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

[Pierce T . Wetter III]

On Jul 12, 2004, at 1:39 PM, Florian Weimer wrote:

> * Tom Lord:
>
> >   ~ everyone agrees that we are a nation at war;  many agree that
> >     during wartime, some suspension of normal rights is a necessity
>
> Really?  Did invading Iraq change this feeling, or was it the same
> before?

 Americans have a fair problem with telling when we're at war given all 
the weird things we've been sucked into over the years. (WWI, WWII, 
Cold "War")

 I'm kind of weird in that I think we're at war whenever we send 
soldiers somewhere to kill people. That doesn't just mean boots on the 
ground, but rather bombs, cruise missiles, etc. So we've been at war 
with Iraq since 1990 when that crazy Saddam invaded Kuwait. Kosovo was 
a war. Recently, we were at war in Haiti. I like my method, because 
many of our recent un-wars (Korea, Vietnam were "police-actions") are 
counted as actual wars. For the remaining things (Somalia, Haiti) I 
think that thinking of it as a war forces us to take it seriously, 
calling it something else just encourages fuzzy thinking.

 Legally, we're at war when Congress approves a declaration of war. 
That doesn't matter for most Americans. For most Americans, we're at 
war when Americans start getting killed, or when we have boots on the 
ground. That's pretty typical for us, we tried to stay out of the 
stupidity of WWI until the Lusitania, and we tried to stay out of WWII 
until Pearl Harbor. So we've been at war with Islamofascism since 9/11 
when some terrorism spilled over onto our home territory.

Iraq is really a side issue, its kind of something we had to clean off 
the table before we dealt with the difficult problem of the lack of 
democracy in the middle east. We kind of went into Iraq with the hopes 
of a twofer, that is, we could get rid of Saddam, and have at least one 
democratic yet arab country in the region to interact with.

> In reality, the Afghanistan involvement probably is a necessary
> tribute for gaining a permanent seat in the Security Council.

 Having a large enough military to matter, or providing enough foreign 
aid to matter should be a necessary prerequisite for being on the 
Security Council, not who won WWII. So Germany probably makes more 
sense then say, France, which has been cutting back on both.

 What many US citizens feel is that Europeans have been skimping in 
these two areas lately. If you don't want to spend the money on guns, 
fine, we recognize that we have a large military partially for social 
reasons, but then you should be spending the equivalent on foreign aid 
then. You live in the world too.

 You're not going to like hearing this, but a widespread perception in 
the US is that Europe wants to both not spend the money to be relevant, 
while retaining veto power on US actions. That's not going to happen. 
If Europe wants to be consulted, they'll have to spend the money. In 
the debates I see in Foreign Affairs, the pro-Europe faction is getting 
increasingly frustrated because more and more, when Europe shows up, it 
doesn't make any difference.

Anyways, that's my $0.02.

 Pierce

P.S.

  Fun Fact: The US Army is the only armed force in the world with a 
"Civil Affairs" department specifically tasked with interacting with 
civilians both friendly and hostile.

 This is relevant because more and more, its those sort of troops that 
seem to be needed in the world.