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2006-03-13 Home Front: WoT

Spengler: How I learned to stop worrying and love chaos

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Posted by tipper 2006-03-13 11:36|| || Front Page|| [5 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Spengler: A hundred years ago just 3,000 British officers controlled the whole of the Indian subcontinent, but most of them commanded local troops in their own language.

The British *created* India. Before the Raj, there was no India. Sure - there had been Indian empires in what is today India. But when the British set foot on the sub-continent, India was like Europe - dozens of independent kingdoms. This is why the British were able to control India with no more than 100,000 troops at any time - they recruited from one kingdom and used them in another. (The BS 3,000 figure cited only consists of the officers in the Indian army, which was composed of British officers and Indian ranks. As insurance, there were British-only divisions - just about the entire British military rotated through India).

This is why Spengler's articles are worthless. His predictions and historical citations are wrong more than half the time. He predicted, about a year ago, that US casualties would decline significantly as American forces prepared to withdraw. We're still there. He did not pick the non de plume Spengler for nothing. Oswald Spengler's schtick was his prediction of the imminent decline of the West - 100 years ago. I'm still waiting.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2006-03-13 13:02|| http://timurileng.blogspot.com]">[http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2006-03-13 13:02|| Front Page Top

#2 Even chaos is based on a deep, underlying order. We do not stagger into chaos, we approach the situation with far better planning than for Gulf War II.

Great hue and cry has been made that the Iranians might use "asymmetrical warfare", and that somehow this secret weapon will still work even though the western world is already meeting it head on in the WoT. "But Hizbullah might attack Israel!", has been heard more than once. And that would be different from now, how?

So what if instead of chaos, we see a repeat of Gulf War I, call it Gulf War III, once again doing as we please to their C&C, their military and revolutionary guard, and to anyone else who resists us? And see how their great ambitions for empire crumble.

But what of the hand-wringing, when we take from them not only their nuclear capability, but also partition their country, so that there won't be a Gulf War IV? We sort of did that with Iraq, but made the mistake of leaving the North and South of that country under Saddam's domination.

But by carving off three or four chunks of Iran for good, they would really see the price of their ambitions.

Posted by Anonymoose 2006-03-13 13:18|| 2006-03-13 13:18|| Front Page Top

#3 A fifth to a half of the constituent nations of the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact will die out by mid-century, about as many as would have died in all-out nuclear war.

Perhaps so, but it will probably be without a nuclear holocaust. That represents a very substantial difference and immense progress to boot.

To export a prefabricated democracy to a part of the world whose culture and religion are far less amenable in the first place is an act of narcissistic idiocy.

To not try at all is suicidal, and that trumps "narcissistic idiocy" every time. Take your pick. Either we glass over these backward nations with atomic slag or we make some sort of noble effort to drag them kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Iran may emerge as the first time we go in and break things without any subsequent nation building.

US Special Forces, as I observed in reviewing Robert Kaplan's book Imperial Grunts (Do you call that an empire? October 4, 2005), display nonpareil technical skill and valor in the field, but unlike the officer corps of the Indian Army, did not cut their teeth on Greek and Latin at school. Of the old British public-school curriculum, the United States has taken only one element, namely the emphasis on games, and ignored the depth of intellectual training that produced a T E Lawrence.

Rote memorization of verb conjugations from a dead language is not much help in a door-to-door sweep through Fallujah. I think even T.E. Lawrence might have found the current situation a little daunting. I also doubt that Britain's SAS elite have much use for the plays of Aristophanes while holding down Basra.

But by carving off three or four chunks of Iran for good, they would really see the price of their ambitions.

Mmmmmmmm ... chunky Iran.

Posted by Zenster 2006-03-13 19:46|| 2006-03-13 19:46|| Front Page Top

#4 He's a bit weak on details (e.g. Arabic is not compulsory in Israeli schools). And he, obviously, never read Michiavelli on mercenaries. But, there is something here.

Posted by gromgoru 2006-03-13 20:12|| 2006-03-13 20:12|| Front Page Top

#5 As best illustrated by Canadian TV, prosperous Muslims living in Canada want to destroy what modernness they have in favor the primitive and obsolete. As for America, America must establish an offshore Foreign Legion in the name of an democratic America that America's own Lefties post-WOT don't want to remain either sovereign or democratic. America can unilater modernize the world, pay the bulk or all of future global taxations, invade other nations, and send its Milfors to fight and die for a global empire America is not allowed to govern its own empire nor even to remain sovereign. America must submmit to being governed by a group of world nations where America's interests is just one of many - Amer pay for the Majority in return for America's agenda being degraded to a Minority.
OH YEAH, THAT'LL ELECT HILLARY AND SAVE THE DEMS FOR 2008 - NOT!

Posted by JosephMendiola 2006-03-13 23:41|| 2006-03-13 23:41|| Front Page Top

11:42 Just Curious
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