be a fairly strong chorus of agreement across the political spectrum. Oddly enough, I don't remember Sto even mentioning it."

This is part of the point I was trying to make. If Marj and Sto are just decrying Bush's intensely hypocritical trade policy, I would be giving them an "amen" instead of an argument.

383. Daniel Sickles - 6/20/2002 10:54:53 AM

What about India and China and Indonesia and Brazil? What about Japan?

Perhaps you could offer a sample unilateral action or policy that, in your view, would have been better effectuated by the greater involvement of one or all of these nations?

384. Wombat - 6/20/2002 10:55:08 AM

Europe has benefitted--and still does--from the US military umbrella. The comments of European military officials on what it would take to bring an integrated--let alone indivdual country's--armed forces up to US standards after Kosovo were instructive.

385. CalGal - 6/20/2002 10:56:43 AM

Rask--yes, we crossposted or I would have acknowledged your comment.

386. marjoribanks - 6/20/2002 10:57:22 AM

Kyoto, a necessary protocol, would be better addressed if the US took the lead in setting an example for the rapidly developing nations of India and China. By divorcing itself from global reality, the US has done a disservice to all of us, the Indians and the Chinese as well.

387. Raskolnikov - 6/20/2002 10:58:13 AM

"I'd say that Americans in 1955 were more aware of global issues than the same populace in 2000."

Only insofar as knowledge lingered from WWII. I think it is Pseudo who occasionally jokes that American interventions are motivated by a desire to teach geography. Similarly, Americans are now pretty familiar with many of the issues in central and south asia because of recent events. The awareness invariably comes *after* the crisis, not before. I am not defending this. My point instead is that a change in American policy doesn't strike me as a plausible explanation for anti-American sentiments, as if anything that policy has become more moral.

388. CalGal - 6/20/2002 10:58:22 AM

The comments of European military officials on what it would take to bring an integrated--let alone indivdual country's--armed forces up to US standards after Kosovo were instructive.


Yes. And Europe hasn't even begun to act on their weaknesses, being quite happy to benefit from our military spending.

389. Daniel Sickles - 6/20/2002 10:58:50 AM

Bush suffers in Europe and elsewhere because he's an easy mark as the prototypical American "cowboy", a man who has strung up hundreds along post roads throughout Texas (I can't count the discussion I've had with Brits and Germans who are agog at the death penalty in general and Bush's support for same in specific - it is a huge influence).

Add that he is less than glib, wears his disdain of cosmopolitanism on his sleeve, and sits at a time when American unilateralism is necessarily strident, and you can get a sense of the dislike.

390. marjoribanks - 6/20/2002 10:59:12 AM

The United Nations would be a stronger, much more useful organization, if the US took heed that it is part of a global community and should sometimes submit its own national urges to mediation within that body.

391. CalGal - 6/20/2002 11:00:49 AM

I agree with Rask about American knowledge of world events. We bone up on it when we feel it is necessary, which is always after we've been affected by it, not before.

392. Raskolnikov - 6/20/2002 11:02:31 AM

"Kyoto, a necessary protocol, would be better addressed if the US took the lead in setting an example for the rapidly developing nations of India and China. By divorcing itself from global reality, the US has done a disservice to all of us, the Indians and the Chinese as well."

I agree, but the topic isn't whether the US *should* be changing certain policies. Rather it is whether recent policy changes explain anti-American sentiment, which you seem to be saying. I think the evidence is to the contrary.

393. Raskolnikov - 6/20/2002 11:05:07 AM

"The United Nations would be a stronger, much more useful organization, if the US took heed that it is part of a global community and should sometimes submit its own national urges to mediation within that body."

I disagree. I think it is because the UN is *not* a strong, useful organization that explains why the US has generally abandoned it except when convenient.

394. Raskolnikov - 6/20/2002 11:07:52 AM

I will point out that the "Ugly American" stereotype was a result of the immediate post-war era, not a recent invention.

395. Raskolnikov - 6/20/2002 11:11:25 AM

The reason I am addressing this is that Marj seems to implying that if the US takes a European stance on Kyoto (making vague statements of approval while not actually doing anything), and engages in more consultation with other nations, that anti-Americanism will diminish. I don't think this is true, and I think Marj is opportunistically using current events as an excuse to push to his pet issues (Bush does this a lot, as well).

396. marjoribanks - 6/20/2002 11:20:56 AM

Dude,

What are my pet issues? I didn't even know I had them.

In this instance, on borrowed time, all I'm doing is replying and commenting off-the-cuff to legitimate and serious questions.

397. Raskolnikov - 6/20/2002 11:29:05 AM

"What are my pet issues? I didn't even know I had them."

I could have sworn I have seen you criticizing America's lack of respect for the UN, and Bush's unilateralism over Kyoto, on several other occasions. I don't have time to dig up examples, so if you deny that these are pet issues of yours, I won't dispute it.

398. marjoribanks - 6/20/2002 11:33:38 AM

I do deny that the UN and Kyoto have ever been issues with me wrt US involvement. In fact, I have over years justified the US manipulative and cynical use of world bodies mostly on grounds of the latter's ineffectuality.

But Rask, I will have a coherent and detailed argument for you. Just not now, nor for the next few days.

399. Daniel Sickles - 6/20/2002 11:39:37 AM

marj

So, by bringing up Kyoto, you speak of agreement, not multilateralism.

We were very multilateral in not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. We stand with many nations, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, China, Peru, Brazil, Chile, the Russian Federation . . . and Lichteinstein -only 74 out of 111 nations have ratified the protocol.

The United States is not exactly going it alone.

400. Ms. No - 6/20/2002 11:59:38 AM

Sto,

Because it's the best long term way to promote and maintain international stability, peace and prosperity.

Personally I agree with you, but the goals of long term peace and prosperity for all nations aren't a given, particularly when we're talking about a Nation's priorities rather than individual ethics systems. How many nations act against their own personal best interests in order to promote harmony and prosperity for others?

401. stostosto - 6/20/2002 12:13:04 PM

For the record, I have several times critisised Bush's trade policy which is much more demonstrably idiotic than actually hypocritical inasmuch as Bush's steel tariffs was making good on an campaign promise. The fact that Europe also often acts idiotically in this area, as Rask says, doesn't make it one iota better. On the contrary, I would say.

As for Kyoto, I happen to be very much in doubt as to that treaty's value (since there seems to be no scientific agreement over the issue). In any case, its particular set-up is almost certainly technically flawed. The way to address this, however, is to argue the issue, not just lazily saying "pfft" just because this happens to be what Bush doese best.

Other unilateral examples (from the top of my head) are treaties on test bans, land mines, chemical and biological weapons, declarations and programmes for population control, women's rights (both issues where the USA sides with an assortment of reactionary mullahs), resolutions over Israel, the excessively tight sanctions regime against Iraq, the NMD, the ABM, the flouting of international law regarding the al Qaeda prisoners, the opposition to an international court of war crimes, etc. etc. etc.

As for Rask's and marj's debate on when unilateralism started, I think it's actually an on and off kind of thing which ebbs and flows according to the shifting policies in Washington.

Vietnam (Nixon): Unilateral.
Carter: Multilateral. Human rights centered agenda.
Reagan: Unilateral.
Bush Sr.: Multilateral, "new world order" focus.
Clinton: First bungling, then largely multilateral, human rights oriented intervention (Bosnia, Kosovo). And damn good international salesmanship.
Bush Jr.: Brainless smirky "up-yours" foreign policy, also known as the "pfft" doctrine. ("If the French don't like it, we must be doing something right, yak yak!")

402. stostosto - 6/20/2002 12:13:27 PM

Personally, I can't get worked up over the death penalty, by the way. It's a trivial detail.

403. Daniel Sickles - 6/20/2002 12:19:36 PM

sto

treaties on test bans, land mines, chemical and biological weapons, declarations and programmes for population control, women's rights (both issues where the USA sides with an assortment of reactionary mullahs), resolutions over Israel, the excessively tight sanctions regime against Iraq, the NMD, the ABM, the flouting of international law regarding the al Qaeda prisoners, the opposition to an international court of war crimes, etc. etc. etc.

