Re: [Osx-nutters] President Bush Vows Attacks “Across the World”

[Chris Gehlker]

On Oct 6, 2006, at 6:45 AM, Chuck Bennett wrote:

> I don't think it's a win in any other sense than it may buy us some  
> time to find a better way to deal with them.   If they are indeed  
> pouring into Iraq then they aren't going anywhere else at the moment.
>
> Also, a defeat there will demoralize the hell out of them.   That  
> was the point of the letter to Zarqawi and others and mentioned in  
> the parts of the NIE that we can read.

Everyone  I know who has actually served in Iraq is telling me that  
the war is lost. Most of these folks  were actually pretty gung ho  
when the first went over there. This  does have a profound affect on  
my views.

> Isolated from the rest of the world?   I think a lot of the Iraq  
> war wounds are actually being healed now.    Germany is closer.    
> France was actually taking some sort of lead in the Iran Nuke  
> problem and the US was being supportive  (so far).   All in all,  
> it's not great but I don't think it's getting worse.    If we take  
> on Iran or something like that, then I'd agree that we would be  
> doing it alone..

But France and Germany are actually  staunch allies. A strained   
relationship  isn't a divorce.

> Well there was the whole gassing the kurds thing that we found a  
> bit off putting, but I understand what you are saying.  I guess one  
> approach could have been to create another 'Shah' kind of guy that  
> dominates the entire area.  Very Machiavellian.    IF you ignore  
> the millions of people that Saddam killed and buried in mass  
> graves, I guess that might have been workable.  It would have been  
> the cheapest way to get oil from Iraq, that's for sure.

Saddam was an evil bastard to his own people. Ataturk had people  
thrown into prisons where they were killed, beaten an raped because  
he didn't approve of their choice of hats. Peter the Great was a real  
shit-heel to his own people,  reducing the status of most of them to  
a condition of slavery. It seems that leaders who have wrested their  
countries from theocracy have universally been cruel despots.

I do think that to whatever extent the  invasion of  Iraq was  done  
for humanitarian reasons, it was misguided. I think that the neo-cons  
did actually believe that somehow if Saddam  was removed from power   
then modern secular democracy would bloom  because modern secular  
democracy is the natural state of man or some such Rousseauian  
claptrap. People with just as much humanity but better sense would  
not  have meddled.

--
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those  
who could not hear the music.
-Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900)