Breaking News Events

[MsDemeanor]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

The meme that is going to emerge in the next week is that Obama's firing of McChrystal is this once-in-a-lifetime event with not the least bit of historical precedent---don't believe it because it simply is not true.

I think that Rachel had a snippet on her show yesterday that listed 5 military higher-ups axed by Shrub. Sorry, I was baking and only half paying attention.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by chefhmboyrd

is it safe to assume that all wars are fought over money, money from drugs, money from oil, money from money???????????

I don't think that's a safe assumption. I really, really don't. I think it oversimplifies a VERY complicated human behavior and in so doing gets in the way of understanding.

I'm curious are we talking about ALL wars--no matter who fights them--or are we talking only about wars Americans fight or are we talking only wars that Europeans and Americans fight? Is it just modern wars or is it all wars? Are wars fought in defense of a nation also in that category? I ask because the answers to those questions kind of set the dimensions of the discussion.

If it's all wars then it brings up the problem of wars where there was not a clear-cut financial or material gain to be had.

If it's just wars that Americans fight (leaving others to have other reasons to fight wars) then it fails to explain either WW II or Korea.

If it's just wars that Europeans and Americans fight then it fails to explain WW I or WW II.

Originally Posted by apocalipstic

War, always about money, greed and power.

So if your nation is attacked--for whatever reason someone might do so--are you saying that your nation should NOT defend itself?

Originally Posted by MsDemeanor

Wars are fought for one of two reasons, and quite often a combination of both: A) resources (money, land, food, water, minerals, etc.), or B) religion. Even though Shrub seems to have done it because Sadam picked on his daddy and it was a good way to funnel lots of taxpayer dollars to his buddies at Haliburton, etc., that still falls under "resources". Governments don't decide to spend their money and kill their citizens for the fuck of it, they do it because they want something.

This seems more along the lines of treating war as the complicated phenomena it is. I would, however, add the following: C) national honor and D) largely by accident. I think that most wars we might care to study fall into a combination of those four with each one having different weights.

For example---

WW I--mostly D and C with, perhaps, a sprinkling of A in the peripheries (read what was left of the Ottoman Empire). WW I, at the time it broke out, wasn't what any nation was *trying* to make happen--it just kind of happened because the various national leaderships allowed the situation to get out of hand.

WW II--mostly A and C with a sprinkling of B and D in the case of the European theatre. Hitler invaded Eastern Europe for land (lebensraum) and to rebuild the honor of the German people after the humiliation of WW I. I say D because there are things that England and France probably *could* have done that might have prevented the war but they didn't. For Japan it was A, C, D and B in that order. Japan had legitimate strategic interests in the Western Pacific--being an island nation with very few natural resources not having control of the Straits of Malacca would cause the Japanese high command no end of sleepless nights. They wanted land and control of the waters in their immediate neighborhood. In attacking the United States, they stumbled into a war that was far larger than they had anticipated.

Korea--D, A, C in that order. After WW II, with Japan defeated the Korean peninsula was partitioned on the 38th parallel. One thing led to another and the North Koreans invaded the South. The South was backed by the U.S. and the UN and the North by China and the USSR.

Vietnam--A and D in that order.

Gulf War I -- D and A with a sprinkling of C. Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait was a HUGE miscalculation. He expected the U.S. to sit it out which, of course, we weren't about to do. He stumbled into a larger war in an attempt to grab more oil resources and regain of some Iraq's national honor after the war of attrition that nation had fought with Iran. For the United States, it was a way of redeeming the American military after Vietnam and to begin asserting a stronger presence for the US military in the region in pursuit of goals related to reason A.

Gulf War II -- A and C in that order with a sprinkling of B. The US leadership wants to establish *permanent* hegemony (beyond what we already have) in the region and Iraq is perfect for that purpose. C has to do both with the feeling of the neo-cons that Bush the Elder, Powell and Schwarzkopf didn't finish the job by getting rid of Saddam Hussein AND Bush the Younger wanted to avenge the attempt on his father's life. Oddly enough this is the only war a Western nation has been involved in that had a clear religious dimension to it.

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Since I expect that the *next* meme we'll see propagated is that flag officers are *never* relieved and that it has happened, maybe, a few times in our history and since that meme is manifestly untrue, I thought I would just go ahead and cut this myth off before it can get going here.