In your list (which is in part quite questionable and in part, hyperbolic), the United States does not stand alone with regard to any of the referenced matters. It does stand in the minority on many.

Thus, are you suggesting by use of your compendium that the United States should go with the majority view (true multilateralism) in international affairs (something to which marj alluded with his statement on the United Nations)?

If so, what is there to say? Some people believe that Rwanda and Lesotho and Ireland should have an equal voice in international affairs, a decidedly un-American concept of representative democracy, which apportions representatives based on population, not existence.

404. pseudoerasmus - 6/20/2002 12:23:28 PM

Message # 401

Other unilateral examples (from the top of my head) are treaties on....land mines....

An example which proves my point from Message # 368.

NATO used land mines as part of their defence against the Warsaw Pact. At that time, few countries complained about landmines. Now that there is no military threat from the east, Europeans have become enthusiastic proponents of the international convention on land mines.

NEVER MIND that South Korea's first line of defence from North Korea is STILL land mines. NEVER MIND that India and Pakistan rely heavily on land mines for their mutual border defence. NEVER MIND that the fragile peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan would not be possible without a no man's land with land mines. NEVER MIND that maybe some people other than Europeans want land mines for legitimate miltiary reasons.

This is prime evidence that when Europeans talk about multilaterialism, they mean they, not the rest of the world, want to be consulted by the USA. Multilaterialism is a code word for European involvement, not for any plea that the USA consult other countries and seek a truly international consensus.

Vietnam (Nixon): Unilateral.

Why would Europe want to be consulted on Vietnam? The USA might have consulted its Asian allies, but why the European allies?

405. pseudoerasmus - 6/20/2002 12:24:56 PM

"If so, what is there to say? Some people believe that Rwanda and Lesotho and Ireland should have an equal voice in international affairs, a decidedly un-American concept of representative democracy, which apportions representatives based on population, not existence."

I think you forgot the Senate, which very much apportions representatives "based on existence".

406. pseudoerasmus - 6/20/2002 12:31:36 PM

For some reason in my penultimate post I kept on writing "multilaterialism", instead of the proper "multilateralism".

Multilaterialism is, of course, the ancient Greek philosophy which argued that all matter is composed of many sides.

407. Daniel Sickles - 6/20/2002 12:32:06 PM

pseudo

I didn't forget it. Consider the Senate the American democratic equivalent of the U.N. or mulilateral consultation.

408. Daniel Sickles - 6/20/2002 12:33:47 PM

More importantly, even the most Lesotho-like American states (California, Idaho) are trustworthy members of the conglomerate.

409. pseudoerasmus - 6/20/2002 12:34:25 PM

A muli-lateral consultation must be either (1) political negotiations conducted while riding mules; or (2) euphenmism for bestial acts involving mules.

410. Daniel Sickles - 6/20/2002 12:47:19 PM

What is a euphenmism?

411. stostosto - 6/20/2002 12:58:04 PM

Pederastmus,

I certainly plead guilty to Eurocentrism on this issue. But I'd like to note that a possible coincidence of self-interest and common interest means you shouldn't prevent the promotion of both. In fact, if the self-interested don't advocate their cause, then where is the cause?

My argument is, I think, that establishing and upholding a reliable institutionally anchored international order is the best basis for conducting global affairs, and hedging against rogue states and terrorist threats. I have previously likened the European idea of a good intervention with the idea of good policework.

But policework is best done in circumstances where most of society view it as legitimate. Cases in point: Gulf war and Kosovo. Afghanistan too. (What Cal seems to miss in her weird idea that Euros "hate" USA is that this action had sky high approval in all European countries, and indeed they were miffed that they weren't allowed in on the action -- probably for goog military reasons, but again, "pfft" isn't always perceived as a polite way of saying "no thanks").

And legitimacy tend to be diminished when the policeman is obsessed with chest-thumping and celebration of his muscle and engages seems to openly disregard any law or institution that might constrain his actions.

412. stostosto - 6/20/2002 1:01:04 PM

A bit bungling, sorry:

I meant to say:

"I'd like to note that a possible coincidence of self-interest and common interest doesn't mean you should prevent the promotion of either, or both".

413. stostosto - 6/20/2002 1:01:43 PM

arf... or something.

414. stostosto - 6/20/2002 1:11:01 PM

Why would Europe want to be consulted on Vietnam? The USA might have consulted its Asian allies, but why the European allies?

Well, you're the one explaining the Euro penchant for multilateralism exclusively by a European interest in being consulted.

Given the opposition to that war in Europe as well as in many other countries, not least including America itself, it seems many constituencies felt an unheeded need for making their voice heard on that issue.

415. stostosto - 6/20/2002 1:14:31 PM

pederastafarimus #404:

I know absolutely nothing about land mines. But if the Americans oppose a treaty banning them, there must be something right about the idea, yak yak.

416. pseudoerasmus - 6/20/2002 1:15:36 PM

I think Schmuck exaggerates today's American unilateralism for pathetically tendentious reasons. I repeat: what he means in reality is NOT that the USA is being unilateralist, but the USA is ignoring Europe on many issues it doesn't want to be ignored on. Tant pis.

Take Iraq. The USA is not being "unilateral". It is actively consulting Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. But it is ignoring Europe. But that's only natural since Europe is irrelevant to Iraq.

The same with the land mine convention and even Kyoto. The USA opposes the land mine convention out of regard for its ally, South Korea. Many developing countries baulked at Kyoto -- so by definition the USA was not being unilateral. It was only disagreeing with Western Europe.

It is risible that Schmuck (and his sidekick Marzipranks) should hold out the post-war international order as an ideal for multilateralism. The IMF and the World Bank are, and were, controlled by the US Treasury department. GATT represent(s)(ed) the interests of the USA and Western Europe, and it is therefore not an example of multilateralism in any way.

417. pseudoerasmus - 6/20/2002 1:24:21 PM

Message # 415

"I know absolutely nothing about land mines. But if the Americans oppose a treaty banning them, there must be something right about the idea, yak yak."

Your idiotic response would be more appropriate to Calwhore, who is an American and whose argument is often reducible to "there must be something right about the idea" if America is doing it. Why you suppose I would take the "America is always right" attitude, I have no idea.

My point is simple: it is that you, as an insular provincial European, equates multilateralism with "USA consults Europe" and the "rest of the world" with Western Europe. I am trying to inject a perspective of that portion of the rest of the world that is not Western Europe.

But your response to this criticism is rather like the various Americans' responses to you: casually dismissive and unserious. There's a lot of over-defensive yak yak coming out of your herring-hole.

418. stostosto - 6/20/2002 1:24:59 PM

I already conceded Eurocentrism. But that doesn't in and of itself make the argument wrong. IMF, World Bank and GATT are of course multilateral institutions; the fact that USA in practice has a controlling stake in the Bretton Woods sisters might mean they aren't multilateral enough, but I view them as examples of constructive attempts to create an institutional framework for the conduct of international affairs. How about Japan and the East Asian tigers, by the way? Haven't they benefitted from the GATT?

Then there is the UN, of course, which you failed to mention as a vehicle for European influence. It is, of course, but it's also multilateral.

419. stostosto - 6/20/2002 1:27:54 PM

#417

My idiotic response was precisely a parody of the standard idiotic American response to criticism which I mentioned in my #401.

420. stostosto - 6/20/2002 1:29:12 PM

And you're just cross because I don't explicitly advocate consulting with Pashtuns.

421. pseudoerasmus - 6/20/2002 1:30:12 PM

The IMF and the World Bank -- regardless of the merit of their programmes --are not examlpes of multilateralism. They are, rather, examples of unilateralism disguised as multilateralism. Europeans have very little say in the running of the IMF or the World Bank. If Schmuck thinks otherwise, then why do IMF and the World Bank policies so closely reflect the agenda and biases of the US Treasury department, not the finance & economics ministries of continental Europe?

The UN is indeed a multilateral institution.

422. PelleNilsson - 6/20/2002 1:34:55 PM

PE:

(I don't even know why SchmuckMuckMuck bothers. Doesn't he realise by now that any foreign criticism of Yankistan always results in nationalist defensiveness and repeated strenuous protests that they don't care?)

So very true. That's why I seldom post here. I get so tired by the simplistic, predictable responses.

