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General » Ron Paul
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sgtarky 4 months ago |
yeah , I do get that *some* of ron pauls supporters are bad..hell i think some them are leftist and only hear anti-war and smoke pot. they wouldnt like Pauls limited government. Wilkow is spot on about the constitution but he seems to be the in the crowd of meddling with other countries, then calls Ron Paul foreign policy bad. ITS CONSTITUTIONAL! if you feel we need to go to war with a country GET CONGRESS TO DECLARE WAR President Paul will SIGN IT! |
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nav68 4 months ago |
Unfortunately, Ron Paul is at heart more of an isolationist. And he is ant-Israel, no matter how he tries to disguise it. His idea of peace through trade does not comport with the world we live in. We have a total zud now in office who knows nothing about international relations, less than that about the Middle East, and is ready, willing and able to de-nut the military because of his ignorance. We don't need another version of that in the White House. |
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sgtarky 4 months ago |
I have no issue with being isolationist. I don't consider him anti-israel, I consider him anti-fed money to Israel. We restrain Israel as it is against their own best interest. I have 2 tours in Iraq and its possible I will be going to Afghanistan(looks like a funding issue right now) I say fugg'm let them plot all they want, SECURE OUR BORDERS! my cousin is an over the road trucker, you know those Mexican trucks arent piloted by mexicans, there's plenty of akmeds and moHAMheads driving too |
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nav68 4 months ago |
The problem with isolationism is that you lay the seeds for our next war. There IS no withdrawing into any kind of shell anymore. We ARE the world's policeman, like it or not. And we'd better accept the mantle, because power abhors a vacuum and there are any number of world class mutts just dying to fill that spot - radical Islamists, China, Russia, and other kind hearted such folk. |
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Itchy 4 months ago |
I'd rather live in an isolationist country and still have all my freedoms, than live in a secure country with no freedom. |
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crossofcrimson 4 months ago |
Ron Paul is not an isolationist. Ron Paul is not anti-Israel. The coupling of the mindset that reflexively repeats these very off-base MSM pretensions/assertions and the mindset that prescribes vast interventionism on behalf of the U.S. in foreign affairs without care or concern for the very real consequences (which we already live with every day) makes me truly weep for the Republican party. If neo-conservatives think they are going to retake the white house AND continue their course of flagrant dismissal of arguments through cheap cliches and empty rhetoric then they need to take inventory of the broader opposition to Obama & company to get their finger back on the pulse. We're not going to rally around another GWB. |
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nav68 4 months ago |
If ot looks, walks and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. The mindset that prescribes vast interventionism in foreign affairs without regard to the consequences assumes a lot about "neo-conservatives" that's unwarranted. We WILL be involved internationally because it's impossible not to be. It's a global world a global economy. How and where we intervene-key word is intervene-is a matter of how an administration sees the world. Trading for peace with people who are expanding and modernizing their military into a global force, and who have us at the top of their list of military/industrial intelligence targets, is not a recipe for peace. The glittering bauble of peace tends to blind one to the danger of the growing mailed fist. How many times do we have to learn that lesson? Neville Chamberlain rolled over in nthe late '30's. We got WWII. Clinton's eight years of pushing Israel to be "more mature" than the Palestinians by way of ceding more and more to the Palestinians, didn't work. It has never worked. The Obama administration is after the same thing, with the same failed idea that Clinton had. I don't see Ron Paul with a much different mind set than them on that subject. |
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crossofcrimson 3 months, 4 weeks ago |
"If ot looks, walks and quacks like a duck, it's a duck." - The problem is it doesn't look, walk, or quack like a duck. But apparently some of the pigs feeding at the same trough say it and it's magically so for the rest. "The mindset that prescribes vast interventionism in foreign affairs without regard to the consequences assumes a lot about "neo-conservatives" that's unwarranted." - It assumes only their actions and words, which are surely (particularly in retrospect of the last ten years) less warranted than the assumptions they've led to for onlookers. "Trading for peace with people who are expanding and modernizing their military into a global force, and who have us at the top of their list of military/industrial intelligence targets, is not a recipe for peace." Have you ever actually given thought to why people might view the last standing superpower, the largest imperial interventional force in the world today, as a threat to their well-being? Do you