Droning On About Pakistan
POSTED BY: Kwicko
UPDATED: Friday, February 6, 2026 20:08
VIEWED: 1857
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DT: I'm not convinced Bush really was a born again Christian, considering his daughters, and I kind of think that the inspiration from god thing was an act, but still good. :)
The funny thing is, the only nation in the world that I think even HAD 144,000 soldiers during the biblical time was Persia or Babylon... In those times the residents and occupiers of the region.
People don't realize when the Bible is being tongue in cheek.
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"My snarky tone of voice aside, what should we change, and how will those changes cause a change in the folks who oppose us?"
Most - nearly all - terrorists are recruited b/c of some real world problem - usually of resources, or the lack thereof.
The US needs to stop supporting Israel in its apparent drive to exterminate Palestinians.
The US needs to stop explicitly supporting repressive governments (Saudi Arabia, Egypt) with aid and/ or lots and lots of arms sales and 'technical assistance'.
The US needs to stop unilaterally targeting countries it 'doesn't like' - Iran for example - and trying to railroad everyone else into going along.
The US DOES need to become involved as an active (but not dominant) party to global issues - Somalia and Ethiopia for example.
The US needs to take a lesson from South America - while it was involved in the Middle East that continent to the south was freed from oppressive and constant meddling and seemd to be doing ebtter as a result.
The US needs to stop exporting it's paticularly pernicious form of capitalism through the IMF, World Bank, and global trade agreements. The institutions don't benefit anyone except the very rich.
***************************************************************
Silence is consent.
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Byte,
It was "truthiness." an attempt at humor, to avoid the horrifying reality that mike was presenting.
Mike is right on the money, as is his quote, and wonderful term, rube-golbergian logic.
As per the 144,000, I think it *did* come from the bible, but I agree with you that Bush wasn't much of a Born Again Christian, but then again who is ;)
I actually think that the coincidence of the attack plan with the revelation of St. John the Divine actually had some basis in trying to keep Christian support for the Administration.
I humbly submit, for example, that if he had sent 666,000 troops, and bombed assyrian christian churches in northern iraq during prayer rather than mosques, he would NOT have been re-elected, even though the effective policies would have been essentially the same.
Even if the extra troops would have meant that he won the war ;)
Mike,
I'll add another problem:
The US is not only an ally of Pakistan, we have sworn by treaty to defend Pakistan against ANY foreign attack.
Does that include against ourselves?
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Total agreement Rue,
One of the articles I posted above had the question
We now openly trade with Communist Vietnam whom we were at war with, but we still embargo Cuba ?
I think US foreign policy needs to be openly debated point by point until something resembling common sense takes hold...
Add to your list
The US needs to begin closing its overseas bases, particularly where the people there don't want them
The US needs to begin to treat countrys who violate treatys the same, rather than ignoring one and hammering the other for the same thing...
Either your with the terrorists, or ... your with the terrorists 
Lets party like its 1939
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Another example
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2009/12/20091229134142350297.
html
Putin warns US over missile defence
Putin says "The problems of missile defence and offensive arms are very closely linked," Putin said in comments broadcast on state television.
"By building such an umbrella over themselves our partners could feel themselves fully secure and will do whatever they want, which upsets the balance.
"Aggressiveness immediately increases in real politics and economics [in this situation].
"To preserve the balance, we must develop offensive weapons systems, not missile defence systems as the United States is doing,"
Extend the same argument to conventional arms, the more the US flails about it the world, does it provoke a resurgence in Russian military build up to contain it ?
Can we really afford another cold war?
Either your with the terrorists, or ... your with the terrorists
Lets party like its 1939
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Quote:
"By building such an umbrella over themselves our partners could feel themselves fully secure and will do whatever they want, which upsets the balance.
...Welll... That's actually a bad argument. No country is going to agree to limit it's defenses to give countries that want to attack it more even ground in the interest of balance. That's just not smart. Nor is advocating production of offensive weapons. Weapons are weapons, and Putin is pushing his own agenda, remember that.
But, where Putin does have a point, (and this is considering that I think of Putin almost as the head of a Hitler Youth-esque personality cult), is that Americans ARE arrogant, and do feel like they have the right to go into allied countries and install those same defenses, which do locally cause a sense of invulnerability and aggressiveness.