Thomas Ricks has an excellent article on today's OpEd page of the NY Times talking about the history of firing officers who screw up. Link

Since you have to register to read the page (registration is free) I thought I would paste in a few specific paragraphs which are particularly germane here:

FOR most of our nation’s history, the armed services have had a strong and worthy tradition of firing generals who get out of line. So for most of our presidents there would have been no question about whether to oust Gen. Stanley McChrystal for making public his differences with the White House on policy in Afghanistan. If President Obama had not fired General McChrystal, it would have been like President Truman keeping on Douglas MacArthur after his insubordination during the Korean War.

In the longer term, the Army has to return to its tradition of getting rid of leaders who are failing. The Navy has shown more fortitude; in the first two months of this year alone it fired six commanders of ships and installations.

Back in World War II, the Army had no qualms about letting officers go; at least 16 of the 155 generals who commanded divisions in combat during the war were relieved while in combat. George Marshall, the nation’s top general, felt that a willingness to fire subordinates was a requirement of leadership. He once described Gen. Hap Arnold, chief of the Army Air Forces, as a fine man, but one who “didn’t have the nerve to get rid of men not worth a damn.”

The old system may seem harsh in today’s light, and certainly some men were treated unfairly. But keep in mind that job losses were dwarfed by combat losses: In the summer of 1944, 15 of the 20 battalion and regimental commanders in the 82nd Airborne were either killed or wounded. In World War II, a front-line officer either succeeded, became a casualty or was relieved within a few months — or in some cases, within days.

The tradition of swift relief provided two benefits that we have lost in today’s Army: It punished failure and it gave an opportunity to younger, more energetic officers who were better equipped to adapt to the quickening pace of the war. When George Marshall heard of a major who really was doing a general’s work, he stepped in to make the man a brigadier general overnight. Under this audacious system, a generation of brilliant young commanders emerged, men like James Gavin, an innovator in airborne warfare who became the Army’s youngest three-star general.

The meme that is going to emerge in the next week is that Obama's firing of McChrystal is this once-in-a-lifetime event with not the least bit of historical precedent---don't believe it because it simply is not true.

Cheers
Aj

Thanks for the link, Aj. How anyone can believe that this is a once-in-a-lifetime event is just nuts! My academic historical background is not war history, but, there are many war historians that can be read that knock this out of the water! Going back to even Washington and Lincoln's wartime presidential decisions really shoots a whole in this claim. Then, again, just about Obama is the fodder of race linked to his being the first African US American president. Sad, but true and not surprising at all.

I have a problem with news snippet history. And these days, news programs are nothing but talking-point whores. Have to do some research and historical perspective reading to get a clearer picture of things.

[MsDemeanor]

Aj, very good points about C and D. Thank you!!!!

[Corkey]

Officers serve at the pleasure of the Commander In Chief, not the other way around. McChrystal's insubordination was unbecoming of an officer of the US Army, I am glad he has been replaced.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by AtLastHome

I have a problem with news snippet history. And these days, news programs are nothing but talking-point whores. Have to do some research and historical perspective reading to get a clearer picture of things.

In fact, as things stand right now the modern conservative movement is *counting* on historical amnesia. The examples are legion but I'll list just a couple of ones that really have my gall up:

1) Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican. In fact, there appears to be NO evidence that this was the case other than the word of his niece Alveda King. However, his son says his father was not a Republican, he voted for LBJ in '64 (who, if memory serves, was a Democrat) and in his autobiography he is quoted as saying that the '64 GOP convention was a "frenzied wedding ... of the KKK and the radical right". What's more he would NOT have supported the GOP of today. Which, actually, leads to the next issue.

2) It was the Democrats that were the party of segregation and Republicans that was the party of civil rights. This is *partly* true but it does not tell the whole story. The South was solidly Democratic until the mid-1960s. As such, there were a lot of segregationists and it WAS the party of segregation--at least the Southern flank of it was. However--and this is critical to understanding what happened--after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, the South started to swing toward the GOP. At this point, most of the people who had been pro-segregation Democrats (Dixiecrats) became Republicans. So it was Conservative Southern Democrats who were transformed into Republicans--they didn't shed their racism when they moved from the D column to the R column. The Republican party would like people to forget that Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond and Trent Lott and Haley Barbour were ALL--to a man--pro-segregation Democrats who became embittered pro-segregation Republicans. One unintended consequence was the shift of the two parties---the Democratic party moved Left and the Republican party moved Right. Although, to be honest, the Republican party moved more to the Right than the Democratic party moved to the Left.

