So what do we do now?

[shin]

Osama would vote Republican
by John in DC - 8/23/2006 07:03:00 PM

I'm reading Ron Suskind's book "The One Percent Doctrine" and I've come to a rather interesting and relevant part dealing with why we haven't been hit since September 11 (other than the Anthrax attacks).

There is a strong belief inside the US government that perhaps the reason we haven't been hit is because Osama decided a while back NOT to hit us again on the US mainland. Rather, he is targeting our allies (Spain and England particularly), the argument goes, in order to force them to pull out of Iraq, and more generally distance themselves from the US, in order to leave us all alone in our Iraqi quagmire, thus making Iraq an even BIGGER quagmire (taking the financial and military hit), but just as importantly, making the US (and its Arab allies, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan) the focus of all the Muslim rage that will continue to build because of the US presence in Iraq.

Or to put it more simply, Osama wanted the US to invade the Middle East, and he really wants us to stay there because our presence helps generate anti-US and pro-Osama feelings.

Or even more simply, Osama wants us to "stay the course" in Iraq. George Bush and the stay-the-course Republicans are Osama's wet dream.

This also means that Bush has been lying to the America people about why it is we haven't been hit since September 11. He knows that it isn't at all clear that we haven't been hit because he's supposedly done such a good job breaking up terror cells.

First, I can't think of a single terror cell that seriously threatened the US mainland (perhaps that plane plot to hit that building in LA, and I say perhaps because you'll notice we haven't heard Bush boasting about that plot at all, and you know as well as I that we'd still be hearing about it if it were true). As for Bush's other great terror cell capers, the guys in NY were a joke, the guys in Florida a second joke, Padilla a third joke, and who else is there that we the US broke up? Oh yeah, the nutjob who wanted to take down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch, yeah he was a big threat.

One plot that was real, and which Bush was NOT responsible for breaking up, was a planned 2003 Al Qaeda poisoned gas attack against the NYC subway. It wasn't by George Bush or anyone in the US government. It was stopped by Zawahiri, bin Laden's right-hand man. We would have been hit again but bin Laden's guy called it off, not George Bush. So George Bush's policies don't get the credit. This is also further evidence that Al Qaeda, for whatever reason, has decided NOT to hit the US mainland since September 11.

So what this tells us is:

1. George Bush is lying when he talks about how everyone should vote Republican because we haven't been hit since September 11. He knows damn well that it's quite possible we haven't been hit because bin Laden has decided not to hit us in the US.

2. George Bush is doing exactly what bin Laden wants by keeping US troops in Iraq. According to the Suskind book, bin Laden was hoping we'd invade Afghanistan and that IT would become our quagmire to inflame the Middle East. The fact that Iraq ultimately became the quagmire wasn't the initial plan, but it's working just as well to isolate our country and foment even more anti-Americanism across the globe.

So, that makes George Bush the closest thing to the al Qaeda candidate, and it makes anyone who wants US troops to remain in Iraq the next best thing to al Qaeda enablers.

Try them apples, Karl.

[kmc]

docdrum said:

Am I a total cynic if I suggest that in 880 days (or less) all the high falutin' democracy-talk goes out the window?

No, you're not. You're a realist, and perhaps an optimist. I am quite sure he annoints himself King George by inauguration day, and further negates our Constitution.

He's a sack of shit.

[rockysigman]

kmc said:

He's a sack of shit.

You're being way to kind to him. Seriously.

[strat-0]

That's an excellent point that has not been at all lost on me, Mary. We here have had discussions on "democracy" before, even back in the old RS.com days, that have addressed the issues of "true" cf "constitutional" cf "representative" democracy. Since this is within your area of expertise, it may or may not horrify you to see that the majority of the American public as well as our illustrious leader would benefit greatly from an eighth-grade civics class.

We get most of our freedoms from the Constitution -- in fact, it protects people from democracy. I think most everyone here would acknowledge that; what's amazing is the general level of ignorance of so many about governments, cultures, and societies.

Democracy is not the same thing as "the American Way," or western values. Democracy in Iraq and other places in the Middle East is just as likely to lead to the adoption of sharia (Islamic law) as it is to bring western freedoms and "liberal" democracy. I use the loaded word deliberately. They haven't had their Enlightenment period yet -- no philosophs there.

