The most brilliant writer working today

[Andre Jute]

The most brilliant writer working today is
https://www.steynonline.com/11664/the-great-complacency

Andre Jute
Sincerity and constancy when aligned to brains are devastating.

[Tom Kunich]

What Biden has done will go down in history and they are not going to take the Lame Stream Media position that it was the greatest win ever.

[Andre Jute]

"There are honorable ways to lose a war. This was not one of them. We have dishonored the dead of 9/11 and insulted their sacrifice."
-- Mark Steyn
https://www.steynonline.com/11682/the-years-we-wasted

It's shameful that Americans have to be told this by a foreigner. It's almost like 1929 again, the passenger partying while the ship sinks, except that from here it seems as if Americans are partying underwater, and entirely tone-deaf performance. -- AJ

[AMuzi]

The last time this happened, Mr Churchill quipped, "You had
a choice between dishonor and war. You chose dishonor, and
you shall have war."

Nothing's changed.

--
Andrew Muzi
<www.yellowjersey.org/>
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

[Andre Jute]

.
The stubborn persistence of the eternal verities is one of the most discouraging things about being old. -- AJ

[Tom Kunich]

On Saturday, September 11, 2021 at 1:40:05 PM UTC-7, Andre Jute wrote:
> On Saturday, September 11, 2021 at 6:05:30 PM UTC+1, AMuzi wrote:
> > On 9/11/2021 11:48 AM, Andre Jute wrote:
> > > "There are honorable ways to lose a war. This was not one of them. We have dishonored the dead of 9/11 and insulted their sacrifice."
> > > -- Mark Steyn
> > > https://www.steynonline.com/11682/the-years-we-wasted
> > >
> > > It's shameful that Americans have to be told this by a foreigner. It's almost like 1929 again, the passenger partying while the ship sinks, except that from here it seems as if Americans are partying underwater, and entirely tone-deaf performance. -- AJ
> > >
> > > On Sunday, September 5, 2021 at 5:42:20 PM UTC+1, cycl...@gmail.com wrote:
> > >> On Friday, September 3, 2021 at 7:24:29 PM UTC-7, Andre Jute wrote:
> > >>> The most brilliant writer working today is
> > >>> https://www.steynonline.com/11664/the-great-complacency
> > >>>
> > >>> Andre Jute
> > >>> Sincerity and constancy when aligned to brains are devastating.
> > >> What Biden has done will go down in history and they are not going to take the Lame Stream Media position that it was the greatest win ever.
> > The last time this happened, Mr Churchill quipped, "You had
> > a choice between dishonor and war. You chose dishonor, and
> > you shall have war."
> >
> > Nothing's changed.

> .
> The stubborn persistence of the eternal verities is one of the most discouraging things about being old. -- AJ

The way I see it is that Biden and company left all of those Americans in Afghanistan so that they would be killed and then the Military-Industrial complex will push us into remaining in this forever war. Remember Obama campaign promise "I will have ALL American boots on American soil within 16 weeks of being elected". What happened instead? He quadrupled our military commitment.

Trump pulled most of our people out of Iraq and was slowly reducing out military presence in Afghanistan. I'm convinced that he had people on the ground that told him that the Obama inspired Afghani government would last less than a week under the best of conditions.

Trump also pulled all of our troops out of Syria who were there by illegal actions of Obama. Only the Congress can declare a war, so why did Obama invade Syria. One of Biden's FIRST actions was to re-invade Syria and then when the Syrians responded the Lame Stream Media was claiming that our "military advisors" who were all that Trump had left in Iraq had been attacked by the Syrians. The Democrats under the control of the Military Industrial complex want a forever war and they will do anything to get it.

[AMuzi]

Your examples are of hubris mostly.

As the old joke goes:
"How to you make god laugh?"
"Plan"

As Mr Bush, Mr Obama, Mr Trump and now whoever's pulling Mr
Biden's strings discovered, the enemy gets a vote.

[Tom Kunich]

Excuse me but "hubris"? There is no question that Obama quadrupled our war after campaigning on the grounds of getting all Americans out of a forever war. There is NO question that Trump reduced our troops in Iraq to nothing more than advisors. And that he actually met with the Taliban and warned them not to bother the Americans as we left. That is a matter of actual record.

What hubris is it to say that Biden invaded Syria again after Trump had removed ALL American soldiers there which was an illegal war? ONLY CONGRESS has the power to declare war. A President could only act as Obama did under an attack by foreign troops. There had been no such attack. What gave Biden the right to re-invade Syria. And what gave the Lame Stream Media to claim that Syria attacked the American military advisors in Iraq to support Biden's invasion - the advisors were nowhere even close to the Syrian border.

Really Andrew, I find this very curious. It is my opinion is that eventually they are going to "discover" that the Taliban killed a lot of Americans that were left behind and that will be a reason for reinstituting the forever war. Is this in some manner hubris?