3) Washington, Jefferson, Paine, Adams, Franklin and Madison were all what we would now consider to be evangelical Christians. They were not. Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and Madison were all deists. Paine was an atheist. Not a SINGLE one of those men would pass muster as a Christian the way that is defined within the Religious Right, the Tea Party or the Republican party.

The list could go on and on but those are three particularly pernicious myths that the Republican party is trying to perpetuate and are hoping that Americans overall cultural amnesia will allow them to get away with the bait and switch.

Cheers
Aj

[Corkey]

I really think it's time for a review of civics and history lessons that folks supposedly learned in high school.
I have no problem with folks having opposing opinions, but this misleading and factually wrong, twisting of history and how the government works is disturbing to me. If one is unsure of the facts perhaps one shouldn't post inaccuracies that are factually wrong.

[dreadgeek]

I am not a military historian. I'm not even going to pretend that I can play a military historian on the Internet. The discussion of the firing of McChrystal and the larger issue of the Afghanistan war has me thinking, however, about how to deal with the question of warfare as a tool of geopolitics. I am not pro-war however I am what I hope is a geopolitical realist. Right now and for any foreseeable future, the way geopolitics is done one of the pieces that nations have on the board is a standing military. While I understand the reflex to condemn all war and to try to distill it down to its simplest *possible* essence, I don't know how useful it is in understanding why we get into wars, how we can avoid them in the future and how we get out of wars. For me, I think the idea that 'war is always about money or resources' actually clouds the issue and doesn't allow one to think about the subject on its own terms.

I get it that war is unpleasant. Although I was lucky enough not to see combat in my time in the military, I am the daughter and mother of combat veterans. I served under men who had fought in combat. I am not trying to argue for the glorification of war, nor am I trying to argue in favor of either action the US military is embroiled in currently. Rather, I'm trying to deal with the issue of warfare beyond either the reflexive Liberal position (always bad, we're always up to no good when we're involved in a war) and the Conservative position (kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out--as long as I don't have to do the fighting).

To do this, I think it is useful to try to deal with geopolitics using the most hard eyed, coldly realistic realpolitik we can muster. By doing so, I think it allows us to actually dig deeper into the issue.

For instance, I think we spend too much on our military and I think our current strategic posture makes no sense. Do we have legitimate national interests? Yes. Do we have legitimate transnational interests? Yes. So, I see no reason why we maintain our Cold War defense posture in Europe. It is vanishingly improbable that any two given European nations are going to war with one another and there's just no way that Russia is going to invade Western Europe anytime soon. No European nation has anything to gain by invading another and Russia has absolutely nothing to gain by invasion that they couldn't get some other way. We *never* had any legitimate strategic interest in Iraq and any strategic interest we had in Afghanistan in 2001 no longer exists. We could, I think, pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq entirely and withdraw from Europe without any significant harm being done to our national interest. On the other hand, there is a *legitimate* national and transnational interest in maintaining a naval presence in the Persian Gulf. Why? Because huge amounts of the oil used by EVERY country flows through that area and everyone--from you and I to every person who could lay their hands on a boat and some explosives--knows it. In order to keep oil prices somewhere in a region that could be called stable world markets have to have a reasonable surety that the oil will get from A to B without being blown up. To do that, you need a deep water navy. We have the best blue water navy on the planet--in fact, we have the only navy that is probably capable of making certain that the oil tankers get from point A to B. It is in the global interest for oil prices to be stable and it is in the US national interest for this to be so as well.

