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2006-08-15 Home Front: Politix

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Posted by Fred 2006-08-15 07:05|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Here's the test.

If a country suffers a major disaster who do they turn to for real substantive help?

a - the UN
b - the EU
c - the USA

Years after the disaster and an accounting takes place, who delivered on their word?

a - the UN
b - the EU
c - the USA

Reviewing back after those same years, who promised a lot but delivered nothing but showboating?

a - the UN
b - the EU
c - the USA

I'd take a good Vegas bet that Julia wouldn't pass.

Posted by Grick Unosing4544 2006-08-15 09:12|| 2006-08-15 09:12|| Front Page Top

#2 Tranzi trash.

Posted by gromgoru 2006-08-15 09:19|| 2006-08-15 09:19|| Front Page Top

#3 Fishin must not be too good.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2006-08-15 09:26|| 2006-08-15 09:26|| Front Page Top

#4 " a foreign policy that deploys U.S. power with some consideration for how the U.S. is perceived will gradually make legitimate U.S. military action more acceptable abroad. "

Coffee shooting out nostrils as I laugh hysterically...

Posted by Jules in the Hinterlands 2006-08-15 09:33|| 2006-08-15 09:33|| Front Page Top

#5 Why do they hate us? Some because they envy us. Some because their "god" commands them.

Posted by Rob Crawford">Rob Crawford 2006-08-15 10:28|| http://www.kloognome.com/]">[http://www.kloognome.com/] 2006-08-15 10:28|| Front Page Top

#6 Every country wants the power of the US military and economy at THEIR disposal. Ms. Sweig and her bosses at the DNC propose to make that a reality.

Ms. Sweig needs some seasoning in the way the world really works. I suggest, for starters, a four year hitch in the army.

Posted by ed 2006-08-15 10:40|| 2006-08-15 10:40|| Front Page Top

#7 ...as the gap between rich and poor widens,

...reducing social and economic inequalities

Is Ralph Nader running for President again?

Posted by Raj 2006-08-15 10:48|| 2006-08-15 10:48|| Front Page Top

#8 This is the kind of crap that makes me seethe.
it is deeply entrenched antipathy accumulated over decades. It may take generations to undo.
Oh, they don't like us! Mommy, make them like us!
Apparently, the goal of all American policy to make the rest of the world like us. This whole piece is so shallow and lame that I won't bother with it anymore. She got a whole book out of this crap?

Posted by Spot">Spot 2006-08-15 10:53|| 2006-08-15 10:53|| Front Page Top

#9 When did it become policy that everybody like us. The US ever did pack up and told the rest of the world f*ck off they sh*t themselves.

Posted by djohn66 2006-08-15 11:11|| 2006-08-15 11:11|| Front Page Top

#10 Fred, the Chicken Dance is a staple of Cincinnati's annual Oktoberfest, second biggest in the world after the original in Munich.

Posted by trailing wife 2006-08-15 11:23|| 2006-08-15 11:23|| Front Page Top

#11 What gets me while I'm reading this is the "good news" pictures coming out of Iraq/Afghanistan/etc. where our troops have been. Yes, we're good at trashing stuff(tm), but it appears we're also getting better at "winning hearts and minds." Yes, little 6 year old Achmed in Iraq will remember the guns/tanks/shelling in his 'hood, but he'll also remember GI Joe handing him candy, rebuilding his school, turning on the lights, getting him clean drinking water, etc. Methinks those who hate us(tm) are only the elites of those countries (ignorant of the realities of the world) or are the ruling class(tm) who stand something to lose when we trash stuff(tm) in their country (e.g. Baathists in Iraq, Taliban in Afghanistan, Jihadis in both), not your average Joe in Ramadi, Kost or even Baghdad. Yes, even they may hate us, but I don't suspect their children will.

Posted by BA 2006-08-15 11:30|| 2006-08-15 11:30|| Front Page Top

#12 Meant to add, even if they do end up hating us, I say piss off. We're trying to give you a right to self-determination. Not our fault you're not taking advantage of it. Jeebus, I imagine the Germans and Japanese hated us too, after WWII, eh Julia?

