Article

2004-01-09 Europe

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by tipper 2004-01-09 11:03:25 AM|| || Front Page|| [4 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Here's the link to the NRO article. Hopefully it will have some permanence.

Posted by eLarson 2004-1-9 11:41:57 AM|| 2004-1-9 11:41:57 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 I have my own theory on the maniacal nature of the hate Bush campaign. I think it stems from his ability to start the ball rolling in the other direction. For example, there has been no real movement towards restricting âabortion rightsâ until Bushâs administration chose to frame the partial birth abortion procedure in a way that prevented a reasonable counter-argument.
In similar fashion, eventual privatization of Medicare has begun. The taboo issue of the transition of Social Security from a Congressional slush fund into an investment account has been breached. Now I can see an open path to the Flat Tax, to a Supply Side economic policy and to some type of specie standard. The path may stretch out 12 to 16 years but the âtax cut into prosperityâ has convinced many Americans to put a sock in the Keynesian stuff.
The current immigration proposal is brilliant, as well, but not because it panders to Latino voters. Through open public discussion that frames this issue within the purview of national security, Bush has prevented any million person amnesties to increase DNC voter rolls. Can anyone imagine a serious politician proposing that type of amnesty in the foreseeable future?
Also if the proposal is studied closely, it is apparent that the goal is to destroy the market for illegal labor by attacking the corporations that hire illegal aliens â like Walmart â and encourage the lawbreakers to sneak in. Economically speaking, there is a market for the labor that legal immigration is not satisfying. I wish we could attack the War on Drugs on the demand side. The alternative is to militarize the borders through hiring even more federal workers. Our government leach is large enough already.
Once all the guest workers are documented and fingerprinted, locating, and jailing the remaining illegals and terrorists becomes economically and mathematically feasible.

The Hose is optimistic as well as verbose and OT. My apologies.

Posted by Super Hose 2004-1-9 12:00:02 PM|| 2004-1-9 12:00:02 PM|| Front Page Top

#3 This post and Europe's Arab Gambit seem to complement each other as no other in explaining the why in EU behavior the last year.

Posted by Barry 2004-1-9 1:37:37 PM|| 2004-1-9 1:37:37 PM|| Front Page Top

#4 a de facto settlement â along the lines of readjusted borders in a present-day postwar Germany or Japan, whose citizens are not blowing up Poles or Russians a half century later for occupying home soil lost after failed wars of aggression.

The way of the world.

Posted by Lucky 2004-1-9 1:46:17 PM|| 2004-1-9 1:46:17 PM|| Front Page Top

#5 When are we going to stop picking at the nits and worrying about the odds and ends? Time for attacking the disease, instead of the myriad symptoms.

The links to some (all? many? most?) previous RB articles are broken, so I can't just refer you to them, but VDH gets it dead right in the second paragraph. If you think about it, everything else hinges upon it.

Since 1973, the US has been at war with the entire "Arab World" (the Persian Black Hats have had a separate game afoot since their "revolution" in '79) since that is when the Saudis, which fund almost the whole fucking thing, declared their war on the US. Until the timeframe of the African Embassy bombings, the USS Cole, and 9/11 it was a slow-burn diplo-economic war, fought under the table and below the radar. When it truly became hot, on 9/11, we were surprised to find ourselves at ground zero.

Intentionally misled by our willfully-blind State Dept (hoping for those lucrative deals after leaving the "service") in loose cooperation with the elitists of both US and Euro intellectuals (courtesy of the cult of Edward Said and his ilk) and all flavors of anti-semitism bubbling beneath the surface of many countries and societies, we have been indoctrinated with the notion that the Saudis, and by extention the Arabs who follow their ~~cash~~ lead, were our friends and allies. Nothing could be further from the truth, but it takes time to wake up a giant who has been asleep for 30 years to the hard facts. Now that some are coming around, we have begun to take the measure of the problem... what it will lead us to is obvious, but unpalatable politically and in our near-comatose PC-istic state. It will inexorably lead us to the conclusion that our greatest enemies are the Saudis and the Black Hats. The subversion of the socialists, still busy as bees trying to undermine American individualism and freedom of action, are a trifle - just as the tentacles of Wahhabistic Islamist Caliphate terror, they are primarily funded by Saudi oil and fueled by the ideologically convenient convergence of Shi'a and Sunni interests, i.e. Islam, with communism, maoism, Euroism, multilateralism, and other flavors of idotarianism. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, indeed.