Now, we could wish that our civilization was not dependent upon fossil fuels and I think we should not be dependent upon them. We might wish that it didn't take a deep water navy to secure the shipping lanes. But wishing doesn't make it so. The job has to be done, the US Navy can control any large body of water and the air space above it for a few hundred miles at the time and place of their choosing. Therefore the US Navy is best positioned for the job. (As an aside, this is a legacy of both WW II where sea power was decisive and the US/NATO war plan for WW III which would be fought in Europe against the Soviets. The war plan called for the army in Europe to fight the world's greatest holding action while the navy owned the Atlantic ocean and then a huge resupply mission would be undertaken. The Russians could resupply by train, the Americans had to resupply by ship.)

It's a different way of thinking about the same subject. The reflexive Liberal response to the above is "why do we have to be in the Persian Gulf at all". The reflexive Conservative response is "withdraw from Iraq, Afghanistan and Europe! Are you mad?! 9/11 and Hitler!". Neither response actually deals with the realpolitik that the SecDef and SecState as well as the POTUS and the Joint Chiefs actually have to face. It requires, on the Liberal side ,getting over the knee-jerk "if the American military did it, then it must be evil and done for some horrible purpose". Have we done things in the name of national interest we should not have done? Yes. Absolutely. But that is no reason to assume, at the outset, that any and all military actions involving the American military were undertaken for horrible, backhanded reasons or that national interest is just another word for "policy makers waking up and deciding to send a bunch of poor kids to kill a bunch of brown people because it's Thursday".

As MsD pointed out, national leaders--not ours, not anyone's--spends blood and treasure to fight a war because they are in the mood. They do it because they *want* something.

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

In fact, as things stand right now the modern conservative movement is *counting* on historical amnesia. The examples are legion but I'll list just a couple of ones that really have my gall up:

1) Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican. In fact, there appears to be NO evidence that this was the case other than the word of his niece Alveda King. However, his son says his father was not a Republican, he voted for LBJ in '64 (who, if memory serves, was a Democrat) and in his autobiography he is quoted as saying that the '64 GOP convention was a "frenzied wedding ... of the KKK and the radical right". What's more he would NOT have supported the GOP of today. Which, actually, leads to the next issue.

2) It was the Democrats that were the party of segregation and Republicans that was the party of civil rights. This is *partly* true but it does not tell the whole story. The South was solidly Democratic until the mid-1960s. As such, there were a lot of segregationists and it WAS the party of segregation--at least the Southern flank of it was. However--and this is critical to understanding what happened--after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, the South started to swing toward the GOP. At this point, most of the people who had been pro-segregation Democrats (Dixiecrats) became Republicans. So it was Conservative Southern Democrats who were transformed into Republicans--they didn't shed their racism when they moved from the D column to the R column. The Republican party would like people to forget that Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond and Trent Lott and Haley Barbour were ALL--to a man--pro-segregation Democrats who became embittered pro-segregation Republicans. One unintended consequence was the shift of the two parties---the Democratic party moved Left and the Republican party moved Right. Although, to be honest, the Republican party moved more to the Right than the Democratic party moved to the Left.

3) Washington, Jefferson, Paine, Adams, Franklin and Madison were all what we would now consider to be evangelical Christians. They were not. Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and Madison were all deists. Paine was an atheist. Not a SINGLE one of those men would pass muster as a Christian the way that is defined within the Religious Right, the Tea Party or the Republican party.

The list could go on and on but those are three particularly pernicious myths that the Republican party is trying to perpetuate and are hoping that Americans overall cultural amnesia will allow them to get away with the bait and switch.

Cheers
Aj

So much misinformation along the political front. Number 3 is so very telling in terms of the wing-nut wagons of far right Christian folks...

Something that always bugs me is the modern day concept of what puritans were really like.... OMG!! Talk about fact distortion for one's own agenda!!

Thanks for these points, Aj. When will ever learn to reseach matters and not just accept some media blitz!!

I don't really have a problem with disagreement unless whoever is disagreeing just has not done any homework. The whole revision of facts is getting very scary... look at Texas and the proposals for US History taught in the public schools!

[Toughy]

Originally Posted by Toughy

........Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) being the first who comes to my mind.

I need to correct this. Senator Sanders is not a member of the Democratic Party, nor is he a Republican. He is an independent....meaning he has no party affiliation.

[MsDemeanor]

Originally Posted by Toughy

I need to correct this. Senator Sanders is not a member of the Democratic Party, nor is he a Republican. He is an independent....meaning he has no party affiliation.