But then, these are many of the same people who still can't distinguish between the Iraq war and Osama bin Laden's al Queda.

[rockysigman]

Anyone who has read the Federalist Papers understands that at least a few of the Founders recognized the potential dangers of pure democracy. How many of those essays refer to the "tyranny of the majority"? A great many things in our federal system are designed specifally to prevent the majority from having too much power over the minority.

A lot of people in this country seem to think that democracy is the same as American democracy, and it is not. Our rhetoric about democracy in the middle east is a direct contradiction to many of our actions there. The strongest proponents of our current policy talk about democracy, but really want those countries to adopt our way of doing things, which, when done by force, is the exact opposite of democracy.

[phil]

Am I a total cynic if I suggest that in 880 days (or less)
all the high falutin' democracy-talk goes out the window?

That long ... ??

WE'RE FUCKED !!

[RocDoc]

Seems like a future-leaning thread like this is where to C&P this...interesting shit here (well, except to some):


<sub>Where's the Love, Russia?

Russians blame the U.S. for 1990s corruption and economic bullying.

By Rajan Menon, RAJAN MENON, a fellow at the New America Foundation, is Monroe J. Rathbone professor of international relations at Lehigh University.
August 20, 2006


THE BUSH administration's imposition of sanctions on two Russian companies this month for selling military technology to Iran certainly sends the Kremlin a message — but it won't be the one the White House has in mind. The penalties will only deepen the hostility that Russia's political establishment feels toward the United States.

That attitude came through loud and clear in many discussions I had with Russian academics, foreign policy specialists and senior officials during a recent trip to Moscow. President Vladimir V. Putin echoed it in his caustic dismissal of Vice President Dick Cheney's recent complaint that Russian democracy was eroding. And his condemnation of the sanctions as an "illegitimate" attempt to foist U.S. laws on Russian companies was no less acerbic. He will doubtless respond in kind.

The anti-American nationalism so palpable in Russia today is rooted in the 1990s, the decade of Boris N. Yeltsin, whom many Americans credit with ending Soviet totalitarianism and introducing the country to democracy. Russians have a different take on those years. They remember the chaos; the economic contraction; the extreme poverty; the robber barons who, with the connivance of the government, made billions after taking over state-owned industries at bargain-basement prices; and the Yeltsin family's rampant corruption. Rightly or wrongly, they associate these bad experiences with the United States. As one Russian official told me, "We followed your advice, and look where it landed us."

NATO's expansion also feeds Russian anti-Americanism. During the debate here, U.S. experts confidently predicted that Moscow would adjust to the induction of its former Soviet republics — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — into the alliance just as it had when Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic joined. They were wrong.

The Russians I met see the U.S. drive to enlarge the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as unfriendly and unnecessary, undertaken when Russia was weak and without regard for Russian sensibilities. They believe that the U.S. continues to trample over vital Russian security interests, particularly in the post-Soviet republics, where, as they see it, Russia has the right to be dominant by virtue of history and geography. The democratic revolutions in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine, hailed in Washington, are viewed in Russia as a U.S. gambit to undercut Moscow's influence in its own backyard by creating what one official sneeringly called "puppet governments." Russia, I was told, would never allow Georgia to retake its breakaway statelets in Abkhazia and South Ossetia; "blood would flow" if it tried. And were Ukraine admitted to NATO, the consequences would be dire: Russia would throw in its lot with China, demand that Ukraine return the Crimea and show Europe who's boss when it comes to energy.

Russia's anti-American nationalism also reflects current circumstances. Although their country has many problems, Russians feel stronger and more confident than they did in the 1990s and are determined to be taken seriously as a great power. The economic disaster of the previous decade is over. Russia's gross domestic product has annually increased, on average, by 5% under Putin. Yeltsin's drunken antics, which made Russians cringe, have been replaced by Putin's authoritative and confident air on the world stage. One young Russian, who finished high school and college in the U.S., told me, with evident admiration, that Putin conducted himself at the G-8 summit with the assurance of an adult tending children.