423. CalGal - 6/20/2002 1:42:15 PM

Your idiotic response would be more appropriate to Calwhore, who is an American and whose argument is often reducible to "there must be something right about the idea" if America is doing it.

Nonsense. My argument is often reducible to: "If you don't like the attitude of a global power, too fucking bad."

424. pseudoerasmus - 6/20/2002 1:47:27 PM

Whatever. Who other than Sickles reads your remarks anyway.

425. Daniel Sickles - 6/20/2002 1:54:18 PM

No one here (save for me) has the qualifications to either pat their own back or deem the writings of other posters inadequate. The mines of a sto, like those of a marj, a pelle or a johnny psuedo, rarely produce gems (in fact, pelle's sole written contributions can be reduced to annoyance or bloated laments).

Good Christian charity keeps us reading.

426. CalGal - 6/20/2002 1:58:55 PM

Who other than Sickles reads your remarks anyway.

You, apparently, because you attempted to interpret them.

427. Indiana Jones - 6/20/2002 2:00:24 PM

I come here for the big-breasted tee-shirt wearing waitresses in orange short-shorts. Who cares what the food tastes like?

No, wait, that's why I eat at Hooters.

428. pseudoerasmus - 6/20/2002 2:01:41 PM

There is too much egalitarianism. Clearly some people mostly produce turds in prose.

429. Daniel Sickles - 6/20/2002 2:02:47 PM

Pseudo's like an evangelist, publicly decrying pornography but privately, wacking his weiner with one hand while plunging quarters in the peep show with the other.

If he were a better writer, I could overlook his hypocrisy.

As it is, in Christian tradition, I can only forgive it.

430. pseudoerasmus - 6/20/2002 2:05:22 PM

Hypocrisy about what ?

431. Daniel Sickles - 6/20/2002 2:07:31 PM

This is what passes for non-turd -

So very true. That's why I seldom post here. I get so tired by the simplistic, predictable responses.

Translation - Woe is me. Must I suffer these fools? I don't know how I do it, being so unpredictable and complex

That's about 90% of Pelle's contribution. Even marj's Okay, I said something I can't support, so you disprove it is less pathetic.

432. Daniel Sickles - 6/20/2002 2:08:12 PM

psuedo

Why, Calgal, and other posters who you don't read except when you read them with great interest.

433. pseudoerasmus - 6/20/2002 2:20:37 PM

Message # 432

In threads relating to international issues (the only ones I frequent most of the time), I read remarks by Raskolnikov, Stostosto and Wombat regularly. With Marjoribanks, I usually read the first line and decide whether I want to continue. I read Godlesscliff and Concerned because I'm trying to drive them away from the Mote. Calgal, I very seldom read unless (1) her remarks are quoted by someone else; and (2) she addresses me directly. As for Daniel Sickles, I have no policy but in this particular discussion started by Sto, I didn't read any of your remarks before 403. I already know your views.

434. pseudoerasmus - 6/20/2002 2:21:19 PM

I also read Pelle, when he posts more than two sentences.

435. zojak quafeth - 6/20/2002 2:22:11 PM

Here we are. "America Abroad" in a microcosm. Sickles, Cal, and sto as the US v.s. Marj, PE and Pelle.

Read the last 50 or so posts and you'll know why some damn foreigners dislike Americans and vice versa.

First. The Americans just talk some really pompous, self-important crap.

Second. The non-Americans just talk some really pompous, self-important crap.

Third. The Americans look after their own interests first, which is why, in some cases, they do not consult with and get the approval of non-Americans.

Fourth. The non-Americans look after their own interests first, which is why, in all cases, they want the US to consult with and get their approval.

Fifth. The Americans have the political, economic, and military power to do whatever they want and they know it.

Sixth. The Americans have the political, economic, and military power to do whatever they want and the non-Americans know it.

I could go on....

436. PelleNilsson - 6/20/2002 2:27:06 PM

Maybe Europe (and we Europeans) should stop acting as scorned lovers and stake out our own path. There are some signs this is happening. The EU has started negotiations with Iran on a trade pact. I posted a link in International about it.

437. Daniel Sickles - 6/20/2002 2:29:32 PM

I read pseudo when he's talking chicks and Harleys.

438. joezan - 6/20/2002 2:29:50 PM

Good riddance...

..and don't forget to take your stinky cheese with you.

439. joezan - 6/20/2002 2:30:47 PM

..I'm sure the Iranians will love it.

440. zojak quafeth - 6/20/2002 2:31:06 PM

WAIT!!!!

NOT THE CHEESE!

441. Indiana Jones - 6/20/2002 2:33:07 PM

I propose we offer godless and concerned as a burnt offering to whichever deity can force the return of Ace.

442. pseudoerasmus - 6/20/2002 2:35:19 PM

Has anyone noticed that all the up-market manifestations of the American right-wing in the Mote (PincherMartin, ScottLoar and Butterfieldswire) have not been seen and only the down-market kind has remained?

443. zojak quafeth - 6/20/2002 2:38:33 PM

They prolly can'tafford internet access anymore. I'm sure they still believe though.

Oh, and we'll keep some of the wines too.

444. PelleNilsson - 6/20/2002 2:49:00 PM

It's the Danes who have the really stinky cheeses. You wouldn't believe it.

445. zojak quafeth - 6/20/2002 3:52:18 PM

Is it perhaps due to poor hygeine Pelle?

446. PelleNilsson - 6/20/2002 4:34:06 PM

Can't imagine that as a cause. The Danes are known to bathe every Christmas. Excessive in my view (a sound body keeps itself clean), but there you are.

447. concerned - 6/20/2002 5:19:09 PM

Re. 441 -

Sorry; I'm busy, IJ. Be a good boy and fill in for me, would you?

448. stostosto - 6/20/2002 5:50:18 PM

zojak #435:

That's very funny!

Are you Iranian? Denmark used to have a sizeable export of feta cheese to Iran which stirred some foreign policy controversy after the fatwa against Rushdie. Danish dairies didn't think such an unimportant thing ought to affect its production of feta cheese. The export topped in 1984 with a full 90,000 tonnes. It stopped completely in 1997. Now the total Danish production of this product stands at 25,000 tonnes, mostly sold within the EU.

The EU Commisssion, btw, has just recently allowed the Danish producers to continue to market the cheese under the name "feta". The Greeks had complained that the product was a Greek specialty (like you can't call a cheese "Camembert" that isn't produced in Camembert). Such pivotal matters occupy many hardworking conscientious EU officials.

(My source for this is the EU Commission's web site. I have to confesse I couldn't remember whether it was 90,000 tonnes or only 80,000 tonnes of feta we exported to Iran).

449. stostosto - 6/20/2002 5:54:34 PM

#442:

Has anyone noticed that all the up-market manifestations of the American right-wing in the Mote (PincherMartin, ScottLoar and Butterfieldswire) have not been seen and only the down-market kind has remained?

Yes, I have noticed. Maybe you succeeded in driving them away? You forgot Ace of Spades, btw, whom I perhaps wouldn't call "upmarket" (neither would he himself I am sure), but he was one of the most incredibly funny posters.

450. CalGal - 6/20/2002 6:03:59 PM

Pincher is travelling, I thought. Not sure what happened to Butter or Scott. I don't think PE considers Ace (or Daniel, for that matter) "up-market" manifestations of the "American right wing".

451. pseudoerasmus - 6/20/2002 6:05:06 PM

Why would I have driven away Pincher or Butter away? I've never been hostile toward those two, they're hardly the timid herrings who can be "driven away", and besides, I was totally absent from the Mote between early March and early June.

452. pseudoerasmus - 6/20/2002 6:06:25 PM

No, I don't consider Ace upmarket but then that's his charm, he's Downmarket and He's Proud of It.

so what happened to Ace anyway?

453. iiibbb - 6/20/2002 6:09:29 PM

Message # 435

That's how I see it. This is just a more eloquent and explicit version of a point I made somewhere in this thread.

As far as Kyoto goes... it isn't going to accomplish what they claim... however whoever made the point that instead of going pfft we should engage and debate the matter is absolutely correct. I think Kyoto falls short. The real problem in this country is our energy and resource gluttony... once we get that under control, many environmental issues will fall in line...

anyway, it is my humble opinion that global warming isn't nearly as serious an issue as acid rain, but acid rain is very passe'.

