RE: Obama ups the stakes... (Full Version)

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Vendaval -> RE: Obama ups the stakes... (8/2/2008 1:19:58 PM)

General Reply -
 
The rest of the world is paying attention to the US Presidential race for many reasons, not the least of which is the number of US military bases in other countries, over 700 as of 2005.

http://www.alternet.org/story/47998/

See also these maps showing the placement of US military bases and oil reserves, biological resources, fresh water and resistance movements in Latin America.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/intervention/2007/0701worldwide.htm



Sanity -> RE: Obama ups the stakes... (8/2/2008 2:50:53 PM)

It's a good thing those maps look that way as opposed to the way they would look had the United States lost all the battles and wars we've engaged in. It could be all British empire, all Nazi or all Soviet, or possibly Imperial Japanese. We even battled the Barbary Pirates. What would things be like without us? You won't ever catch me crying over those maps!



Politesub53 -> RE: Obama ups the stakes... (8/2/2008 3:44:01 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Sanity


You may like for your leaders or your potential leaders to act as lap dogs for foreign interests, but you'll have to excuse us if we do not.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Politesub53
You seem to be getting wound up because an American politician chose ( Note that word ) to do a whistle stop tour of Europe, and got a good reception in Germany, although his reception in the UK wasnt so rapturous. Please explain how giving Obama a good reception, is interfering with American politics. No one made him come here, and McCain is entitled to do the same if he so wishes.





How did Obama behave like a lap dog ? Which line from which speech ?  You are seeing shadows where none exist. If anything Obamas speeches were self promotional, that hardly makes him a lap dog, does it ? 



kittinSol -> RE: Obama ups the stakes... (8/2/2008 4:05:38 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Politesub53

quote:

ORIGINAL: Sanity


You may like for your leaders or your potential leaders to act as lap dogs for foreign interests, but you'll have to excuse us if we do not.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Politesub53
You seem to be getting wound up because an American politician chose ( Note that word ) to do a whistle stop tour of Europe, and got a good reception in Germany, although his reception in the UK wasnt so rapturous. Please explain how giving Obama a good reception, is interfering with American politics. No one made him come here, and McCain is entitled to do the same if he so wishes.





How did Obama behave like a lap dog ? Which line from which speech ?  You are seeing shadows where none exist. If anything Obamas speeches were self promotional, that hardly makes him a lap dog, does it ? 


Sanity doesn't realise that diplomacy is the number one weapon on the international relations scene, and that whether he likes it or not, he shares the planet with a host of other countries: all these relationships between countries and leaders are dependent on diplomacy. If one is to avoid war. Obama seems to have realised this rather crucial point.

Pesky for Sanity, but hey... que le meilleur gagne.



Sanity -> RE: Obama ups the stakes... (8/2/2008 4:27:32 PM)


According to Vendeval  "Obama pushes all the right buttons for the Germans. "

So yeah, he's playing that part.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Politesub53
How did Obama behave like a lap dog ? Which line from which speech ?  You are seeing shadows where none exist. If anything Obamas speeches were self promotional, that hardly makes him a lap dog, does it ? 



Sanity -> RE: Obama ups the stakes... (8/2/2008 4:35:01 PM)


America doesn't need to behave like Europe's little lap dog, that has nothing to do with diplomacy, KittenSol. Do you even know what the word means?

quote:

ORIGINAL: kittinSol
Sanity doesn't realise that diplomacy is the number one weapon on the international relations scene, and that whether he likes it or not, he shares the planet with a host of other countries: all these relationships between countries and leaders are dependent on diplomacy. If one is to avoid war. Obama seems to have realised this rather crucial point.

Pesky for Sanity, but hey... que le meilleur gagne.



Politesub53 -> RE: Obama ups the stakes... (8/2/2008 4:36:08 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Sanity


According to Vendeval  "Obama pushes all the right buttons for the Germans. "

So yeah, he's playing that part.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Politesub53
How did Obama behave like a lap dog ? Which line from which speech ?  You are seeing shadows where none exist. If anything Obamas speeches were self promotional, that hardly makes him a lap dog, does it ? 



I agree, but it still doesnt make him a lap dog.



Vendaval -> RE: Obama ups the stakes... (8/2/2008 7:42:04 PM)

What are you talking about?  No one is crying over anything. 
 
Do you not understand that the world has become both more inter-dependent and more complicated, and that diplomacy is a key to maintaining stability and prosperity?



Vendaval -> RE: Obama ups the stakes... (8/2/2008 7:45:54 PM)

You are not correct. I am not the person who made that statement. The quote is from a German newspaper, The Local, translated into English.

http://www.thelocal.de/13225/20080722/




quote:

ORIGINAL: Sanity

According to Vendeval  "Obama pushes all the right buttons for the Germans. "

So yeah, he's playing that part.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Politesub53
How did Obama behave like a lap dog ? Which line from which speech ?  You are seeing shadows where none exist. If anything Obamas speeches were self promotional, that hardly makes him a lap dog, does it ? 




slvemike4u -> RE: Obama ups the stakes... (8/2/2008 7:57:41 PM)

This is amusing, a new objection to Obama...he was well recieved in Europe..how dare he go there and deliver a speech!....The nerve of the man...



Thadius -> RE: Obama ups the stakes... (8/2/2008 8:04:16 PM)

I am glad I am not that shallow. My objections to Obamessiah are strictly on the issues and policies (especially those that he has finally started to be a bit more specific about). [;)]  Like the additional $150 billion in spending he elaborated on today in Florida.  I am beginning to fear that he is actually serious about balancing the budget and decreasing the deficit, while increasing spending to the levels he is proposing.... the resulting tax rates make me shudder.



caitlyn -> RE: Obama ups the stakes... (8/2/2008 8:16:36 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: kittinSol
Sanity doesn't realise that diplomacy is the number one weapon on the international relations scene, and that whether he likes it or not, he shares the planet with a host of other countries: all these relationships between countries and leaders are dependent on diplomacy. If one is to avoid war. Obama seems to have realised this rather crucial point. 