However, he does caucus with the Democratic Party and is considered a Democrat when it comes to committee assignments.

[Glenn]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

osition (always bad, we're always up to no good when we're involved in a war) and the Conservative position (kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out--as long as I don't have to do the fighting).

On the other hand, there is a *legitimate* national and transnational interest in maintaining a naval presence in the Persian Gulf. Why? Because huge amounts of the oil used by EVERY country flows through that area and everyone--from you and I to every person who could lay their hands on a boat and some explosives--knows it. In order to keep oil prices somewhere in a region that could be called stable world markets have to have a reasonable surety that the oil will get from A to B without being blown up. To do that, you need a deep water navy. We have the best blue water navy on the planet--in fact, we have the only navy that is probably capable of making certain that the oil tankers get from point A to B. It is in the global interest for oil prices to be stable and it is in the US national interest for this to be so as well.

Now, we could wish that our civilization was not dependent upon fossil fuels and I think we should not be dependent upon them. We might wish that it didn't take a deep water navy to secure the shipping lanes. But wishing doesn't make it so. The job has to be done, the US Navy can control any large body of water and the air space above it for a few hundred miles at the time and place of their choosing. Therefore the US Navy is best positioned for the job. (As an aside, this is a legacy of both WW II where sea power was decisive and the US/NATO war plan for WW III which would be fought in Europe against the Soviets. The war plan called for the army in Europe to fight the world's greatest holding action while the navy owned the Atlantic ocean and then a huge resupply mission would be undertaken. The Russians could resupply by train, the Americans had to resupply by ship.)

s MsD pointed out, national leaders--not ours, not anyone's--spends blood and treasure to fight a war because they are in the mood. They do it because they *want* something.

We're sitting on that oil there and we're not going anywhere. Why? Because of the power of fear at what could happen if we did'nt have it. A shortage of fuel eventually stopped the Germans and Japanese. Everyone needs oil to defend their countries, until Science can develop new innovative technologies we need. If oil were gone, our American spirit of pride in innovation leadership would be gone and we would need to devolve into relying upon more primitive techniques once again to get what we want. Until then ,we need our brains are so battered in by war and world devastation that every country in the world will fall upon an aggressor.

[Sabine Gallais]

The truth is that both sides equally have folks bent over. That ain't no conservative conspiracy, folks. How about we all make a deal. Let’s just call it as we see it. It’s a goddamned disaster – politics, that is. It’s one miserable failure after another, and yet the same old clowns have the unmitigated gall to get up before mankind and profess their really honest desire to do something about the raping and pillaging of America this time. Oh yes, just trust them this time and you’ll see. This time it’ll be better. The vote coming up in November isn’t about Republicans or Democrats. It’s about throwing all these criminals out on their ass for good. Every one of them. Lying, stealing, thieving bastards that they are.

So, go ahead. Enjoy your summer. Let the media continue to tell you what all this discomfort is about. Let them jerk you around as before, telling you bullsh*t about how this one over here is going to do this for you and that one over there is going to do that for you. And blah, blah, blah. Frankly, I am not going to watch this crap on TV any more until right before this election in November in order to confirm my suspicions that people fall for this nonsense over and over and over. You have to keep in mind, these people in the media are able to basically package turds and sell it to y'all. It happens all the damn time. Just read the endlessly pedantic posts.

If you want to take Rolling Stone seriously, rock on. They fly Matt Taibbi around to attend political conferences and make snide remarks and that passes for cutting edge. That rag hasn't been relevant or taken a real chance since I was taking bong hits in high school. Hmmm, is it their opinion-filled lack of journalism, their grade school writing or their biased music critiques? Maybe it's The Jonas Brothers cover? It's amazing that something supposedly so cool and supposedly subversive could be so undeniably insignificant.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Sabine Gallais

[FONT="Comic Sans MS"]The truth is that both sides equally have folks bent over. That ain't no conservative conspiracy, folks. How about we all make a deal. Let’s just call it as we see it. It’s a goddamned disaster – politics, that is. It’s one miserable failure after another, and yet the same old clowns have the unmitigated gall to get up before mankind and profess their really honest desire to do something about the raping and pillaging of America this time. Oh yes, just trust them this time and you’ll see. This time it’ll be better. The vote coming up in November isn’t about Republicans or Democrats. It’s about throwing all these criminals out on their ass for good. Every one of them. Lying, stealing, thieving bastards that they are.