454. Raskolnikov - 6/20/2002 6:14:31 PM

"anyway, it is my humble opinion that global warming isn't nearly as serious an issue as acid rain, but acid rain is very passe'."

That is because the environmental damage was overstated, and emissions controls in rich world countries pretty much solved the problem.

455. ronski - 6/20/2002 6:19:10 PM

Ace complained bitterly about jexster's carpet-bombing of the U.S. Politics thread, and finally left in disgust, as far as I could tell.

456. PelleNilsson - 6/24/2002 12:10:18 PM

There is a growing awareness among Europeans that we don't need America any more. During the last 60 years we spent a lot of energy on making that lumbering, slow-witted giant do our bidding. This is now superfluous to requirements. Let America poke around in the backyards of Afghanistan and the Phillipines and pour its money down the black hole of the NMD while we have some caviar and chilled vodka with our Russian friends.

457. marjoribanks - 6/24/2002 12:20:19 PM

Nice sally, Pelle.

The scenario would be less hollow if Europe had actually wanted to act as one, and if the Russians were capable of providing a stable environment.

For now, Europe's ally will remain the US. And all of your important countries slaver over relationships with these USA in a manner best described as beseeching.

458. concerned - 6/24/2002 12:20:40 PM

As far as Kyoto goes... it isn't going to accomplish what they claim... however whoever made the point that instead of going pfft we should engage and debate the matter is absolutely correct. I think Kyoto falls short.

It does, and when faced with that fact, the global warming fascists darkly mutter that Kyoto is intended to presage a series of ever more draconian measures restricting human CO2 emissions. Which is neither diplomatic, well thought out nor reassuring.

OTOH, I'm certainly in favor of the US relying less on hydrocarbon based generation of electricity.

459. Jimmy Page - 6/24/2002 12:24:48 PM

restricting human CO2 emissions

Does this mean we will all be required to take fewer breaths per hour?

460. concerned - 6/24/2002 12:27:40 PM

That only would apply to citizens of Kyoto signatories.

461. godlessclif - 6/24/2002 12:43:19 PM

It is not human CO2 production that is the problem. It is people burning hydrocarbons. Bush is about to ask Christy Todd Whitman to sign new rules that will effectively repeal the clean air act. Companies like Southern Company that are big Bush political contributors are gearing up to burn high sulfer coal, and acid rain will be back before we can get the Bush Regime out of the white house.

In fact there are thorium impurities in some of this coal so it is also radioactive.

Peabody coal is preparing to remove some mountain tops.

C-Span just had the debate and the condscending attitude of the coal lobbyist and his charectorization of anyone who supports the clean air act as a godless communist terrorist with some hidden agenda and traitor was terrifyingly neo-McCarthyist.

462. concerned - 6/24/2002 12:46:11 PM

For those who haven't 'got it' yet:

Human CO2 production includes 'people burning hydrocarbons'.

Thanks in advance for comprehending the obvious, people.

463. godlessclif - 6/24/2002 12:55:38 PM

The Bush Regime will not implement the vital Kyoto protocol because it is in the pocket of the oil and coal companies and their short term profits mean more to Shrub than our health.

If the coal companies had to pay for the cancer they cause they would have already switched to wind power, but since they can give us all cancer for free they need not worry about paying for the damage they do to the public health as long as they can come up with a couple of million buck for George W Bush's campaign fund.

464. PelleNilsson - 6/24/2002 12:57:48 PM

marj

The sentiment is there, just under the surface. And what's wrong with it, objectively speaking?

465. PelleNilsson - 6/24/2002 1:02:12 PM

conerned is in grave difficulties now that the Bush administration has changed its mind on global warming and its causes. His discomfort reminds me of communist politruks I have met who had to change their minds overnight because of new signals from their masters.

466. godlessclif - 6/24/2002 1:02:22 PM

Got to admit Pelle is right about NMD/SDI/ABM/Star Wars. When something is unpopular and discredited repeatedly changing the name of it won't make the defense pork black hole work.

467. marjoribanks - 6/24/2002 1:02:24 PM

It is hollow, Pelle. In the end, the big Europe cannot wipe its arse on the International stage without asking the US for permission. It can barely use strength when talking about its domestic affairs, after all.

You can have the sentiment, but be prepared to have it laughed at.

468. Jimmy Page - 6/24/2002 1:08:00 PM

Human CO2 production includes 'people burning hydrocarbons

DAMN.

Sex is out the window.

Picture this.

Candlelit dinner. Fireplace in the den. A little nookie on the rug in front of the fireplace. A nice smoke afterwards.

Shit. That creates human CO2 production everywhere. Burning candles and fireplaces and cigarettes. Those are all no-nos. Heavy Breathing. Another no-no.

No Kyoto for me baby.

469. concerned - 6/24/2002 1:11:58 PM

Re. 465 -

Pelle -

When have I ever denied the existence of global warming?

I have been the voice of reason wrt its magnitude and effects. For instance, I have claimed for years now that:

1)Temperature increases due to global warming would be almost entirely felt at higher latitudes, during the winter and at night.

2)Oceanic level changes will be less than a foot by the year 2100.

3)The average intensities of cyclonic storms will decrease due to smaller average temperature differentials between the tropical and polar latidudes although average precipitations will tend to increase.

4)Average global temperature increases by 2100 AD will be 3 degrees C or less.

Additionally, I have posted repeatedly on the Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age, Antarctic ice accretion, etc., back when the IPCC loons were doing little but running back and forth, waving their hands and screeching about our imminent climatic demise.

So, sorry, Pelle. My predictions and take have been spot on regarding global warming. It's the envirowhackos who are continually backtracking and who owe the world an apology.

470. concerned - 6/24/2002 1:14:23 PM

Who better in the world to beseech the US than the Yourapeons? A passel of dirty Islamists?

Ahhhhh....life is so satisfying.

471. PelleNilsson - 6/24/2002 1:14:45 PM

concerned

You have done nothing of the sort, not at least in this forum.

472. PelleNilsson - 6/24/2002 1:16:30 PM

marj

You are turning into an American Patriot, First-class. I had counted on your support for this little gig which has now fallen flat.

473. concerned - 6/24/2002 1:19:16 PM

Pelle -

Any number of Motiers will confirm that I have posted precisely as I have claimed.

And I insist on claiming the credit for doing so which I deserve. I don't really care if you don't want to acknowledge the truth of the matter. You merely diminish yourself by such dishonesty.

474. godlessclif - 6/24/2002 1:22:00 PM

The temperature has risen half a degree in the last ten years. If the trend was linear, which it is not, that will be a whopping 50 degrees by 2100. Temperature in increasing exponentially. I certainly hope that is not the case since it would end all life on earth. You tell me what might stop that trend other than an end to all fossil fuel use.

Those in denial like to quote the one degree rise since 1900 and pretend it will be only a rise of one degree per century. They fail to tell you half of that degree was in the last ten years concealing the exponential increase.

Another three degrees will melt all the global ice. The number of storms has increased in the last ten years and bizzarre new phenomenon like El Nino have appeared.

Africa is gripped in a drought unprecidented in history.

475. PelleNilsson - 6/24/2002 1:23:16 PM

Let this "number of Moties" step forward.

476. Jimmy Page - 6/24/2002 1:24:22 PM

But, its sounds like the Republicans were right all along, then. We must teach our children abstinence in order to reduce human CO2 emissions.

477. PelleNilsson - 6/24/2002 1:36:18 PM

Calm down, godless. El Nino is by no means a "new bizarre phenomenon". The African drought is certainly not "unprecedented". Global warming is not necessarily a bad thing. If you were an adherent of the Gaia theory, i.e that the earth is a self-regulating system designed to sustain human life, it might even be a good thing, opening up the vast tracts of tundra in Siberia to agriculture in order to sustain the ever-growing human population.

478. Daniel Sickles - 6/24/2002 1:46:18 PM

Let this "number of Moties" step forward

I vouch for concerned (only because Pelle dishonestly and lazily refuses to substantiate a hollow accusation, but rather, places the onus on the accused).

