okie wrote:You didn't answer my last question. Was Harry Truman wrong then?
About what? He did say a great many things during his term as President.
Winning doesn't matter as much as other things, I repeat. I'd still like to hear any of you Conservatives specifically address your support for bombing the **** out of innocent civilians as a method of victory in Iraq.
Cycloptichorn
Cycloptichorn wrote:okie wrote:You didn't answer my last question. Was Harry Truman wrong then?
About what? He did say a great many things during his term as President.
Winning doesn't matter as much as other things, I repeat. I'd still like to hear any of you Conservatives specifically address your support for bombing the **** out of innocent civilians as a method of victory in Iraq.
Cycloptichorn
When we know that whole villages and entire suburbs of major cities are harboring and supporting the insurgents,then those areas should be leveled.
This concerns the Internet. Gore and Clinton made it the best in the world, while Bush had dragged it down to the bottom.
^7/23/07: The French Connections
By PAUL KRUGMAN
There was a time when everyone thought that the Europeans and the
Japanese were better at business than we were. In the early 1990s
airport bookstores were full of volumes with samurai warriors on their
covers, promising to teach you the secrets of Japanese business success.
Lester Thurow's 1992 book, "Head to Head: The Coming Economic Battle
Among Japan, Europe and America," which spent more than six months on
the Times best-seller list, predicted that Europe would win.
Then it all changed, and American despondency turned into triumphalism.
Partly this was because the Clinton boom contrasted so sharply with
Europe's slow growth and Japan's decade-long slump. Above all, however,
our new confidence reflected the rise of the Internet. Jacques Chirac
complained that the Internet was an "Anglo-Saxon network," and he had a
point -- France, like most of Europe except Scandinavia, lagged far
behind the U.S. when it came to getting online.
What most Americans probably don't know is that over the last few years
the situation has totally reversed. As the Internet has evolved -- in
particular, as dial-up has given way to broadband connections using DSL,
cable and other high-speed links - it's the United States that has
fallen behind.
The numbers are startling. As recently as 2001, the percentage of the
population with high-speed access in Japan and Germany was only half
that in the United States. In France it was less than a quarter. By the
end of 2006, however, all three countries had more broadband subscribers
per 100 people than we did.
Even more striking is the fact that our "high speed" connections are
painfully slow by other countries' standards. According to the
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, French broadband
connections are, on average, more than three times as fast as ours.
Japanese connections are a dozen times faster. Oh, and access is much
cheaper in both countries than it is here.
As a result, we're lagging in new applications of the Internet that
depend on high speed. France leads the world in the number of
subscribers to Internet TV; the United States isn't even in the top 10.
What happened to America's Internet lead? Bad policy. Specifically, the
United States made the same mistake in Internet policy that California
made in energy policy: it forgot -- or was persuaded by special interests
to ignore -- the reality that sometimes you can't have effective market
competition without effective regulation.
You see, the world may look flat once you're in cyberspace -- but to get
there you need to go through a narrow passageway, down your phone line
or down your TV cable. And if the companies controlling these
passageways can behave like the robber barons of yore, levying whatever
tolls they like on those who pass by, commerce suffers.
America's Internet flourished in the dial-up era because federal
regulators didn't let that happen -- they forced local phone companies to
act as common carriers, allowing competing service providers to use
their lines. Clinton administration officials, including Al Gore and
Reed Hundt, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission,
tried to ensure that this open competition would continue -- but the
telecommunications giants sabotaged their efforts, while The Wall Street
Journal's editorial page ridiculed them as people with the minds of
French bureaucrats.
And when the Bush administration put Michael Powell in charge of the
F.C.C., the digital robber barons were basically set free to do whatever
they liked. As a result, there's little competition in U.S. broadband --
if you're lucky, you have a choice between the services offered by the
local cable monopoly and the local phone monopoly. The price is high and
the service is poor, but there's nowhere else to go.
