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Re: wake and smell the fucking coffee
----- Original Message -----
From: Paul Christian Glenn <trance at radiks_net>
To: Kyle Howe <howe.38 at osu_edu>
Cc: OTR List <Over-The-Rhine at actwin_com>
Sent: Friday, April 16, 1999 11:00 AM
Subject: Re: wake and smell the fucking coffee
>Or maybe it's that you're wrong, or maybe it's that there *is* no logical
>conclusion, or maybe it's that space aliens have taken over the minds of
all the
>OtR listies... ;)
for most cases, there is a logical conclusion that can be reached, but for
one who is incapable of it, i would guess not.
>>Isolationism is
>>never the answer, if history is anything to go by.
>Really? Care to back that up with some actual history, rather than simply
>alluding to ambiguity? An excellent case can be (and has been) made for
>isolationism, y'know.
ok, time to put away the crack pipe, and slowly step away. you accuse me of
debating in amiguity? what excellent case can be made for isolaitionism? i
haven't heard of one yet. actualy history? how about this. right before
both WWs, sentiments of isolationism were running high in this country. we
didn't want any part of the so called european wars, but what happened?
both times, we end up fighting the war anyway. in the case of WWI, we
started to empathize with the allies, and the we used a little convienet
incident with the Luthtenia and riding a wave of idealism cleverly driven by
Woodrow Wilson (a war to end all wars) and jumped in on the side of the
allies. in case of WWII, an even better case can be made against
isolationism. Europe was in a economic depression which contributed greatly
to the rise to power by the Nazis in Germany and the Fasicists in Italy.
People are much more susceptible to extreme idealogies when they are
desparate. The european depression which in turn dragged the US economy
into a depression (global economy ring a bell? now, that's more true than
ever) but at the time, the sentiment was we should fix our problems before
concerning with someone else's (gee, that sounds awfully familiar, who said
that?) but it was not to be. need i remind you what happened on the day of
infamy? Granted, i think that we (FDR's administration) delibrately pushed
Japan into a corner from which their national psyche would allow no other
option than coming out swings. so in a way, we did picked the fight to
enter the war, but the end result was we were fighting the war despite the
fact that the people wanted no part of it to start out.
>>Why do people think,
>>just because its happening somewhere else, that we should not concern
>>ourselves with it?
>Because it has nothing to do with us, and we've got our own problems to
worry
>about. (Not saying that I agree with that, necessarily, but you asked why)
there it is, the "we've got to fix our own problems..." line, i knew i heard
it somewhere
>Who's condoning anything? Failure to intervene would have no reflection on
>whether or not we *condoned* what was going on. Good grief.
so i guess that we don't condone it, but we shouldn't do anything about it
either other than flap our collective lipps and hopefully can shame the
combatants to the point where they see the error of their ways? excellent
idea, why didn't i think of that.
and if you see someone gets mugged on the street corner, you'd say" stop or
i will say stop again" right?
>>And if we can do something
>>about it, we should.
>Why? If you're going to make that assertion, you'll have to do better
than...
i see you've missed my point entirely, do you have a short term memory
problem? because i just stated why we should do something if we could...
>>it is the morally RIGHT thing to do,
>According to whom? According to you? Okay. What about everyone else?
What
>about all the people who feel that it is the morally WRONG thing to do?
Does your
>opinion outweigh theirs? If so, why?
anyone who thinks its ok to ethnic cleanse another group, and drive people
away from their homes into another country as refugees, please raise your
hand.
let's see, excellent! mr. milosevic and mr. hussein, you can put your hands
down now
>Yeah, yeah. That's a *great* reason to go to war. To prove a goddamn
*point* to
>those pesky cynics!
that's merely an added perk, if you will.
