I fear we are already in an ideological civil war of sorts as well as a global war. The tech weapons have been unsheathed. It is every man for himself. No one is immune. The first shot was fired a long time ago. Just finished reading (okay it was an audio ebook) Tinker, Tailor,Soldier,Spy by Le Carre. While it is just a story, it portrays convincingly how a "mole' with a few rabbit tricks up his sleeve can obfuscate the most trained and seasoned spies in his midst. Vaguely remember that perhaps this was loosely based on that traitor Aldrich Ames (spit here). Also "read" Escape by Caroline Jessop- 4th wife out of umpteen wives in the break away Mormon group FLDS -Fundamentalists of Latter Day Saints-truly a cult. It is so easy to be brainwashed despite signs, obvious signs that something is amiss. I found myself in this position once. I took a course about energy healing. The course itself had valuable info that is legitimate, the hook was once you got certified, to keep up the certification, they kept redeveloping the info, you had to continue to take courses that got increasingly more expensive plus added requirements to re-certify, and the constant harping about how this is sooo cutting edge, and there is so much more in the works. Ultimately, I know I was duped. When the realization hit me, I then started to notice things that I blinded myself to, the superior attitudes of the instructors. The main director was a brilliant physician. To this day, I am not sure if she believes what she does, or is out for money. The most egregious thing that happened which certainly was the last straw, was when one of the directors, who upon discovering that she had diabetes decided to use only the energy healing techniques without taking insulin. The directors were commenting on how the "toxicity" of her family wasn't letting her heal. While that may be true, she should have taken the damn insulin, and not die.

the hook was once you got certified, to keep up the certification, they kept redeveloping the info, you had to continue to take courses that got increasingly more expensive plus added requirements to re-certify, and the constant harping about how this is sooo cutting edge, and there is so much more in the works

And we won the "long twilight struggle" of the Cold War, yet with each passing year we find ourselves spending more money and building more bases and fomenting more coups and fighting more wars. Sound familiar?

"Devils do not exist, nor angels."
Yet Clio does?
Jimmy Crickets, Kenneth! Sometimes I get the idea you don't like America's foreign policy.
NJ to IL:
Isn't it amazing how we learn our lessons sometimes? My "hard lesson" in the not so near past was a multi level marketing thingy. Yuk! By the way. Good post. I did not miss your point.

"POTUS claims he knows history. History says that after wars, the US educes the troop levels until the Devils come calling, and we are short hundred of thousands of troops the first months."

And that was when we had a draft. We don't got that now. Now we got Gays in the Military. Anyone ever notice exactly when the oh-so-kind and thoughtful and inclusive Europeans states admitted Gays to their military? After the fall of the Soviet Union, when everyone was sure there would be no more wars for the West to fight.

David Brinkley's portrait of US military on the eve of WW2 was painful to read. Even stones in the streets knew there was going to be a war in Europe by '38. No excuses for the decision-makers to have been either so blind or so stupid.

"Does anyone reading this think that today we are any less hated?"

Sorry, but does anything thinking person care about living in a country that's beloved of others? I mean, really? What's love get a nation? Machiavelli was spot on: Tis better to be feared than loved. Unfortuately, Democrats make it one of their principal platforms to court the love of other nations and peoples rather than the security of their own and their own's interests. No thoughtful person gives that ambition serious consideration.

Name one right or freedom you had before 9/11 that you don't have now. Just one. Have you been prosecuted because of something the government heard or read in your correspondence or communications? Been jailed lately without due process? Care deeply about whether dangerous men with injurious intent sit in Guantanimo without trial, do you? Been contributing vast sums to Muslim charities acting as front organizations?

Morons . . . everyone who let's this happen is a moron . . .

March 5, 2009

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Yertle (Obama):

I apologize for disturbing you as your economic philosophy continues to make wealthy people poor, and poor people destitute; but if those of your ilk stay true to form you will attempt to balance your social agenda on the back of the national security efforts of the United States. Further, if past is prologue, you’ll make a list of the highest cost programs and begin to chip away at them regardless of how they fit into the overall tapestry of this effort. Before you do this please ask President Obama to secure from our enemies, current and future, an agreement that they will not attack us or our allies. Maybe Mr. Obama can get the same agreement that Prime Minister Chamberlain had XXXXX sign?