If concerned has denied the existence of global warming, Pelle, and you make such an accusation, you must do more than scratch the boils on your ass and fob the responsibility for clearing good name on the accused.

Your ungentlemanly ways have hurt you in the past. I'd thought I'd shamed the lout out of you.

479. ivan osokin - 6/24/2002 1:46:37 PM

marj...as much as i am loathe to admit it, i think you are right...europe will be fellating the US more and more, wishing to benefit from america's unique brand of greed and media spin, until the only difference between the US and Europe will be the architecture.

pelle: alas, it's depressing to me as i had hoped to live in europe to escape the encroaching tentacles of the crypto-fascism known as american politics (with its partner, "the media conglomerate") and to inoculate myself from knee-jerk americanists. now i'm gonna have to consider a move to some place like the trobriand islands or ulan bator :)

480. judithathome - 6/24/2002 1:51:41 PM

ulan bator

Fanrastic scenery there...

481. judithathome - 6/24/2002 1:52:01 PM

Ooops...fanTastic

482. PelleNilsson - 6/24/2002 2:02:18 PM

ivan

I think Ulan Bator is OK. I once applied for a post as junior UN Expert there, without success.

483. PelleNilsson - 6/24/2002 2:07:47 PM

Daniel

I note that I have become a target for your contentless little posts. Carry on if it gives you satisfaction. Be my guest; having worked with Arabs for a long time I can live with minor irritants.

484. Daniel Sickles - 6/24/2002 2:14:54 PM

Pelle

Your notation has been noted. I will carry on in the revelation of cads and hooligans and those of ill-character in discourse as long as breath wends through this body.

Rest assured, had concerned stated "Pelle espouses man-boy love", and thereafter, you denied it, and concerned responded by placing the onus upon you to clear your name, then concerned would be at the wrong end of my whip hand.

But concerned has done nothing so small.

You have.

485. Daniel Sickles - 6/24/2002 2:15:56 PM

And, sir, this is not your first offense.

486. PelleNilsson - 6/24/2002 2:30:41 PM

ivan

On a more serious note: If you do contemplate moving to Europe I think you would find Ireland congenial.

487. ivan osokin - 6/24/2002 2:44:15 PM

Pel:

i did figure on starting in the UK...all depends on what we want to do regarding grad school. it's probably a long ways away, but we hope to be across the pond somehow in the next 10 years.

488. ivan osokin - 6/24/2002 2:45:06 PM

besides...i am a finnegans wake geek and as such i'd like to check dublin out in detail.

489. OhioSTOPAS - 6/24/2002 2:56:15 PM

Evolution of the Bush Administration's Position on Global Warming

490. concerned - 6/24/2002 3:07:49 PM

Re. 478 -

Thanks, DS. You've probably saved this thread from much contentious yammering.

491. concerned - 6/24/2002 3:23:28 PM

Re. 474 -

godless provides another blast from the envirowhacko past (or is it?) here.

The 'worst case' changes I projected for 2100 AD would bring the earth to roughly the climatic state it enjoyed at the last interglacial optimum, approximately 6000 years ago. This is when many paleoclimatologists believe the entire Sahara was covered by grasslands and savanna.

492. concerned - 6/24/2002 3:40:40 PM

Btw, I simply borrowed the formal term (interglacial optimum) used by climatologists to describe the era around 4000BC.

493. godlessclif - 6/24/2002 3:45:44 PM

4000 years ago there weren't million of cars a power plants pouring millions of pounds of CO2 into the air every day. Core taken of glaciers show that the present global warming is an order of amgnitude faster that any warming recorded in those thousands of years of glaciation. It is beleived to be so fast that plants and animals will not be able to adapt to the new climate fast enough to survive.

494. concerned - 6/24/2002 3:54:08 PM

Even a moderate amount of warming over the next century will result in some species migration and stress. However, the overall increase in biomass (as a response to higher atmospheric CO2 levels) acts as both a very significant carbon sink and accelerates overall plant growth.

495. concerned - 6/24/2002 3:56:22 PM

I should have said that the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration accelerates overall plant growth. As a reference, I have read that atmospheric CO2 concentrations were at geologic lows about 300 years ago.

496. godlessclif - 6/24/2002 5:40:44 PM

We are still adding CO2. The warming has warmed half a degree in ten years and is accellerating. That is not a mild warming. That is an exponential warming. As we add acres of grassland to the permafrost we loose acres of grassland to desert in Africa. We better start flying planeloads of grass sees because as the life forms thta live in the permafrost die grass will not jump up by magic. That action may only level off the warming. It won't correct the environmental damage.It is abvious Bush won't do anything until it is too late.

We got to get Bush out of office as soon as possible.

Ohio-loved the Tom Toles cartoon.

497. godlessclif - 6/24/2002 5:41:10 PM

"That is grass seeds"

498. concerned - 6/24/2002 5:43:53 PM

Even under x42, the US Senate refused to ratify Kyoto 95-0. Don't think swapping presidents would make much of a difference there.

499. concerned - 6/24/2002 5:49:50 PM

IAC, Kyoto is nothing but enviro-masturbation. Even its greatest proponents don't claim that it'll amount to a hill of beans CO2-wise. It also hasn't been demonstrated that the recent CO2 change in concentration is a significant driver of the small amount of global warming that has already occurred.

500. godlessclif - 6/24/2002 5:52:12 PM

Like John McCain said the first bill to be passed should be one that stops oil companies from bribing our senators. Then we can have a policy that is good for Americans like a crash program for wind power and electric automobiles before me commit global suicide.

Again I reject your premiss that there was ever a time in history where this much CO2 was put in the atmosphere. Of course the glaciers provide the oldest data and we are headed for a world with no ice caps where crocodiles swim in the artic ocean. If there was ever such a world it left no weather record in the ice. There are crocodilian fossiles at very high lattitudes like Hudson's bay that indicate a warm world.

You own Hudson's bay beachfront land or are you expecting divine intervention?

501. concerned - 6/24/2002 5:58:17 PM

I've seen estimates that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 were eight times higher than at present during the Cretaceous era, and even higher yet during the Permian when mass volcanism accompanied the breakup of Gondwanaland.

502. godlessclif - 6/24/2002 5:59:37 PM

Even you President Bush has admitted that man generated CO2 is the driver of Global Warming. Politically incorrect recently had a disinformation whacko on that tried to say there was no global warming or it was caused by the sun getting hotter, her conclusion is we should stop using solar power because that was making the sun hotter.

Maybe during the next election we can tell the people the truth.

The analogy between environmental protection and masturbation is not obvious to me.

503. concerned - 6/24/2002 6:00:17 PM

If you want to say that the whole field of paleontology and paleoclimatology is full of shit, join the creationists.

504. concerned - 6/24/2002 6:03:18 PM

Even you President Bush has admitted that man generated CO2 is the driver of Global Warming.

Perhaps a driver. It's far too early to single it out as the only driver, given the recent research indicating that changes in the sun's luminescence accounts for most of the recent global temperature changes.

505. godlessclif - 6/24/2002 6:07:34 PM

Lets see a link from non-creationists who support such a slow warming.

The creationist trick is to throw around terms like Paleotology and Paleoclimatology with no data pretending scientists back up their religious beliefs or financial interests with scientfic sounding lies.

Ready to go to the inferno with this?

506. concerned - 6/24/2002 6:11:32 PM

Try this link for starters, godless. Of those 15,000 real scientists (not english majors) protesting envirowhacko globaloney, how many do you think are creationists? Half a dozen, maybe?

507. concerned - 6/24/2002 6:11:59 PM

godless is left without a leg to stand on.

508. godlessclif - 6/24/2002 6:15:17 PM

Global Warming Increases Disease

Some disease vectors helped by the warming are obvious like increases mosquito and fly populations. Others are less obvious like fungi who infect Coral, but we must face the climate of the Tropics in Canada and unlike the USA Canada is getting ready for diseases like Dengue Fever and Malaria to show up in the next 25 years in their provinces.

509. concerned - 6/24/2002 6:29:07 PM

Re. 508 -

I think there may be some room for concern here. But, thanks to technology, there's nary a mosquito in Disney World, I hear.

