Gonk posted:Well, I'd question that statement on WWII. The United States was never near destruction. The Japanese never had a hope of invading continental North America. Even conquering China or Australia would've been extremely difficult, if not impossible. Heck, it's difficult to come up with a realistic scenario for a successful German invasion of Britain either. Right -- but that's an accident of Geography. The only reason the US was so protected was because of the Atlantic and PAcific ocreans.
Gonk posted: So if it takes these huge wars to change these sort of simple developments in other nations, what does that mean for the future of international relations? How many other nations will stumble into a similar situation? Worse, what if one we count among valued allies stumbles back into it? There's got to be a better way of dealing with these situations.
Gonk posted: Other decisive uses of force since WWII: The Vietnamese unified their country through military force. First by fighting US and allied forces until we withdrew, than by invading South Vietnam in a conventional military campaign. Sure, they succeeded. And was that worth it all in the cost/benefit analysis? I suppose it depends on which person you ask; for the sake of that distinction, millions died. They had to fight the French and then the Americans, and it took what... 25 years? More if we include the Japanese? Considering all the Vietnamese that died, and all the ones that were expelled -- wasn't there a better way to go about this?
Gonk posted: Rhodesia was forced to accept majority rule due to the protracted black insurgency; in doing so, it effectively ceased to exist. Sure. And South Africa...? Again, other ways of going about it to get to the same place.
Gonk posted: And Israel is STILL fighting. And they still keep up thier military to be superior to thier neighbors. Thisd is precisely what I mean -- just like WWI, nothing has really been DECIDED here: even in cases where Egypt and Jordan are no longer hostile to Israel, large portions of thier populations are and seem to have every indication of continuing that trend. Meanwhile Syria remains hostile. And of course, the Arabs have hardly gotten what they wanted out of thier own similar approach to foreign policy.
Gonk posted: I'll forego this example from the American POV, except to say that obviously from Saddam's POV there was a better way to have approached the situation, because force certainly didn't get him anywhere.
Gonk posted: This is a more complex situation, because it's not clear the Soviets ever really wanted to control Afghanistan in the conventional sense any more than the Americans ever wanted to control Vietnam.
Gonk posted:But this is not something that can be assumed with every situation, and there's many situations that need a more dynamic approach other than trying to phych out your opponent by projections of stength and weakeness.
Vaderize03 posted:You give very sweeping generalizations in most of your posts.
V03 posted:My point is, and remains, that you consistently trot out the republican playbook when it comes to why Obama can't win: Wright, democratic "race baiting", too "liberal"; it won't work this time around. When it comes down to it, Obama is an game-changing candidate in the way that Reagan was. He's an idea, and the time has come for his ideas. He can certainly lose, no question, but the ball is squarely in his court.
V03 posted:Now on to McCain. Vetted? They haven't even started on him yet. I would very fearful if I were a republican right now, because Senator McCain has flown under the radar for a very long time. As soon as the democratic race is settled, we're going to get a MSM lovefest about the party "healing" and then it will be open season on Mr. McCain. We're going to hear about the Keating 5, the Iraq War, his economic inexperience, all his gaffes, his association with Bush.
V03 posted:Wright and what-not will be old news by the fall.....but there's plenty of time to introduce the country to Johnny's skeletons, positions, and associations.
V03 posted:Look, like I stated earlier, the cycle is strongly against the GOP this year.
V03 posted:The War, the Economy, a highly unpopular president, and a charismatic (although imperfect) challenger, young and idealistic-appealing, all go against the GOP this year. McCain will be tough to run against, but I do believe he will lose. The dems will unite, they have a tremendous financial advantage over the GOP, GOP turnout has been very depressed this year, and the dems are running a 50-state strategy that has a better chance of winning that anything they've done since Bill Clinton.
V03 posted:Glad to see you back on the boards .
BARACK OBAMA has emerged as a classic example of charismatic leadership — a figure upon whom others project their own hopes and desires. The resulting emotional intensity adds greatly to the more conventional strengths of the well-organized Obama campaign, and it has certainly sufficed to overcome the formidable initial advantages of Senator Hillary Clinton. One danger of such charisma, however, is that it can evoke unrealistic hopes of what a candidate could actually accomplish in office regardless of his own personal abilities. Case in point is the oft-made claim that an Obama presidency would be welcomed by the Muslim world. This idea often goes hand in hand with the altogether more plausible argument that Mr. Obama’s election would raise America’s esteem in Africa — indeed, he already arouses much enthusiasm in his father’s native Kenya and to a degree elsewhere on the continent. But it is a mistake to conflate his African identity with his Muslim heritage. Senator Obama is half African by birth and Africans can understandably identify with him. In Islam, however, there is no such thing as a half-Muslim. Like all monotheistic religions, Islam is an exclusive faith. As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as Senator Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion. Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother’s Christian background is irrelevant. Of course, as most Americans understand it, Senator Obama is not a Muslim. He chose to become a Christian, and indeed has written convincingly to explain how he arrived at his choice and how important his Christian faith is to him. His conversion, however, was a crime in Muslim eyes; it is “irtidad” or “ridda,” usually translated from the Arabic as “apostasy,” but with connotations of rebellion and treason. Indeed, it is the worst of all crimes that a Muslim can commit, worse than murder (which the victim’s family may choose to forgive). With few exceptions, the jurists of all Sunni and Shiite schools prescribe execution for all adults who leave the faith not under duress; the recommended punishment is beheading at the hands of a cleric, although in recent years there have been both stonings and hangings. (Some may point to cases in which lesser punishments were ordered — as with some Egyptian intellectuals who have been punished for writings that were construed as apostasy — but those were really instances of supposed heresy, not explicitly declared apostasy as in Senator Obama’s case.) It is true that the criminal codes in most Muslim countries do not mandate execution for apostasy (although a law doing exactly that is pending before Iran’s Parliament and in two Malaysian states). But as a practical matter, in very few Islamic countries do the governments have sufficient authority to resist demands for the punishment of apostates at the hands of religious authorities. For example, in Iran in 1994 the intervention of Pope John Paul II and others won a Christian convert a last-minute reprieve, but the man was abducted and killed shortly after his release. Likewise, in 2006 in Afghanistan, a Christian convert had to be declared insane to prevent his execution, and he was still forced to flee to Italy. Because no government is likely to allow the prosecution of a President Obama — not even those of Iran and Saudi Arabia, the only two countries where Islamic religious courts dominate over secular law — another provision of Muslim law is perhaps more relevant: it prohibits punishment for any Muslim who kills any apostate, and effectively prohibits interference with such a killing. At the very least, that would complicate the security planning of state visits by President Obama to Muslim countries, because the very act of protecting him would be sinful for Islamic security guards. More broadly, most citizens of the Islamic world would be horrified by the fact of Senator Obama’s conversion to Christianity once it became widely known — as it would, no doubt, should he win the White House. This would compromise the ability of governments in Muslim nations to cooperate with the United States in the fight against terrorism, as well as American efforts to export democracy and human rights abroad. That an Obama presidency would cause such complications in our dealings with the Islamic world is not likely to be a major factor with American voters, and the implication is not that it should be. But of all the well-meaning desires projected on Senator Obama, the hope that he would decisively improve relations with the world’s Muslims is the least realistic.
J-Rod posted:Hey, maybe Barr will be a good conservative choice! I know nothing about him right now. I'll have to look into him. Remember, I voted Buchanan in 2000 in the absence of a solid conservative Republican. I'll do it again...don't push me McCain!!!!
