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Rodney G. Graves

Pulix Delendum Est; Part III

Still back in ancient times (October of 2001)

Rodney Graves replied to a Sand Flea with:
It is a question of world view.

I've pretty much sat out the debate which "inspired" you to this height of reasoning and  logic <\sarc>. I don't find the proposal to be appealing. I do, however, find that it  passes the reality test.

A Sand flea replies:

Not even close. Your plan would cost more in blood and treasure and leave us less safe. Hardly an improvement.

It's always amusing to watch reality bitch slap an ivory tower pseudo-intellectual, and the  outraged bellowing which then issues from the appropriately slapped idiot makes for high  quality entertainment. Especially when the bellowing twit has no concrete counterproposal.

My counterproposal is limited by the facts on the ground. I can't change who our president is or his policies with a wave of the hand. I can't give him the moral guts to actually discuss what the costs are, and get the American people willing to publicly back him.

I can't get Bush to decide on a coherent policy. I can't staple his mouth shut when he doesn't have a prepared speech in front of him.

Bush is determined to overthrow Saddam. That is a fact of the universe, as unpleasant to deal with as the fact that Saddam can't be relied upon to keep any agreements.

So my 'plan' is to stall until either Bush sees reason or is replaced. A half-measure invasion that doesn't allow for a swift rebuilding won't increase our safety.

Do you see the world as it is, and craft solutions which do not require an overnight change in human nature, or do you squander blood and treasure on a utopian goal...

No, even worse, you damn any and all but propose no solution of your own.

Your 'solution' doesn't work. Ask Alva how successful he was in subduing the Netherlands.  Was there anything wrong with the Soviet Empire except they did not repress their neighbors and citizens enough, according to you?

Gee, if only one of the great repressive empires had been able to conquer _everybody_ in the past, _then_ we would be safe, according to Rodney. As long as we were part of that empire.

A Sand Flea opined (originally):
There are a number of people on this board who hold positions I passionately disagree with. It is possible that I misunderstand what their positions are, so I hope they will correct me if I have them wrong.

There are people who claim that the US should overthrow certain governments and take no steps to install or aid a new government beyond overthrowing the new government if the US doesn't like it.

This solution, while suboptimal, has several benefits. First, it is achievable. Second, the cost in blood and treasure is calculable based on the first iteration. Since the goal is to eliminate threats to the United States, anarchy and or squalor will work in furtherance of   that goal.

First, it is not achievable. It didn't work for Hitler, Stalin or Tojo, why should it work for us?

You can't long control countries merely by threatening to overthrow their governments. And you want to control them because you want to control the oil.

Can you protect the oil and oil workers without occupying the region?

Can you occupy the region without establishing a government?

Having established a government, don't you have to protect it? Or is it okay to abandon governments like we abandoned South Vietnam, when we could no longer bear the cost of supporting a corrupt regime?

Second, its cost is not easily calculable. What is the moral cost? What is the cost to the unity of the country when we give a significant percentage of our citizens, (those of Middle East descent), a reason to hate our Government?

What is the cost of lost trade, of refugees, of more and more nations kicking us in the shins whenever they have the advantage?

What is the cost if the policy is not maintained, due to change in parties at the helm?

What is the cost if the armed forces, with a lot of experience in knocking over governments, starts regarding as a threat to itself a party that says, "Give up all of your gains and play nice with the world again."?

What is the cost of having to maintain a pro-war party in power forever in order to maintain that fear/respect thing you seek?

You are so cheerful when you say that promoting squalor and despair could be in the US interests. And what of the rest of the world which has movements which blame the US for their woes? Why give them ammunition?

These people don't want to rebuild Iraq or Afghanistan with US dollars, they don't want to protect the new government, they just want to hold it responsible for everything that happens in their country!

That is a supportable restatement. But you overlook the question of their own wealth in the form of oil. Why should we spend our own treasure on these neo-barbarians when we can spend their own wealth to their benefit?

And how do you intend to spend their wealth to their benefit without an occupying army?  Without supporting some government that distributes things?

And would we not have a stake in that government we set up?

And if we set up a government, should it not reflect our values? After all, if we set up a dictatorship does that not say the preferred form of government by our Administration is a dictatorship?