510. godlessclif - 6/24/2002 6:33:31 PM

SEPP os a Washington Loggy Group. I lot like the "Republicans for Clean Air" who attacke dMcCain in the primaries.

Lets see what the real scientists at the weather bureau say.

511. godlessclif - 6/24/2002 6:34:03 PM

Lobby Group that is

512. concerned - 6/24/2002 6:47:09 PM

The scientific evidence indicates no significant changes in sea levels in the twentieth centuries. Figures of increases of several inches are erroneous because they are applying correction factors for continental rebound from glaciation (as applied to all of Northern Europe and most of NE North America) to areas of the globe which were never covered by ice sheets. This error has been documented, and when corrected for, show no measurably significant changes in oceanic levels (i.e.: less than an inch) over the last 100 years.

513. concerned - 6/24/2002 6:47:35 PM

...twentieth century....

514. godlessclif - 6/24/2002 6:48:17 PM

Also the earths rotation.. I noticed it is warmer at noon than midnight. That has nothing to do with greenhouse warming that is 100% attributed to burning fossil fuels. Department of Transportation not a lobbyimg group.

515. godlessclif - 6/24/2002 6:51:06 PM

It melt all at one. There is abundant evidence that all the glaciers in the world are melting. Every now and then a hunk of ice the size on manhattan falls off of the Ross ice shelf in antarctica.

516. concerned - 6/24/2002 6:55:03 PM

Yes, but. The ice over continental Antarctica and even Central Greenland is becoming thicker due to increased precipitation. The earth's temperature could become 20 C warmer before the continental Antarctic ice would be in any danger of starting to melt, and that is where 90% of all but the sea ice (which already is displacing its volume in water) exists.

517. godlessclif - 6/24/2002 6:59:21 PM

It must be nice for a lobbying group to contact all the political action committees to get all the signatures of all the scientists and engineers who work for automakers, oil companies, and chemical companies. Thier bias is obvious.

518. concerned - 6/24/2002 6:59:48 PM

Then, we have the historical evidence where, during the last interglacial optimum, there was no large change in sea level (less than a foot) even though it was 2.5 C warmer than it is now and with thousands of years allowed for any glacial or polar ice to melt on top of that, instead of the few decades left until 2100.

519. godlessclif - 6/24/2002 7:04:32 PM

Mosquito mutatates Global Warming has cause one species of mosquito to mutate to adapt to a longer growing season. By the Scientific American magazine. Not by an environmental lobby group. Lets see Walt Disney keep theses guys out with a few Purple Martin birdhouses.

520. godlessclif - 6/24/2002 7:07:50 PM

Is this the Rush Limbaugh Ice in my martini doesn't make my drink spill argument. Antarcta is on land if you haven't noticed so are the ice caps of the Andes Himmalayas, Alps and Rockies all of which will run into the ocean. The dissapearance of spring runoff water in the rockies will devastate agriculture. Bush still does nothing.

521. godlessclif - 6/24/2002 7:13:57 PM

CO2 is not the only culprit. So is soot. ban diesels

522. concerned - 6/24/2002 7:32:18 PM

Antarcta is on land...

Exactly my point. And 90% of the world's ice is locked up over Antarctic land; all of it at least 50 degrees below freezing, on the average. That virtually translates into no catastrophic melting for centuries no matter how much CO2 pumped into the atmosphere.

523. godlessclif - 6/24/2002 7:38:40 PM

Of course it can melt

524. concerned - 6/24/2002 7:43:58 PM

Not if it never reaches freezing. And it doesn't over continental Antarctica. That's pretty much a given by all sides.

525. concerned - 6/24/2002 7:46:56 PM

Nobody, no matter what their projections, except for brain dead hippies, perhaps, has the least concern that continental Antarctic ice will melt for hundreds of years, to put it another way.

526. godlessclif - 6/24/2002 7:48:24 PM

melting mechanism BCC science article. The iar temperature is -50 in the winter, not in summer, not the whole block of ice at -50 degrees. And seawater undermines ice shelves. They fall in the ocean and melt. Just a few degrees warmer for sea water, due to global warming warming the ocean and melting rates can increase by a factor of ten.

These are real scientists and they don't have all the answers.They tell the truth, they don't advocate for some oil company.

They admit the west ice shelf is thickening and don't know why. Research goes on.

527. godlessclif - 6/24/2002 8:09:22 PM

You don't seem to be reading the data. It is likely a 3 degree rise in 25 years and 6 1/2 degrees by 2100. An unprecidented increase in temperature taking place a blinding speed by biologival standards, even if we stop spewing soot and CO2 right away. Not 2 1/2 degrees in thousands of years like the warming you are citing from ancient history. This could even be a runaway warming like Venus that kills everyone if we don't stop it.

The thousands of years of previous warmings let species adapt. Grass and trees had lots of time to slowly move north populate high lattitudes and stop the warming by sucking out the volcanic CO2 that cause previous warming. Volcanos are one shot, then they stop.

Bush has no intention of stopping. He is to stupid to understand and capitalist businesses are greedy and short sighted. This is different.

528. marjoribanks - 6/27/2002 11:29:06 AM

Fisk, in the Independent:

Why, I wonder, doesn't Mr Bush let Ariel Sharon run the White House press bureau? Not only would it be more honest - we would at least be hearing the voice of Israel at first hand - but it would spare the American President the ignominy of parroting everything he is told by the Israelis.

All that he offers to the Palestinians is a ghastly mockery of what the Palestinians are told to do by the Israelis.

There never has been an "interim" state, let alone a "provisional" state. These are fantasies of the Israelis and Mr Bush. White House "officials" - we can guess who they are -believe a Palestinian state can be "achieved" within 18 months. Let's forget international law provides for no such entity.

Let's go over again that most crucial - and most dishonest - part of the Bush statement.

"When the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbours," he told us, "the United States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state, whose border and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East." Let's see what this means: when the Palestinians have elected a leader whom the Israelis want - a condition that could go on to the crack of doom - the Americans will support a Palestinian state whose very existence will mean nothing unless Israel approves what that state wants to do.

529. marjoribanks - 6/27/2002 11:30:34 AM

Fisk.

530. Rama - 6/27/2002 11:36:48 AM

Why should I care what Fisk thinks? How is this different from quoting Rush Limbaugh or Sergei Glazyev?

531. sakonige - 6/27/2002 11:41:05 AM

He's explaining why the world hates Americans.

532. marjoribanks - 6/27/2002 11:43:44 AM

Rama,

I suggest that you read Fisk's book on Lebanon (and Arafat) before you make idiotic and know-nothing comparisons.

Where is your thesis?

533. Rama - 6/27/2002 11:53:52 AM

I suggest that you read Fisk's book on Lebanon (and Arafat) before you make idiotic and know-nothing comparisons.

I could equally suggest you listen to Limbaugh for a couple of years before you dismiss his pontifications.

Where is your thesis?

I don't know what you mean to be asking by that.

534. Rama - 6/27/2002 11:55:17 AM

He's explaining why the world hates Americans.

Were that true, it would make reading re-posts of his opinion even less worthwhile. The world doesn't hate Americans.

535. marjoribanks - 6/27/2002 11:58:37 AM

Rama,

I will resist from my natural impulses, and merely ask you for your general thesis wrt the US and its international affairs. What are the US priorities, which countries should it ally itself with?

Where do you see the US going in this "War on Terror"?

Don't be afraid to be comprehensive in your answers.

536. sakonige - 6/27/2002 12:00:42 PM

Message # 534

Well, I suppose you can quibble about the meaning of the word "hate" and whether it is the entire world. Obvioulsy, Americans don't hate themselves and they have a few friend. But it seems it would be useful to know what others think of you. Fisk makes an articulate statement of the kinds of opinions of Americans that dominate discussions on British messageboards.

As someone against whom a lot of hatred is directed, I am convinced it is important to know exactly what your enemies are thinking, to examine their motives and predict their behavior, if for no other reason.

537. marjoribanks - 6/27/2002 12:13:44 PM

Rama,

In fact, as far as the evidence goes , you do not know very much about anything.

It is rather uninteresting to read a series of silly, basic, idiotically reductionist, questions such as those you offer here .

If you have something compelling or meaty to post please do so.

Otherwise, remember at all times that your messages here are considered entirely irrelevant.

