In the case of Iraq, for example, the strategy is something along the lines of "We can kick their asses pretty easy, and we won't get nuked in the process, so let's go do them first. We'll talk about really dangerous regeimes later, m'kay..."

Then, the hope is that places like North Korea will see us over there in Iraq doing a great job of kicking ass and setting things right, and subsequently give up their Evil Axis Membership Cards and start singing Kumbaya so we won't come do the same to them.

I know it sounds dicey, but it *is* strategy. Time will tell if it was *good* strategy.

In the case of Iraq, for example, the strategy is something along the lines of "We can kick their asses pretty easy, and we won't get nuked in the process, so let's go do them first. We'll talk about really dangerous regeimes later, m'kay..."

Then, the hope is that places like North Korea will see us over there in Iraq doing a great job of kicking ass and setting things right, and subsequently give up their Evil Axis Membership Cards and start singing Kumbaya so we won't come do the same to them. In the meantime, the strategy would be a lot more effective if all the damn peaceniks and hippies would shut the hell up and get with the program. They're all making us look weak and ineffective. You remember what happened the last time, don't you? We lost the war, and Vietnam became a no-good Commie country. All because a bunch of damn dirty dopehead, free-love peacenik hippies messed with the strategy!

I know this all sounds dicey, but it *is* a form of strategy. Time will tell if it was *good* strategy.

I would also like everyone to take note how the fall of S. Vietnam ushered in world wide communism, along with lots of stuff made by the communist Chinese pretending to be capitalists, now available at your local Walmart. :eyebrow:

Well, at least she has something to aspire to. I'm afraid you have reached your evolutionary plateau and will remain homo posterior.

This is the funny bit here. While you fantasize about blowing the budget and getting American kids killed in your favorite hell-hole, you crack down on another stupid idea that comes from the same kind of world redemptive Wilsonian thinking you are guilty of.

BS, Rich, as I expect to tell you very frequently. Your sneers, my dear, readily patronizable fellow, are invalid because your model is wrong, and an attempt -- not for the first time -- to bolster your ego by assailing mine is the mark of an immature mind. You suffer overmuch from fatuity, though I don't think you're actually stupid, unlike a few I could name -- just a bit ignorant and maybe prejudiced by your environment, to borrow a phrase from Heinlein.

"Fantasize about blowing the budget"? That is what I'm cautioning against. And you actually missed that?

Hellhole? Is it not a reliable bet that hells on earth are made in places with totalitarian regimes? -- places that are not libertarian enough and thus poor and oppressed?

Wilsonian? There are two fundamental choices here: either passively accept the badness of the world and do nothing about the kind of people who displease themselves so much with us as to fly our airplanes into our buildings -- an action widely understood to be unjust -- or get proactive, excise these tumors from the body politic, global and local (the only real difference between the two is how long you have to journey to get there) and get a better world thereby. Personally, I've had enough of being the longsuffering target of every planarian fucker with a bomb and a grudge, and of putting up with the world's badness, and I'm of the view it needs a pretty dramatic reduction.

I am at bottom an optimist, Griff. You are fundamentally a pessimist, and you want everyone who claims libertarian beliefs to be the same kind of passivist pessimist you are. You cannot get this sick miserable thing you want. I advise you, for the sake of your own good mental hygiene, to stop wanting it.

You cannot, Griff, now or ever, persuade me of the rightness of your pessimist view. Friendly advice: the next time you get the urge to convert me to your pessimism, and I've read enough of your posts to expect there will be a next time, remember that that is where you get off, where you fuck off, where you stay fucked off, and really far off. About eleven parsecs will do, I suppose. (I've been reading Barnett's Celestial Handbook [3 vols] and am likely to sprinkle astronomical references through my posts for a while yet.) I'm not going to hear it; stop uttering it and say something constructive instead.

Your view's misplaced, Mari. It ushered in two and a half million unnecessary deaths and a dozen years of systemic poverty. Stupid waste on either count, and something the practice of Communism causes. Vietnam only began to come out of its induced poverty and stagnated economy when it abandoned the general practice of Communism. This abandonment will be complete when Hanoi no longer calls for it as a sort of state religion. Laos, another fallen domino, AFAIK, is still bogged down in Communism. Heroin's probably their only growth sector.

Time may cure people of the malady of collectivist totalitarianism, since in an evolutionary paradigm, Communists survive less well, have shorter average lifespans, and make poorer use of earthly resources and in the end get out-bred by the capitalists with their better resource use and longer lifespans -- but eliminating the regimes that enforce Communism would get the job done far quicker. And how much of the world's misery will be forestalled?

I see you remain unable to get the point. Pitiful. Ever heard of a rhetorical question? (I know what the answer to that one is.)

And I do not encourage the spread of Ted Rall's kind of "thinking." He's a very nasty piece of work. Try a Google search, you lazy hemipygian ass. Your want of initiative and intellectual curiosity is truly spectacular.

I missed that in your unnuanced support for the Bush regime and its war of choice.

You prescribe the disease to treat it.

I remain a pessimist about government action (force) and an optimist about human action.

An optimistic thought: Someday America's government will limit itself to the borders of the Constitution and will no longer be the tool of every half-baked utopian.

I am no fan of death and poverty, but the reasons given for the war at the time was to prevent the fall of all of Asia to Communism, NOT a humanitarian concern for the people of S. Vietnam. Yes, a couple of "domino's" fell, but it was not the colossal collapse that great Republican minds were predicting at the time.

BTW, your habit of making multiple posts all at once is confusing. Its easy to address several issues in one post.

See?

Sorry, I still don't get the point about the Dali Lama.

Ooooh, and I love Ted Rall! Thank you! I finally looked him up!

Two and a half million unnecessary deaths seem sufficiently colossal. And that's for Vietnam alone. Add two-plus million unnecessarily dead Khmers to the butcher's bill for Cambodia... Laos... we should have made taking North Vietnam our objective, along with tying Red China's dick in a knot and telling them to like it. Limited wars are losing wars...

And Ted Rall is as much a walking embodiment of wrongness as Michael Crook. Emetic, the both of them.

Well, I'm not going to refight the Vietnam War with you, UG. I won't argue that the number of deaths in that part of the world, Cambodia's killing fields, included, has not been a great human tragedy. However, Pol Pot might never have siezed power but for the US invasion which destabilized the country.

Rall is a walking embodiment of violent opinion. When he's right he's devastating, and when he's wrong he's disgusting.

It's my war too, Griff. I also consider that an array of choices came to an end on 9/11, or earlier. Finally, after decades of ineffectuality, we have a President who does what's supposed to be done. It is also fortunate that he is the second such President in recent times.

Democratization is a disease? Progression towards libertarian social orders is a disease? Removing the evil of totalitarianism is a disease?

Griff, I'm willing myself not to explode. I want action taken; you don't, and will give singularly bad and unwise counsel to achieve that -- passivism. End of story.

Nice line of Libertarian rabblerousing -- but it doesn't duly credit the indisputable fact that government is a human thing also, and staffed by humans moreover. Our foes oppress us with what? -- righteous indignation, or force? Countervailing force is not wrong.