🚀 go-pugleaf

Larry G wrote:

> "Joseph Crowe" <jcrowe@io.com> wrote in message
> news:Pine.LNX.4.44.0212181518110.944-100000@fnord.io.com...
> > On Wed, 18 Dec 2002, Larry G wrote:
> >   1. Rebuttal - had Wilson not gotten the U.S. involved in the first
> >      conflict (after outright lying about never sending our boys over
> >      there), then events leading to the rise of the Nazis may never have
> >      even occurred.  Even at that, do you believe that the U.S. government
> >      has a mandate, either constitutionally (no) or ethically (no) to
> >      correct all of the conflicts in the world?  If so, please explain
> >      how FDR and Stalin were such bossom buddies..after all, Stalin had
> >      many more people killed than did Hitler.
>
> The Nazis came into power because England and France demanded that
> Germany pay full reparations for WWI, putting a tremendous economic onus
> on the people, and building a hell of a lot of resentment and anger at the
> British
> and French in the first place.

  That's correct Larry.  The Treaty of Versailles and the resulting
hyperinflation
created an environment in Germany in which most of the middle class lost
everything.  There's a good treatment of this in The Commanding Heights
which ran earlier this year on KLRU.  But my contention was based on the
fact that had the U.S. not gotten involved in WWI, England and France
would not have been able to win.......in fact, this was the classic European
war which held NO interest to the U.S.  It was the very thing that
Washington warned against in his farewell speech.

> It is my understanding that Wilson helped
> broker
> the peace with Germany, but Britain and France over-ruled his plan as being
> too lenient and not sufficiently punitive.  FDR was much more astute than
> that
> moron Truman who followed him.  I get the impression that FDR appeased
> Stalin only to maintain the alliance long enough to beat the Third Reich.

    That's not what I understand.  I really have no respect for
anything that FDR did but his pro-socialist agenda is well
documented.  From what I can tell, FDR actually admired Stalin.

>
> Truman
> was the clown who gave away eastern europe and half of Germany because he
> pulled a George W. Bush, looked someone in the eye and thought he was a
> sincere and honest statesman.

   Yeah, the winners of WWII, learning nothing from the experience with
the ToV, pulled another boner.

> >   2. Rebuttal - the scope of the military is to defend the country,
> >      period.  Bush's current strategies should have him impeached, tried
> >      for treason and punished accordingly.  The current economic woes
> >      amount to the logical conclusion of government manipulation of the
> >      economy, now with the underlying strength of the economy per se. Of
> >      course, millions of citizens wanting some sort of free ride or
> >      another does not help.
>
> It is generally to our economic advantage to defend America on somebody
> else's soil.  If we wait to fight here at home, we have to absorb and
> replace
> all kinds of collateral damage.  The profiteering which goes on, war or
> shine,
> is both unfortunate and very corrupting.  But it isn't likely to go away any
> time soon.

   You should read more history, Larry.  Fighting in other peoples'
native lands is both overly expensive and longterm ineffective.

> >   3. Rebuttal - military and defense spending is a net loss to the
> >      economy.  If we had a free market, we would not have the problems
> >      we now see in the economy.  Military and other spending does not
> >      buy our economy anything.  It merely consumes a much higher
> >      percentage of private sector capital that cannot then be reinvested
> >      to really improve the economy.
>
> Military spending is one method certain people use to acquire and maintain
> wealth.  I'm not sure that I want a truly "free market" selling arms and
> weapons
> of mass destruction to the highest bidder.  And while soldiers and sailors
> do not produce any material of value, they are essentially infrastructure
> and
> spread money around in the economy where they would be otherwise
> unemployed and unproductive.

   Not necessarily so.  We could argue this til the cows come home but
basically, you will take the Keynsian approach and I will not.  I will bet
you that the U.S. economy will implode within a decade if the U.S. does
continue on its present course of bellicosity and policing the world.

> >    This is not.  If anything, the War of 1812 proved how difficult it is
> > for even a powerful nation to win a war overseas.  It ended up in
> > stalemate, which was to the advantage of the U.S.  All in all, England
> > never had a chance.
>
> Don't forget, that England was still busy paying off a huge debt after
> fighting Napolean for the better part of a decade.  To fully prosecute
> a war with the U.S., in which the prospects for meaningful gain were
> fairly dubious, would meant that it might wreck its own economy by not
> retiring that war-debt when they could.

   Which only reinforces my point, Larry.  And the economic load on
England at the time pales by comparison to that which we face in the
U.S. right now.  You do understand why the sun now has set on the
British empire, right?  You know that old saw about those who do not
learn from history repeating the same mistakes?  There's nothing special
about the U.S. that exempts us from the same fate as Greece, Macedonia,
Rome, Venice, Genoa, Spain and England.

> Major military powers tend to be behind the curve in development
> of tactics, strategies and preparation.  In WWI, allied commanders
> ordered their men to charge across open fields into the line of fire
> of machine guns.  A similar situation occured in the American Civil
> War, with troops being thrown foolishly against well armed, entrenched
> soldiers on the opposing side.  And in WWII, Hitler's generals had
> developed the blitzkreig as a way of overwhelming the soldiering of
> WWI.  There are countless many other such examples.

   Well, short of totally destroying entire countries, which will still
bankrupt the U.S. economy, how do you propose to dominate the
world when with every action, U.S. policy stokes the fires of hatred
among people who will give up literally everything to seek revenge.
U.S. policy created the beast and every single act just converts
more people into fanatics.  By the way, taking out Hussein has
nothing at all to do with the so-called WoT.  It does amount to a
great red herring to try to divert attention from the fact that the
WoT cannot be won and from the fact that U.S. dirty policies
created these monsters in the first place.  Now Bush, knowing
that these policies have failed in the past, wishes to try them
again.....sheesh, and we are becoming a police state in the
process.

> Pax Americana!  It will be a race between the empire builders and the
> corrupting interests to see which can bring America to her knees first.

   I think I might actually agree with you on this conclusion.  By the way,
there's an interesting perspective on what happens after the war and
whether oil has anything to do with it at:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north146.html

One of the quotes appears below:


     If the United States invades Iraq, it will win the war at
     some price.  This nation�s government will then be in charge
     of establishing control over the sale of oil.  It will not do this
     directly.  It will install a puppet regime.  The hatred of the
     United States in Iraq is sufficient so that the United States
     government will not be able to let democracy work without its
     intervention.

--
Joseph Crowe
  Heisenburg may have slept here.