A couple of questions. Firstly, if all politics is a disaster what do you replace politics *with*? America is a nation of 300 million people who do not have identical interests. There are close to 7 billion people on the planet who also have interests that are far from identical with any other given person. If there is a *better* way to manage the conflicting interests of that many people beyond some kind of political process, I'm all ears. Secondly, let's say we throw them all out--every last politician currently holding office and up for election is gone. Now what? Most of the people running for office have held some other elected office so that makes them a politician which, in what we will for the moment call your analysis, means that they are lying, stealing thieving bastards. So we can't vote for the incumbent because that person is a lying bastard and we can't vote for the challenger (unless they are a neophyte) because THEY are also lying bastards. So who, precisely, is left to vote for? Write in candidates?

So, go ahead. Enjoy your summer. Let the media continue to tell you what all this discomfort is about.

Funny thing is, one can be informed by taking in a variety of media sources and then filtering it through some kind of rational thought.

Let them jerk you around as before, telling you bullsh*t about how this one over here is going to do this for you and that one over there is going to do that for you.

I don't know about you but I don't expect anyone to 'do things for me', I expect elected officials to solve problems that are too large for any one person to solve themselves. For example, I have neither the means nor the skills to build a road but my local government does. I don't have the means or skills to negotiate international treaties, but my national government does. That's not 'doing things for me', that's doing things for the country that no one individual can take on by themselves.

And blah, blah, blah. Frankly, I am not going to watch this crap on TV any more until right before this election in November in order to confirm my suspicions that people fall for this nonsense over and over and over.

So, in other words, you have already concluded what will happen and any evidence you see will be taken as evidence ONLY of your foregone conclusion.

You have to keep in mind, these people in the media are able to basically package turds and sell it to y'all. It happens all the damn time. Just read the endlessly pedantic posts.

There are media people here? Who? Who here works in the media because I wasn't aware of anyone here doing so. Or are you folding BFP into the larger category of 'the media'?

You know, the easiest thing in the world is to take a flamethrower and just indiscriminately wave it around, shouting like some biblical prophet of old that it's all corrupt, all is lost and all are fools--except those who, of course, agree with you. It is quite a bit more difficult to actually come up with a cogent argument that actually deals with complexity on its own terms while, at the same time, breaking it down into digestible pieces. Your statements may or may not be accurate--there's really no way to evaluate them because they are largely content-less. By this I mean, for example "it's a goddamned disaster--politics, that is". Okay, so what? Maybe that's true but since the statement just sits there with not even the least suggestion as to how it could be made better or what politics could be replaced with, it comes off as nothing so much as a tantrum instead of an attempt to inform or get people to think about a subject deeply.

For my money, I will trust a news organization like the BBC or NPR or even The Economist (although I don't agree with about half of what I read there) over the likes of Alex Jones or any other conspiracy theorist who is "just telling the truth". The BBC, NPR and The Economist actually have something to lose because if they get it completely wrong too many times without correction eventually they lose all credibility. Alex Jones or any other conspiracy theorist you care to mention doesn't have to worry about credibility. If PrisonPlanet announced that a giant rock will hit the Earth tomorrow at 7:00 am Pacific time and at 9:00 am there still isn't a rock the people who buy into the conspiracy theories peddled there will simply pretend that the prediction wasn't made--OR that 'the government' moved the rock out of its path with lasers as part of a secret plot to hasten the coming of the One World Government--OR that when it was said Saturday 26 June 2010 at 7:00 am Pacific it meant a DIFFERENT Saturday on a *different* 26 June 2010. What they won't admit is "they got it wrong".

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by popcorninthesofa

We're sitting on that oil there and we're not going anywhere. Why? Because of the power of fear at what could happen if we did'nt have it. A shortage of fuel eventually stopped the Germans and Japanese. Everyone needs oil to defend their countries, until Science can develop new innovative technologies we need. If oil were gone, our American spirit of pride in innovation leadership would be gone and we would need to devolve into relying upon more primitive techniques once again to get what we want. Until then ,we need our brains are so battered in by war and world devastation that every country in the world will fall upon an aggressor.

