Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
The Selective Service website unctuously declares there is no draft foreseen at the moment and lists defeat of recent congressional efforts to institute the draft. However, it emphasizes that the agency is required by law to remain at the ready to immediately institute a draft upon notice. As part of this responsibility It polls educational instutitions every 18 months requesting updated information on draft-age youngsters who are receiving federal funding, the most recent of these polls here: http://cryptome.org/sss110404.txt A single harsh attack on US interests could precipitate a draft, and override public opposition in a flash. The military has nearly exhausted it National Guard and Reserve options, and will not give up the long-standing strategic policy of being able to fight two major wars at once. Thus most military resources are tied up not in the Middle East but in pre-positioned locations determined by the 2-wars policy. Whether the US military should forego its 2-war policy and use its forces in ways more appropriate to current threats will be determined by those interest groups who benefit from the horrifically expensive and magnificently wasteful 2-war boondoggle. Two generations of military personnel have been trained for the 2-war threat, and almost none have faced actual combat. This inexperience shows in unconventional warfare. again and again. Big war planners throw big war resources are small targets, take the applause for the phony war show, as in Fallujah, and discount lives lost because the do not show up on big war statistical-casualties diagrams. Big wars expect big losses, far more than volunteers can provide. Indeed, volunteer military personnel -- officers and enlisted -- are careful to throw conscripts into the breech as if they are expendable ammunition, the more thrown the higher the credit obtained in charts of capacity, not charts of smarts. Recall Kennedy embraced the counter-insurgent tool with support for Special Forces, but these forces remain a marginal part of the military, not least because they do not require much material and political resouces to do their duty. Big defense, and never forget, big intelligence to feed the need for big defense, are far superior ar generating contracts, jobs, careers and campaign contributions. The US is totally addicted to profligate, wasteful ineffective big war policy, primarily because there is little risk in parading might, bragging about it, threatening with it, compared to using it. Every application of US military might since WW2 has failed. STF up and pay your taxes, asshole, encourage your sons and daughters to sacrifice for the nation -- well, not really just tell the poor fuckers the military is a good safe job. Don't get drafted, that's for losers. Any road, killing the big war planners at home where they feel safe, is sure to come for their mighty military does not how to fight that war so busy is it parading forces against imaginary wargame-type evil empires of the day.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 11:21 AM -0800 11/22/04, John Young wrote:
Every application of US military might since WW2 has failed.
Korea. Yes. Korea. Hell, the entire Cold War, John. Including your beloved Viet Nam, which was a *battle*, not a war in same. When Castro, and North Korea, etc., finally fall, then the cold war will be over. Heck, when China's current gerontocracy dies off and has an *election*, the war will be over. They're already starting to have private property. So much for "communal" ownership. Once property is completely transferrable, the last nail will be in the coffin. Just because, like some ancient techtonic seafloor, your political compass ossified in the general direction of Moscow, ca 1965, doesn't mean that the magnetic pole's there anymore, John. Heck, that pole's actually flipped polarity, last time I looked. The current war against western civilization started in the 1920's, when Qutb started writing his Moslem triumphalist blather in reaction to the complete collapse of the Turkish Caliphate in the wake of World War I. It'll be finished when the residents of its modern equivalent has property rights and personal freedom. As for the the article that started this thread, I'm merely pointing out that we're entering a period of *Republican* triumphalism. That it has gotten completely up your nose is no surprise, of course. Cheers, RAH - -- - ----------------- 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaI/cMPxH8jf3ohaEQIWSACdFGd11vOhNiHxP95Cg/Aulmqjk7sAoJhT gr46RwVQgpaBsW3ILgZ3jjOy =s5VA -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Hell, the entire Cold War, John. Including your beloved Viet Nam, which was a *battle*, not a war in same. When Castro, and North Korea, etc., finally fall, then the cold war will be over.
That war was won (or lost, depending on how you look at it) by the inherent failures of communism itself, not because the US Government was some kind of champion of freedom. As I've gone to pains to point out, I think a good (though not unassailable case) can be made showing that the US probably slowed down free market development in certain places. Hell--East Asian communism might rightfully be blamed on the outcome of World War I and the need to create some kind of anti-western hegemony. A libertarian might possibly look at the US Government and it's legions of "Conservatives" as being a sort of tag-along (at best) or leech, grabbing a ride on the back of certain industries and (of course) "championing them" against other technologies (eg, defense, oil, autos...). Of course, neocons will turn red at the notion that they promote a very strong form of government intervention into private industry... As for...
