Letters to the Editor
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QuickStrategy
an image Hillary wearing a one piece in some shade of purple.
Aacgk! You're just trying to avenge Pedinska, aren't you? Where's that lye ... must ... cleanse ... eyes ...
I admit that I did not learn any of that stuff in high school, and I was bored sh*tless in history (unlike later). Educators must hate the subject of history, since they always seem to give it to Coach to teach. (my school, anyway)
But it's funny, people will show great interest in the details of 'their' history as well as 'ours', eat them up if they're presented well, with humanity, personal relevance, and good storytelling. Adults, anyway.
So what's our problem?
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This is where I jump on my soapbox about the dereliction of duty at the Department of Education. And deliver a stultifying indictment of our incurious, shiftless youth.
Or not.
Truth be told, I figure (to quote Pete Townsend) the kids are alright. The parents, teachers, administrators and other bureaucrats deserve at least as much of the blame for this intellectual dessication regarding history and other cultures. In my experience, in anything approaching the right situation, the kids learn and thrive.
Last... Pedinska went there on her own! She can apply her own brain bleach ;-)
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Exactly, the running gun battles in Beruit are what they all fear showing up in their capital ...
When WE took out Saddam we disrupted the status quo and made Iran much more powerful regionally (Saddam's death payments to Palestnian sucide bombers were a pittance compared to Iran's support of Hizbollah in Lebanon .... And Hibollah by some accounts is now playing Hama's old role played against the palestinian authority -- true vanguard)
I think -- with the usual paradoxical nature of our bullying -- we are forcing Iran into the same noncooperative stance we force Hussein into ... by some measures we've made it IMPOSSIBLE for them to cooperate with us without losing face ..
If the Saudis don't have nuclear warheads, I'd be very surprised ... surely Pakistan or by proxy North Korea could have taken care of the "need" a decade or more ago, quietly on the QT and very hush-hush ...
It's a pandora's box, a nest of vipers ... and of course, we have our oil addiction to consider ...
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@David Larry D
I agree. I think access to oil, leases, pipeline routes, etc. are real geostrategic concerns and potential sweeteners to push a war, but I don't think they are the 'reason' for these wars.
Add to the reasons you gave: Petroleum markets appear to loathe uncertainty and volatility above all else. Their denizens lose billions on fluctuations, not least because they disrupt time lines on new high-risk exploration projects, lease negotiations, financing, the acqquisition of partners to assume risk in field initiation, access to refinery facilities, downstream marketing lags, etc. (I know, poor oil companies!)
I think these wars are about exercising power, fundamentally. And I think the people who push them, the entire apparatus of them in all their complex interconnections, really believe they are doing something important and righteous. That is a lot scarier, to me, than the idea that it's 'blood for oil'. But it also seems to fit.
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apologies but....
Pedinska is the vintage hillbilly girl. She'd use her own saliva spit to flatten a grade school boy friend's hair cowlick.
Who wanted a kiss?
I mean you'd flatten?
Flatten the caterpillar?
The fuzzy cattail on a lip.
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@Gator90
I'm somewhat happy to see people discussing the '67 war. But the causes of the war are still being debated and I was hoping that people would choose to re-examine the Liberty incident rather than the wider causes of the war.
Most of us here are Americans. We have Rowan, (Hi, Rowan), from Britain and a few loyal Canadian readers but as an American, if you were persuaded that Bamford's assertions were correct, how does that make you feel? Would it make you as angry as you may have felt after the U.S.S. Cole incident?
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And Gator
Bear in mind that the Liberty was totally unarmed. It was not a warship.
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Gator90: Your Disinformation
"Israel's decision to attack was preceded by the Egyptian dictator's expulsion of the UN peacekeeping force from the Sinai Desert. The Sinai had been de-militarized by the UN in order to prevent further warfare between Israel and Egypt, but Egypt chose unilaterally to expel the UN and re-militarize it.
--You just said it yourself. Israel attacked. Among other interesting facts to note. The sinai was demilitarized because Israel had attacked Egypt in the first place nearly a decade earlier.
"Eqypt also blockaded Israel's ports, an act of war under international law."
--Untrue. Egypt did not blockade Israel's ports. Egypt closed off the Straits of Tiran to Israeli traffic.
"To portray the 1967 war as Israeli aggression is, to put it mildly, misleading."
--In what Universe?
"Israel did not attack Jordan. The hostilities between Israel and Jordan, resulting in Israel's ill-starred conquest of the West Bank, were initiated by Jordan a couple days into the war."
Israel did in fact attack Jordan using a pretext that even the US declared laughable.
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@NotOrbitBoy
My comment re. trust was that MAD requires trust. Otherwise it doesn't work. You need to trust your foe to act rationally. Re-read your post, and don't be so quick to call me non-sensical.
I should be quicker. You have not understood the argument even slightly.
Whether or not Iran can be trusted, is, I grant you, a matter of debate. I know of no way to empirically measure their trustworthiness.
Do you think they want the House of Saud ruling Iran?
Now, do you think they will do anything to make that possibility more likely, like, say, nuclear war with Israel?
The only way to ignore such considerations is with the racist assumption that Arabs are a monolithic zombie people.
If you want to trust Iran with the keys to the worst weapon known to man,...I'd like to hear your candidate say that.
"My" candidate.
Your candidate advocates murdering god-knows-how-many women and children on the off-chance it'll dissuade the Iranians from pursuing a nuke.
In fact, any pre-emptive action (and threats to that effect) is only likely to further motivate Iran to acquire nukes. It's pretty hard to see how it wouldn't, unless you think America's ball-flexing is soooooo frightening that those cave-dwelling Arabs will clamor for their leaders to seek mercy from the omnipotent American demigods.
How many other nations should have nukes? All of them? That way everyone is safe because of MAD?
In other words, do you think the nuclear non-proliferation treaty should be stood on its head?
American policy RIGHT NOW treats the NPT as a joke, that's why Bush sold nuclear material and technology to India, who is hardly in the most stable nuclear situation.
If you really believe the Republicans care about proliferation, I have some yellowcake to sell you. If your so concerned about nuclear proliferation, where were you on the India deal? Where were any of you neocon Republicans?
Personally, I'd be happy if the USA unilaterally disarmed all our nuclear weapons and get out of the MAD game. Probably won't happen, since so many Americans like yourself can't even understand the basic premise of MAD, how can you understand the solution?