Post 'em if you got 'em.

Ever notice that politics threads always seem to end with ptk arguing with people?

let's try this again...

i wasn't arguing, i was defending bogus accusations and mis-representations of my statemetns and position...

please try to discredit this guy

My recollection is that the Iraq/Al Qaeda link was never specific, and in some cases denied by the Bush administration. So, if my memory is accurate, how could the administration fake something it never acknowledged existed in the first place?

Of course, you read the article, and it turns out that's not what it's about--it seems to be about the WMD stuff. So why the misleading headline?

Why should I continue to read when it looks like a clear bait and switch?

As far as Georgia goes, I don't see how it helps McCain. He's now saying this is why you need an old guy in the White House. Yet, the Iraq policy really ties our hands in two ways. First, the obvious one, we don't have the military resources to do much of anything, and even if we did, the American public I don't think would respond favorably to anything other than a few bombing sorties with no casualties. And that's not really possible I don't think.

The second issue is that Russia seems to want to get rid of Saakashvili. OK, that's a terrible thing to get rid of an elected leader of a sovereign nation. It's called regime change. Oh. Nevermind. Now, I'm not claiming that Saakashvili is an equivalent to Hussein, but to the Russians, he very well might be.

Russia is a basket case in lots of ways. They are going to continue to engage in these wars on its margins. And at this point, there's not much we can do about it. Thanks largely to McCain's war.

George Kennan died too soon. And he was something like 103 when he passed.

Were Kennan (mpmcgraw alert: he's the intellectual godfather of the Cold War, the guy who basically came up with the containment approach; Google for more) alive today, I think his take would be something like this: Russia remains essentially the same opportunistic and expansionist power they've always been, whatever their nominal form of government. But their current assertive posture is a product of two factors: the high price of oil, and the knots the US has tied itself in by its misguided "let's go kick someone's ass" strategery (and ensuing forfeiture of its international good name by use of "Cheney Tickles"--waterboarding et al) earlier in the decade.

So the answer is to take a defensive posture for the moment. Georgia's gone; Putin will work his will there. Of course, we can't admit this; we have to do essentially as the Bush administration has done, trying to leverage our strategic and economic importance to salvage what can be salvaged from the situation. And then we need to figure out what can be done to start to isolate Russia in diplomatic and economic terms. (Maybe the fact that Russia's aggression is funded with petrodollars will help bring into focus that, yeah, we're going to have to sacrifice to break the addiction, and that the consequences of not doing so are potentially a lot more horrifying than $8 gas.)

Things will change eventually: oil will come down, or something else will happen to undermine Putin at home. Meanwhile we keep our powder dry and, for Kennan's sake, keep the Lieberman/McCain/Bolton/Scheunemann "War--it's FAN-tastic!" crowd away from the Button.

On the domestic front, I would hope that this situation brings into public view what I consider to be a potentially fatal flaw for American democracy in the mass-media age: the truism that more belligerence is always the politically palatable approach. These crazy fuckers on the right, calling for us to arm Georgia with Stinger missiles and what have you, should be public laughingstocks. But they're not.

Paleocon John Derbyshire on dajafi's point:

If we are not willing to go to war with Russia over Georgia, let's not commit ourselves to it. If we are, then of course we should commit … but I'd like to see those poll results first.

At this moment, Putin & his pals are rolling around the Kremlin floor laughing helplessly at our stupidity and gullibility. As a patriotic American, I don't like to contemplate that. What could we do to wipe the smiles off their faces, though? Bomb Moscow? They know we're not going to do that. That's why they're still laughing. Game, set, and match to Putin.

I do think there are ways to attack Russia at their weak points. This does not of course involve a head to head military confrontation.

Unfortunately, 8 years of foreign policy incompetency (and let's not kid ourselves--Clinton's foreign policy wasn't all that hot either, it's just no one really cared) has reduced our leverage and our standing in all kinds of ways.

We have to re-make the argument that we are better than Russia.

VoxOrion wrote:Paleocon John Derbyshire on dajafi's point:

If we are not willing to go to war with Russia over Georgia, let's not commit ourselves to it. If we are, then of course we should commit … but I'd like to see those poll results first.

At this moment, Putin & his pals are rolling around the Kremlin floor laughing helplessly at our stupidity and gullibility. As a patriotic American, I don't like to contemplate that. What could we do to wipe the smiles off their faces, though? Bomb Moscow? They know we're not going to do that. That's why they're still laughing. Game, set, and match to Putin.