understand how our previous interventions (resultant from similarly brilliant mindsets) have contributed in placing us firmly in place we are now in many cases, particularly out engagements in the middle-east? Have you ever heard of the term "blowback"? Do you think it's just a term liberals made up to annoy you? Have you ever, just once, listened to the petition of any radicals who have had the United States in their sites? Is that worth doing at all? Or should we just continue what has become our massive radicalization project in the middle-east? There's a difference between defending your country (which may include keeping a robust military) and justifying mass amounts of pre-emptive military action in supposedly sovereign nations...killing hundreds of thousands of innocents along the way. If the only way you can envision reaching for peace involves putting a boot to the throat of the rest of the world then I think you need to really start rethinking your proposed policies in a serious manner before they pave the way to what you think you're preventing. "Neville Chamberlain rolled over in nthe late '30's" - Try going back in your history book a little farther. WWI forward will suffice. Think the national fervor in Germany came out of nowhere? Is it possible that post-war action/sanction in WWI had something to do with what unfolded over the next twenty years? Or are you going to let your jingoism blind you regarding WWII as well? " We got WWII. Clinton's eight years of pushing Israel to be "more mature" than the Palestinians by way of ceding more and more to the Palestinians, didn't work. It has never worked." - Here's an idea....Israel has enough firepower to demolish most of the middle-east. How about WE MIND OUR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS????? This is the United States of America, not the Co-Dependent States of Israel. Tying American blood and treasure fruitlessly to the grief of the conflicts of other nations...if only our forefathers would have warned us off from entering "tangling alliances"....If you want to protect Israel, either move there or start a fund. I'm sorry that Ron Paul doesn't want to push into Israeli affairs, or sabre-rattle ourselves into an impending war with Iran. After ten years of botched foreign policy, along with lost treasure and lives, it's amazing to hear people continue on their own little crusades, putting more Americans at risk not just now, but twenty, fifty, and one hundred years down the road.....simply because they're so attached to being right that they can't stop to listen to reason. I'm tired of it. I've absolutely had it. And, despite your reservations about Paul, there are a lot of people in the "conservative" camp who feel the same way. And, mark my words, this is what will cause the Republicans to lose the election if they don't decide whether they really want to be about individual rights and limited government or the usurpation of individual rights and massive government intervention on all fronts. |
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boneman 3 months, 4 weeks ago |
You know what they say about being one step ahead of the crowd versus 2 steps. Dr. Paul is still 2 steps or more ahead. As the number of declared Democrats and Repubs falls and the dominant political group are independents more people are waking up to the fact that repub and dems are mostly just two sides of the same big government coin. One more cycle of a big govt repub will in my opinion solidify a strong third party candidate for 2016 or 2020 |
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nav68 3 months, 4 weeks ago |
Yeah, we're guilty of causing all those armed buildups. China, Russia, radical Islam, etc. and their imperial ambitions and successes were all around long before we were. The general shape of the world was not created by us. We grew up in it. If anything, the ways of the world that we grew up in have informed us of the necessaries of staying alive in that world. Therefore, to blame us for Chins's massive military buildup - or Russia's, or for radical Islam's grotesque barbarity - is foolish and betrays a lack of historical knowledge. If we didn't exist, Russia and China and others would be doing what they're doing. My comment about intervention means that there is a lot of room between isolation and intervention without looking far dopwn the road. Intervention is, and always will be, necessary at times. To think otherwise is to deny reality, and to risk annihilation. |
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crossofcrimson 3 months, 4 weeks ago |
Who said that we're guilty of "causing all those armed buildups"? I'm saying we're guilty of doing lots of things that would caused radicalized elements of foreign countries to aim those weapons at us...particularly countries situated in the middle-east. As far as Russia and China go, quite frankly, I give a shit not what arms they may or may not have unless they start lobbing them in our direction. Are you worried about Russia or China attacking the United States? And if you are, have you taken your medication today? While I don't think it would be in our best interest to pick a fight with either of them, the reverse is even more painfully obvious. Our military expenditures outpace China's by roughly 6 to 1. It outpaces Russia's spending by roughly 12 to 1. And, regardless, they're both nuclear powers. So I'm not sure what type of proverbial genie you think "pre-emptive" military intervention upon China