Meanwhile, as a recent article in Business Week explains, the real
French bureaucrats used judicious regulation to promote competition. As
a result, French consumers get to choose from a variety of service
providers who offer reasonably priced Internet access that's much faster
than anything I can get, and comes with free voice calls, TV and Wi-Fi.
It's too early to say how much harm the broadband lag will do to the
U.S. economy as a whole. But it's interesting to learn that health care
isn't the only area in which the French, who can take a pragmatic
approach because they aren't prisoners of free-market ideology, simply
do things better.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Cycloptichorn wrote:okie wrote:You didn't answer my last question. Was Harry Truman wrong then?
About what? He did say a great many things during his term as President.
Winning doesn't matter as much as other things, I repeat. I'd still like to hear any of you Conservatives specifically address your support for bombing the **** out of innocent civilians as a method of victory in Iraq.
Cycloptichorn
Nice attempt to play dumb, cyclops, you know what I am talking about. It has nothing to do with what Truman said. It has to do with him dropping the bombs "to win." And when he did so, he seems to fit your classification of people that you call "genocidal butchers who flatten cities full of innocent people."
Answer the question. Was Truman wrong then? Should he instead of doing what he did to win, should he have pulled our troops back to our shores and simply quit trying to win. After all, we had lessened any threat of them attacking us again soon on our shores, and we had subdued or driven them out of most of the Pacific Islands that they had occupied. Why should Truman keep killing more innocent people when winning would not accomplish anything positive?
Truman delayed the end of the war until he could drop the atom bomb.
He could have had Japanese surrender before that.
He wanted to demonstrate to the Russians what the bomb could do.
And yes, innocent civilan lives were held to be subordinate to that aim, at that time.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of that, the situation in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan is in no way analagous to the situation in the Pacific in the 1940s.
mysteryman wrote:Cycloptichorn wrote:okie wrote:You didn't answer my last question. Was Harry Truman wrong then?
About what? He did say a great many things during his term as President.
Winning doesn't matter as much as other things, I repeat. I'd still like to hear any of you Conservatives specifically address your support for bombing the **** out of innocent civilians as a method of victory in Iraq.
Cycloptichorn
When we know that whole villages and entire suburbs of major cities are harboring and supporting the insurgents,then those areas should be leveled.
Good way to make Muslims hate you and an excellent way to make a whole lot more terrorist that want to kill Americans. With people like you in charge the War on Terror will be never ending.
Conservatism Itself
Quote:"We have to recognize that this was a defeat for Republicans, not for conservatives," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich summarized the 2006 Republican election rout. Republicans, George Will echoed, "were punished not for pursuing but for forgetting conservatism."
Conservatives now react to the debacle that is the Bush administration with two general strategies -- denial and disavowal. Conservatives are cutting and running from George W. Bush, blaming him for straying from the conservative gospel, and invoking, by contrast, an iconic Ronald Reagan as exemplar of that faith.
But the spin won't cover the reality. Over the first six years of the Bush administration, conservatives largely had their way. With Bush and Karl Rove pursuing a political strategy of feeding their base, Tom DeLay ramrodding the conservative majority in the Congress, and the corporate lobby enforcing discipline, movement conservatives set the course of the country -- with catastrophic results.
Each of the signature Bush follies -- Iraq, Katrina, Enron, privatization of Social Security, the Terri Schiavo case, trickle-down economics that didn't trickle -- can be traced directly to conservative ideas and the conservative think tanks and ideologues that championed them. In every case, conservatism failed, not simply because of corruption or incompetence, but because of original conception. Sensate conservatives have, in the words Irving Kristol once applied to liberals, "been mugged by reality." Actual existing conservatism fails because it gets the world wrong. And invoking Reagan offers not salvation but confirmation of that failure, for Reagan championed many of the same ideas and inflicted similar debacles on the nation.