Posted by BA 2006-08-15 11:33|| 2006-08-15 11:33|| Front Page Top

#13 Quite the contrary. U.S. credibility abroad used to be reinforced by the perception that our laws and government programs gave most Americans a fair chance to participate in a middle-class meritocracy. But the appeal of the U.S. model overseas is eroding as the gap between rich and poor widens, public education deteriorates, healthcare costs soar and pensions disappear.

Why then do they keep coming by trhe millions.
A case could be made that 10-30 millipon illegal mouths at the teat are screwing it up for ther rest of us , no ?
Yet they keep coming. Must be something better here.....

Posted by J. D. Lux 2006-08-15 11:35|| 2006-08-15 11:35|| Front Page Top

#14 On that train of thought, didn't someone here post the immigration stats for most of these countries. Something like most Euro countries were losing population to the U.S., whereas we're "importing" them by the millions. Linky anyone?

Posted by BA 2006-08-15 11:37|| 2006-08-15 11:37|| Front Page Top

#15 Sounds like she wants Jimmy Carter back.
No fucking thank you...

Posted by tu3031 2006-08-15 11:38|| 2006-08-15 11:38|| Front Page Top

#16 wants Jimmy Carter back
My first thought upon reading this steaming pile was "Too stupid to live.", but your brief description goes illustrates the point very well.

Posted by ed 2006-08-15 11:59|| 2006-08-15 11:59|| Front Page Top

#17 does illustrates

Posted by ed 2006-08-15 12:05|| 2006-08-15 12:05|| Front Page Top

#18 Our biggest "crimes" are:
1) Our economy is growing twice as fast as Europe's.
2) Our jobless rate is 1/2 that of Europe.
3) Our population is growing. Europe's is shrinking.
4) Our GNP per capita is 1/3 higher than Europe's.

Anti-Americanism has more to do with the failures of those countries than anything the US does or does not do. Therefore Anti-Americanism will not go away till those countries start growing again.

She is right when she says it won't change under the Dumb-ocrats.

Al

Posted by Frozen Al 2006-08-15 12:20|| 2006-08-15 12:20|| Front Page Top

#19 Sweig's thesis kinda reminds me of the parents I know who tell their kids that it's more important to be cool and popular than to be responsible, sober, chaste, and ethical.

BTW, when you get to some level of the academic-policy complex, do you get a pass on backing up your claims with facts and data?

Posted by 11A5S 2006-08-15 12:27|| 2006-08-15 12:27|| Front Page Top

#20 "Steering the body politic out of its insular mood, reducing social and economic inequalities, and decreasing our dependence on fossil fuels will help improve our moral standing and our security."

Reads like a combination of modern Euro tranzi fantasy and DNC boilerplate.

Oops, sorry for the redundancy.

When will the RNC spend the money to run a decent info campaign that will a) show that the Dems want a society in the U.S. which is virtually identical to Euroland and b) that such a society is doomed to extinction? It wouldn't be that hard to do. And watching the Dems try to sputter and deny it would be high entertainment.

Most 'burgers get it about the connection between socialism/moral relativism/evangelicalsecularism and societal extinction, but lots of Americans need to have the dots connected. They're smart enough, if somebody would only do the connecting.

Posted by no mo uro 2006-08-15 12:30|| 2006-08-15 12:30|| Front Page Top

#21 These clowns better quit asking "why they hate us" and start asking "why we hate them."

They keep this take-over-the-world-and-subject-everyone-to-sharia shit, they might find out. The hard way.

Posted by Barbara Skolaut">Barbara Skolaut 2006-08-15 12:37|| http://ariellestjohndesigns.com/page/15bk1/Home_Page.html]">[http://ariellestjohndesigns.com/page/15bk1/Home_Page.html] 2006-08-15 12:37|| Front Page Top

#22 I hate them right back. Does that make us even? Goodie.

Posted by Dar">Dar 2006-08-15 13:14|| 2006-08-15 13:14|| Front Page Top

#23 Steering the body politic out of its insular mood, reducing social and economic inequalities, and decreasing our dependence on fossil fuels will help improve our moral standing and our security.

A few tsk, tsk's to this very naive asanine statement:

(1) You haven't begun to see insular moods. I for one, would love to go full insular AIRT gov't (e.g. pull all "foreign aid" monies back home, shut down/militarize the borders, etc.).

