georgeob1 wrote:Frankly I think you have far more anecdotal knowledge of both history and the way in which governments work than real understanding. That is not to belie your understanding particularly, in that your wealth of anecdotal detail is great. However you manage to get some fundamentals very wrong indeed.
Someone has used a quote of yours to the effect that those who have no argument resort to condescension. I suggest that you need to revisit that quote.
Quote:Our government has no obligation legal or moral to cure all the ills of the world.
Nor have i suggested that they do. This statement beggars the self-serving and mealy-mouth protestetations of the current administration about the virtue of freeing the Iraqi people. That claim to virtue was not advanced until it became apparent that little or no evidence would be forthcoming to prove the allegations of Iraqi WoMD resources and stockpiles, and an intentional and disingenuous campaign to imply in the minds our less critical fellow citizens that the Iraqis were involved in the September 11th attacks. Certainly we have no such obligation--and that includes in Iraq.
Quote:The order in which one takes out his enemies in a fight or a threatening situation is not necessarily in the rank order of the threats they impose. This is a basic principle of any brawl, and it applies to nations as well.
Don't try to teach your grandmother to suck eggs. I'll warrant i've been in as many brawls, if not more, than have you. Once again, your didactic tone recalls to me the quote of you disparaging the value of the arguments of those who resort to condescension.
Quote:North Korea is far better contained by its neighbors now than it was by the bribes paid during the Clinton years.
I suggest that you have an odd definition of contained. Japan could, just barely, defend itself against a conventional attack, were the North Koreans able to overcome their disadvantage in naval forces. Japan has no way to defend itself from nuclear attack by the North Koreans, who long have had the ability not simply to deploy intermediate range ballistic missiles, but to manufacture them in quantities sufficient for a brisk international trade in that commodity--in the 1980's, Iraq was one of their biggest customers. This was such common knowledge among casual students of military subjects, that i first read about in a war-gaming magazine. One trip to the local university library confirmed everything i had read.
South Korea, with substantial American aid, is able to defend itself. China makes no pretense of "containing" North Korea, and only grudgingly, at best, assents to putting any pressure on them to negotiate. A nuclear-armed North Korea with an unstable leadership remains the biggest threat to the stability of the western Pacific rim. You have simply stated from authority that they are "contained," and expect it to be swallowed whole by those who read here.
The contention that Hussein threatened the southwest Asian region with WoMD's was notional at best, and no compelling evidence is forthcoming. No one has any doubt about North Korea's possession of weapons of mass destruction,
and the requisite delivery systems. You seem to me to be making it up as you go along, in a failing attempt to support your thesis.
Quote:The relationship I characterized with the Iraqis persisted over many years in the Gulf. It was not merely the character of one meeting or (as was the case) several. I was not involved with the formation of our political policy, but I was directly involved with the execution of many aspects of it in both the Atlantic and the Pacific/Indian ocean regions for a long time.
The "aid" provided to Iraq during the '80s was just enough to keep them in the fight with the Iranians, no more. It was not very substantial, and it was given for the most realpolitik of reasons.
In view of the scale of casualties on both sides in the Persian war, i am rather curious as to your definition of substantial. However one defines that, we were happy to use them as proxies to smite the Persian Amalekites hip and thigh.
Quote:Are you trying to say the French sold all those weapons to Saddam and signed all those oil development contracts with him because of our "tacit encouragement"? Funny our "tacit encouragement" of them hasn't worked anywhere else. Moreover you have this detail dead wrong. France was the major western arms supplier to Iraq long before Reagan came on the scene.
I am saying, and ought to have made this clear, that in light of all the contentions flying around these fora about what the Europeans did and did not do to provide Iraq military aid, the position of the Reagan administration did nothing to discourage it, and in fact gave a distinct impression that the Americans were in no wise averse to such transactions. The Soviet Union was Iraq's major weapons supplier.
Quote:The policies that - in the face of general opposition from continental western Europeans - brought down the Soviet Empire without a war were hardly the stuff of "shoot-from-the-hip" policy making. That phase ended in 1982 when the feckless Jimmy Carter left the stage and Reagan took office.
Feckless means without faith--i would like to know in what particular you contend that Mr. Carter broke faith, and with whom and with regard to what. I have already had pages of exchange with you in which i ridicule your contention that Reagan brought down the Soviet empire. I don't intend to rehearse those arguments, but simply to remind you of them, and to assure you that i continue to ridicule, to laugh to scorn, the notion that the cowboy in White House in those days deserves any credit for that event.
Quote:I don't know just what constitutes "ratified by the American people" in your definition. However two elections as president, each by relatively large majorities, does the job in my view.
I wrote: "It was not a policy ratified by the American people, except perhaps by a particularly elastic stretch of the imagination which sought to ramify Reagan's garnering a majority of voter turn-outs twice into the express will of the people, which it certainly was not." The express will of the people is what the people have said they want--hence, the use of the word express. My statement also refers to voter turn-outs. I voted in those elections as well, you know. The voter turnouts in 1980 and 1984 were among the proportionately lowest in our nation's history. Therefore, to assert that Reagan's goofy foreign policy was ratified by the people, it would be necessary to contend that garnering a majority of a 40% voter turn-out (which is very close to the voter turn-out in 1980) can be taken to be the express will of the people. Which is nonsense. Even three-fourths of such a turn-out, something Reagan did not achieve in either election, would only represent 30% of the entire electorate.
Quote:"Secret meetings" between the Vice President and Energy executives are substantially no different than "secret meetings" between government officials ant the representatives of any interest group -- labor unions, women's rights groups, environmentalists, and so on. It happens all the time.
That something happens all the time is a meaningless statement--custom cannot be held to ratify acts either venal or criminal, as courts have long held to be the case. I am curious to know when it is that you assert government has met secretly with labor unions, women's rights groups and environmentalists to further the formation of national policies crucial to the domestic economy of every household in America. You are stretching farther and farther in an attempt to make your arguments.
Quote:The Energy Policy document that came our of Cheney's meetings and subsequent planning was almost verbatim reproduced in the recent reissue of the policy document which caused no stir at all. It was all a red herring stirred up by the Democrats to make political points. It was full of radical stuff like renewable fuel initiatives, the resumption of the construction of nuclear power plants in this country, more efficient distribution of natural gas and the licensing of LNG terminal construction to meet our needs, and measures to increase production of petroleum in our own reserves.
When a Federal court ordered the Vice President to turn over documents from that meeting--an order he has never complied with--it was precisely because an "energy policy document" which was thought fit for public consumption by the administration is no answer to a valid question of what went on in the meetings, why those meetings included energy industry executives, but no environmentalists and no members of the opposition party, and why the administration refused to release documents from those meetings--and they continue to stonewall to this day.