The war in Iraq was driven by the neoconservatives who lobbied for it long before September 11 or the Bush presidency. Infatuated with an America free to act as the lone hyperpower, they celebrated th...
Interesting perspective and good thought for democrats to keep hammering home in order to get more people to vote the conservative out of office and more conservatives out of congress so that we can actually push forward on getting troops out of Iraq like the American people want without my favorite (not) home senator filibustering the American will.
McTag wrote:Truman delayed the end of the war until he could drop the atom bomb.
He could have had Japanese surrender before that.
He wanted to demonstrate to the Russians what the bomb could do.
And yes, innocent civilan lives were held to be subordinate to that aim, at that time.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of that, the situation in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan is in no way analagous to the situation in the Pacific in the 1940s.
It is true that we are fighting wars differently now, but the point that MM brings up is, should we be? Perhaps not being analagous is the flaw, maybe they could be analagous? Perhaps fighting not to win, with no surrender and no peace treaty is not working out very well?
okie wrote:McTag wrote:Truman delayed the end of the war until he could drop the atom bomb.
He could have had Japanese surrender before that.
He wanted to demonstrate to the Russians what the bomb could do.
And yes, innocent civilan lives were held to be subordinate to that aim, at that time.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of that, the situation in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan is in no way analagous to the situation in the Pacific in the 1940s.
It is true that we are fighting wars differently now, but the point that MM brings up is, should we be? Perhaps not being analagous is the flaw, maybe they could be analagous? Perhaps fighting not to win, with no surrender and no peace treaty is not working out very well?
The solution to this is to not engage in useless wars, not to become much more brutal.
Jeez
Cycloptichorn
Cyclops, you're back. Are you going to answer the Truman question?
okie wrote:Cyclops, you're back. Are you going to answer the Truman question?
Oh, sorry.
There are a couple of different angles to look at this from:
First, the Japanese declared war against the US and actively fought for a long time to keep us out. There is no corollary to Iraq, who did not attack us.
Second, we really didn't understand the long-term radioactive effects of dropping our bombs. We do today.
Third, I've seen reports that show casualties from attacking the mainland of Japan in an actual invasion would have resulted in up to twenty times the casualties amongst the Japanese populace. An argument could be made that dropping the bombs saved lives overall by forcing the Japanese to surrender.
But, in Iraq, who is going to surrender? The insurgents? Al Qaeda? There is no logical corollary to our current situation.
Cycloptichorn
okie wrote:Perhaps fighting not to win, with no surrender and no peace treaty is not working out very well?
Eh?
You're still talking about the "War on Terror", I suppose? So, uhm,
who exactly would surrender? A loose network of terrorists, that is really only linked by an ideology? And who exactly would sign a peace treaty? Osama bin Laden? And whose cities, exactly, would you want to bomb to achieve all of that?
I'm not sure where okie went to school, but his inability to see left from right, and top from bottom is a study in confusion - or ignorance.
I sincerely hope he's getting an education now on a2k, because he sure didn't get one before now.
Cycloptichorn wrote:okie wrote:Cyclops, you're back. Are you going to answer the Truman question?
Oh, sorry.
There are a couple of different angles to look at this from:
First, the Japanese declared war against the US and actively fought for a long time to keep us out. There is no corollary to Iraq, who did not attack us.
Second, we really didn't understand the long-term radioactive effects of dropping our bombs. We do today.
Third, I've seen reports that show casualties from attacking the mainland of Japan in an actual invasion would have resulted in up to twenty times the casualties amongst the Japanese populace. An argument could be made that dropping the bombs saved lives overall by forcing the Japanese to surrender.
But, in Iraq, who is going to surrender? The insurgents? Al Qaeda? There is no logical corollary to our current situation.
Cycloptichorn
I agree with that, although I think we knew or highly suspected the longterm damage. We simply accepted the cruel realities of war, and also figured we would save lives in the long run, especially ours.
