… the Chechens are terrorists, spud. To a Russian, that is like saying, “think of Al Qaeda challenging America.”
Elaborate. Defending Freedom? Stability?
Freedom, hah. We support more dictatorial regimes than democratic ones in the region.
Stability? To take a line from Three Kings, “Stablity? This is your stability, my man. pours oil down your throat using a CD to prop your mouth open”
Are you quite sure? I think only Al Qaida seriously wants US out of somewhere. All the rest is bitching. People always bitch about police. As soon as US seriously considers withdrawal from anywhere, mood changes very quickly. See Korea, Europe etc.
Were US to withdraw into the “fortress America”, I’d give you 3 years max until nuclear war between India and Pakistan with speedy China and Russia involvement; and that is if we forget about Israel for a moment. Re-militarization of Europe and Japan goes without saying.
:eek: :rolleyes:
Jeez, you really believe that shit, don’t you? You’re not whooshing us?
** New Iskander**: Were US to withdraw into the “fortress America”, I’d give you 3 years max until nuclear war between India and Pakistan with speedy China and Russia involvement; and that is if we forget about Israel for a moment. Re-militarization of Europe and Japan goes without saying.
Braingutton: Jeez, you really believe that shit, don’t you? You’re not whooshing us?
** Mister Milum** : You know what is scary, Brainglutton? You don’t believe all that shit, that is what is scary. I whoosh you not.
*(Please excuse me, Moderators, for using the vulgar word “shit”. But you see Braingutton is but a child of this time and I want to try to reach him by using the hip word “shit”) *
When you whoosh upon a star…
Honestly, I don’t quite know what “whooshing” is. I tell you what I know, though. Take US out and the world is going to get a whole lot worse real quick. I give you credit, at least you do have a coherent political position when proposing US complete withdrawal from ME. However, do you really believe that if we withdraw, oil-rich ME countries will reconsider their habits and improve their ways? I think most likely scenario is that the vacuum will be filled by oil-hungry huge nations, like India and China; also don’t forget Europeans and Japanese and many other smaller countries. Russia will be pulled in as the biggest oil-producing competitor. Do you think it would be an improvement? We know only too well how disastrously old countries manage their relations. US had nothing to do with bringing about WWI and WWII. But if we couldn’t stay out even in 1914, what will we do in the event of nuclear world war in 2014?
Please bear in mind that the U.S. military presence in South Asia has done nothing, and is doing nothing, to smooth relations between India and Pakistan. In fact, part of the problem is that Pakistan’s government is a military dictatorship, and we are supporting Musharraf. And why shouldn’t Europe re-militarize? The important thing is that they’ve politically evolved to a point where they will no longer fight each other, and they have no reason to wage wars of aggression on any non-European region.
We could have stayed out of the war in 1914, Iskander. In fact, in hindsight, that would have been the best decision.
As for the results of a “vacuum” if the U.S. should stop interfering abroad – as I recall, British imperialists used similar arguments to justify retaining their rule over their Asian and African colonies. And certainly things haven’t gone well in Africa since the Europeans pulled out – but who, today, would seriously defend the proposition that they should have stayed? It is better that the Africans have been allowed to make their own mistakes in their own way in the past 50 years, even if some of those mistakes were really horrible ones.
And what do you mean about “how disastrously old countries manage their relations”? Many of the European nations are older than the U.S. (some of them only emerged as nations in the 19th or 20th Century), but today they are managing their relations with each other in a civilized way that the rest of the world, including the U.S., should envy.
And what’s this about the “vacuum” being “filled” by “huge, oil-hungry nations”? If you mean that other Great Powers might emerge to rival the unilateral dominance of the U.S., yes, that would be an improvement. Better a multipolar world than a unipolar one, like we have now, or a bipolar one, like we had during the Cold War. But I really can’t see any scenario where China invades any Middle Eastern country. In fact, the Communist regime in China might be on its last legs anyway. See The Coming Collapse of China, by Gordon G. Chang (Random House, 2001) – you can read a good review at http://pages.prodigy.net/aesir/tccc.htm.
It was multipolar world that caused WWI and WWII.
What? What the hell is a multipolar world? How cute, how quaint, to sling around such meaningless terms as “multipolar worlds”
To be sure, that which instigated WWI and WWII was a bunch of decadent societies in conflict with advanced human societies that instinctively knew the way towards the pragmatic progess of all mankind.
Damn, Iskander, have you fallen for the false wit of the low-life left?
I don’t think it’s that clear-cut. Who was decadent in WWI? England and France were stalwarts of civilization. Germans were progressive and highly civilized. Russians were not quite civilized, but developing quickly. Austro-Hungary was somewhat stagnant. Serbian extremist shot Austrian prince (who was widely expected to improve the lot of Slavic subjects in Habsburg empire, which Slavic radicals couldn’t allow) and suddenly the whole hell broke loose.
WWII appears to offer a safe distinction between good and evil. Still, there are questions. Why was Mussolini made outcast for doing in Ethiopia the same thing British were doing all over the world? Why were Japanese driven insane by Western, and especially US, obstructionism? Were those the best policy decisions? Not to forget that some wise people predicted that Versaille treaty will guarantee another war all along .
Which is exactly what they were thinking when they referred back to WWI as “the war to end all wars.” Everyone thought they had finally moved past it.
They don’t need oil?
Keep in mind they do still have colonies and interests all over the world, and that by now we should know that one man’s peacekeeping intervention is another man’s “war of aggression.”
Yes, the constant fear of nuclear annihilation by Russians was so fun! Looking back at it, those schoolchildren learning to “duck and cover” were adorable!
Unless Gordon Chang is a blood relative of Hari Seldon’s, I’ll take China’s collapse as one possibility among others.
I don’t especially care for a unipolar world, either, and if another superpower wants to emerge that advocates economic and political freedom, that’s fine. I hope the EU can get their shit together and be that. My money’s on India.
But wishing for a polarized world of any old sort is hopelessly naive and ignorant of history, and seems to betray more of a dislike of the US than desire for peace and prosperity for the world in general.