I just reread all this stuff. Our Wilson E Coyote is endorsing Hillary Clinton.

Got an analogy.

Thinking certain things prevents having to think certain other sweaty things.

For example, there is a strong view that the Treaty of Versailles caused WW II.

That’s good. Because if we take that off the table, we’re back looking for reasons.

What’s left? Well, considering the Franco-Prussian War and the First World War, it doesn’t take the Treaty of Versailles necessarily to send the Germans over everybody’s borders. Maybe we’d be left saying, it’s in their blood. It’s their culture. They like that stuff.
Imagine saying that in an academic setting.

Or we could point to WW II’s end and say, wow. We pounded them flat. We destroyed their cities, their infrastructure. We occupied them. We remade their institutions. We hanged, imprisoned, or humiliated their leaders. Our occupation force, the Constabulary, I find, had a minimum height of six feet. Here are the Germans with their tall men dead lorded over by spit-shined, razor-creased, well-fed men not one of whom was less than an overawing two yards high.
And we haven’t heard a peep from them or the Japanese for sixty years.
Clearly, we didn’t hurt them enough after WW I.
Like to get that one off in a peace and wonderfulness setting?

Believing in the Versailles Treaty not only gets to make it our fault, always a winner, it keeps us from having to think no-nos.

Believing that Bush Lied seems to be as big a help, if not more so, in avoiding the uncomfortable.

The U.S. did make the effort. The U.S. made the effort over & over again for more than a decade. At some point diplomacy has to be abandoned. And I’m appalled at your willingness to let U.S. policy be subject to the approval of foreign governments(“a few trusted friends”).

tequilamockingbird

Does the U.S. need military allies? No, it does not. It’s perfectly capable of running roughshod over any country you pick — China, Russia, and certainly a pygmy like Iraq. What it needs is philosophical allies. What it needs is the give and take of diplomacy. The U.S. needs to make the effort to convince others that it is doing the right thing and to bring them on board, and it needs to receive the input of other sovereign nations who may perceive that perhaps it’s not doing the right thing and should modify its approach. (In the face of unanimous world disapproval, it should perhaps even admit that it’s mistaken and invite a few trusted friends to the blackboard for a redrafting).

This is an incomplete response to your informational and thoughtful post. I’ll have to look more carefully into what you’re saying, and I don’t have the time right now.

I hope you’ll agree, though, about about my point on cooperation and making allies. You don’t need ‘em to win militarily, but if your position is just and right in the first place, they can easily be convinced to join you, and you’re way stronger with ‘em.

Nope. The we-need-allies bit is an excuse. Whichever ones we have wouldn’t satisfy this line of thinking. And if we had them all, some other vital item would be necessary, determined solely by the fact that we didn’t have it.

Since almost nobody can fight more than a day’s march past their borders, we even have to bring them to the ball. Still, it’s extremely useful to have the first-line units of various countries associated with us, helping, if not on combat ops, to train police and engineers and border patrols and pipeline security and so forth.
There are more reasons than just Iraq for this.
See Kaplan’s “Imperial Grunts”. You can look at reviews on Amazon if you don’t want to read the thing. Our man in Mongolia is only one part of the long-term approach of which the Mongol return to Baghdad is a part. Ditto getting help from the stans and eastern Europe.

The immoral, unjust tags to the war in Iraq are mere opinions. They are not facts. The Presbyterian Church (USA), damn’ near a unilateral pacifist church (we disarm, what our enemies do is ignored) even decided, after looking at the Balkans, that “humanitarian intervention” could be justified, and if you nagged the hierarchy, they’d even admit, sotto voce, that it could include, um, er, LOOKOVERTHERE!! fighting. All conditions for the Iraq war were met, although the collared shooters didn’t admit it.

I don’t want to get into a strategic discussion with you because that requires a certain agreement on definitions, which is to say, good faith.
I will say that the war in Iraq fits the long-term strategy for the war on islamofascism.

Your agreement with part or all of this is not required.

“Poisonous”? Maybe. I would use a milder adjective, perhaps ‘barbed.’ Something not so fatal. You brush aside any need to be factual about the principle issue of debate & expect the response to be uncomplaining? It’s ok to lie about what Bush said because it’s just “shorthand”?

And the Nazi comparison was unfair. Other points you put forth have credible cases to be made for them, although perhaps not to your extremes – political beliefs I don’t buy personally but which I assume are sincerely championed by most of their adherents. But the Nazi comparison is just gratuitous ranting & with it your comment passed from discussion & debate into a form of aggression upon the reader.

But weren’t you purposefully inflammatory? Didn’t you expect, perhaps even want to cause some heat:

I know I’ll be attacked from all sides. Take your best shot — or, in the celebrated words of a prominent American, bring ‘em on.

As long as the centerpiece of that war is an injust and immoral invasion of Iraq, the U.S. has no allies to draw upon. When Bush and his cabal have been jailed for their warcrimes and discredited for a generation, all sorts of international cooperation will take place on all fronts.

In the meantime, when Bush’s policy is “bring ‘em on” — well, let’s talk again in 2008, when the American people have realized how their well-meaning patriotism has been manipulated by these whores who wrap themselves so tightly in the flag.

I concede on all fronts.

Bush is the most wonderful president who ever existed and he’s leading us into a wondeful new existence of world prosperity.

I’ve been converted by the simplicity and rightness of your arguments — Praised be the Lord and his presence on earth —
The Son among us — GBII. Let us all bow down to the Son and do his bidding.

Fat chance — just kidding!

tequilamockingbird

You can either think about this, what it means, and what we ought to be doing.

Or you can hate George Bush.

Which is easier?

And, if the notes disturb you, you can call me a racist, which is much easier than contemplating what they mean.