When Russians look ahead, they feel that they are on a roll. Thanks to sky-high oil prices, Russia is flush with cash. It has paid off much of its foreign debt ahead of schedule. Europe is increasingly dependent on Russian energy, and Western oil and gas companies want to partner with their Russian counterparts, most of which are under state control. The West is desperate for Russian help on Iran and North Korea, and the U.S. is bogged down in Iraq and hated in much of the world. All this makes Russians determined to push back when they feel that they are pushed.

It's folly to assume that a new, post-Soviet generation will seek greater harmony with the U.S. or that Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization (certain to occur) and market forces will necessarily integrate it into the West. When I asked the U.S.-educated Russian whether he shared the anti-American nationalism that I'd heard during my talks with Russian academics and officials, he said he did. What's more, he added, his circle of friends was, if anything, even angrier at the United States for what he regarded as its arrogant foreign policy and disregard of Russia's interests.

Many Russian businessmen want membership in the WTO and want market-oriented reforms to accelerate. But others, in business and in society generally, consider foreign competition a threat, believing that globalization will reduce Russia's independence, contaminate its culture and allow foreigners to control its natural resources. Moscow's populist mayor and a possible Putin successor in 2008, Yuri Luzhkov, said as much when, soon after last month's G-8 meeting, he welcomed Russia's failure to get into the WTO as a blessing. It would be a grave error to see his view, also regularly voiced by the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church (itself an important source of a nationalism) as idiosyncratic.

Russians have yet to determine the kind of society they want to build and what its relationship with the West, in general, and the United States, in particular, should be. Let's hope that the country's attitudes toward us will have a minimal effect on those choices.</sub>

[RocDoc]

Rightly or wrongly, they associate these bad experiences with the United States. As one Russian official told me, "We followed your advice, and look where it landed us."

'Rightly or wrongly'? After some across-the-board 'advice' they think was given to them?
This being like 'the key to the city' in effect, unfettered success and happiness, having been handed to them...

Excuse me, TOTALLY fucking wrongly, so emblematic of shortsighted boobs who feel they're entitled to the quick score to live happily ever after wthout a clue to how economies and developing markets generally change quite slowly.

LET 'em think that way...not that anything's going to stop anyone who's that thick.

[kmc]

I have a couple of Lithuanian friends, and they told me that life in the USSR was actually pretty great. Better than some living in the States, in fact.

[RocDoc]

This surprises you?

_{In terms of me having somehow made representations to you that it was horrible all the time over there?
Which sure seems would be the point of you posting a statement regarding your 'survey'...}

Bottom line is that everywhere, people are people and they'll always find some way to live decently, have fun, fall in love and all that sorta shit.

The first 10-20 years of the SSRs were where the people indeeed DID have it hard.
VERY hard.

Til everyone settled into a 'Well it's not going away how do we live with it'.

The educational system in Lithuania for one, definitely beat the hell out of this misguided crap that we have which is supposed to pass for education.

Out of curiosity, what are the age ranges of this group of Lithuanian acquaintances you have? Similar to yours I'll guess.

The point here being if they're 25 years old, then they were just ten when the Soviet Union broke down, a bit short on having a usable opinon on the 50 years of Communism which their parents and then their parents and grandparents lived through.

Fact is that lots of people did live pretty well...and that lots did not.

[shin]

Well they're no longer the country with the gulags, so I suppose such sentiments are the result of the modern political landscape.

[chrisfan]

kmc said:

I have a couple of Lithuanian friends, and they told me that life in the USSR was actually pretty great. Better than some living in the States, in fact.

Careful Kenny -- you're going to risk sounding like TDD and her family members that give credibility to all her views on everything with all these friends from every country criticized who just happen to pop up to tell you how good life is there.

[kmc]

My friends said that the Soviet Union was never as bad as depicted, it was just that people needed someone to demonize, and they picked on the pseudo-communists for no good reason.

[kmc]

I believe them. I know how these things go. And these guys are pretty reliable people.

[RocDoc]

_{Out of curiosity, what are the age ranges of this group of Lithuanian acquaintances you have? Similar to yours I'll guess.}