or Russia is going to that isn't, quite frankly, just begging for the "annihilation" you believe we're risking by simply not fucking with them in the first place. My main focus, regarding policy, remains the middle-east. If you're pushing for confrontations with Russia and China at this point then you lost your brain at some point during the Cold War. If you think we've had nothing to do with the shape of the world as it pertains to these countries, particularly following WWII, and even more particularly in the middle-east, then saying that your understanding of the 20th century is vacuous would be an understatement. Do you actually understand why there's a large radicalization against us in the middle-east? Do you know what spurred these various factions? Again, have you ever actually listened to any of their petitions? Have you ever read the transcripts of any of the Bin Laden videos in particular? How can you be a living, breathing (and hopefully thinking) human being and think that these things just developed in some vacuum completely separate from U.S. involvement? I would almost call it comical if it wasn't so dismally tragic in it's consequences. As far as there being a place between isolation and intervention, you're right. There is a place. It's called self-defense. You don't have to sit there and let someone who breaks into your house kill your wife and family. But you also can't go walking door to door with a gun and putting a bullet in the head of any neighbor you suspect might have the intention of breaking into your house. Overwhelming force, but only when necessary. And that's precisely what Paul supports. But to people who have no qualms about dead neighbors and familial vengeance I suppose that not shooting people who haven't broken into your home must look a lot like "isolationism." I'm not interested in apologetics from the continually war-drive factions of the Republican party anymore. |
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crossofcrimson 3 months, 4 weeks ago |
boneman - I don't disagree with you...maybe another election cycle will shake some of the group fragmentation out a bit more. It will be interesting to see what happens in either case. |
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nav68 3 months, 4 weeks ago |
The Middle east was pretty well shaped by Britain and France, and by Middle eastern regimes trying to enter the modern world. The radical Islamists have been around forever, long before we existed. They don't like the modern Middle East, they want the old one where they held sway. If we weren't around now, they'd be doing the same thing to whoever would be the perceived world leader. I don't know how you came up with the spending figures for China and Russia. China is engaged in a major military builkd up that is international in its intention. Claining that it's because of our foreign policy over the years may be right, if you consider that out policy has been to limit the expansion of large murderous police states that have global aspirations. Otherwise, your comment on this amounts to advocation of a foreign policy wherein we sit on our thumbs while the China's and Russia's of this world (or Nazis, or Fascists) proliferate. At which point we have to fight them in another long expensive war. And Russia is trying to become the world power it once was - again. Direct confrontation isn't likely. But influencing events in the Middle East to their interests and against ours and others. Military force is always necessary to back up their foreign policy. At the height of their power the Russians engaged in proxy wars in Africa and the Middle East aimed at Israel and us. I'm not pushing for a confrontation with China. China and Russia, in fact are by their actions pushing a military confrontation at a future point. I'm saying head them off, diplomatically and economically, before we get to armed conflict. |
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crossofcrimson 3 months, 4 weeks ago |
nav68 - Sometimes I wonder if you read what I actually write, as your respond to arguments (often) in contexts which I didn't make them. I'm (I think fairly obviously) not talking primarily about the geographical shaping of the middle-east (although pretty much washing ourselves of that too seems too cute by half even for you). I'm talking about our shaping and influence as it has pertained to regime structure and change throughout the Arab world - particularly after WWII. I'm sure there are radical Muslims, just as I'm sure there are radical Christians, who would like to smash the world into a burgeoning baptismal fire by their sword. What's seemed to elude your argument is the nature of it's scope, prominence, and direction - particularly over the last 50 years - as it pertains to radicals in the Arab world....enough to pull massive support from opposing factions and secularists alike. And yet you still drink this Kool-Aid of thinking that, apparently, in the heart of every Muslim lies and bridled draw towards world domination, and so you propose line after line of the very interventions which have sewn the majority of the hostility towards the United States to begin with. But you still don't get it, do you? Did you read the 911 commission report? Have you listened read the petitions of those who threaten? Because while it surely comes through the vehicle of religious inspiration and obligation (which mirrors the despicable nature of American jingoism in a way that is almost painfully