Archived material Access restricted Article
Rantburg

Today's Front Page   View All of Fri 04/22/2005 View Thu 04/21/2005 View Wed 04/20/2005 View Tue 04/19/2005 View Mon 04/18/2005 View Sun 04/17/2005 View Sat 04/16/2005
1
2005-04-22 Home Front: Politix
The normalization of war
Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.
Posted by tipper 2005-04-22 05:46|| || Front Page|| [5 views since 2007-05-07]  Top

#1 What a whiney wanker.
Posted by Craig 2005-04-22 7:03:06 AM||   2005-04-22 7:03:06 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 Right you are,Craig.This wennie say's that a small,weak,inefective military(like Europe's military)is a good thing,a large,robust,effective military is bad.A military that strictly adheres to concepts of Honor and Morals is bad.What an idiot!
Posted by raptor 2005-04-22 8:56:35 AM||   2005-04-22 8:56:35 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 Not to mention how expensive all the technological advances would be that we enjoy from the military-industial complex...research and development don't grow on tress, you know.
This guy needs to take a macroeconomics class.
Posted by beagletwo 2005-04-22 9:49:38 AM||   2005-04-22 9:49:38 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 THe writer is a putz.

"The truth is that there no longer exists any meaningful context within which Americans might consider the question, "How much is enough?" "

How much is enough? Well the last time we said "enough", several thousand Amricans died due to our limited responses to people who want to erase our nation. And we are paying the price of saying "enough" by having to rebuild our armed forces after letting them rot in half during the 1990's.

Somone needs to introduce this idiot writer to Barry Goldwater's writings.

"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."

The author of the article is simply a whiney "I dont liek the Amricans" type, who wants the US to be brought down - he hates the US because it is strong and free. Typical little small-minded collectivist.
Posted by OldSpook 2005-04-22 11:29:43 AM||   2005-04-22 11:29:43 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 Based on the comments I won't bother to read the article. However, if the writer dislikes America and Americans so much, shouldn't he be pleased that we are unnecessarily wasting national monies and manpower on armies and armaments we don't need, instead of putting it into making our country even stronger by the measurements he considers important? If he were as clever as he thinks he is, the tone of this article would be triumphalist instead of whiny: "Hah! See how we fooled G.W.! He's spending more money on his silly War on Terror and annoying the rest of the world while we surge ahead, growing stronger by making important commercial treaties with the countries that matter. Double hah!!"
Posted by  trailing wife 2005-04-22 12:13:43 PM||   2005-04-22 12:13:43 PM|| Front Page Top

#6 Oooooooooooooh! A professor at BU! Let's all pay attention...
Posted by tu3031 2005-04-22 12:28:38 PM||   2005-04-22 12:28:38 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 tw, you've nailed France's strategy. How do you say free rider en francais?
Posted by thibaud (aka lex) 2005-04-22 12:28:47 PM||   2005-04-22 12:28:47 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 How do you say free rider en francais?

sale francais
Posted by incarnate of lee atwater  2005-04-22 12:45:54 PM||   2005-04-22 12:45:54 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 thibaud, the only problem France has with their strategy is that they seem to have structured things so that their economy can't manage the part about surging ahead.

How do you say free rider en francais? I don't speak the language, but it may well be the same term as "Lose/lose." ;-) A pity, as the world would benefit from a France that is actually successful and happy at the things that really count -- as opposed to the ones Chiraq is working on.
Posted by  trailing wife 2005-04-22 12:46:30 PM||   2005-04-22 12:46:30 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 Oooooooooooooh! A professor at BU! Let's all pay attention...

Could be worse - could be Howard "The Original" Zinn.
Posted by Raj 2005-04-22 12:47:43 PM||   2005-04-22 12:47:43 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 The normalization of war

When your enemies are constantly trying to kill you, it would be unwise to not be ready for war.
Posted by Bomb-a-rama 2005-04-22 1:15:12 PM||   2005-04-22 1:15:12 PM|| Front Page Top

#12 Now, now: the writer is also a West Point grad and a Vietnam vet. I read the article. Interesting, and while I disagree with a fair bit of his thrust, he has provoked me to think about and examine why. The writer somehow thinks it's wrong and cowardly for Democrats to go along with the expansion of the military -- he practically sneers at them for voting to authorize the Iraq war and (for the most part) refusing to be the point men for the anti-war movement. Rather than cowardice or avarice, it demonstrates that there is indeed a sensible wing of the Democratic party, and once they get over their rabid anti-Bush nonsense, at least some Dems are going to be sensible about having and using a military.

The writer also decries the fact that we didn't spin down the military after the Cold War was over. He's wrong, we did down-size considerably, but not near as much as at the end of WWI (one of his examples). And for two simple reasons: 1) there were still substantial global security threats out there and 2) no one else around was going to pick up the slack in dealing with those threats. Sea lanes of control is just one example: if the US Navy were downsized to the point that we couldn't protect the sea lanes, who else was going to do it?

