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National Suicide I
Newsmax.com ^ | 12-15-03 | Alden, Diane

Posted on 12/16/2003 8:43:04 AM PST by Theodore R.

National Suicide I Diane Alden Monday, Dec. 15, 2003

We are committing national suicide. Forget the politicians and even conservatives who are caught up the power politics in the New York-Washington nexus. They are no help. It is OUR failure as citizens of the states to address certain basic issues that have us on the ropes. Those issues include:

*Reforming the judicial oligarchy even if it requires a constitutional amendment. We will lose this nation and what is left of the Bill of Rights and Constitution if we don't.

In 1996, some of our very best, including men like Judge Robert Bork, Fr. Richard Neuhaus, Charles Colson and others held a symposium called "The End of Democracy." The outcome was the admission that our judicial and legal system had veered so far out of control that the demise of the republic was over the horizon.

If we are to survive as a constitutional republic we have got to replace judicial review with something else. That something else may be the placement of important national questions on the ballot.

The screaming by some that that would be pure democracy is a little late. It cannot be much worse than what is taking place in the judicial system and the judiciary. In fact, if California is an example, the placing of controversial questions or solutions on the ballot is a good idea.

It is our judiciary, which is out of control and our legislative branch that is incompetent or irresponsible. The real power struggle is between the executive and the judiciary wherein they both are advancing and centralizing power to themselves.

The courts over turn any actions by citizens that may be attempted through the ballot box. California and Nebraska and other states come to mind. The ballot box, in the end, is the only way to give balance to the needs of citizens, the failure of legislatures, and the over reaching of the judiciary and the centralization of power in the executive branch.

Ballot initiatives are a good way to stem power, legislative, executive, judicial or corporate from trampling on the citizenry. The courts no longer give the average citizen a way to address grievances; they are part of the grievances we hold.

Because of judicial activism basic institutions like the family, Western morality, and the Judeo-Christian tradition are under assault if not on the way out. That is not acceptable.

Immigration: Suicide by the Numbers

*End immigration, legal and illegal – now – before it kills us. Both political parties and their operatives in the power corridor are doing us in through immigration, legal and illegal. From the corrupt visa system to illegal immigration, we get no help from conservatives or libertarians. Certainly none from think tanks like Cato and Heritage. They absolutely resist a halt or call for time out regarding legal and illegal immigration.

It is a betrayal of this nation. The problem is not the people who want to come here. They are in no way lesser human beings or unworthy of the good life. Their problems and needs should be addressed by their own countries. If there were anyone with guts in D.C. they would inform those countries, particularly Mexico, that we are not a dumping ground or receptacle for their problems. The only way to force Mexico to change is to stop enabling its corruption.

Nonetheless, the fact is that we the people of the United States are being systematically replaced by a disconnected entity more at home in a world run by unelected elites and unaccountable bureaucrats.

As it is, residents and citizens are interchangeable. However, few will have grounding or interest in our history, tradition, political or spiritual system.

Immigration in its present form is about giving the transnational corporate and business world and government a source of income and power or votes. It is about cheap, docile laborers, who may or may not be citizens. It is about creating more warm bodies in urban mega-cities, which allow greater representation for those cities, and fewer for places like Montana and Mississippi.

Scandal obsessed and jaded Americans may not know this, but we no longer have one man, one vote. We have noncitizens that are included in the census, but do not vote. Their presence, however, allows greater representation for urban areas in the government in DC. The more residents the greater representation: such a deal. Citizenship doesn't count.

Therefore, the rest of us who ARE citizens are being replaced. In science fiction terms, think invasion of the body snatchers. Remember the structure of the city and society in sci-fi thrillers, Blade Runner and Total Recall. Think the Borg and merging of Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984.

In a speech in Florida recently, Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge called for legalization of approximately 5 to 12 million illegal "residents" in the U.S. Then, he states, we might get serious about the borders. His "answer" is a call for national suicide. Ridge's statements merge with what is going on in the Bush White House re immigration. {The Washington Times reported on the legalization issue: {"White House verifies immigration review" http://www.washtimes.com/national/20031211-114734-2215r.htm.}

In 1986, we legalized millions of illegals. The government "promised" that would lead to action by our government to stem the invasion from Mexico of 1 million illegals each year. It did not. Illegals still pour in.