Imagine that oil could not get out of the Persian Gulf starting today. What would be the consequences? The first is that the non-gulf oil producers would be on their way to becoming fantastically rich because the price of oil would shoot up like the space shuttle. The second thing that would happen is that the price of food would rocket up in a desperate attempt to catch up to the price of oil. The third thing that would happen is that agriculture would grind to a halt. We use oil to make fertilizer (I won't get into the process here because it's not germane) so suddenly we would be doing agriculture as it was done in the early part of the 19th century before we could make nitrogen fertilizers. The fourth thing that would happen is that industry would grind to a halt as other fuel couldn’t' get from A to B, materials couldn't get from A to B, and some things couldn't be manufactured at all.

So now we have six billion people many of them hungry and living in gigantic monkey-hives called cities which are going to go dark as soon as the sun sets. Hellish nightmare straight out of Dante doesn't even *begin* to touch how horrible this gets. I'm not talking about what would happen just to the U.S. but this would be global.

It is simply a fact that we cannot feed 6 billion people on pre-20th century agricultural techniques. Not possible. It is simply a fact that modern medicine relies heavily on plastics which are made from, you guessed it, oil. It is simply a fact that it takes oil to get coal or wood or anything else you might use for fuel from here to there. World civilization would collapse. That's not trading in fear, that's trading in cold-eyed reality.

Yes, a shortage of fuel sort-of stopped the Germans (although I would argue that Germany was just battered into submission). The Japanese probably could have kept fighting--had two atomic bombs not been dropped on their cities. Recognizing that the Americans had a weapon they could not counter and which would visit unspeakable horror upon their people if they kept on, they surrendered. But your point demonstrates just how important oil is to modern society. I don't know about you but I am profoundly grateful I wasn't born in the dark ages and I would like very much for human civilization to avoid a repeat performance of them.

[Sabine Gallais]

Of course, the MSM wants you to believe that there is a power struggle going on in the military over Afghanistan (=distraction), and the new big whopping financial industry regulations that those poor bastards worked on all night long for us small people (=another distraction), and the big hamburger outing with Medvedev after his visit to ‘Twitters’ (=distraction), and on and on and on it goes seemingly without end…

[MsDemeanor]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

You know, the easiest thing in the world is to take a flamethrower and just indiscriminately wave it around, shouting like some biblical prophet of old that it's all corrupt, all is lost and all are fools--except those who, of course, agree with you.

I really should copy this quote and paste it every time someone posts one of those nonsensical 'everyone's corrupt', 'throw the bastards out', 'there's no difference', or, then new one, 'everything's a distraction'. It's become clear to me that one of the biggest problems facing this country isn't our government, it's our citizenry, where a fair number of people don't bother to pay attention, to get facts, to sort out the crap, and to make informed decisions.

My new rule: If you make blanket statements about government, politicians, or policy along the line of 'it's all bad', I'm going assume that you don't pay attention and you have no idea what the hell you're talking about.

[MsDemeanor]

Originally Posted by Sabine Gallais

Of course, the MSM wants you to believe that there is a power struggle going on in the military over Afghanistan (=distraction), and the new big whopping financial industry regulations that those poor bastards worked on all night long for us small people (=another distraction), and the big hamburger outing with Medvedev after his visit to ‘Twitters’ (=distraction), and on and on and on it goes seemingly without end…

Um, there IS disagreement over Afghanistan. There IS financial overhaul - though it's much less powerful and effective than it should be thanks to the Republicans (once again, if one can't tell the difference between the parties, one is not paying attention). And they DID eat a hamburger and discuss twitter. None of this is made up by the MSM, it really is happening!! There's really also an oil spill, and global warming, and all kinds of stuff. The MSM doesn't fabricate disasters and wars to generate advertising revenue.

[SuperFemme]

Originally Posted by MsDemeanor

Um, there IS disagreement over Afghanistan. There IS financial overhaul - though it's much less powerful and effective than it should be thanks to the Republicans (once again, if one can't tell the difference between the parties, one is not paying attention). And they DID eat a hamburger and discuss twitter. None of this is made up by the MSM, it really is happening!! There's really also an oil spill, and global warming, and all kinds of stuff. The MSM doesn't fabricate disasters and wars to generate advertising revenue.