(2) Reducing social/economic inequalities? PSHAW. So you'd like for all of us to live in cardboard boxes and tin huts? Or, just us "peons" who aren't enlightened, Julia. And, I call "projection" on this one. You wanna talk about social/economic inequalities? The ones who hate us the most (Saudi, Iran, N. Korea, Syria, even Russia, et al) have a TON more inequalities than we do (ruling classes vs. "real squalor living", women not being able to vote/go outside w/o a man, sentencing to death w/o trials, etc., shall I go on?).

(3) Reducing our dependence on oil? You think they're pissed off now, just wait til we actually dry up funding Saudi, Iran, et al, and subsequently, the Paki-Waki madrassahs, etc. Only the "Arab Street" hates us now. You dry up funding to Ali-Baba and his 2,000 Saudi princes and watch what happens. Of course, I'm all for this (and as a first move, get off their oil and drill our own).

Posted by BA 2006-08-15 14:06|| 2006-08-15 14:06|| Front Page Top

#24 When I read nonsense like this, I thank God that He has seen fit to make America's enemies so stupid.

Posted by Dreadnought 2006-08-15 15:04|| 2006-08-15 15:04|| Front Page Top

#25 They hate us? Like hell. They're jealous. They have been for a damn long time. It's been a European tradition since around our Revolution, for heaven's sake. Doesn't this "analyst" know any history at all?

We only got a bit of a break right after 9/11, but that's only because there was a genuine fear of what we might do in reply and they were hoping it wasn't aimed their way. (Sympathy my ass....they were waiting to see if we would turn the Middle East into a giant expanse of radioactive green glass. You know damn well many other countries, if they would have gotten hit with something like that and had our arsenal at their disposal, would have been readying the bombers and missiles on 12 Sep.)

If "they" hated us, they wouldn't bust their asses trying to get their kids into our universities, visit Disneyland and go shopping, and trying to see if they could manage to get a green card too. Yeah, they throw protest marches every now and then showing our President as Satan, but then they regroup afterwards at Mickey D's and Starbucks, and show off their new Levi's and Nikes.

And as "they" are aware, many of us could go live somewhere else if we wanted to. I could go to Russia and live there....I speak the language, and am married to a Russian. My kid would be eligible for Russian citizenship, and I could be too after a while.

Am I gonna do it? What the hell for??? Even my sweetie doesn't want our little mite to have Russian citizenship. He wants him to have American citizenship, like he hopes to have someday.

If this writer wanted to really do something that wasn't a regurgitation of tranzi crap from the past 30 or so years, why didn't she write about how they hate native-born Americans for not valuing American citizenship/residency like the rest of the world does? Yeah, I know, might require some work and actual thought....silly me.

Posted by Swamp Blondie 2006-08-15 15:07|| http://azjetsetchick.blogspot.com]">[http://azjetsetchick.blogspot.com] 2006-08-15 15:07|| Front Page Top

#26 Blah, blah, blah. It's all about the picture on the top. Really, it is. And the only time I could be said to be "left-leaning."

Posted by ex-lib 2006-08-15 15:11|| 2006-08-15 15:11|| Front Page Top

#27 As the tag line on Rantburg sometimes says: Oderint dum metuant. Let them hate us, as long as they fear us. Especially the jihadis.

Posted by Rambler">Rambler 2006-08-15 16:01|| 2006-08-15 16:01|| Front Page Top

#28 Doesn't this "analyst" know any history at all?

Of course not, and that's precisely the point. Any knowledge of history tells you that all the crap this "Senior Fellow" hurls at the wall is true for just about every country in the world.

You want to talk about interfering in another country's business? How about Russia in Eastern Europe? Or France in sub-saharan Africa? Or Cuba in Angola?

Globalization? Have you looked on the roads in this country? Japanese and Korean cars as far as the eye can see!

Katrina? What did the Iranians do for themselves after that earthquake they had? Or the Pakistanis? Or the Turks? And that's just earthquakes! How about France and its heatwave roasting all its elderly? Katrina was a monster storm that would have posed a monumental task for any rescue operation.

