George Will, Kissinger, Supermen... and Big Baddaboom-onomics ("How bad will it get?")
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Subject: George Will, Kissinger, Supermen... and Big Baddaboom-onomics
("How bad will it get?")
Date: Sep 4, 2009 11:01 AM
GEORGE WILL "OUT-OF-IRAQISTAN" ARTICLE BELOW
==========================
We're in Iraq because we're Supermen, plain and simple:
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/USAWC/parameters/97summer/peters.htm
"For the world masses, devastated by information they cannot manage or
effectively interpret, life is "nasty, brutish . . . and short-
circuited." The general pace of change is overwhelming, and
information is both the motor and signifier of change. Those humans,
in every country and region, who cannot understand the new world, or
who cannot profit from its uncertainties, or who cannot reconcile
themselves to its dynamics, will become the violent enemies of their
inadequate governments, of their more fortunate neighbors, and
ultimately of the United States. We are entering a new American
century, in which we will become still wealthier, culturally more
lethal, and increasingly powerful. We will excite hatreds without
precedent."
The PNAC ActionPlan also says we're superior:
http://www.actionlyme.org/PNAC.pdf
Therefore, we're in Iraq and Afghanistan because Supermen
need to be fed:
http://www.actionlyme.org/070426.htm
and that - the Middle East - happens to be where the oil and
minerals are. ‘Especially the oil and minerals we *have* to have
because we're not smart enough Supermen to replace the internal
combustion engine or depolymerize polymers.
Plus, we need to mention that things that go "bang" scare
people into submission. Some things that don't go "bang"
are like, the electric cars and windfarms. Other things
that don't go "bang" are wheat and soy fields, solar panels,
irrigation canals and desalination processes. <<< So, *they're*
no good.
Kissinger reminds us that if we continue to go “BANG, BANG,
BOOM!” enough around the people who have stuff we Supermen
want, they will eventually give up and hand over the bootle to the
American Bigs, who are the managers of the Supermen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bKwH3kJew4
So, that’s ^^ how it’s done.
That’s the formulary.
And just nevermind! the fact that we know that every other
moral, scientific and religious truth negates the Supermen
hypothesis.:
"But as useful as hypocrisy can be, it’s apparently not quite as
basic as the human instinct to do unto others as you would have
them do unto you. Your mind can justify double standards, it seems,
but in your heart you know you’re wrong."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/science/01tier.html
- - -
The one certain way to demilitarize would be to simply
force the discussion of our energy/economic condition in
reality terms.
We could also discuss the fact that Arab nations have
smart people who could develop nuclear weapons
and that upsets Israel because it would upset the
current balance of power in the Middle East.
*WE* know what *WE* want. What does Israel
want?
All the other nations want their people to *not*
suffer poverty, and we refer to that as nationalism.
So don't even bother to bring Putin into the equation.
We all know Putin is a nationalist and we all know
all the Europeans do not want any more Hitler-like
risks. We played China and China played us, so
we don't even need to have that discussion.
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney09032009.html
"How bad will it get?"
We *know* we're not going to win any forward
bases in Iraq or Poppyland. 'Not with all the other
powers lining up around us, and not with Putin telling
George W. Bush "not to *dare* do Iran," and not
with Putin telling Kissinger he didn't believe his
"terrorists could get nuclear weapons" bullcrap.
And not with Sibel Edmonds revealing under oath
who was dealing weapons with whom:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7387
Kathleen M. Dickson
http://www.actionlyme.org
===================================
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/03/AR2009090301866.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
One Way Or Another, Leaving Iraq
By George F. Will
Friday, September 4, 2009
Since U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq's cities, two months have passed,
and so has the illusion that Iraq is smoothly transitioning to a
normality free of sectarian violence. Recently, Gen. Ray Odierno,
commander of U.S. troops there, "blanched" when asked if the war is
"functionally over." According to The Post's Greg Jaffe, Odierno said:
"There are still civilians being killed in Iraq. We still have people
that are attempting to attack the new Iraqi order and the move towards
democracy and a more open economy. So we still have some work to do."
No, we don't, even if, as Jaffe reports, the presence of 130,000 U.S.
troops "serves as a check on Iraqi military and political leaders'
baser and more sectarian instincts." After almost 6 1/2 years, and
4,327 American dead and 31,483 wounded, with a war spiraling downward
in Afghanistan, it would be indefensible for the U.S. military --
overextended and in need of materiel repair and mental recuperation --
to loiter in Iraq to improve the instincts of corrupt elites. If there
is a worse use of the U.S. military than "nation-building," it is
adult supervision and behavior modification of other peoples'
politicians.
More than 725 Iraqis have been killed by terrorism since the June 30
pullback of U.S. forces from the cities. All U.S. combat units are to
be withdrawn from the country within a year. Up to 50,000 can remain
as "advisers" to an Iraqi government that is ostentatious about its
belief that the presence of U.S. forces is superfluous and obnoxious.
The advisers are to leave by the end of 2011, by which time the final
two years of the U.S. military presence will have achieved . . . what?
Already that presence is irrelevant to the rising chaos, which the
Iraqi government can neither contain nor refrain from participating
in: Security forces seem to have been involved in the recent robbery
of a state-run bank in central Baghdad.
Post columnist David Ignatius correctly argues that "without the
backstop of U.S. support," Iraq is "desperately vulnerable" to Iranian
pressure. He also reports, however, that an Iraqi intelligence
official says Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's links with Iran are so
close that he "uses an Iranian jet with an Iranian crew for his
official travel." Whenever U.S. forces leave, Iran will still be
Iraq's neighbor.
Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution, writing in the National
Interest, notes that although rising Iraqi nationalism might help
"heal the rifts between Sunni and Shia," it also might exacerbate
relations with the Kurdish semi-state in northern Iraq, where control
of much oil and the city of Kirkuk is being contested.
The militia parties that ruled Iraq from 2003 to 2007 remain, Pollack
says, the major political parties, although mostly without militias.
They "still bribe and extort," "assassinate and kidnap," "steal and
vandalize" and try to prevent the emergence of new political parties
that are "more secular, more democratic, more representative, less
corrupt and less violent." If they succeed and "America is forced
out," Pollack says, "the glimmers of democracy will fade and Iraq will
be lost again." But if democracy is still just a glimmer that will be
extinguished by the withdrawal of a protective U.S. presence, its
extinction can perhaps be delayed for two more years but cannot be
prevented.
The 2008 U.S.-Iraq security agreement must be submitted to a
referendum by the Iraqi people. If they reject it, U.S. forces must
leave the country in a year. Pollack believes that if Maliki pushes to
hold the referendum in January, coinciding with the national
elections, the agreement will become the campaign issue and will
indicate that Maliki wants U.S. forces removed in order to enlarge his
freedom of action. The United States should treat this as a Dirty
Harry Moment: Make our day.
Many scholars believe, Pollack says, that nations that suffer civil
wars as large as Iraq's between 2004 and 2006 have "a terrifyingly
high rate of recidivism." Two more years of U.S. military presence
cannot control whether that is in Iraq's future. Some people believe
the war in Iraq was not only "won," but vindicated by the success of
the 2007 U.S. troop surge. Yet as Iraqi violence is resurgent, the
logic of triumphalism leads here:
If, in spite of contrary evidence, the U.S. surge permanently dampened
sectarian violence, all U.S. forces can come home sooner than the end
of 2011. If, however, the surge did not so succeed, U.S. forces must
come home sooner.
"[Real] scientists are *fiercely* independent. That's the good
news."-- NIH's Top Fool, Anthony Fauci