I admit the corollary is more thorny, but I think we are wrong not to consider the possible corollary at all. Have you heard of the "Bush Doctrine?" That doctrine perhaps deserves more debate, as it was acceptable when proposed, but politics has fogged over the existence of this doctrine.
yeah, peace treaty with terrorists who don't wear uniforms, use mosques, children, and women as shields, and kills by IEDs and suicide bombings.
Yeah, makes a whole lot of sense - to okie only. Where does these people come from?
old europe wrote:okie wrote:Perhaps fighting not to win, with no surrender and no peace treaty is not working out very well?
Eh?
You're still talking about the "War on Terror", I suppose? So, uhm,
who exactly would surrender? A loose network of terrorists, that is really only linked by an ideology? And who exactly would sign a peace treaty? Osama bin Laden? And whose cities, exactly, would you want to bomb to achieve all of that?
As I answered to cyclops, the problem is more thorny, but I think we need to consider this aspect of the situation more, and attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff in terms of bringing the enemy out into the open, identifying him, and his supporting cast, so that we can more accurately pinpoint how we fight against him. After all, terrorists do require the support of political forces, countries, and areas in which they operate.
Nobody's been trying to identify all the bad guys all these years, because okie says so.
okie wrote:Cycloptichorn wrote:okie wrote:Cyclops, you're back. Are you going to answer the Truman question?
Oh, sorry.
There are a couple of different angles to look at this from:
First, the Japanese declared war against the US and actively fought for a long time to keep us out. There is no corollary to Iraq, who did not attack us.
Second, we really didn't understand the long-term radioactive effects of dropping our bombs. We do today.
Third, I've seen reports that show casualties from attacking the mainland of Japan in an actual invasion would have resulted in up to twenty times the casualties amongst the Japanese populace. An argument could be made that dropping the bombs saved lives overall by forcing the Japanese to surrender.
But, in Iraq, who is going to surrender? The insurgents? Al Qaeda? There is no logical corollary to our current situation.
Cycloptichorn
I agree with that, although I think we knew or highly suspected the longterm damage. We simply accepted the cruel realities of war, and also figured we would save lives in the long run, especially ours.
I admit the corollary is more thorny, but I think we are wrong not to consider the possible corollary at all. Have you heard of the "Bush Doctrine?" That doctrine perhaps deserves more debate, as it was acceptable when proposed, but politics has fogged over the existence of this doctrine.
Let me ask, what do you mean when you say 'Bush doctrine?' It seems to mean different things to different folks.
And, logically, what would we do as a corrollary to 'dropping the bomb?' Just start flattening Sunni neighborhoods? A large part of our problem is that there is no clear enemy to attack. There's no one area where we can just hit hard, and that's the end of the military problem there.
Cycloptichorn
okie wrote:old europe wrote:okie wrote:Perhaps fighting not to win, with no surrender and no peace treaty is not working out very well?
Eh?
You're still talking about the "War on Terror", I suppose? So, uhm,
who exactly would surrender? A loose network of terrorists, that is really only linked by an ideology? And who exactly would sign a peace treaty? Osama bin Laden? And whose cities, exactly, would you want to bomb to achieve all of that?
As I answered to cyclops, the problem is more thorny, but I think we need to consider this aspect of the situation more, and attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff in terms of bringing the enemy out into the open, identifying him, and his supporting cast, so that we can more accurately pinpoint how we fight against him. After all, terrorists do require the support of political forces, countries, and areas in which they operate.
They do?
Let's look at your theory, using the example of the 9/11 terrorists (we
are still talking about the "War on Terror", aren't we?)...
The terrorists had been operating in the United States of America, right? And I wouldn't say that they had support from a political force, the country or the area they were operating in, right?
So we seem to be faced with the problem that terrorists can operate very well without having any support from local political forces, countries, or areas in which they operate.
However, if your theory is wrong, I'll likely remain sceptical about your conclusions....