I bring up the most infamous goose stepping XXXX because, one of, if not the sole reason we and our allies crushed his brand of evil was a result of the meteoric advances in aviation in that time. Admittedly this worked both ways, the French built the useless Maginot Line - only to have it defeated by a Nazi flying an air cooled piston engine with a set of wings that could generate enough lift to overcome its combined weight. As the decades past the United States military has required airplanes that fly farther, faster, and higher. These characteristics enable the military to meet it’s objective of securing this country by sending a clear message to other nations around the world; if you choose to fight in the air, you will lose, so don’t waste time and resources trying. Unfortunately, they did not get the message. They began to innovate methods to detect and destroy our aircraft, surface to air missiles, shoulder fired missiles, and attempt to eclipse our aviation efforts. It soon became clear that to maintain air supremacy we would need an airplane that could evade these threats and still engage the enemy successfully.

At long last we have it in the form of various aircraft that can accomplish this goal to varying degrees depending on their mission objectives. Mr. Obamas budget erodes this capability, and reinforces our current, and future adversaries notion that they can take us in the air. Please stand against it. Military aviation is the lynchpin of our national defense do not allow it to be routed in search of economic social justice (someday someone will have to explain that to me, to give to one you must take from another, just because they have more does not make it justifiable to take it, and in taking it from someone else, you diminish the very desire to make more of it). In fact stand against any effort that would erode our capacity to defend ourselves. In addition I cannot conceive of any greater stimulus for the economy then defense spending. Assembly lines already exist, workers stand ready to create product, lines of raw material supply are well established, and the propensity to spend the profit domestically on research and development is one of the highest of any industry.

In closing, if I were in your position analyzing and debating the cost and benefits of the various parts of the defense budget I would only consider if that weapon system protected my child, while giving him or her the ability to accomplish their mission, would I support it? If the answer is no than I would push for increasing those capabilities that would accomplish that goal. I would never take dollars from that budget to support domestic programs that, but for our strong defense, would not exist in the first place. Frankly, If we are all dead the only program we will need is the body bag program that FEMA runs. Remember that defending this country is an ongoing never ending effort that exists on, and under the sea, on land, and in the air; but if we seed supremacy in the air, or one day in space, no weapon system will ever accomplish its goal of defeating the enemy before they even chamber the first round. We are blessed that we have so many people willing to volunteer to protect us the least we can do is make damned certain we present them with a better mouse trap than the enemy has. If we one day become the paper tiger we were prior to World War Two we will incite the wider wars we work so hard to avoid; if that day comes even you will be singing “Praise the lord and pass the ammunition.”

Respectfully,

Joe Doakes

"What's love get a nation?"
Nothing. I am thoroughly convinced that as soon as the Iranians get a delivery device they will use it. And if it is so easy for a novice to figure out...? I hope that those who make the real choices (the ones we never hear about) have come to the same conclusion and have been preparing. I don't believe we will know what's going on covertly, and may never know. But I don't see any alternative. Like Travis, I am hopeful that some right thinking man has drawn that line in the sand. From some of the goofs lately at some of the Iranian "nuc-u-lar" facilities I get a sense that we have already begun.

In the waning years of the Vietnam War, the Defense Department, under Nixon and Secretary Melvin Laird, cut the military budget and its staffing. An economic recession ensued. Carter continued the cutbacks, and in time -- thanks largely to his own administration's policies -- faced an Iran who made a mockery of both our diplomacy and our force capability by holding our embassy personnel hostage for hundreds of days.

Now we face one of the very same people who embarrassed Mr. Carter, and (though not widely reported) there are once again U.S. citizens being held in Iran. In the face of irrational belligerence, we cut back on both the presence and budget of our armed forces.

Try as he might to pose as Abraham Lincoln, either of the Roosevelts, or (more recently) Hugo Chavez, snapshots of Barry just keep on resembling Jimmy.

P.S. -- The military (and NASA, for that matter), helped bring us RADAR, MREs, computers, the Internet, advanced emergency medical techniques and technologies, the National Guard as an effective domestic emergency response system... Uhhh... Why is it that we're cutting their budget again?

"Uhhh...Why is it that we're cutting their budget again?"
That, Mr. Philip Toll, is a mystery, wrapped in an enigma. If I am reading correctly the armed services budget is the ONLY part of the budget that is being cut. Does anyone think this is a back door redistribution of wealth? I don't feel safer knowing our military is about to shrink by 20%. Do you?

Machiavelli was spot on: Tis better to be feared than loved.

You overlooked Machiavelli's next insight:

Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred...

Which fits in with my point, not yours.

Name one right or freedom you had before 9/11 that you don't have now. Just one. Have you been prosecuted because of something the government heard or read in your correspondence or communications? Been jailed lately without due process? Care deeply about whether dangerous men with injurious intent sit in Guantanimo without trial, do you? Been contributing vast sums to Muslim charities acting as front organizations?