ironic), it's more than clear that world domination is not their intended goal. What is clear, however, is that they wish great loss and pain upon many Western powers who have been listening to the policy prescriptions of people like you for far too long. Political assassinations, supplying arms to various political factions, overturning governments or heads thereof, occupying sovereign nations, facilitating coups, pressing economic sanctions...and generally leaving death and grief in our wake. They want to be left alone to handle their own political affairs. They are tired of our direct and indirect influence. It's as simple as that...and every one of them from Osama on down would have told you that. And while such "just" (from their point of view) retribution may play to their notions of divine providence, don't let your bigotry and religious misgivings blind you from the very obvious (and stated!) context of their actions. As for where I got the rough figures for China and Russia...the figures are widely available...publicly. Here's a concise and comprehensive overview, but there is plenty of literature on this elsewhere; (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures). As far as China or Russia becoming the next WWII Germany or Italy any time soon...First I'll say that maybe my conjecture about you losing your brain during the Cold War are not too far off at this point. This is not 1965. Secondly, when they start goose-stepping across a border (particularly ours) you go ahead and let me know and we'll talk about it. Until then I'm not sure exactly what interventionist policies you think are either required or acceptable with regards to these two nations. They're not openly hostile with us (again, this is not 1965), but I'm sure that could change in a hurry with people like you around eager to put boots to throats. What exactly do you think we're going to do here in January 2012? Bomb a tank-manufacturing facility in Russia out of nowhere? Start lighting up some some of those new Chinese carriers maybe? A proxy-war perhaps? Should we shower NK with some ICBMs? Maybe starve a bunch of innocent people in surrounding countries through economic sanctions? C'mon, let's hear it. Let's hear you talk your way into creating the very problems you foresee. So far the brilliance of your foreign policy prescriptions boils down to beating beating anyone with a growing military into submission, not because they've volleyed attacks at us...but because they MIGHT! I have to give it to you, it is a pretty solid plan. I couldn't imagine that leading somewhere bad at all. Perpetual political hegemony and military adventurism - goddamn it feels good to fly the old red, white, and blue! |
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nav68 3 months, 4 weeks ago |
AS for your assertions about radical Islam, the points you make about our evil machinations were, in fact, were being practiced by colonial powers well before we existed, and long before we became a world power after America was formed. The jihad against non-believers seems to be directed world wide, not totally against us. So I don't begin to buy into this "they just wanna be left alone" crap. If you believe that they just want to impose their version of religious obligation on the Muslim world, but don't intend to expand the Muslim world, you can either hit the history books in re powew, and how it's always been used, or lay back and take another toke off the 'ole dooby. As for intervention, you apparently can't envision anything except something like the Nazis rolling into Poland in 1939. It seems like you think that any foreign policy is inherently evil. All it consists of is beating on someone if we think thatn they're a possible threat. I didn't say that. It reflects poorly on your understanding of the interaction between nations over time, and says far more about you than it does me. Intervention has many forms. We're using economic sanction against Iran, and in company with other nations, to intervene in Iran's development of nuclear power for possible use in war. Apparently that's bad. We're starving Iranians. Of course that's not Iran's leader's fault. He's just developing nuclear power for peaceful purposes. Forget all that silliness about wiping out Israel and killing the unbelievers (we deserve it anyway, all that evil meddling in other's affairs). We need to wait until Iran develops a bomb, then uses it. THEN we can act, AFTER a shitload of people are dead. I'm not sure why you believe that China and Russia are only trying to spread their influence and power world wide, just to counter our evil influence. They've pretty much made themselves known over the decades in word and deed. If you think that's all about just us being evil, jingoistic, yaddayaddayadda, see the above comment about hitting your history books or the dooby. I now want to hear your brilliant idea of foreign policy. We aren't allowed to prepare for any hostilities based on what someone might do to us. We can't look down the road and take any preemptive, non-military, action because then we're starving people or otherwise meddling in their affairs (can't be interventionist/jingoistic). So, let's hear your forign policy, Neville. |
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crossofcrimson 3 months, 3 weeks ago |