18 million Americans cannot find a full-time job, yet Secretary Ridge wants to keep 8-12 million illegal-alien workers and their families in this country. That not only has an impact on jobs, it also has an impact on the tax base and infrastructure of the states.

Contrary to the nonsense spread by "experts," illegal immigrants often do NOT pay taxes. Day laborers and others are off the books. That suits business. Meanwhile, illegal immigrants' use of medical systems and emergency rooms have led to the bankruptcy and demise of hospital systems in California, Arizona and New Mexico.

The recent bailout of those systems with a billion-dollar inclusion in the appropriations bill is only a temporary solution. The FACT is that illegal immigrants cost the U.S. billions more than they put into the system in taxes or in economic contributions. (Harvard's George Borjas, CIS, FAIR)

The only ones making out like bandits are hotels, agriculture, construction, fast food, restaurants, cleaning services, and domestic service – anywhere cheap labor is needed.

Meanwhile, last week the Department of Homeland Security announced it was killing the NSEERS program that caused tens of thousands of illegal aliens from terrorist-sponsoring countries to leave our country voluntarily rather than appear at DHS offices to register.

Meanwhile, NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) was offered up by the elite as a way to improve the economic lot of Mexicans, it did not. It only improved the bottom line of the cheap labor corporations that went to Mexico. Mexicans labor in sweatshop conditions for wages that will NEVER allow them to forge a decent life.

Reports from those who have visited the industrial conditions and lives of Mexican citizens who work for these companies report deplorable conditions. There is NO excuse, corporate or ideological, for treating human beings like discards in the name of the bottom line. Remember there are reasons for revolutions, there were reasons for the formation of unions, there were reasons books like The Jungle, Grapes of Wrath, and 1984 were written.

Meanwhile, the Mexican system is still corrupt, it is still an oligarchic society and government, and it still dumps its poor on the U.S. Mexico has no reason to change, reform, and improve. We make it possible for them to remain corrupt.

According to the DoJ, the U.S. has between 8 and 13 million illegals in the country; no one knows for sure. It is an admission that there is NO Homeland Security to speak of. Tom Ridge might as well go back to Pennsylvania.

The money wasted on the new agency would be better spent on expanding surveillance technology on the border. Additionally, give the money, status, and power to the Border Patrol, expand the FBI. Take agents from the IRS or Fish and Wildlife and place them on Border Patrol, the INS, or give decent salary and benefits to our military.

Since we cannot control or oversee our borders, nor do we have the will to remove the invaders, therefore, the answer is to cave in to lawlessness and manipulation by the political and economic elite of both countries. Absolutely amazing.

It is mind boggling that we have the technology to catch deer hunters in Montana using walkie-talkies to spot deer. We then confiscate their property, fine them and deal with them in court. Nonetheless, we can't find the personnel or technology to control our borders. We know when a kid is downloading music from the Internet and go after him but we can't stop the influx of people from Mexico.

We send hundreds of thousands of troops to Iraq and Bosnia, Germany or Korea but can't spare any to patrol our own borders.

One can only conclude that our politicians and leaders, of both parties, are disingenuous liars and totally sinister when they claim there is nothing they can do about our borders.

What they won't tell you is that it would upset their large contributors and governmental and private elites, lobbyists, and the identity lobby, the immigration lawyers, and others who benefit from this particular brand of law breaking. It would upset Mexico and actually might stop incursions by Mexican police and soldiers into U.S. towns along the border. It might even end illegal drugs coming into the U.S.

We are in a new kind of Civil War. In fact, it is the second phase of the first Civil War. Once again the New York-Washington power nexus against the heartland.