The writer also condemns our military mindsight to achieve "dominance": For the armed services, dominance constitutes a baseline or a point of departure from which to scale the heights of ever greater military capabilities. Indeed, the services have come to view outright supremacy as merely adequate and any hesitation in efforts to increase the margin of supremacy as evidence of falling behind.

Well of course our military is interested in dominance. Every military is. And our military has some first-hand experience of what it means not to have dominance (Bataan, Kasserine Pass, Pusan, etc). Not having dominance means a higher risk for your soldiers, and our generals rightly prize the lives of their soldiers. So of course they're interested in dominance in any situation they may be put into.

The real issue on that point, which the writer won't dare touch, is the political purpose of dominance -- to what uses will this military dominance be put? Ahhh, there's the rub, because he and LLL travellers assume that we're in it for oil, Cheney and Halliburton. Whereas what's been done with our military dominance since the end of the Cold War has almost always been in the direction of defending the weak and enlarging the democratic sphere. Is is wrong to use military dominance to bring democracy and personal liberty to parts of the world that need it? That's the real question, and the writer won't answer it -- he dare not answer it.
Posted by Steve White  2005-04-22 2:44:20 PM||   2005-04-22 2:44:20 PM|| Front Page Top

#13 The author should write about the POTEMKINIZATION OF WAR, as Osama and Radical Islam IMHO are PSEUDO-SPETNATZ, PC militarized proxies and diversions for the still-Communist centric Russia and China. The Failed/Angry Left in reality wants War, and wants America to PC create, and thus be PC blamed, for any GLOBAL EMPIRE - it will NOT accept America NOT waging war for Global Empire! What Americans have to understand is once AMerica is finis dev global empire/OWG for the self-alleged peace-loving Left, for all the blood spilt since 9-11, and any righteous indignation as a consequence of 9-11, AMERICA WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO RULE NOR GOVERN ITS OWN [SOCIALIST] EMPIRE. The USSR imploded because like any good societal delinquent, or medieval bandit-slaver-raider, it couldn't and wouldn't feed or take care of itself without external tribute,and or ransacking and looting the countryside- under Left-beloved dialectic theory and equalism, since the USSR imploded the USA must now implode, and the USA can implode by OVER-CONSUMPTION, OVER-SIZED, and OVER-COMPETENCY, as opposed to Commie under/non-consumption. under-/non-sized, and under or incompetentcy. IFF THE CLINTONS ANDTHEIR CABAL FAIL TO PC SUBORN THE USA TO OWG AND COMMIE WORLD ORDER, THE LEFT IS WILLING AND READY TO RESORT TO GLOBAL NUKE WAR - THESE ARE POWERCRATS. CONTROLCRATS, MAFIA-CRATS AND POLICRATS, etc, NOT and NEVER WERE DEMOCRATS - rest assured that like Bill Clinton, the USA's fav Hitlerist-for-Stalinism/Marxism, no matter the truth its YOUR fault they lied, deceived, stole, and enslaved you. Even iff they did admit to being a liar and crook, its your fault again and you have no right to label them as such, and have no right to resist them! The Lefties and their "LOOK AT ME" or "SOCIETY MUST BE PROTECTED FROM ME" psy complex are their own biggest [self]justification for REGULATION and SUPER/HYPER-REGULATION.
Posted by JosephMendiola  2005-04-22 9:47:48 PM|| [http://n/a]  2005-04-22 9:47:48 PM|| Front Page Top

#14 Hey, Joe! Tell us how you really feel!
Posted by Sobiesky 2005-04-22 10:07:50 PM||   2005-04-22 10:07:50 PM|| Front Page Top

#15 Wow, Joe! There are enough concepts in there to populate a book. Your posts are like Bob Dylan lyrics - one song would populate 5 or 6 regular tunes.

This just rocks:
"The Failed/Angry Left in reality wants War, and wants America to PC create, and thus be PC blamed, for any GLOBAL EMPIRE - it will NOT accept America NOT waging war for Global Empire!"

Wow - ties in handily to other observations, such as bad's rock-solid assertion that dead Americans is the fondest hope of the Moonbats.

Ya did it again, Joe, heh.
Posted by .com 2005-04-22 10:08:19 PM||   2005-04-22 10:08:19 PM|| Front Page Top

#16 it will NOT accept America NOT waging war for Global Empire! Joe's got a point. The Left's problem is the facts don't support their worldview, therefore there must be an underlying reality beneath the facts.
Posted by phil_b 2005-04-22 11:30:10 PM||   2005-04-22 11:30:10 PM|| Front Page Top

00:02 .com
23:51  trailing wife
23:47 Asedwich
23:46 Bomb-a-rama
23:36 Brett
23:32 phil_b
23:30 phil_b
23:27 its me
22:47 .com
22:43 Barbara Skolaut
22:40 Barbara Skolaut
22:36 Grunter
22:28 Atomic Conspiracy
22:08 Unagum Elmelet3616
22:08 .com
22:07 Sobiesky
21:47 JosephMendiola
21:39 Zhang Fei
21:38 3dc
21:34 whitecollar redneck
21:22 tu3031
21:19 Zpaz
21:17 mom
21:15 mom









Paypal:
Google
Search WWW Search rantburg.com