US a fading superpower?

Well Zip- all those rich guys only got rich by supplying the public with what the public want at the best rates surely? That's evolution. That's the struggle for existence.

That was a lot of reading El Maestro Senor Zippo assigned for us to read. I don't think I read it as well as I read Catcher In the Rye, but I did notice that the AIPAC guy claimed that Clinton was the most pro-Israel? The Bushes are the most pro-Israel; witness how the President did not say one word to limit Israel's charge into Southern Lebanon last summer, when they were fighting Hezbollah. Something doesn't jive here? It makes me wonder if AIPAC just likes collecting money from wealthy Jews, but they have political alliances that might not be the "best for Israel"?

It makes me wonder if AIPAC serves the Democratic party, and milks wealthy Jews in their behalf?

Did Zippo uncover the possibility that wealthy American Jews are being used? Is AIPAC's Israel concerns a cover for milking wealthy American Jews for the benefit of ????

Zippo did you spill the beans intentionally?

Would any of you please explain what the last several pages have to do with the diminishing power of the USA on the world scene?

It used to be that the industrial strength of the US was powerful enough that no one had to worry about it, but the free flow of capital and technology has sapped the strength of the US and improved that of other nations. Of course, 60 years ago when approximately one half of the world's GWP was centered in the USA and the rest of the world either in ruin, rubble or undeveloped that might have been a bad specious place to compare or use as a baseline (yet that is the way Americans still think).

The fact that the US has a stable legal system helps investors from being hoodwinked like the events that slowed the Seven Tigers economies of East Asia in the mid-late '90s, after all just ask anyone with Enron stock.

Likely Bretton Woods, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system

helped develop the "free-non-soviet" world economies to keep the seductions of Russian Soviet Communism at bay, but by doing so it well might have strengthened capitalistic democracies world-wide, yet eventually the ability for the free flow of capital would undermine even the most efficient economy by forcing it to compete with cheaper labor and resources, especially one like the USA's that invested in a defense program so large that now it matches that of the world's other top five national economies combined.

Yet if one looks at history, empires fall from the introduction of new military technologies, just ask any 15th century BCE Egyptian whose bronze sword was bent on the blade of a Hittite iron sword.

The USA will dominate the world for only a single reason even if its economy is suspect simply because it has a tremendous advantage in military weapons and has shown itself ready to use them.

However like Lenin said, the Western capitalists will sell others the rope with which to hang them. Note that the process of profit maximizing of western capitalism has lead to the fact of trade imbalances with the major trading partners of the USA , to the tune of approximately $2 trillion dollars being held by the Communist government of China. So to me those American capitalists who invested overseas in China and those retailers, whose method was to squeeze out the last drop of blood from the turnip of American workers caused this, and I believe that these people are certainly NOT patriots but traitors who sold out the USA for a few dollars.

The saving grace of US dominance likely will be a nationalistic set of social and economical programs akin to the National Recovery Act of the 1930's, but that will arise only from the ashes of severe economic shock and population relocation that will make the Great Depression look like a bird walk, with the serious problem being that such ideas can turn into a unique brand of American fascism.

The incident is important because it demonstrates that for whatever rhetoric the Israelis peddle, the United States has never (and likely never will) put their own troops and military assets on the line for Israel. And, despite the rhetoric of anti-semitic conspiracy nuts

Setanta wrote:

The incident is important because it demonstrates that for whatever rhetoric the Israelis peddle, the United States has never (and likely never will) put their own troops and military assets on the line for Israel. And, despite the rhetoric of anti-semitic conspiracy nuts

Educated people such as walt and mearsheimer disagree with you. I'd rather believe their 'facts' more then some unknown username behind a PC.

( Iraq: A War For Israel )

Although you do sound very convincing...I also regret the Jewish holocaust and feel guilty.

Zippo wrote:

Setanta wrote:

The incident is important because it demonstrates that for whatever rhetoric the Israelis peddle, the United States has never (and likely never will) put their own troops and military assets on the line for Israel. And, despite the rhetoric of anti-semitic conspiracy nuts

Educated people such as walt and mearsheimer disagree with you. I'd rather believe their 'facts' more then some unknown username behind a PC.

( Iraq: A War For Israel )

Although you do sound very convincing...I also regret the Jewish holocaust and feel guilty.

Why should you feel guilty over the Holocaust in WWII (all 12 million people)???? I'm assuming you don't believe in reincarnation and were not alive during WWII.

Today, AIPAC is widely regarded as the most powerful foreign-policy lobby in Washington DC and by other accounts, the most powerful lobby period, except for perhaps the Association for the Advancement of Retired Persons (AARP).

Zippo wrote:

Today, AIPAC is widely regarded as the most powerful foreign-policy lobby in Washington DC and by other accounts, the most powerful lobby period, except for perhaps the Association for the Advancement of Retired Persons (AARP).

A-HA! So it's all those old retirees that are bringing us down! I KNEW they was up to somethin'! Thanks for showing me the light, Zippo!

kickycan wrote:

Zippo wrote:

Today, AIPAC is widely regarded as the most powerful foreign-policy lobby in Washington DC and by other accounts, the most powerful lobby period, except for perhaps the Association for the Advancement of Retired Persons (AARP).

A-HA! So it's all those old retirees that are bringing us down! I KNEW they was up to somethin'! Thanks for showing me the light, Zippo!

If I add AIPAC to AARP, I feel like I have a bunch of lousy "A's" in Scrabble.

But aside from that, the next President will not be taking us out of the Middle East. It's not a Republican versus Democratic agenda. And AIPAC is not keeping the U.S. in the Middle East. It's the Middle East that's keeping us in the Middle East. Like some grades in school always need supervision.

Shouldn't we stop pretending that the Middle East is just like western Europe.

But the tenor of your post is that they want to be and that they are going to break some windows unless we allow them into the fold and their plan was to get dollars circulating in Iraq and to get us looking out for them and getting rid of the silly sods who had been pretending to do that heretofore.

And Mr Bush understands.

Zippy, neither you, nor your fellow Israel obsessive weirdos, have ... provided evidence ... that support for Israel will cause the United States to "fade" as a superpower.

Setanta wrote:

Zippy, neither you, nor your fellow Israel obsessive weirdos, have ... provided evidence ... that support for Israel will cause the United States to "fade" as a superpower.

Just a thought; is it possible to provide evidence for something that hasn't come to pass?