Do you _really_ think that this Administration is at all likely to distribute Iraqi oil treasure in the interests of the Iraqis? Not after exalting the supremacy of American Interests!

I think that is a foolish policy in many many ways. For one thing, International opinion would be against overthrowing a new government that hasn't had the history that Saddam did.

International opinion will never be satisfied when it comes to dealing with the  neo-barbarians of the middle east. International opinion, above all else, doesn't want  there to be effective international force. Even worse is the possibility that  the sole superpower will tell them to sod off and go about defending itself and policing  terrorist regimes as it sees fit.

Yeah, but there is a difference between reluctant acceptance of the sole superpower's actions and the widespread active sabotage that we could easily end up facing if we ignored International opinion utterly.

These people I mentioned say, "Screw international opinion, what can they do?"  Well, maybe by about the third time the US knocked off a government because it didn't obey the US fast enough the rest of the world would start shifting alliances. Perhaps Europe would even start to militarize.

If Europe realigned and started militarizing right now it would take them two or more decades to catch up to where the United States is NOW. Nor does the EU have the economic power to catch and surpass should the United States notice and care enough to match the percentage of GDP the EUnics were spending.

Perhaps, but getting into a trade war with the rest of the world could destroy our economy even if we 'won'.

And if it came to a military confrontation, just what percentage of the US population would you have to inter in camps?

The US would be unable, politically, to declare war on the EU until the EU was already a major military rival. So the EU would have all the time in the world need to militarize. Heck, it would even be welcomed in some right-ward political quarters.

I don't want to live in a WMD armed country that engages in wars of aggression and that is what we would be if we followed that policy.

I'll gladly pay your one way ticket to the nation (outside of the Americas) of your choice, as long as you sign a renunciation of citizenship...

Hah. I would take the money and buy a sniper rifle, (+ lessons) long before I left. At that point, pieces of paper with my signature on them would be about as irrelevant as anything else. "From my Cold Dead Hands."

Far better that than contribute to a Tacitean Peace.

There are those who claim that the Iraqis have been indoctrinated into hating the US, and that it would be impossible to change them. Well, Japan was an even more alien culture, whose people hated, feared and despised our nation and our race, and we re-wrote their Constitution. Further, the Japanese had a stronger military tradition, had fanatic soldiers, and _still_ they were subdued.

Are you willing to occupy, and when necessary suppress/oppress Iraq for the next fifty years or more? That's what it took in the Philippines, and they are a far better template than Imperial Japan. How much American blood are you willing to spend in such an endeavor? Will YOU contract to send YOUR children to Baghdad as part of the occupation forces?

And you think it would be cheaper to keep Iraq in squalor and chaos while we seized their oil, perhaps diverting some funds to support the friendly drug-addicted warlords who kept the Iraqi people in-line?

Look, if you are going to occupy Iraq forever anyway, (or invade it every other year, which amounts to the same thing), why not try to build something we can be proud of instead of the Heart of Darkness?

Oh, but that might cost too much, some people say.

I'm less concerned with the treasure than the blood. Especially if we use their oil in place of our treasure. But if you think world opinion has its panties in a twist now, imagine the howls of rage when we actually occupy, pacify, and rebuild Iraq in the image of a western secular society.

And you believe that we would spend more blood occupying Iraq than turning it into a desert and periodically invading that desert?

I say put so many ground troops into Iraq that they have no hope of resisting.  Enough troops to protect those Iraqis who want to give our ways a chance. Enough troops so we can someday, maybe 50 years from now, pull out of a garden, not a desert.

How many other deserts will you have to make, once you make that our policy? When any fanatic resistance at all forces you to destroy a country, gain.

Well, get out of this country you cowardly vomitous piece of filth.

Yeah right, it might be cheaper to invade a country every two years or so, destroy its infrastructure and civil institutions and leave them to warlordism and the tender mercies of UN relief agencies.

It's always cheaper to destroy. An impoverished and fragmented nation is not a threat to us. That's just a fact of human nature repeated time and again  in history.