All flavors of tyranny, fearing no actual retribution in this PC touchy-feely age of words over might, have solidified in rhetoric and methodology. Anti-Freedom interests have melded and combined to fight the last outpost of individualism and free-thinking. Anti-Freedom has evolved to become Anti-American. What a shock Afghanistan and Iraq have been for them. Though the benefits will come, eventually, they were still merely symptoms... the process grinds exceedingly slowly toward solution. You can measure it -- but in generations.

The policy of pre-emption is grounded in the obvious fact that the lethality of weapons has reached the point where the time-honored tradition of letting the bad guy take the first shot is no longer intelligent. We must discard it, no matter how painful. This is the first truly useful policy change directly attributable to the recent wake-up call. The world has become very dangerous very suddenly. We do not have the luxury of time for generations to pass while the Arab world dithers over the revolutionary concept of freedom. We do not have time for them to change their customs incrementally. Tough shit.

After the oil money, all the rest is window dressing and secondary currents of self-interest. Eeewww subversion? Syria? Palestine? Yemen? Indonesia? Malaysia? Chechnya? African Islam, such as Somalia? Pfeh. All backwater pools of elitist socialism over espresso, rear-view mirror jingoism, or poor illiterate cannon-fodder - what a combination of losers. Without the money, they seethe in silence or bubbles of toothless fury - or at home waiting for their US immigration lottery number to come up. Only Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan (with its nukes) matter. Much of the bubble Of frantic factionalism and hatred implodes without the cash of the Saudis. North Korea and Sudan / Chad are separate considerations - tiny little zits on the tip of the tail of the dog. We can take another compass-reading when the dust (sand) settles after.

It comes down to this: kill the Saudis and the Black Hats. You can have it half-way with the Saudis if you take away the oil, but no more polite arguments. Give the Iranian people a one-shot offer: stand up on your hind legs and overthrow the Mad Mullahs - or go down with them. No more half-measures. No more trying to get people to accept the obvious with a spoonful of sugar. Fuck it. Kill them.

So, is that clear enough?

Posted by .com 2004-1-9 4:11:12 PM|| 2004-1-9 4:11:12 PM|| Front Page Top

#6 .com, I guess I opened up a can of verbose whoopass upon myself. Do you think that the Europeans and Jihadis miscalculate Americans because in the short run they deal with superficial trani punks from DC, LA and NY while eventually through slow seepage the rest of America gets the picture. Things change when a rather determined, camouflage-faced man from Blackburg, Virginia or Ashland, Kentucky kicks in your door and doesn't want froth on his latte.

Posted by Super Hose 2004-1-9 11:14:22 PM|| 2004-1-9 11:14:22 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 Way to go Dot.

Posted by Lucky 2004-1-10 11:32:09 AM|| 2004-1-10 11:32:09 AM|| Front Page Top

11:32 Lucky
06:45 Super Hose
00:04 Rick
23:53 Super Hose
23:51 Super Hose
23:40 Super Hose
23:35 Super Hose
23:30 Old Patriot
23:30 Super Hose
23:27 Super Hose
23:24 Super Hose
23:21 Super Hose
23:17 CrazyFool
23:14 Super Hose
23:12 Observer
23:02 tipper
23:01 Super Hose
22:59 Barbara Skolaut
22:53 Super Hose
22:53 Zhang Fei
22:48 andrew k
22:45 andrew k
22:43 Observer
22:42 Atomic Conspiracy