So this guy Derbyshire's a Mysterian

looks a little like Question Mark, but without the shades

I Spy


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080814/ap_ ... s_revealed


Julia Child

jp_chips wrote:I Spy


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080814/ap_ ... s_revealed


Julia Child

That is awesome. And in the end, not really all that surprising.

drsmooth wrote:

VoxOrion wrote:Paleocon John Derbyshire on dajafi's point:

If we are not willing to go to war with Russia over Georgia, let's not commit ourselves to it. If we are, then of course we should commit … but I'd like to see those poll results first.

At this moment, Putin & his pals are rolling around the Kremlin floor laughing helplessly at our stupidity and gullibility. As a patriotic American, I don't like to contemplate that. What could we do to wipe the smiles off their faces, though? Bomb Moscow? They know we're not going to do that. That's why they're still laughing. Game, set, and match to Putin.

So this guy Derbyshire's a Mysterian

looks a little like Question Mark, but without the shades

Only 95 tears.

I sort of understand the "tied down in Iraq" argument, except we never would go to war with Russia.

jerseyhoya wrote:I sort of understand the "tied down in Iraq" argument, except we never would go to war with Russia.

But we would have more credible deterrence.

TenuredVulture wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:I sort of understand the "tied down in Iraq" argument, except we never would go to war with Russia.

But we would have more credible deterrence.

But Putin is still greedy, and everyone and their mother knows we're not actually gonna go to war over this crap.

jerseyhoya wrote:I sort of understand the "tied down in Iraq" argument, except we never would go to war with Russia.

Matthew Broderick disagrees

Dear World Trade Organization,

Recent events illustrate that Russia does not play well with others. Until they demonstrate otherwise, they should not be admitted into the super cool WTO club.

Sincerely yours,
America

XOXOXO

jerseyhoya wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:I sort of understand the "tied down in Iraq" argument, except we never would go to war with Russia.

But we would have more credible deterrence.

But Putin is still greedy, and everyone and their mother knows we're not actually gonna go to war over this crap.

President Bush sent American troops to Georgia on Wednesday to oversee a “vigorous and ongoing” humanitarian mission, in a direct challenge to Russia’s display of military dominance over the region.
...
At a news conference at the State Department, Ms. Rice evoked some of the darkest memories of the cold war, though she stopped well short of promises of direct military support to Georgia.

“This is not 1968, and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, where Russia can invade its neighbor, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it,” she said. “Things have changed.”

She and Mr. Bush gave credence to Georgia’s accusations that Russian forces continued to operate in violation of the cease-fire. Russia insisted that all of its operations were permitted under the agreement.

Bad on me for stupidly saying something complementary about Rice, whose main qualification for her high offices was that Bush liked talking to her about the NFL. (She dated players! Wowwie!) Based on the statement above, she evidently thinks it would have been a good idea to go to war with the USSR over their repression of the Prague Spring. Ironically, we were tied down in a stupid, brutal, strategically irrelevant war at that time, too.

Rarely does a nation want to go to war, and I'm sure we don't, other than maybe certain political types. (Rove I imagine thinks it would help, for instance; "National security is a Republican issue, and our candidate is a war hero!") The problem is that when you have a lot of heavily armed guys in close proximity and a basically belligerent posture, things happen. And instead of the relatively sane people who were in decision-making roles when such things happened during the Cold War, we've got... well, the Bush administration and Putin and his KGB cronies.

If a Russian accidentally shoots an American, say, we really could go to war from some Cheneyesque notion that it would be a preferable alternative to looking like a pussy; if one of ours accidentally shoots one of theirs, we might or might not apologize (and they might or might not accept it).

On a slightly lighter note:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articl ... _mail.html

dajafi wrote:On the domestic front, I would hope that this situation brings into public view what I consider to be a potentially fatal flaw for American democracy in the mass-media age: the truism that more belligerence is always the politically palatable approach. These crazy $#@! on the right, calling for us to arm Georgia with Stinger missiles and what have you, should be public laughingstocks. But they're not.

Why exactly shouldn't we arm them?

I am sure Russia wouldn't be happy when they realize they are losing planes and tanks from the stingers and javelins (because as we all know human life means nothing to them. even their own) but they sure as hell won't do anything about it.

I say make this another Afghanistan for them although it might be a little less effective without as many jihadist crazies.