I wasn't making a judgment on whether "our" "machinations" are/were evil or not. Our policy has been, and continues to be, the product of many people with varying outlooks and intentions. I'm sure plenty of people have nothing but the best intentions, even when they turn out to be wrong in the long run. I heavily supported our escalated presence in the middle-east until fairly recently. I'd like to think I was being foolish, not evil. But pointing out that the middle-east has been fucked with since forever does not wipe away how it's been fucked with by us quite a bit in the last half-century. You're right....they had quite a vendetta against the West to begin with. And our actions over the last fifty years have only escalated the situation. This "world-wide" jihad against non-believers is a farce...it's as simple as that. It's a conviction you've created ex ante to justify what would otherwise be a most tenuous position. They aren't sabre-rattling at Russia, or China, or Mexixo, or South Africa, or Australia, or Argentina....It's almost all indescriminately aimed at the United States and the Western European nations that have a deep history of imperialist tendencies...particularly over the last thousand years or so. That's not a coincidence. Again, have you every sat and read transcripts from documented video and statements from these people? Their complaints are almost always very pointed, especially regarding actions of the U.S. over the last several decades. So no, of course they don't "just to be left alone"....at this point....after decades of foreign policy that amounts to sticking our dick in a hornets' nest....thanks to people like you. We're already going to have to deal with the radicalization we've escalated in the last century. That will be difficult enough as it is (regardless of the endless wars you're apparently like to see). But making it a policy to just fuck the hornets' nest harder seems just slightly unwise...just slightly. As far as me not being able to envision anything outside of conventional warfare as intervention, apparently you must have had some kind of stroke while reading my response and missed where I addressed that (with pointed question no less). Firstly, economic intervention, while it is better than military intervention and yet flawed in it's own right, is not the focus of what we're discussing. We're talking about Paul''s foreign policy stance, specificly his stance on pre-emptive military intervention abroad. Ron Paul has never ruled out sanctions or other non-militaristic forms of diplomacy (if done for the right reasons). Again, this is the problem with people like you who really don't know anything about Paul or his policies. He's taken a strong stand against pre-emptive military intervention and the neocons labeled him an isolationist.....so now every warmonger under the sun things his policy amounts to putting up a giant wall around the United States and just ending foreign relations altogether apparently. I guess I shoulds start apologizing for their lack of curiosity regarding Paul's actual positions at this point. But, while we're on the subject of economic sanctions (outside of the most obvious reasons for which it's an affront to human liberty) it can certainly be a horribly useless (and even worse) tool for diplomacy depending on the nation in question. For a credible and open democracy (where the voting block has at least appreciable leverage over the system) economic sanctions can certainly sway voters to push that current administration out. But exactly what do you think it achieves in countries which don't have anything which resembles a well-oiled democracy? What did sanctions do for us with Iraq...outside of killing tens of thousands of innocent women and children? Do you think it hurt Saddam's regime in any appreciable way? Is it possible that policy prescriptions that directly lead to the starving of the common people in any given nation might radicalize some of those people at some point? Or are we just going to be dismissive of that possibility/probality...I do hear that all those people are all in for global hegemony...the starvation on our part would really just be one in a long line of coincidences...probably. That you fall back on the supposed ad hominem of comparing me to "Neville" is quite fitting....because as I pointed out in a previous post, your appreciation for history conveniently skips early portions in any given causal timeline. You see the clear dangers of a radicalized Islamic world aimed at us but you conveniently ignore the things we've done to make them that way. You excoriate what you believe to be the great appeasers of the lead-up to WWII, but you won't flip a few pages back in that same history book to figure out what led to the radicalization of Germany in the post-WWI period. Why? Because you'd be forced to confront a series of facts and events that proves pretty damning to your world-view. It's much easier for you to fall back on that world of your childhood, playing cops and robbers, or cowboys and indians, where the dichotomy between good and evil always seemed absolute and clear (which is ironic even for those analogies). All you have to do to justify massive aggression upon innocent people is to pretend that all of your supposed enemies are incarnations of absolute evil, and that you and your beloved country could have never been on the side of anything but good...that they never could have made the mistake of choosing bad policies (even with the best of intentions). Then you don't have to worry yourself with actually thinking about WHY someone wants to kill you...because, for you, it was just a matter of their evil nature. I