Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [OT] facism gaining ground in US

[Pierce T . Wetter III]

> >    2. Steal your oil:
> >
> >       If all we wanted was their oil, we could have gotten that very
> > easily.
> > Saddam offered the US these huge discounts if we would lift sanctions,
> > etc. And anyways, how exactly did we steal their oil? It's still  
> > there.
> > They pump it out of the ground and sell it.
>
> It's about control and leaving Saddam in control over it was not option
> for the US gov.

 Actually, the UN was in control in theory. It doesn't really matter who
was in control of it. Ultimately, all oil comes from Chicago. That is,  
its
traded at the Chicago Board of Trade (the US commodity market).

 Thing is, you can't eat oil. You have to turn it into cash, and once  
you
do that, you've sold it and you don't have "control" over it. Oil  
doesn't have
little "made in Iraq" stickers on it.

 Saddam could have said, Iraqi oil will never be sold to the Americans,  
and
it wouldn't have mattered in the least. Some % of the oil produced by  
Iran
(who hates the US) ends up in my vehicle. The US was never worried about
who "owned" the oil. What we were worried about was the sanctions were  
breaking
down. The corruption in the oil-for-food program was an open secret,  
which
you might want to research a bit, since its just shocking.

 Now if you're willing to state that we weren't willing to have Saddam  
in charge of the billions generated by Iraq's oil, I'll agree with  
that. Bin Laden did
a lot of damage with the money he had to the US morale and economy  
(we're still
feeling the effects), we didn't want him or any other terrorist group  
given
a blank check by Saddam.

 So we didn't want Saddam in control of the resources and wealth of  
Iraq, sure. He was crazy. Did you know he wrote a book? Its all about  
how he's going to lead this guerilla struggle against the evil  
americans in Iraq. What a kook.

> >   Here's a cowboy parable for you:
> >
> >   So there was a snake in my front yard, and I let it go by because it
> > was
> > just a green snake, and they aren't poisonous.
> >
> >   There was a snake in my back yard, where my children play, and I
> > killed it because you don't stop to check whether a snake is poisonous
> > if its in your back yard.
> >
> >   Then a snake bit one of my kids.
> >
> >   Now I kill the snakes in my front yard whether their poisonous or  
> > not.
>
> 1. Fascists also declared Jews to nonhuman, there were vermins that  
> had to
> be exterminated. I don't want to accuse you of being a fascist, that  
> would
> be counterproductive. I would rather suggest you read a bit more about
> what brought the fascist into power and more important what kept them
> there and made it possible to create the atrocities. Once you  
> understand
> that you might have an idea, why europeans are so concerned about the
> current US government.

 Well first off, Saddam was a proven nutjob. Just because you're  
paranoid doesn't mean people aren't out to get you.

As far as fascism growing in the US. Fascism had multiple forms, not  
all of them chose to demonize some race.

  Nor can you really support Fascism by demonizing one person, you  
would have
to demonize a people.

  So its a little more complicated then that as far as fascism goes.  
The US
doesn't have enough of the despair that was present in the fascist  
states, and
that was a necessary ingredient. Finally, the federal government  
affects us less
then you might think. City/County/School District/State/Federal  
governments have more effect in that order.

  What I keep saying is that we understand a lot of why europeans are
concerned both about the current US government and any that follow. What
I don't think I'm getting across is that the currents are deeper then  
just
this administration, this has been an issue in US-European relations  
since 1948.
We're not quite sure what to do about it, and we don't see Europe as  
being very helpful in this regard. The difference between constructive  
criticism and criticism is that constructive criticism proposes an  
alternative.

 Again, obligatory Foreign Affairs plug, as America discusses all of  
this quite out in the open:

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20040701faessay83406/eliot-a-cohen/ 
history-and-the-hyperpower.html
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20040701facomment83401/james-f-hoge-jr/a- 
global-power-shift-in-the-making.html
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/background/default#botn2004-06-30

 Here's Colin Powell's essay on how the administration sees things:

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20040101faessay83104/colin-l-powell/a- 
strategy-of-partnerships.html

Which in a nutshell, means that the US will strive to consult what it  
sees as the involved countries, but not necessarily all of them. That's  
been both good and bad so far. It was good in India/Pakistan and North  
Korea, but with Iraq, I think
that Europe felt they needed to be consulted more then we thought they  
did. I know that we talked to every single Arab country in the region  
and Russia, but France (for instance) felt snubbed.

I see this as an evolution of our foreign policy in this Post Cold War  
period. In the case of India/Pakistan, previously, a superpower would  
get behind one or the other country, and then nothing would happen. In  
this case, the US told both of them, look, your relations with each  
other are something you'll have to work out. We'll help if you want,  
but we won't take sides.

So that's been a quiet coup for the Bush administration, and its been  
repeated in other places.


> 2. While talking about cowboys, it's not necessarily an insult here
> either and we don't mean no disrespect to real cowboys, but we just  
> know
> that cowboy methods are not really helpful in international affairs. We
> talk so much, because we want to try understand and solve problems not
> create more of them.

 At the same time, the wrong decision made at the right time is often  
better
then the right decision made too late. There's room for both methods.  
The
US army is an interesting example, they have two types of generals:
bureaucrats/diplomats/logistic guys like Eisenhower, and cowboys like
Patton.

 It takes both kinds.

 One thing that's really bad about cowboys to some extent is that there  
is this
"do, don't talk about it" rule, because there's this belief that people  
who
talk about things don't do things. While its kind of true that you don't
need to talk about how you're going to fix a fence, you just need to do  
it,
in this case I wish Bush would realize that talking is the "doing" when  
it comes to public diplomacy.