And then people get greedy, and find economic reasons and resources to fight over, and viola, instability caused indirectly by efforts to stabilize a region.
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Bytemite wrote:
" No country is going to agree to limit it's defenses to give countries that want to attack it more even ground in the interest of balance. "
But the SALT treaties did just that by limiting deployment of ABM systems, and this was a key point in every nuclear treaty until Bush2 took office.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Arms_Limitation_Talks
The strategic nuclear forces niche of the Soviet Union and the United States were changing in character in 1968. The U.S.'s total number of missiles had been static since 1967 at 1,054 ICBMs and 656 SLBMs, but there was an increasing number of missiles with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) warheads being deployed. MIRV's carried multiple nuclear warheads, often with dummies, to confuse ABM systems, making MIRV defence by ABM systems increasingly difficult and expensive. One clause of the treaty required both countries to limit the number of sites protected by an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system to two each. The Soviet Union had deployed such a system around Moscow in 1966 and the United States announced an ABM program to protect twelve ICBM sites in 1967. A modified two-tier Moscow ABM system is still used. The U.S. built only one ABM site to protect Minuteman base in North Dakota where the "Safeguard Program" was deployed. Due to the system's expense and limited effectiveness, the Pentagon disbanded "Safeguard" in 1975.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ballistic_Missile_Treaty
At about the same time, the USSR reached strategic parity with the US in terms of ICBM forces. A nuclear war would no longer be a favorable exchange for the US, but both countries would be devastated. This led in the West to the concept of mutually assured destruction, MAD, in which any changes to the strategic balance had to be carefully weighed. To the US, ABMs now seemed far too risky – it was better to have no defense than one that might trigger a war.
Putin, simply wants to go back to status quo, where neither side needs to spend money it doesn't have to provoke similar spending elsewhere...
My argument, is US foreign policy provokes the world to arm itself rather than become the end of that policy
Either your with the terrorists, or ... your with the terrorists
Lets party like its 1939
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Nuclear arms are a special case, most countries are scared enough of them that they're willing to limit the amount of nukes just so they have the assurance of knowing their enemies ALSO don't have many.
Except for the U.S., who seems to still be riding high on post soviet collapse paranoia, and who still has a lot of the missiles from the cold war build up.
I was saying, in general, countries aren't going to agree to limit their defenses programs, not if they have the money to pay for them.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Nuclear arms are a special case, most countries are scared enough of them that they're willing to limit the amount of nukes just so they have the assurance of knowing their enemies ALSO don't have many.
Except for the U.S., who seems to still be riding high on post soviet collapse paranoia, and who still has a lot of the missiles from the cold war build up.
I was saying, in general, countries aren't going to agree to limit their defenses programs, not if they have the money to pay for them.
" not if they have the money to pay for them "
there you go, reason enough
Either your with the terrorists, or ... your with the terrorists
Lets party like its 1939
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Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Nuclear arms are a special case, most countries are scared enough of them that they're willing to limit the amount of nukes just so they have the assurance of knowing their enemies ALSO don't have many.
Except for the U.S., who seems to still be riding high on post soviet collapse paranoia, and who still has a lot of the missiles from the cold war build up.
I was saying, in general, countries aren't going to agree to limit their defenses programs, not if they have the money to pay for them.
As for conventional arms....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditure
s
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute produces a list of the top 10 biggest spenders of military expenditure annually in their Yearbook publication. The following figures for 2008 are from the SIPRI Yearbook 2009 and were calculated using market exchange rates.[1]
Rank ↓ Country ↓ Spending ($ b.) ↓ World Share (%) ↓
— World Total 1464.0 100
1 United States United States 607.0 41.5
2 People's Republic of China China 84.9a 5.8a
3 France France 65.7 4.5
4 United Kingdom United Kingdom 65.3 4.5
5 Russia Russia 58.6a 4.0a
6 Germany Germany 46.8 3.2
7 Japan Japan 46.3 3.2
8 Italy Italy 40.6 2.8
9 Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia 38.2 2.6
10 India India 30.0 2.1
So in order to feel safe, the US needs to spend seven times what the next closest country does in defence spending ?
41.5% of all military spending on Earth ?
must be a guilty conscience thinking everyone hates them like that... lol
Either your with the terrorists, or ... your with the terrorists
Lets party like its 1939
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