[AMuzi]

I'm a tough critic of foreign policy generally.
My favorite question for decades has been, "What does
victory look like and what's the plan to get there?"

Despite good or ill intentions none of the men mentioned
above seem to have gotten that far. The idealistic (or
ideological) thought of 'remove all soldiers' has a real
cost in real time, and turned Mr Obama to repeat the
reinforcement ('surge') he had previously criticized when
done by Mr Bush. Give Mr Obama some credit for ameliorating
a piss poor impetuous error. The same can't be applied
currently.

I could go on and often do but I think the point's made.

[Tom Kunich]

I'm more of the mind to wonder why we should stick our nose in other people's business at all. If they aren't a clear and present danger, live and let live. I don't think that it improves the lives of Russians for us to pretend that they are our enemies when they aren't. What is pretty clear is that the CCP and the Democrats have used what is no doubt the accidental release of a near harmless virus into a grab for power unheard of in US history.

What caused 9/11? Bill F-ing Clinton bombing the hell out of Iraq. The same thing could have been achieved with less hate and ire with economic perssures.

[AMuzi]

None of it's our business until it is.

As Mr Chamberlain noted in 1939, "Czechoslovakia is a
far-away country, of which we know nothing." How did that
work out?

You're about to live through a (or some) real world in real
time example(s).

The Persians have promised to kill the Jews and then us for
40 years. Covering one's eyes while throwing money at them
hasn't helped so far:

https://americanmilitarynews.com/2021/08/iran-is-10-weeks-from-a-nuclear-weapon-israel-says/

Your suggestion(s), Mr Kunich?


China has opinions as well. With the largest Navy and
significant nuclear, electronic, hypersonic and
anti-satellite assets they say:

https://www.businessinsider.in/a-chinese-admiral-said-his-country-should-attack-us-supercarriers-with-new-weapons-but-us-navy-is-already-scrambling-to-counter-the-threat/articleshow/67428896.cms

https://americanmilitarynews.com/2021/01/xi-jinping-orders-chinas-military-to-be-ready-for-war-at-any-time/

It's a threat of unknown dimension. One may take solace in
China's absolutely abysmal combat record since 1949. Then
again Al Quada aren't the only guys with asymmetric tactics.

What do you suggest right now, Mr Kunich?

[Tom Kunich]

My suggestion is to let them rot. If we had nothing to do with them of what worth would they be now? They were FAR more busy killing each other off before we stepped in. Would we make enemies by supporting Israel? Nothing at all like we've made trying to turn Afghanistan or Iraq into democracies. Is there a danger of Iran and nuclear weapons? There wasn't until Clinton decided that they were an enemy of the world. Why, would you think, that Iran would make bombs rather than power stations? Why has the US become an enemy of the world?

Do we need the world's largest military? Hell yes, but with that power comes responsibility and the people on the Joint Chiefs of Staff have shown plainly that they are more a danger than a means of protection.

Do you want to limit the powers to make war? Simply reinstitute the draft and you would be amazed how much different the attitude would be when the younger generation has their own skin in the game.

Why would this country pay foreign aid to anyone? If they don't want to develop a working economy, why should we pretend that they will? What would be a reason for us to actually go to war? For another country to invade their neighbor. Isn't this what Chamberlain was ignoring? This is the 21st century and even with cloud cover we can watch from orbit.

[AMuzi]

In re Iraq-

Mr Hussein's subterfuge[1] and shambolic attempts at nuclear
armament not only faked out Hans Blix, the UN, the various
European States, Mr Putin, Mr Clinton[2] and GWB, but
several in-depth investigations all concluded that there was
no deception on the part of either US administration (WJC or
GWB).

Yes there was yellowcake. It went to Canada:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/uranium-shipped-to-montreal-from-iraq-in-top-secret-mission-1.742303

(note source is CBC itself)

Yes there were chemical weapons:
https://thebulletin.org/2021/07/how-unscom-found-and-destroyed-iraqs-biological-weapons/

(note hard left commie source)

So, even well meaning leaders with supposedly adequate
support and resources err. Foreign policy is more difficult
and complex than it may at first appear. And it moves in
real time, straight at you, fast.


[1] It seems in retrospect that the main purpose of faking
nuclear weapons was for domestic propaganda and to
intimidate the Persians. We were merely feckless dupes along
the way.

[2]The Clinton administration also concluded that Iraq was a
nuclear power and had chemical weapons.

[Andre Jute]

On Sunday, September 12, 2021 at 4:30:41 PM UTC+1, AMuzi wrote:

> As the old joke goes:
> "How to you make god laugh?"
> "Plan"

And when it is Central Planning, He laughs harder.

> As Mr Bush, Mr Obama, Mr Trump and now whoever's pulling Mr
> Biden's strings discovered, the enemy gets a vote.