Heck, when China's current gerontocracy dies off and has an *election*, the war will be over. They're already starting to have private property. So much for "communal" ownership. Once property is completely transferrable, the last nail will be in the coffin.
Don't count it. Capitalism, like communism, will likely take on it's own particularly Chinese flavor when hitting the high Refractive Index of that culture. China's population will near 1.5 Billion before it starts to shrink again, so don't look for real estate to be a perpetual contract for a century or two, if ever. Private Property in general (outside of real estate) has of course existed in China for decades now. -TD
The current war against western civilization started in the 1920's, when Qutb started writing his Moslem triumphalist blather in reaction to the complete collapse of the Turkish Caliphate in the wake of World War I.
Eh? OK, I wouldn't have expected you to have heard of Uthman dan Fodio and the Fulani Jihad, but you really ought to have some distant rumour of Muhammad Ahmad the so-called Mahdi, a generation or two earlier than the fall of the Turkish Empire. ()If only because it would be rather hard to make any sense of whats going on in North Africa without)
It'll be finished when the residents of its modern equivalent has property rights and personal freedom.
Sometimes I wonder if the would would be a better place if most Americans learned anything about history that happened east of New Bedford or west of the San Andreas fault. Or that hadn't been filtered through a right-wing journalese dumbing-down small-c-conservative small-l-liberal consensus. But some miracles are too much to hope for.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 11:13 AM +0000 11/23/04, "ken" reached out from his Birkbeck student digs to make September Forever once again on the cypherpunks list:
Muhammad Ahmad the so-called Mahdi
Sayyed Qtub is who every model of a modern major islamofascist likes to point to as his ideological source, so Qtub's good enough for, heh, government work. Qtub is the person whose various manifestoes were used to found Egypt's Islamic Brotherhood, for instance, and Al Qaeda is, ideologically, just a branch of that. At 11:13 AM +0000 11/23/04, ken wrote:
Sometimes I wonder if the would would be a better place if most Americans learned anything about history that happened east of New Bedford or west of the San Andreas fault. Or that hadn't been filtered through a right-wing journalese dumbing-down small-c-conservative small-l-liberal consensus.
<Yawn...> Yes, yes, "War is God's way of teaching Americans about geography", to quote Ambrose Bierce. Meanwhile, "consensus" is the final rhetorical refuge for socialists who can't even get the mob to agree with him anymore... Apparently, understanding the recursive minutiae of the Levant, et al., the old-fashioned "received", regurgitated, OxBridge way didn't help y'all too much when it came to Fabianizing yourselves back to the stone-age, either, since we're on the subject of neo-feudalist totalitarianism. It took a whole *bunch* of American "right-wing journalese", plus the odd rescued City academic or two, filtered through a mere bourgeois shopkeeper's daughter to drag you lot, kicking and screaming, back to the 20th century. ;-) Cheers, RAH - -- - ----------------- 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaNDksPxH8jf3ohaEQLPXgCfaXE9A2lWr5C8iAbeHoq5XKPKxUcAn0Q4 GKol4ptORgONffTxzIAeGzry =g7Jz -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
R.A. Hettinga wrote:
Apparently, understanding the recursive minutiae of the Levant, et al., the old-fashioned "received", regurgitated, OxBridge way didn't help y'all too much when it came to Fabianizing yourselves back to the stone-age, either, since we're on the subject of neo-feudalist totalitarianism.
So that's why you guys are behaving exactly like we used to?
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 4:41 PM +0000 11/23/04, ken wrote:
So that's why you guys are behaving exactly like we used to?
Yup, since you can't anymore, having dropped the ball, a long, long, time ago. Monopolarity is a bitch. See Churchill, below... ;-) Cheers, RAH - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "...our claim to be left in the unmolested enjoyment of vast and splendid possessions, mainly acquired by violence, largely maintained by force, often seems less reasonable to others than to us." -- Winston Churchill, January 1914 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaNwrMPxH8jf3ohaEQKhbwCeJfWxYVxqOZceIldNF/uDxOtQ4tQAn0Vb kn2P1ZqGByUw54RQmr+NzxP6 =VwfI -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
participants (4)
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John Young -
ken -
R.A. Hettinga -
Tyler Durden