On the best day of my life I could not hope to improve upon Robert Bolt's words:

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

"Devils do not exist, nor angels."
Yet Clio does?

I do indeed, just as devoutly as Republicans believe in American exceptionalism. And I also believe in that which follows hubris, namely, Nemesis. In fact, I believe that the daughter of Erebus and Nyx will soon pay these shores a visit.

I am thoroughly convinced that as soon as the Iranians get a delivery device they will use it.

On what do you base this belief? It cannot be Iran's record of invading other countries, since they have not done so in the lifetime of anyone reading these words.

Perhaps you think so because of the peculiar Twelver theology that Mr. Batchelor speaks of so often.

If so, to keep matters in perspective you would do well to recall that many members of the Republican Party believe in Dispensationalism, a 19th Century religious heresy that bears little resemblance to traditional Christianity. Moreover, that same party will soon nominate as its candidate a politician who believes that God is made out of meat.

If nutball theology + the Bomb = danger, then America with its religious craziness and belief in its own exceptionalism, not to mention its thousands of nuclear weapons, is Godzilla, Mothrah, Rodan, and Ghidorah the Three-headed Monster all rolled into one.

I agree with KS that Machiavelli would have thought BHO to be quite a turkey. BHO pisses people off for the sheer gusto of pissing them of. He does it for the same reason a dog licks his own lollipop, because he can.

"If Machiavelli's insights into the nature of power do not apply to America's situation, then why did you quote him in the first place?"

Cute.

Some of them obviously do, such as the one I quoted. However, "being loved" is no nation's ambition unless they are too small to be a significant player on the world stage. First, it's not reasonable goal. Second, love is capricious: whose love is to be courted consistently? Third, usually the only way you get the love of other countries, assuming it's possible, is to subordinate your objectives to theirs, or to save their asses from destruction. Even if you accomplish the latter, their gratitude lasts until their major goals conflict with yours. Fourth, world's love and $2.25 will get you a coffee at Starbuck's. It's the kind of silly "I want to buy the world a house and furnish it with love" nonsense Dems are so fond of setting up as a legitimate national goal. It shocks me that you give it any purchase as something worthy of national consideration. In Palmerston's formula, i.e., no permanent friend, no permanent enemies, only permanent interests, being feared rather than loved constitues a permanent interest.

"You will just have to take my word for it that I aim not for cuteness but only a reasonable degree of clarity and consistency."

You attitributed to me an argument I didn't make. Classic strawman creation. All I said was that Machiavelli's remark I quoted was spot on. I didn't claim, as you seem to think I did, that everything he said about a Prince's conduct was equally applicable to the behavior of states, as opposed to individuals.

"As for your talk about love, I am puzzled as to why you mention it."

Habit. That's how I hear it spoken of often by Democrats. "Before x America was loved; now because of x we are hated. We must get rid of x, so we can regain the world's love and respect." Nations are seldom neutral about great powers. I want us to be feared again, like we used to be.

Since America views its role as world ruler, residents of all nations are our subjects.

It is unfortunate that you never saw fit to step forward on this website to say something about argumentum ad hominem on any of those occasions when I was called unpatriotic, anti-Semitic, and racist because of stances I have taken with regard to US imperialism, the Middle East, and Third World immigration. I speak from the heart when I say that your intervention would have been most appreciated by me back then, Father. But I digress.

Perhaps the reason that you cannot quite decide which logical fallacy I have committed that none of the three types that you listed actually apply to what I wrote.

In any case, if you care to be take the trouble to figure out which one actually applies, then I will be happy to go over my statement as best I can to see if I have indeed fallen into error. If not, well, I am content to let it stand unexamined.

Most countries in the world hate us to one degree or another. Only a few factions within a few countries have actually declared jihad on us.

Probably most just use us as a foil, a straw man, to win popularity in the elections. Or to blame the countries' grinding poverty on.

I would submit to you that careful study should be given to the question: "Have we done all we reasonably can to dissipate as much of the jihad-type hatred as possible, while ignoring the straw-man hatred as background noise?"

Maybe the answer is that there's nothing that can be done to dissipate the jihad-type hatred. But given that so many of us here on this board despise our own government (and believe that something could be done about it), why is it such a stretch to admit that maybe outsiders could have legitimate reasons for despising us as well?

This analysis doesn't have to be all or nothing (and it doesn't have to be conducted in Latin, either!: ) Si no te cuidas, voy a ponerme a discutirlo en espanol, pa que veas.