know you think you can put the genie of nuclear technology back in the bottle....that maybe if you put your boot on the world's throat long enough you can just indefinitely keep them from discovering swoard and gun-powder. But that's never how it's worked. It may or not be in the next five years, but Iran, like most countries in the world, will eventually harness nuclear power. And you're going to have to learn to deal with it - just like you've had to live in a world of a nuclear Russia and a nuclear China. The question is whether you are going to push for policies that are going to engender radicalized use of such weapons in the future (whether from individual nation states or rogue groups) or if you'll have the decency to put your pride aside for two seconds and consider the idea that you're not engaging the problem in a constructive way. No one said we can't (or even shouldn't) prepare for hostilities (including Paul). No one said that we can't use any non-military "intervention" action either (including Paul...although, again, regarding the economic sanction of some countries, I'm sure starving tends of thousands of people for absolutely no gain would probably not be at the top of his list). But perpetual pre-emptive war, bombings, assasinations, and occupations are not only piss-poor answers to current problems (have you been awake the last ten years???), but they sew the seeds of future problems. And that's the issue. Maybe you don't get a shit about the people who are going to have to deal with the consequences of your actions down the road, but I do. And that doesn't require me (Neville) to lay out an elaborate foreign policy that pleases you. I don't have to be standing in front of a house-fire with a hose to tell you you're a dumbass for throwing buckets of gasoline on it in a futile attempt to put it out. You're not helping anyone. |
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nav68 3 months, 3 weeks ago |
I can't begin to respond to all of that. See my previous posts. They deal with all of this. I do note that you are still on the business of us engendering bad behaviour from other countries. Iran has been a bad actor ever since the mullahs took over there. Whatever you think of our policy in Iran during the Cold War, remember that we didn't engage in that by ourselves. Russia was seriously courting Iran as a wedge against us and our allies in the Middle east. England and others were very much our partners there. The mullahs were bad before they gained power, and they're worse than the Shah ever was since they took over. With nuclear power, you don't wait until the biggie goes off before you act. Iran is not someone who can be trusted with this. China and Russia aren't the direct threat that Iran will be. As for starving people through economic sanctions, I'm still waiting for your answer. Or is it that we just have to accept "things"? And if people get massacred because of that, oh well. Better than intervention. I'm also well aware of the problems with a near sighted foreign policy and the problems it causes down the road. But I'm also aware of the fruits of a foreign policy that fails deal with problems realistically. We pay a price for that, too, and it's usually a more horrendous price than incorrect intervention methods. |
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crossofcrimson 3 months, 3 weeks ago |
Once again, although I appreciate the continues responses, I can only assume that you did not thoroughly read my previous response as you still have not directly addressed not only the consequences of our current "short-sighted" actions but also how previous actions have played into previous calamities. Of course, once we've gotten ourselves into those conflicts, whatever their nature, it's easy to look at immediate and persuasive solutions - as you allude to at the end of your response. But, once again, you've declined to address how previous interventions, often from tangential excursions in the past, have managed to share a causal relationship with the the threats we see today. The proposed solutions, for all the convenience of their immediacy, share a promise of a gamble to pull the problems closer or push them further on the timeline. And for all the hypothetical success of such solutions with regards to immediacy, it's the blowback and entanglement lend a great deal of promise to the continuation of such conflicts. And again, as jusdging from your response, you've misread my diagnosis. I'm not claiming that such interventionist actions are the sole source of "bad behavior" for such groups and nations. Make no mistake, I make no apologies for the gross actions of any nation-state...that goes for Iran, China, Russia, or the United States itself. Ironically enough you've alluded to the issue I take with our own country as you try to rationalize our previous interventions by speaking of duty to our allies. We've invested ourselves deeply in political conflicts that are, quite frankly, none of this country's business. Don't get me wrong - feel free to spill your blood and treasure of your own volition if it means that much to you. But don't do it in the name of our country, further endangering the lives of innocent men, women, and children, and pretend that you've done something to keep them safe. You haven't. I'm almost embarrassed to have to say that to another American after 9-11. But, then again, there are still apparently people who believe that had nothing to do with the foreign policy of