Right? The distraction argument reminds me of the groups that say the holocaust never happened. Meaning the distraction argument is a distraction in and of itself.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by MsDemeanor

It's become clear to me that one of the biggest problems facing this country isn't our government, it's our citizenry, where a fair number of people don't bother to pay attention, to get facts, to sort out the crap, and to make informed decisions.

My new rule: If you make blanket statements about government, politicians, or policy along the line of 'it's all bad', I'm going assume that you don't pay attention and you have no idea what the hell you're talking about.

I have to say that I want to copy that out and paste it in every time someone starts complaining about how all the politicians are corrupt. We may not have the government we want but increasingly I am coming to the conclusion that we have the government we deserve. We deserve it because we no longer think that there's any difference between information and rumour, fact or fiction. If you believe that a solar flare is going to turn the Earth upside down like in some summer blockbuster movie, it isn't really going to matter what any scientist says about it being physically impossible. It's not going to matter how much information they bring to bear on debunking the idea. The Earth is going to be turned upside down by a solar flare, killing off all but the very rich (for no good reason), and 'the government' is keeping it all from us. Full-stop, end of story.

That might sound funny but that's precisely where we find ourselves in this country today. A high ranking officer is insubordinate and gets cashiered (much to the delight of the troops under his command) and it's a distraction? No, not really. If firing McChrystal means that someone who is less likely to get my son killed will take command in the Afghani theatre then I'm all for it and I don't consider it a distraction at all. It IS news that McChrystal was fired. It's easy to say "it's a distraction" but I couldn't help but notice that it was never detailed *what* we were being distracted *from*. If I'm doing a "hey, look over there!" feint then I'm not doing it because it's Thursday and I can has cheeseburger, it's because I want your attention elsewhere while I do something. Well, what's that thing that we're being distracted from? Or is the MSM just distracting us because it's Friday and they can has cheeseburger?

You're spot on that so many citizens don't pay attention and don't filter things through a fine mesh of "is it reasonable to presume that the world works this way". That fine mesh alone makes it safe to get news from a variety of sources. (And for the record, TV news--including Rachel Maddow's program--is not real valuable to me as anything but entertainment with two exceptions--BBC America's news broadcast and PBS Newshour. I get my news mostly by reading because I'm antiquarian like that.)

Lastly, I can't help but notice that the prophets are long on declarations of how FUBARd things are and how anyone who doesn't see that in the exact same terms they do is nothing more than a foolish dupe of the powers-that-be and their media lapdogs. When it comes to solutions, however, nine times out of ten they are nowhere to be found because solutions aren't interesting, they aren't as emotionally satisfying and they have the added disadvantage of actually forcing one to deal with the complexities of a given problem. I used to think that the world was a pretty simple place but the more I tried to understand why the world didn't work the way a simple world should, the more I realized that part of what was wrong wasn't with the world but with my expectations of it. I was expecting a very complicated world to behave as a very simple system. The more I delve into a given subject, the more I have come to realize that the problems facing us are fiendishly difficult.

Just to take one--our dependency on fossil fuels. We need to get off oil and coal as soon as possible. Yet, getting off oil--particularly--isn't going to be easy. Sure, we could all trade in our ICE cars for hybrids or, better yet, electric cars. But I don't think that an electric 18-wheeler is practical and an electric jumbo jet is out of the question. The easy answer is "no more oil!". Nice, simple, fits on a bumper sticker and is emotionally satisfying. But spending time with the issue, trying to figure out how we still manage to have an economy while not using fossil fuels anymore than is absolutely necessary will make your head hurt. It doesn't fit on a bumper sticker. "No more oil! (Except for long haul transport, military applications and jet aircraft)" doesn't really fit on a bumper sticker very well.

I don't pretend to have answers for what ails us. I do hope that I think about these issues and give them the gravity and respect of depth that the problems deserve and require. I hope that when I get didactic here I am stimulating people to think about matters in a way that, perhaps, they didn't think about them before. This is our mess--not 'the government's mess' it's OUR mess. Like I said earlier, we may not have the government we want but we probably have the government we deserve.

Cheers
Aj