538. sakonige - 6/27/2002 12:32:06 PM

Oh, that's right. This is marjoribanks' thread. Sorry, I forget to pay attention to who the threadhost is unless I'm posting something I expect to be deleted.

539. sakonige - 6/27/2002 12:33:38 PM

oh well.

540. sakonige - 6/27/2002 12:40:02 PM

I've actually developed a pretty good record of predicting how Americans will collectively behave in spite of their self-delusion, by my own scorekeeping. Latest vindication was my observation that the United States is not and never has been secular.

541. sakonige - 6/27/2002 12:42:58 PM

Previous score was the obeservation that the US would quickly turn into a de facto police state.

542. sakonige - 6/27/2002 12:47:07 PM

Betcha these people will rip eachother to shreds when the going gets tough following another serious terrorist strike. All this patriotic union crap will quickly melt away in a me-first free-for-all.

543. sakonige - 6/27/2002 1:30:27 PM

One nation, (sponsorship opportunities available)

544. Rama - 6/27/2002 7:02:47 PM

I will resist from my natural impulses, and merely ask you for your general thesis wrt the US and its international affairs.

My general thesis is that this is a complex matter requiring a good deal of specific education and experience, best left to specialists working for elected representatives. I know that I understand some aspects extremely well, and that it is reasonable to assume that I am as unaware of my own ignorance on other aspects as I find other people to be on the topics I am competent in.

What are the US priorities, which countries should it ally itself with?

The US priorities are not all that different from most industrialized countries, with the exception of economic liberty and military power. In US prioritizes these items higher than most other countries.

Where do you see the US going in this "War on Terror"?

I suspect the US will use the same strategy it used to win the "Cold War".

Don't be afraid to be comprehensive in your answers.

That seem a great deal like assigning homework. People get paid to provide comprehensive answers regarding foreign policy.

545. Rama - 6/27/2002 7:07:55 PM

In fact, as far as the evidence goes , you do not know very much about anything.

Hey, if I already knew the answer, I wouldn't have to ask the question about Fisk.

It is rather uninteresting to read a series of silly, basic, idiotically reductionist, questions such as those you offer here .

Can't answer the question, huh?

If you have something compelling or meaty to post please do so.

Ok. Until then, I'll just respond to what you apparently think is compelling or meaty.

Otherwise, remember at all times that your messages here are considered entirely irrelevant.

Jawohl, Meister Marji!

546. marjoribanks - 6/28/2002 9:44:59 AM

Rama,

Whatever. It is apparently impossible to get anything substantive out of you, and I'm going to stop trying.

---

All, Foreign Affairs has this interesting article in its current issue - If America's current global predominance does not constitute unipolarity, then nothing ever will. And despite what many have argued, no serious attempts by others to balance U.S. power are likely for the foreseeable future. The sources of American strength are so varied and so durable that the country now enjoys more freedom in its foreign policy choices than has any other power in modern history. But just because the United States can bully others does not mean it should. If it wants to be loved as well as feared, the policy answers are not difficult to find.

547. marjoribanks - 6/28/2002 9:45:53 AM

Excerpts:

To understand just how dominant the United States is today, one needs to look at each of the standard components of national power in succession. In the military arena, the United States is poised to spend more on defense in 2003 than the next 15-20 biggest spenders combined. The United States has overwhelming nuclear superiority, the world's dominant air force, the only truly blue-water navy, and a unique capability to project power around the globe. And its military advantage is even more apparent in quality than in quantity. The United States leads the world in exploiting the military applications of advanced communications and information technology and it has demonstrated an unrivaled ability to coordinate and process information about the battlefield and destroy targets from afar with extraordinary precision. Washington is not making it easy for others to catch up, moreover, given the massive gap in spending on military research and development (R&D), on which the United States spends three times more than the next six powers combined. Looked at another way, the United States currently spends more on military R&D than Germany or the United Kingdom spends on defense in total.

No state in the modern history of international politics has come close to the military predominance these numbers suggest. And the United States purchases this preeminence with only 3.5 percent of its GDP. As historian Paul Kennedy notes, "being Number One at great cost is one thing; being the world's single superpower on the cheap is astonishing.

548. marjoribanks - 6/28/2002 9:46:41 AM

More -
America's economic dominance, meanwhile -- relative to either the next several richest powers or the rest of the world combined -- surpasses that of any great power in modern history, with the sole exception of its own position after 1945 (when World War II had temporarily laid waste every other major economy). The U.S. economy is currently twice as large as its closest rival, Japan. California's economy alone has risen to become the fifth largest in the world (using market exchange-rate estimates), ahead of France and just behind the United Kingdom.

It is true that the long expansion of the 1990s has ebbed, but it would take an experience like Japan's in that decade --that is, an extraordinarily deep and prolonged domestic recession juxtaposed with robust growth elsewhere -- for the United States just to fall back to the economic position it occupied in 1991. The odds against such relative decline are long, however, in part because the United States is the country in the best position to take advantage of globalization. Its status as the preferred destination for scientifically trained foreign workers solidified during the 1990s, and it is the most popular destination for foreign firms. In 1999 it attracted more than one-third of world inflows of foreign direct investment.

U.S. military and economic dominance, finally, is rooted in the country's position as the world's leading technological power. Although measuring national R&D spending is increasingly difficult in an era in which so many economic activities cross borders, efforts to do so indicate America's continuing lead. Figures from the late 1990s showed that U.S. expenditures on R&D nearly equaled those of the next seven richest countries combined.

549. marjoribanks - 6/28/2002 9:49:41 AM

Part of the article's conclusion:

President George W. Bush recently said, "To be serious about fighting poverty, we must be serious about expanding trade.... Greater access to the markets of wealthy countries has a direct and immediate impact on the economies of developing nations." But deeds are more important than words. Lowering domestic trade barriers would be precisely the kind of U.S. policy that could reduce the inevitable frictions and resentments unipolarity generates. It would mean going beyond reacting to security challenges once they became critical and trying to forestall their emergence in the first place. Implemented fully and expanded to other cases, this approach could serve as the velvet glove covering the iron fist of American power, demonstrating that the United States was interested in not just its own special interests but the interests of others as well.

Magnanimity and restraint in the face of temptation are tenets of successful statecraft that have proved their worth from classical Greece onward. Standing taller than leading states of the past, the United States has unprecedented freedom to do as it pleases. It can play the game for itself alone or for the system as a whole; it can focus on small returns today or larger ones tomorrow. If the administration truly wants to be loved as well as feared, the policy answers are not hard to find.

Emphasis mine. I believe I've argued on these very lines earlier in this thread only to have my arguments discounted for being excessively idealistic or even naive.

550. marjoribanks - 6/28/2002 10:47:25 AM

Okay, here is part of my thesis. At the same time that the US enjoys unprecedented advantages in its global status as the strongest, richest, least vulnerable country, its citizens and interests abroad have never been more threatened. The situation is not yet disastrous, but there are many countries and parts of countries where it is now unwise for an American to travel alone, and there are growing threats to US business interests as well.

It is my considered opinion that this country needs to be a bit more pragmatic and a lot less unipolar-thinking in order to maintain its advantages as well as build support - what the article refers to as love.

This is already a country much more admired than disliked, even in parts of the world where you'd imagine there'd be resentment, even in the Muslim world. Judicious use of overseas influence can only help in this regard, as well as creating a perception of evenhandedness and engagement.

I'm actually a bit with Condoleeza Rice in thinking that most multilateral bodies are useless to this country, and that the US should unflinchingly focus only on its core interests overseas. Pure cost-benefits analysis should be the engine for foreign policy, not the half-baked ideology that is often propounded from the foreign policy pulpits in this country. But maintaining a perception of multilateralism fits right in with wise policy, even if the US retains an out. It simply pays to appear engaged and interested in the rest of the world's welfare.

551. marjoribanks - 6/28/2002 10:56:38 AM

Were I foreign policy czar in the US, I'd pursue the following tacks.

1) I would pressure China to implement massive advances in human rights, to negotiate some kind of dialogue with the Tibetan resistance, to enter permanent negotiations with and about Taiwan, and use trade as a stick in all of these matters. If necessary, wield embargoes because the US economy will never be in a better position to take a hit or two from that country and still manage to grow. That bargaining power is dwindling.