Perhaps. But if we are so stretched financially that all we can afford to do is destroy, then we will not last long as a power, either. You won't impress the barbarians long with a demonstration of power, because they will always look to a regime change. They will always think that a nation desperate enough to use brutal methods will collapse if its will ever wavers. Say with a change of administration.

Whereas a nation that is strong and confident enough to build, well, it always has the club, so why try to change their policy?

Why choose a policy that practically forces you to maintain power by military means lest it cost you your brutal reputation?

Yeah, it is much cheaper to destroy than to build. To be feared rather than respected.

Respect is great. Fear is acceptable. The current situation is not acceptable.

We lose more by losing the respect of our _many_ friends than by losing the fear of a few deluded enemies.

Losing our self respect is even worse.

You Stalinist pieces of shit. Take your jingoistic fascism somewhere else you amoral armchair mass murderers.

Remarkable. Give Slick Willy a pass on all his debauchery, but lash out in [...]

Gee, a blow job vs tens of thousands of deaths by US weapons, and billions of dollars to do it. I just can't seem to get equal outrage over those two issues.

 [...] terms of morality against those who propose a historically effective means of removing a threat to the United States and its citizens. Thou hypocrite!

'Historically effective'? No, historically effective is occupying the country for 50+ years and installing a favorable government. That worked for the US.  Supplying Berlin by air bought us Europe as friends for decades.

Turning nations into deserts has not been 'historically effective' for the US.

Just one of your many problems is that while you treat Saddam as a fixed quantity in your calculations you postulate utterly unrealistic changes in the American public and American politicians.  The American people would not support ruling by brutality. Not for long. And you could blame the liberal peace-weenies all you like for the failure of your policy, but it wouldn't change the fact that you endorse a policy that Historically America has been unable and unwilling to sustain.

So you can whine all you like about the moral weakness of the US that we can't repress other peoples when it is in our national interest to, (according to your assessment), but it is no more realistic than a plan that assume Saddam will roll over and play nice.

History is replete with the ugly wars between societies/empires and the barbarians which surrounded them. Those who have read and learned from those histories know two things:

1. For the societies/empires, victory is the ONLY option. Barbarians which are neither conquered and civilized nor destroyed will rise to try again.

Fine. So why start with the bizarre assumption that this particular Barbarian is uncivilizable? You have proposed conquering the Barbarian and spending no effort to civilize them, trusting our military to endlessly flatten them.

I would think that the best result is civilizing the Barbarian.

2. Half measures don't work.

Barbarians only respect strength.

'Strength' does not equal brutality. The strength and commitment to occupy Iraq for the long term, do you think that barbarians would not respect that?

There is physical strength and moral strength. I think that a power that destroys a barbarian country because it fears its own moral weakness in the future demonstrates _less_ strength than a power that has confidence in its successors.

Compassion is for them a dirty word. Measured response is a position of weakness, as is negotiation. Reasoning with them from our perspective is like  reasoning with a wolf. It doesn't work. Enforcing the law of the pack on the wolf does. Domesticating subsequent generations works.

Bribing one group of thugs to attack another is also a position of weakness, as we learned at Tora Bora. If they believe that we need one group of thugs to patrol the streets because we are afraid to do it ourselves, that is a position of weakness.

Obsessing over everything that could be construed by barbarians as a sign of weakness is also a position of weakness.

This should be a no-brainer, if you want the barbarian to adopt our values, you can't cater obsessively to their notion of what weakness is!

 It's [empire] not pretty. It's not nice. It's not genteel. It's one of the only things which has a historical track record of success.

For extremely low values of 'success'. You would choose brutality because you can't be bothered to spend the effort to make civilizing a more attractive option.

No, I take it back, you aren't cowards, just fundamentally _lazy_. Too lazy to think up a way to rebuild the region into a form acceptable to the US but which preserves their traditions. Too _stupid_ to come up with something like what MacArthur did, in allowing the Japanese to keep their Emperor as a figurehead. And worse still, absolutely confident that their cowardice, lazyness and stupidity are justified, and that people who seek a better solution are misguided at best and unpatriotic at worst.

So where is YOUR solution? What do YOU propose? How will YOU solve this problem without offending your sensibilities?