>Now, here you're starting to make a little more sense. The idea that
Milosevic
>(sp?) will spread his wickedness is and should be, IMO, the primary concern
of
>NATO. The troubling question is, of course, what evidence do we have that
he'll
>do that? And at what point do we have the right to interfere? What if
France
>decided that they couldn't just sit by and let Clinton be acquitted in his
Senate
>trial, so they decided to bomb us? How would you feel? Do they have a
right to
>tell us how to run our own country? What if they feel that our decision
was an
>atrocity? Does that give them the right to interfere? You see, the
questions are
>a tad more complicated than you make them out to be.
since this is an incredibly absurd assertion, here is my absurd answer. the
french wouldn't care if their or our president is doing with his assistant
on the side, only the puritanical attitude of this country towards sex would
allow something like that blown out of proportion. And if Clinton was
killing say all the cajuns in Lousiana and driving them into Mexico, then
i'd say you might have a point. but as things stand now, you are comparing
killing hundreds if not more people to Clinton getting his dick sucked. i
for one, fail to see any comparison.
>>And for those misguided people
>>out there, arrogance is not the cause that we are over there. with the
down
>>fall of the USSR, we are the only super power left in the world, whether
we
>>like it or not.
>Actually, with the downfall of the USSR, "superpower" status (in any
meaningful
>sense) is really up for grabs to the highest bidder. What makes one a
>"superpower" anyway? Isn't it, in the end, really just the ability to nuke
other
>countries?
not quite, at this point, to use your terms, we are the highest bidder. and
to be a superpower is not merely the possession of nukes. Russia, Great
Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, and Israel all possess nukes, but
we usually do not consider them to be super powers. we quality becasue our
military at any one time can probably take on any of three other above
mentioned countries and still come out on top. our navy is bigger than any
three countries' combined. and can put theirs on the bottome of the sea
within a week. and no other country operate nuclear powered full size
aircraft carriers, which is significant because one can project power with a
carrier where as one cannot with subs and frigates. if you want to know
more detailed mechanics of power projection, i would have to explain later.
but i doubt you would care.
>>For us to
>>do nothing is like us announcing to the world that we no longer cared
what's
>>going on
>That's ludicrous. Failure to interfere could mean any number of things.
such as we don't feel like it, we are having a bad hair day?
>>Evil must be opposed, and all it takes for evil to flourish is for good
>>people to do nothing, and ethnic cleansing fits my definition of an evil
>>deed.
I>t doesn't fit everyone's definition, though, does it?
ok, once again anyone who thinks its ok to do so, please speak up now. last
chance..
>>When does it becomes our
>>problem? When two countries are involved, maybe three? Or is it going to
>>take a whole continent going up in flames...?
>Oh, I don't know. When did Vietnam become our problem? We really nipped
that one
>in the bud, didn't we? And thank goodness...
Vietnam was a case where we had good motives whether speaking from a
political point of view or idealistic point of view. and yes, we definitely
should have been there. our failure to nip it in the bud was largely due to
the political leadership's insistence on micromange the war instead of let
the military commanders do their jobs. when the president was approving
daily frag orders from the oval office instead of the commanders on site, no
wonder the war went to hell, but we did contain the spread of communism on
the SE asia sector.
>The right thing? You honestly think that's what this is all about? Don't
make me
>start talking about our political leadership and it's cozy relationship
with
>fucking *China*. Our "leadership" doesn't give a rat's tail about doing
the
>"right thing", my friend. It's all about politics.
once again, politics coincide with the right thing this time, and i am not
complaining. the end justifies the means and the motives.
and to achieve a good relationship with china is a good idea because for one
thing, china has over 1/5 of the world's population, and that's one enemy
you don't want to have. secondly, its a hell of an underdeveloped market
for US companies to exploit. meaning, my slow witted friend, is more jobs,
and more money for china and the US. thirdly, i lived there for 9 years,
and i can assure you there are no ethnic cleansing and the human rights
problem is not nearly as bad as some would have you believe. i did not once
have my rights violated by the govnerment while i was living there. so
while china does have some room for improvement, evil it is not, but thank
you for referring to it as "fucking china" though.
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