the United States at all. Why bother thinking or listening when you can rationalize all your reactions away with a generalization or two. Wonderful. I'm not asking you to be a pacifist. I'm asking you to recount the words of Thomas Jefferson and ask yourself these policy prescriptions really lead to a peaceful and prosperous America, or if they have and continue to lead to perpetual war and bloodshed. Regarding your duplicate inquiry on economic sanctions, I answered that (and did so on the likelihood that you would ask). But apparently you didn't read it. I would imagine, as much of an affront it is to the liberty of a large number of people (including Americans), that economic sanctions might work for countries with strong, reliable, democratic institutions. I may or may not prefer that to military action depending on the scope of the sanctions and the nature of the relationship between a state and its citizens. Both fall behind persuing direct diplomacy - the details of which, I would imagine, depend heavily on the country we're dealing with and what they have to bring to the table...I'm not really sure what it would mean to have "diplomatic" measures that are independent of diplomacy itself...so it doesn't make sense to unroll some unilateral plan unless we're talking hypothetically and about a specific country. But the point I made before (I'm reiterating because you apparently missed it) about economic sanctions is that if they are not held against a nation with strong democratic channels, then I think you're unlikely to accomplish much...unless you count the hundreds of thousands of deaths of innocent people as an accomplishment. Look at the economic sanctions we persued with Iraq (again...I brought this up). What did it accomplish? Why did it fail? Put a little bit of thought into this and it's not hard to imagine why someone would see economic sanctions as being unfruitful in dealing with certain regimes. Do I have conrete solutions to any of these problems? Of course not. And I don't have to in order to point out the folly of other proposed solutions. If military intervention engenders an escalation of arms proliferation and/or terrorism then we should use it only when directly threatened (the threshold for which you seem to find incredibly - dangerously - low). If economic sanctions rob millions of innocent Americans and foreigners of their most basic liberties and stands to starve tens of thousands and feeds future waves of terrorism we should use it very cautiously (again, another threshold's limits which you seem fairly flippant about given the consequences). As far as "accepting things", with regards to technological proliferation, I'm certainly not asking you to like it...but I think you're inferring my answer in a one-dimensional context. I'm really saying two things...and both I believe to tautologically true. So, in that way, their "rightness" has little to do with the decision we make. The first thing I'm saying is that technology - like almost all forms of information - is not regressive in nature (pending some kind of apocalyptic disaster). The genie doesn't go back in the bottle. It's never worked that way. So that presents us with two possibilities; maintaining complete military hegemony indefinitely, in hopes of an indefinite and assumingly perfect campaign to quash the dissemination of technological information/innovation amongst people and nations we see as a threat; or the people and nations we currently see as a threat will eventually invent or dismantle said technologies at some point. If you believe the first possibility to be even remotely probable, then I'd posit that it's you who's being "unrealistic" about our situation. That roundly covers the first part of "accepting it" as you put it. The second part, which is tangential to and ultimately strengthened by the first part, is in asking ourselves what a failed totalitarian program on our part (or even a successful one for that matter) means to us consequentially. It means at the very least, even assuming its unlikely success, a massive (and massively dangerous) central government which is, neccessarily, an enlarged abridgment of freedom on so-called U.S. citizens...we can just look at the massive theft through taxation required to support it if conservatives have completely absolved themselves of the non-willingness to "trade freedom for security" at this point. But, even if we ignore such an abridgment, where would we find ourselves if that hegemony proves imperfect at some point? You've spent your time so worried at the people who might aim a gun your way - so how do you think our worldwide program(s) of massive imposition will affect the number of people who are willing to point the proverbial gun your way should they get the chance? You dismiss people like me as pacifists and appeazers...but if your path promises a world of more death, more misery, and less freedom (the latter being the least of which we can expect for those you are attempting to "protect"), then who am I appeasing? And to the people who so flippantly bandy talk of war and pre-emptive retribution against cultures you find so willing ot radicalize in the name of god and country (sound familiar?), who is it that YOU are appeasing? Your unwillingness to to recognize the consequences of past transgressions only belies your inability to see the likely consequences of future ones. And the world is left a more dangerous place for it. |
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