RE: Geodesic neoconservative empire
Sounds good, but there's a little flaw in the logic:
At 10:07 PM 10/24/04 -0400, R.A. Hettinga wrote: If the only way
to kill barbarians is to kill barbarians in their bed before they kill you in yours, to pave over nation-states that support them, starting with the easiest first, it can't happen fast enough, as far as I'm concerned, and I'll gladly "vote" my expropriated tax-dollars for the purpose of draining the swamp that is the Middle East.
We're not reducing the quantity of government, just consolidating under a single growing Borg-like government, namely the US. I consider one giant government a far more dangerous situation that lots of little ones. -TD _________________________________________________________________ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
-- On 29 Oct 2004 at 10:20, Tyler Durden wrote:
We're not reducing the quantity of government, just consolidating under a single growing Borg-like government, namely the US.
This presupposes the US intends to rule Afghanistan and Iraq, which is manifestly false. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG TCB2vWoGyhVihGigpgZNddyxcR+FX8/hDPZankmv 4jNqo70KLA5nfPvXptDt0z6bJGMJ0LDIX5iVsCD/p
On Fri, 29 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote:
On 29 Oct 2004 at 10:20, Tyler Durden wrote:
We're not reducing the quantity of government, just consolidating under a single growing Borg-like government, namely the US.
This presupposes the US intends to rule Afghanistan and Iraq, which is manifestly false.
Agreed. Our interest in not in Afghanistan/Iraq per se. Our interest is in ruling the *planet*, rather than any individual pissant player.
--digsig James A. Donald
-- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF "An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core" S. Plath, Temper of Time
On Fri, Oct 29, 2004 at 09:24:20PM -0500, J.A. Terranson wrote:
Agreed. Our interest in not in Afghanistan/Iraq per se. Our interest is in ruling the *planet*, rather than any individual pissant player.
Empires never last, and if there's going to be a new one, it's going to be Chinese. (Of course it won't last, either). It sucks to be old-growth in a large new-growth market. -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
On Fri, 29 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote:
This presupposes the US intends to rule Afghanistan and Iraq, which is manifestly false.
Since this chain started by ragging on RAH about it being a _geodesic_ neo-{Khan, con-men} empire, you're both correct - there isn't a conflict between ruling them by proxy and not ruling them directly, assuming that the Commander-in-Chief can get Our Puppet Iraqis to take over ruling their country for us as was supposed to magically happen when we knocked off our previous puppet. It didn't help that the Iraqis have con-men of their own like Ahmad Chalabi telling our con-man how easy it would be (which is what they wanted to hear) and we've not only had to get a new puppet, we've had to do an awful lot more work that we were supposed to. At 07:24 PM 10/29/2004, J.A. Terranson wrote:
Agreed. Our interest in not in Afghanistan/Iraq per se. Our interest is in ruling the *planet*, rather than any individual pissant player.
I've never been clear how much the neo-con gang (Wolfowitz, Leo Strauss, et al.) desire to give America a cohesive sense of national purpose through empire was because they cared about actually controlling the rest of the world and how much was because they cared about ruling America. ---- Bill Stewart bill.stewart@pobox.com
Bill Stewart wrote:
On Fri, 29 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote:
This presupposes the US intends to rule Afghanistan and Iraq, which is manifestly false.
Since this chain started by ragging on RAH about it being a _geodesic_ neo-{Khan, con-men} empire, you're both correct - there isn't a conflict between ruling them by proxy and not ruling them directly
Most all empires that lasted more than a few decades used indirect rule (famous big exception China - though not always and they had to endure generations of collapse between each advance) Rome & Britain just best known. Read up on Lord Lugard.
At 8:29 PM +0000 11/1/04, ken wrote:
Read up on Lord Lugard.
Oh. I get it. September came two months later this year across the pond... Cheers, RAH <Foghorn-Leghorn>Now, *that*, I say, *that*, son, is an ad hominem...</F-L> -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
participants (7)
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Bill Stewart -
Eugen Leitl -
J.A. Terranson -
James A. Donald -
ken -
R.A. Hettinga -
Tyler Durden