You state the world as we all wish it was ... not how it actually is.
 
Historically, diplomacy rarely solves anything, and when it does, it's usually because some big bad superpower threatens military action over less powerful nations, unless they let diplomacy runs its course. Diplomacy among powerful nations, normally ends up making small regional conflicts into much larger ones.
 
Thats not to say it isn't worth trying, but tp claim its the "number one weapon," is not backed by history and comes across as nieve.



slvemike4u -> RE: Obama ups the stakes... (8/2/2008 8:32:14 PM)

Caitlyn someone should have pointed that out to Kennedy during the Cuban Missile crisis...or Nixon bfore he played the China card...or Reagan when he told Gorbachev (sp?) "tear down this wall"...were they just naive as they practiced diplomacy.What was the Cold War if not diplomacy ,backed up by nucler weapons to be sure,but diplomacy all the same



caitlyn -> RE: Obama ups the stakes... (8/2/2008 8:47:00 PM)

Well, the first two are examples of a much stronger nation dealing with a vastly less powerful one, and in the first instance, largely over a hill not worth dying on. In the last instance, quite a bit of killing took place, before any walls actually came down.
 
Perhaps I'm jaded, but as a student of history, its very hard to make a case (with a few exceptions, mind you) for the human experience really respecting any peace won by any other method other than at the point of a sword. This is crushingly sad, but crushingly true.



Thadius -> RE: Obama ups the stakes... (8/2/2008 8:52:31 PM)

Evening Mike,

I suppose the blockade using actual ships was just aggressive diplomatic negotiations?  I do agree though that diplomacy should at least be attempted, if for no other reason to make clear what the stick is, and that there is a possible carrot.

But more to the topic at hand, stating that diplomatic negotiations will be entered into with a hostile nation (party) with no conditions, seems a bit naive to me.  Afterall, many times the meeting itself is a reward, as it allows for headlines and grandstanding about how they refused to give into the American oppressors.  You know what I mean?

As always,
Thadius



slvemike4u -> RE: Obama ups the stakes... (8/2/2008 8:56:50 PM)

Caitlyn in all those examples we were "dealing"with the Soviet Union...it was after all their misiles in Cuba,their ships stopped on the high seas.The second example was Nixon opening up relations with China so as to get the Soviet Union to the negotiating table to discuss nucleartest ban treatys...Just maybe diplomacy might not be such a useless talent huh?



Sanity -> RE: Obama ups the stakes... (8/2/2008 9:51:17 PM)


Why did you post the article if you disagree with it?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Vendaval

You are not correct. I am not the person who made that statement. The quote is from a German newspaper, The Local, translated into English.

http://www.thelocal.de/13225/20080722/
[\quote]







slvemike4u -> RE: Obama ups the stakes... (8/2/2008 10:12:00 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Thadius

Evening Mike,

I suppose the blockade using actual ships was just aggressive diplomatic negotiations?  I do agree though that diplomacy should at least be attempted, if for no other reason to make clear what the stick is, and that there is a possible carrot.

But more to the topic at hand, stating that diplomatic negotiations will be entered into with a hostile nation (party) with no conditions, seems a bit naive to me.  Afterall, many times the meeting itself is a reward, as it allows for headlines and grandstanding about how they refused to give into the American oppressors.  You know what I mean?

As always,
Thadius
Damm right it was diplomacy and it remains diplomacy till those ships fire those weapons.As for talking with hostile nations,what you say is a point well taken,but you don't seem to take into acount this is a knife that cuts both ways...Having talked ,any subsequent action on our part can be justified in the  court of world opinion much easier...and Thad you know full well how unilateral action is costing us in the court of public opinion...we seem to have come full circle to a little thing called... diplomacy 



Sanity -> RE: Obama ups the stakes... (8/2/2008 10:27:41 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Vendaval

What are you talking about?  No one is crying over anything. 


It should have been obvious to you what I was talking about! I was obviously talking about the links to the maps that you posted, like I said. The sob stories that those web pages told of how terrible we are, for our military power...

quote:

 
Do you not understand that the world has become both more inter-dependent and more complicated, and that diplomacy is a key to maintaining stability and prosperity?


That is entirely debatable - all of it. For example, in Ben Franklin's day it took time to travel to Europe, and he didn't have a Bluetooth connection back to the States when negotiating treaties with the French. He probably didn't have translators, local microcustoms weren't something he could Google on his laptop as he flew in to wherever he was going... so things were indeed  complicated prior to our time.

And maintaining stability and prosperity take more than just words Vendeval. Look to history - oftentimes people must die in order that others may live freely.

Diplomacy only works if you carry a stick in this world.




Sanity -> RE: Obama ups the stakes... (8/2/2008 10:35:11 PM)

quote:


Having talked ,any subsequent action on our part can be justified in the  court of world opinion much easier...and Thad you know full well how unilateral action is costing us in the court of public opinion...we seem to have come full circle to a little thing called... diplomacy


The loudest people (the court of world opinion) are the unemployed anarchists, followed by all our other enemies in order of large to small. To exactly what extent do we expose our necks to this "court of world opinion" you're so fond of. And how about some scientific polls showing us exactly what everyone in the entire world thinks, and why they think like they do. Where do they get their information?  Not just the rioting Communists in London, let's hear from Chinese peasants, too. If we're to have a "world court of public opinion" then let us bring it out of the shadows and really hear it out.



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