Dom4Ebonyfemsub
Posts: 2
Joined: 9/15/2007
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Dear folks,
I realize that I, and my thinking, constitute a minority on this forum. But may we have little historical context and basic understanding of economics please?
All wars are a series of mistakes from the Peloponesian wars to our current struggle against Islamic fascists. Preemption and preventive war have been a part of warfare dating to the wars of the ancients....check out Rome's 3rd Punic War. More recently, it took Lincoln four years to find his Grant and Sherman and it took FDR almost as long to find his Eisenhower. War is not pleasant, but is many times necessary. And, as practiced by Western civilization, it can embody the best of the human spirit and wind up liberating billions over time. And what constitutes liberation? At this place in history, all I can point to as an answer, is that representative government and free-market economics constitutes liberation.
After 12 years of broken peace treaties, Arab lies and aggression, UN scandals, and threats of further aggression several things were clear; Saddam was a threat, was in bed with Islamic extremism and deserved to be removed. Unlike Bill Clinton, who awoke one day and decided to bomb Bosnia without congressional or UN approval, the US under George Bush followed accepted protocol before levying war. Besides WMD, 22 other articles of war were ratified by the US congress. Each one of these articles remains valid to this day. As far as WMDs are concerned, it was not up to the West to verify whether or not he possessed stockpiles, it was up to Iraq to verify that they did not. And such verificatiion was impossible since the inspectors whose job this was were denied entry and access. Listen to the tapes of Saddam, in his own voice, promising that as soon as sanctions died down, he was going to ramp up production. Listen to Saddam as he revels in descriptions of the mass slaughter he will soon be capable of. Listen to Saddam as he relives his past gassings of Kurdish and Iranian villages and hamlets. Listen, and then tell me you want a return to the day of an impotent US, unable and unwilling to confront the central evil of our time. I firmly believe the American soldier is the best friend this world has ever known, and ever will know. Events, and reality, have yet to prove this wrong.
Gone are the days when Abu Nidal takes refuge in Iraq. Gone are the days when Ramsi Yussef flees to Iraq after the first WTC attack in 1993. Gone are the days of training compounds housing aircraft fuselage. Gone are the days of shooting at planes in no-fly zones in accordance with a peace treaty sign by Iraqi representatives. Gone are the days of attempted murder of a former sitting US president. Gone are the days of Iraqi bonuses paid to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Gone are the days of invasions of neighboring peaceful countries and brutal wars with Iran that kill millions.
Yes, each of our war dead is a tragedy for their families, but not for the nation. We have lost less men in 4 years of war against a savage enemy, and not just of us, but of all men and women, than we lost in a matter of hours at Normandy. But should not we have attacked Saudi Arabia in the wake of 911 and not Iraq? Such thinking would have precluded the US from making war on Germany in WWII for, after all, Germany never attacked us. We are at war with an ideology and Iraq is one front in that war. We are not at war with countries, we are at war with extremists; and extremism does not recognize borders, treaties or boundaries. And, lest we forget, war was declared on the West generations ago by Prince Wahibbi and after him, the Muslim Brotherhood. We were just to self-absorbed and "busy" to notice. We have been at war with elements of Islam since the days of Jefferson; this did not begin under George Bush's watch. What is different is that he is the first leader, in my lifetime at least, to stand up to the murderers and thugs; the first leader to deliver something to Islamic extremists besides legal briefs (Mr. Clinton) and harsh language (the United Nations). And now, for the first time in recorded history, the people of the Middle East have a chance to effect the necessary and needed reformation and re-reformation that the development of Islam has lacked, and which has doomed Islam to the pitiful state it occupies today.
In their place are the seeds of true change. You want change? How about women going to school and elections being held in places that, just a few short years ago, such thoughts would be laughable. More change? How about the foundations of a free press and functioning Arab economy based on something other than oil and a hatred for the West. Still want change? How about Sunni and Shia working together and with Americans to rid their country of Muslim thugs and killers. Sanitation plants, water plants, power plants, political progress and reconciliation at the grassroots level, hospitals, schools and roads built where before there was nothing; that is change. Opportunity for people that, until now, stood just as good a chance of winding up in a mass grave with a blindfold still tied around their decaying skulls; that is change.
But, alas, we have also changed. As we have lost our spiritual way, so have we lost the simple ability to discern right from wrong. As we have become wealthier, more leisured and "smarter" we have lost the ruggedness and ability to innovate and respond that separates Western civilization from the dysfunctional mobs of today. We wallow in moral relativisim and bemoan our plight, as if our forefathers experienced nothing of this magnitude. We have replaced acquiring knowledge with staring at an box that influences our thinking, heedless of the fact that the people doing the influencing have a decrepit ideology of their own acquired, unfortunately these days, from the American university system. We seem to have lost the ability to think or act and we mire ourselves in the supposed guilt acquired over the ages. We listen to the insipid and banal posturing of talking heads and think we are informed. And we should be ashamed.
Just in my short lifetime, I have experienced the hysterical voices prophesizing a mini Ice Age descending on the planet. Those same voices now predict doomsday scenarios because we are creating a planetary oven. In my youth, I remember the media telling us that Communism was inevitable and we needed to learn to live with our enemies. These same useful idiots also proclaimed that there were too many people in the world and surely we were running out of food before the new millenium. I listenened and, for a time, I believed. But it did not come to pass.
For the greatest resource we possess is the mind of man. And with the mind of man comes the concept of the individual. And with the individual comes the infusion of commerce and the rule of law. And with these things all, comes relative peace and prosperity.
Fear not the future, for it is glorious! As Sir Winston would say, This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
As far as economics, I will address in a later post if I am still allowed to post. But suffice to say, like everything else, economics is cyclical. Sub prime crisis? 96% of mortgages are paid on time. The ones that are in default are the result of bad decisons by both lenders and borrowers. Corporate greed? In any functioning economy, there exists both wage-payers and wage-earners. One can not exist without the other. Outsourcing? Global prosperity creates markets which in turn creates more opportunity and prosperity. Trade deficit? Given a choice, I will run a deficit rather than a surplus; it implies that my citizens have enough income and savings to buy imports. Rising energy prices? Higher prices lead to more conservation and a quicker turn to alternative methods due to innovation, research and the entrepreneurial spirit.
Have we become so used, through the vapid toilet that is pop culture, to entitlement and self-pitying whining?
Remember this; you are a citizen of the most noble land and you have more opportunity than any people in the history of civilization.
Best regards,
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RE: Congratulations it looks as if america just might g... - 
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