I thought I already said. My solution would be to occupy Iraq with about as many troops as we occupied Japan with. Or to not invade at all if we believed that the US couldn't bear the cost, because brutality and hiring mercenaries isn't cheaper in the long run.

I, for one, will pay attention to your rants on this matter when you contractually oblige your progeny to the occupation and  rebuilding you seem to espouse now. I strongly suspect you lack the stomach for anything but half measures.

Occupation and rebuilding are far preferable to a career of invasion and domination.

And I say you lack the stomach for anything but half measures. You would overthrow the government but balk at the cost of occupation. You would overthrow the government, but with unreliable thugs rather than US troops.

No, I only want to invade Iraq if there is the commitment to rewrite its society from top to bottom. All or nothing, not half-measures at all.  You should criticize me for taking an all-or-nothing approach, but not for espousing half-measures!

I am one of those weird people who would oppose action in Iraq if it did _not_ require US ground troops, but support it if it did.

As I said above, I am probably misinterpreting some peoples' positions.  Certainly no _reasonable_ person would support that kind of morally execrable filth. Noone would so cheerfully destroy the moral reputation of the United States for some illusionary safety.

Wake up and smell the blood. Our oceans no longer serve as adequate barriers to the barbarians. You have claimed that making our enemies weak and fearful of us is distasteful to you. That leaves two choices, Empire and destruction. If you find Empire equally repugnant, then you are advocating our destruction at the hands of the barbarians.

I say again: I would support war with Iraq _if_ I felt that there was the commitment to do it _right_, and not let it slide into another savage Afghanistan.

Who cares what you "feel" when you ignore the lessons of history?

And those _fools_ who think that regions which fall into barbarism aren't a threat to us... Where the warlords and drug lords rule, terrorists will find recruits, havens, money and weapons.

How many of the September 11th terrorists were from Afghanistan? How many were from Columbia (the country, not the university)? How many were from the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority?

'From' by national origin or where they trained?

Areas of chaos draw adventurers from outside.  Arafat was an Egyptian. Most of Al Qaeda were foreign adventurers in Afghanistan who would not have met within their own country. Areas of chaos draw those who _thrive_ in chaos, and promote chaos.

So Afghanistan is a recruiting area for terrorists, but not for _Afghani_ terrorists.

Without places like Afghanistan you just can't get large numbers of people who thrive in chaos all in one place where they can organize.

The majority were from Saudi Arabia.

But would they have met each other if Afghanistan hadn't acted as a filter, a concentrator that got large numbers of Taliban and terrorist wannabees together?

Their funding came from Saudi Arabia and from Islamicists in developed or developing countries.

Do you really believe there is a rich pool of recruits in Afghanistan who could be successfully infiltrated into the United States to act as part of a terrorist cell or active operations unit? Do you really think there is enough disposable income in Afghanistan to fund a global terrorist infrastructure?

This reminds me of Jerry Pournelle's series Janisaries. There were a large number of white mercenaries in the employ of the CIA running around Africa, in the story. Does that mean that Africa is a source for white mercenaries? No.  Could there have been a significant number of white mercenaries without places like Africa where they would be employed? No.

Afghanistan made itself a target by being a safe harbor and base of operations.

At best, a howling wilderness could provide a safe haven. But only to the extent that we decline to treat such howling wilderness' as free fire zones.

Sound like Soviet policy in Afghanistan to me.

Areas become 'safe areas' the instant the troops pull out. And you have stated that you won't occupy every hill and valley, so you will be pulling out a _lot_.

Or do you think Americans can be better at brutality, and more successful at it, than the Soviets?

If the law can't go there, then US armed troops would have to go there.

And your point would be?

So instead of occupying the territory and at least pretending to protect it you would advocate the US repeatedly invade it. So, the same level of commitment, only it is less likely to work, will look worse to the rest of the world, and will expose our troops to the same level of risk. Gee, win-win all around.

Not my first choice, but one of two approaches which can reduce or eliminate the threat.

So you aren't a fan of Leia Organa, :) "The more you tighten your grip, the more star system slip through your fingers."

Perhaps you think the Empire was insufficiently brutal in dealing with the Rebelion?

Choose one:
 
Create a desert and call it peace.

Ave George, Imperator.

Class of 1987
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