”Do you want to end up like Bush?”

The Americans are so clever at being a superpower. Really phucking clever.

I think there ARE times for individual initiative and forcefulness, but it’s certainly not called for as a regular practice. The phrase “unintended consequences” comes to mind. Also, and less obvious, it’s one thing to enable a person to experience ‘enlightenment’ and another to make it stick. The human mind, and presumably an entire Society, doesn’t change quickly and irreversibly just because of one short-term event. We change more surely over time with incremental changes as a result of experiences and given time for us to form ideas and concepts which also reflect our experiential knowledge.

I think we have to restrain our use of force to emergencies and expend most of our energies on slower incremental changes which all involved agree to. That’s the way the world trade revolution is going to move forward and that’s the way Democracy is creeping forward around the globe and that’s the way long-time warring enemies come to finding ways for peace (see N. Ireland or Israel-Palestinians). It takes time for people to really get it.

About 4500 U.S. casualties and an estimated one million Iraqi dead.

I saw Dubya on a show this evening and he said we’re making progress and that he’s a results oriented kind of guy. The problem with that if your means to those results aren’t legal, then you’re a criminal and you disgrace the country. If we didn’t have sufficient information to show the world we were acting in self-defense, then what else can one say about Iraq except that we invaded and occupied them and then overthrew their government and killed a lot of innocent people — it’s clearly illegal.

Bush said he’s in favor of the universal principle of Liberty, then then takes enemy combatants and holds them without habeas rights. A president has to realize that in the process there are limits. It goes beyond whether the results are good.

On HIV/AIDS prevention he’s done good for people. I also like that he says we weren’t paternalistic, we partnered with them and improved overall health care, education and Liberty. But, despite his personal goal of spreading Liberty (beyond Africa too), I have to ask where he sees that in the Constitution. Sure, it’s a great and important goal, but upholding the law (which the Constitution surely is) has to come first for a president. Outside of that official duty he would be within his rights to promote Liberty, abstinence and anything else peaceful. In office there are the limits of our kind of government which Republicans have been harping on for decades (limited government).

Sure, ‘preventive’ and ‘preemptive’ warring are important concepts to understand, and I sure hope President-elect Obama understands them, but it’s clear that the great trend of Western Civilization (as begun even before the Treaty of Westphalia) is toward the power of the people and the rights of a people to self-determination and to be free from enemies. That’s embodied in our Constitution and we need to get back to upholding that. As a Constitutional scholar it would seem obvious Obama will do that.

This is not a good trend. The poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in the UK was very possibly arranged by Russia. Presumably, if India believed that some of the perps were on US soil, and the US refused to extradite them, India would be justified in taking appropriate extra-territorial action, including extra-judicial assassination.

As a young boy, I saw the same patterns growing up in Vietnam, Thailand, Laos.

That was ‘53-’63 . . . I was ten when I landed states side for the final time.
It was in my early teens as my father and I spoke of past times and I gathered my fermenting need to know more about politics and state rule. He was, to say the least, a liberal at heart.

I remain colored by all that, with respect to world affairs.

Skeptical of all I’m told by king and country . . . ;-)

And did I mention, how much I still hate Leo Strauss and the Dulles Brothers (not related hates)?

We did Iraq cuz it was a goal to further hegomony, capture and rule oil resources, and put a foodhold of ours into the ME game to deny Chinese, Russian, Indian and any OTHER influences to those resources.

So we invaded, with false ginned up info, sold to a dumbed down Congress and populous.

And it was sold as a preemptive strike based on Nigerian Yellow Cake and WMD’s that don’t exist.

It was NOT sold as a preventative strike, as the media and any official policy sold it, that I know of.

I’m not a foreign policy analyst, but please, correct me on that if I’m wrong?

Thanks . . . always value you and others thoughts in here . . . .

We’re arguing Monsanto and Heirloom.

One seeks to eliminate diversity, the other seeks to preserve diversity.

I don’t find Iraq to be as you say it was. It was a sham, a scam and it was sold and bought as preventative measure and as such has reshaped decades and generations of deterrence based policy.

Now any country can point to it, and say, screw Geneva, screw deterrence, and screw magna carta and more . . . and use USA as a raison duh eter . . . . if ya catch my drift . . *G*