One day, around the world, the question will be posed: "Why do the Americans hate us?"

Posted by Dreadnought 2006-08-15 16:20|| 2006-08-15 16:20|| Front Page Top

#29 In France, and more generally in Europe, our newspapers and radios and TV's are filled with this kind of analysis.

As a lot of comments point it, the US don't have to bother about this "hate".

1) The anti-Americans are jealous and mediocre people. The less they product, create, achieve in their personal life, the more they rage against America. I see this everywhere in Paris and the diverse countries of Europe I have recently visited.

2) Even if America was behaving with "modesty, discretion, cooperation, empathy, fairness, manners and lawfulness", the anti-Americans would find or invent new stupid pretexts to hate the US. Anti-Americanism is a sort of racism. As it is the case with racism, the problem doesn't lie in the people who are hated, but in the people who hate.

For me, reading the articles selected by Rantburg (and other American medias like FrontPageMagazine, The National Review, The Weekly Standards...), and the robust comments, is like breathing fresh oxygen.

Posted by leroidavid">leroidavid 2006-08-15 16:44|| 2006-08-15 16:44|| Front Page Top

#30 And symbols matter too.

She's got a point there. I was really impressed when the USAF symbolically dropped those two 500-pounders on Zarkman's head.

Posted by Matt 2006-08-15 17:01|| 2006-08-15 17:01|| Front Page Top

#31 Welcome, leroidavid. Frenchmen who don't view us as the world's greatest threat, who can discuss events and ideas intelligently and reasonably are Frenchman we LIKE speaking with. I earned my degree in French, but I have a hard time finding opportunities to use it-other than in Quebec-because I am a shameless American. I have found that the Americans the French like to speak with best are those filled with self-loathing for being American, wouldn't you say? :)

Posted by Jules in the Hinterlands 2006-08-15 17:13|| 2006-08-15 17:13|| Front Page Top

#32 We are trying to win hearts and minds. But are willing to splatter them if nessisary.

HT IMAO.

Posted by DarthVader 2006-08-15 17:17|| 2006-08-15 17:17|| Front Page Top

#33 One reason they hate us is there are a lot of useful idiots who believe the Marxist crap that the US (and West) could only be rich by taking from others. This provides a very convenient excuse for failed countries and failed cultures to avoid looking at their real problems and a very obvious point of US (and Western) villiany to rage against.

Posted by rjschwarz">rjschwarz 2006-08-15 17:34|| rjschwarz.com]">[rjschwarz.com] 2006-08-15 17:34|| Front Page Top

#34 I have found that the Americans the French like to speak with best are those filled with self-loathing for being American (Jules in the Hinterlands)

That's right. I have seen recently in Paris two examples of those self-hating Americans (both were, of course, leftists). They were likable at the beginning, but when the conversation switched to America, they just became mad ("9/11 is America's fault", "the US destroy the world", and so on...). I defended politely the US, and they calmed down. But I am sure they weren't cured.

[As for Blair's speech we talked about last day, all his "global warming, trade, poverty" is of course no more than standard PC 'clichés'. But the rest of the speech, the clear description of the worldwide danger of Islamism, was very good.]

Posted by leroidavid">leroidavid 2006-08-15 17:41|| 2006-08-15 17:41|| Front Page Top

#35 "They hate us? Like hell. They're jealous. They have been for a damn long time. It's been a European tradition since around our Revolution, for heaven's sake."

And underlying that, I suspect there's also resentment at having been rejected. Most of us are here, instead of there, because our ancestors decided "This place sucks. Let's get the Hell out of here and move to America."

And damn few have chosen to go back.

Posted by Dave D.">Dave D. 2006-08-15 18:08|| 2006-08-15 18:08|| Front Page Top

#36 Ya know, I debated on whether or not to continue using "why do they hate us?" as a frequent punchline. But the left never tires of this line of thinking, so I guess it's still in my arsenal.

Posted by mcsegeek1 2006-08-15 20:59|| 2006-08-15 20:59|| Front Page Top

#37 Why They Hate Us
FAQUE. How's that for some concern?

Posted by JerseyMike 2006-08-15 21:05|| 2006-08-15 21:05|| Front Page Top

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