2) I would pressure, much more severely than currently, India and Pakistan to enter long-term talks over Kashmir, preferably with two or three perceived neutrals as facilitators.

3) I would demand immediate talks on a permanent solution to the Israel/Pal problem, using a withdrawal of aid as a stick for both the Israelis and the influential Egyptians.

4) I'd withdraw completely from S. Arabia, base the military in Qatar and tell the Saudi rulers that if they don't keep the oil prices low they will have no support against either attackers from abroad or insurgents within.

And so on. Each of these moves will garner massive support in those regions where the US needs allies on its side to maintain some security for Americans abroad and US business interests.

552. marjoribanks - 6/28/2002 10:59:05 AM

Finally, I'd establish a massive Marshall-Plan like program for Africa (it can be done very cheaply) , with comprehensive US involvement in demilitarization, efficent exploitation of natural resources, and aggressively-pursued health care.

553. RickNelson - 6/28/2002 11:00:39 AM

Marj, or whomever,

Who are the groups which constitute the "half baked ideology"? Are they religious ideologues and the non-profits which skamper around the globe? Are they politicians who unilaterally work abroad along with status or whatever seeking business' and people? Is the problem within our emabassy system?

How might the United States form up to follow what you've proposed in post 550?

554. RickNelson - 6/28/2002 11:06:45 AM

Oops, sorry Marj, X-post. But, still a few questioins remain.

555. marjoribanks - 6/28/2002 11:13:18 AM

Rick.

An example of half-baked ideology is the recently oft-cited reason for supporting Israel given as "they're the only democracy in the region." The irony in this mantra, so self-righteous and unctuous, is that (a) the US has never ever done anything to support or back democracy in the Middle East. In fact, in numerous cases (Iran comes to mind), it has openly subverted democratic mandates. (b) The US is extremely close to Saudi Arabia (for example) which is about as far from a democracy as any nation on the planet now that the Taliban has been removed. The US also stands in support of openly anti-democratic measures taken in places like Turkey just in recent years.

I'm not saying the US should not pursue its interest, far from it. It definitely should jettison the bullshit ideological claims though, because they are transparently hypocritical and nobody is fooled by them.

I also cite the relatively recent comments made by the dimwitted Laura Bush (and the less dimwitted Cherie Blair) to national audiences about the evils of the Taliban rule where women were veiled and deprived of education and subjected to a patriarchal tyrrany. All true, of course, but who could ignore the fact that Bush himself is about as cozy with the Saudis as any American leader in history, and they subjugate their women in exactly the same way as the Taliban did.

Half-baked, thus, is my assessment of the ideologies artificially grafted onto common and necessary power play between the US and other states.

556. RickNelson - 6/28/2002 11:20:13 AM

Total agreement toward your words toward the Saudis. As with Sukarno and Suharto tyrannies in the old days, we just don't learn lessons in a way that they're passed to the incoming leadership. Then that leadership seems to unwittingly replay the old.

Your list of accomplishments above would be wonderful.

557. concerned - 6/28/2002 11:31:26 AM

Re. 551, 2 -

marjoribanks is particulary wrongheaded on items 3), 4) and his proposal for an African 'Marshall Plan'. The Marshall Plan required for its success that an adequate social and governmental infrastructure already be in place, a requirement that Western Europe met after WWII and that most of Africa clearly doesn't today.

558. concerned - 6/28/2002 11:34:00 AM

godless sez: Global Warming Increases Disease

Would godless then go on to assert that communicable disease levels in Cuba, that subtropical socialist paradise, are unacceptably high due to its consistently warm climate?

559. marjoribanks - 6/28/2002 11:43:55 AM

I said something LIKE a Marshall Plan.

The main reasons for this are three:

1) Above all, permanent innoculation against charges of American selfishness and indifference.

2) Creating a working infrastructure for the extraction of natural wealth rather than the destructive chaos that reigns now.

3) Avoidance of the massive global health tragedy that is underway already, which will inevitably have spill-over effects on the rest of the world.

There is also the fact that it can all be done on the cheap, for far less than the Afghan campaign is costing for example.

560. Jimmy Page - 6/28/2002 3:17:25 PM

Marj-

So what would the terms of this "Almost-A-Marshall Plan" be?

And to pick up on apoint concerned made, how does the US get in there were there a no stable or working governments?

It can't without a military, so you'd be in the same boat at a higher cost in more places with the US still hated because it has the power to do what it wants to do.

The idea is less than 1/2 thought out and not warm enough to be called half baked.

On another note, any Monty Python fans out there?

561. RickNelson - 6/28/2002 5:52:11 PM

Jimmy, where did you find the player? What's the code?

562. marjoribanks - 7/1/2002 10:08:52 AM

This thread is a bit stunted, mainly due to the absence of those who called for it. Where are you guys?

563. marjoribanks - 7/1/2002 10:20:06 AM

On the Israel/Palestine matter, I have already posted my preference in terms of US policy.

This country should immediately call both parties to the table in a neutral country, and use whatever sticks it has to beat all concerned into working out acceptable agreements to move forward towards the inevitable two-state solution.

Spike posted a good Friedman column in this regard.

The US must now threaten the withdrawal of all aid as an incentive to get to the table. It's own support for Israel is to the point of ridiculously "whatever you want", and no one is fooled about the provenance - domestic politics.

Such an American policy does not exist with regard to any other country in the world, and it is particularly dangerous because the US thus implicates itself in one of the great and pressing criminal occupations underway right now.

Look at the salutary example of South Africa and the UK (as one major sponsor) as good example. The Apartheid regime was not sustainable, it had to fall, it took concerted effort to make it subside and the UK realized it.

There is no irony in saying that Israel should go the South Africa way, it should and must accept its geographiphic and demographic reality. If it does not, you may see the brute logic of something like Zimbabwe in effect, and then there is a possiblility of worse.

564. marjoribanks - 7/1/2002 10:22:57 AM

I'll say this.

I've not particularly liked Friedman from his books. But as a columnist, particularly post 9/11, this fellow has hit his stride and redefined the role of foreign policy commentator to something like a genuine wind-tasting prophet.

565. pseudoerasmus - 7/1/2002 10:57:00 AM

I have had exactly the opposite reaction. I usually don't like Friedman's columns, but I did like his From Beirut to Jerusalem. (I didn't read his book about Texas and the Olive Pits.) Most people who've liked FBJ usually prefer the first part to the second. But surely Fisk's book on Lebanon is a much better illumination of that incredibly complex country than Friedman's. I prefer the part about Israel. Apart from the fact that I think he's right in being intensely pessimistic about a possibility of a deal between Israel and the Palestinians, Friedman's book made me realise that that conflict is just another communal strife (i.e., ethnic conflict), but writ larger by media hype.

566. marjoribanks - 7/1/2002 11:09:16 AM

Well, Pseuder,

We have some level of agreement here.

Fisk's mammoth book on Lebanon is the best possible first source for information.

I wonder, however, why you devalue the NYTimes fellow's columns, particularly those written recently. Friedman seems to get the Middle East, with many of its particulars. He gets the American role, and he prescribes the same things most anyone with a brain does.

567. marjoribanks - 7/1/2002 11:10:37 AM

Anyway, I have to be away from my keyboard right now, for an hour or two. But I shall return soonish.

568. PelleNilsson - 7/1/2002 2:19:20 PM

It seems there is overlap and competition between this thread and I&P. Is that a healthy thing?

569. marjoribanks - 7/2/2002 11:16:43 AM

There is overlap between this thread and several others. It would and could be a viable concept if those who clamored for it pursued discussion on the lines that they intended when it was suggested.

I've done my bit, and think at this point that this thread ain't going anywhere. My suggestion: let one of those petitioners take it over and take it in the direction desired. Or else, RIP the sucker and let it disappear as soon as you like.

570. PelleNilsson - 7/2/2002 11:28:11 AM

Well I think its ripe for a RIP notice and then we'll se what happens. Thanks for taking it on, marj.

571. iiibbb - 7/4/2002 12:56:22 AM

Happy "Fuck England" Day... from america

The Mote | Mote Archive

back to top