Tom's point is that the US has made all these enemies and then given them a vote. However true that may be, now, with hindsight, with the same hindsight it is difficult to blame the people who did it. They acted in accordance with the best knowledge and principles of the time. Let's not go as far back as the Marshall Plan, but remember its inspiration as a lasting influence on policy all the way through Barack Obama, acting on a very perverted version of the Marshall Plan, sending planeloads of cash to the treacherous Persians. Let's take the example of the real, clear, and very present danger, the Chinese. The men who are responsible are Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, undoubtedly men of goodwill, and the pair of them the greatest and best of America's foreign policy experts in the postwar period. This is important, because the only other candidates for the greatest Americans in foreign policy in the whole *century* are FDR and Colonel House (who didn't even have an official State position) and General Marshall, and Teddy Roosevelt. (Wilson was a pompous fuckup, an ivory tower academic without any connection with reality, a real case of hubris. Eisenhower was very experienced in international politics but he took the Trump view of "America First", as became clear at Suez, which caused many Europeans to view him as treacherous.) So it is understandable, against that background, that many people at the time agreed with the Nixon-Kissinger idea that, if the Chinese could somehow be made rich, they would become just Americans. There was also continuous tension between the Chinese and the Soviets, and the minimum outcome of the policy, driving the wedge deeper between the two Communist supergiants, was already a very desirable end. I certainly subscribed to the idea, and there were endless examples of nations pulling themselves up by their bootstraps to become so middle class that perpetual peace was their greatest and most fervent wish. In a talk I gave at a club in NY, which I was asked to repeat twice in Washington, I also said what many thought privately, that the minimum outcome would the that the Chinese Communist Party, for whose managerial nous no one had much respect, would mismanage the transition -- I distributed thirty pages of examples of societies which had collapsed inwards at some liberation of policy or distribution of powers or opening of borders -- and bring a collapse upon themselves. It turned out the Chinese, after several false starts, found the man for the day, their own Joe Stalin in Xi Jinping. (It doesn't pay to forget that Stalin rose by being the best facilitator in the Soviets, a monster of brilliant organizational skills.) Unlike Mikhail Gorbachev, who lost control of the apparat of enforcement in the disillusion of the Russians after their loss in Afghanistan, and thus could not manage the liberalization well, nor guide it, nor restrain it, and therefore lost his nation, Xi Jinping has all the strings in his hands. If you want to know how much, consider that Xi Jinping has just sent the richest and most influential businessman in China, Jack Ma, into fearful internal exile -- and no one said a word. The Chinese in effect took the gift of Americas manufacturing sector, and stole proprietary rights wholesale, and used them to build a bigger, better, stronger, Communist society, an amazing feat. Couple this with the Chinese belief that they are superior to the roundeye barbarians beyond the wall and entitled by their superiority to rule over them, and all kinds of nastiness follows naturally. However, the Chinese will in the end be beaten by a hysterical Western "scientific" policy that they took up with typical ruthlessness and disrespect for human life, population control. There never was any risk of overpopulation -- I've been saying this since as a boy genius I had a satirical column in a national Sunday paper -- and the Chinese one child policy has caused not only tens of millions of men without women, already a cause for war or some other kind of conquest, but a huge disproportion of old people, pensioners of a socialist state. And behind them China is pitifully poor, a peasant society, the layer of people that Nixon and Kissinger elevated to the middle classes being pathetically thin. I know I've said this here before, but it can't be stressed enough that Xi Jinping doesn't have enough time to make the rest of China rich before the pensioners drag all the systems down and he runs into the same problem that the brilliant Ronald Reagan saw would break the Russians, usually expressed as "Guns or butter?" The danger isn't that clumsy Joe Biden will start a war with China, but that Xi Jinping under pressure of demographics will start an early war because he knows he will not be able to keep up the present armed services, especially the expensive Navy, which will have to fight a three-ocean war. The longer he leaves fighting a war he clearly considers essential to his plans, the less well he will be able to fight it and the more likely to lose it. The Chinese Pandemic, which has cost the Chinese whatever goodwill they had left after decades of theft of proprietary rights, has hastened the inevitable because whoever turns that Chinese poodle Biden out of the White House will join the Europeans in punishing the Chinese by cutting off their lifeblood; the Europeans are already taxing and raising excise on Chinese goods that before COVID-19 they benevolently passed on the nod. More, the Europeans are applying Japanese concepts of "free trade" by bureaucratically delaying goods from China, and there's more to follow because suddenly even the Germans -- who love to wallow in vicarious guilt expressed as over-solicitousness to brown people -- are set to elect a chancellor who will punish the Chinese for carelessly or maliciously killing so many Germans.

Andre Jute
What comes round goes round.

[Tom Kunich]

I think that we can say that Nixon nor Kissinger had any intentions of sending boatloads of money to China, only allowing them into the international community and indeed they would become just another America if left to that. But politicians with money are going to spend it. One of their favorite pleasures is to increase the government staff with riches and benefits so that they have a large group that would vote for them. Since only the Democrats believe in this, they are the ones that gain the most advantage from it.