Globalism as the New Marxism

Globalism is replacing Marxism/Leninism as the materialistic utilitarian power grab to control people, change human nature, destroy individual liberty and the nation-state. Globalism is just behind Islamo-fascism and Arab militarism, as the single greatest destructive factor in the post-Cold War era.

That is why it is shocking that so called "fiscal conservatives" such as the late Robert Bartley of the Wall Street Journal, defend globalism/globalization and the end of the nation-state.

Several years ago, Bartley freely admitted to Forbes Magazine's Peter Brimelow that the end of the nation-state is at hand. He and others in the economic fraternity follow the ideas of Japanese business guru, Kenichi Ohmae. Ohmae is involved in the promotion of the borderless world. That concept accepts the disintegration of the nation-state and the rise of the trading state as the wave of the future.

During the Clinton era, Republicans feigned shock when Strobe Talbot blurted out in Time Magazine that the end of the nation-state was a good thing.

One must conclude that the only difference between Republican globalism and leftwing, deconstructionist globalism amounts to who is in charge.

In the case of the left, it isn't so much about the replacement of the nation-state by the trading state. It is about the end of the United States – period. Their particular wet dream is to recreate humanity, the collective identity; plugging that recreation into an international utopian state. Their perfect world consists not of diversity but of a diluted culture, economy, population, and religion.

They would offer a system that will replace excellence, unique identity, God Himself, and Christianity that has meaning, with disintegration and stagnation. They count on maintaining a distracted populace involved in popular culture: their preference is an ignorant formless mass obsessed with sex, nature and nihilism. Of course the elite is exempt. They will, after all, be running things.

Yet as sure as Sept. 11, 2001, burst many collectivist globalist bubbles, the left's particular fantasy will blow up as well. What they will get instead of a peaceful world, free of nasty conservatives and pesky Republicans, is the kind of chaotic corrupted mess that the United Nations offers.

As millions of Africans die in internecine tribal and religious warfare, as white farmers in Zimbabwe and South Africa are attacked and their property confiscated, as AIDS spreads in Africa, as Israel is always the bad guy, in the wrong, not willing to commit national suicide; as evil is portrayed as good and good as evil; the left can pack it in as well. The U.N. or anything like it will not create utopia; it will bring on the most oppressive tyranny ever known to mankind.

In fact, the U.S. elite, left, right or libertarian are not to be trusted. It does not matter much, which of them are in power. The synthesis of their good intentions continues to evolve into corruption, decadence, tyranny, poverty, and disconnection. The result for most of our children, and us will be the same: the end of our freedom in an independent nation called America.

One can only say that conservatives and a few Republicans have not totally lost the will for self-protection when the U.S. is attacked. But that isn't saying much.

Suicidal Education

We are not educating either Johnny or Jose. Nor have we become better off for adopting new educational nostrums, techniques, theories or social engineering. We are in fact dumber and less civilized. Our children have been the butt of a cruel elitist joke.

*There is no possibility of reforming public education. It is too late for that. It is suicidal to allow any more generations of American children to lose their birthright, their historical roots, traditions, identity, and their right to a decent, solid, substantive education. Like the judicial system, education is beyond reform.

The ideologues and deconstructionists have been in charge too long and will never let go. There are thousands, if not millions of examples of deconstructionists hanging on no matter what: one case is the State of Minnesota.

Not long ago, Washington created new federal educational standards. The standards were supposed to promote our REAL history, most important figures and events, as well as warts and mistakes, tragedies and triumphs. It was supposed to build up basic knowledge in math, science, English, geography. Instead we get the same old "hate America and the West," that renounce any memorization or retention of basics as the FOUNDATION for more critical thinking.

One way or another we are being reformed or molded into good utopian/corporate global citizens. As a single example, one of many, Minnesota's EdWatch passed this along: "From the Center for Civic Education comes yet another effort to remake the children of this nation and our history. In the report "Teaching Democracy Globally, Internationally, and Comparatively The 21 st Century Mission of Schools":

In the past century, the civic mission of schools was education for democracy in a sovereign state. In this century, by contrast, education will become everywhere more global. And we ought to improve our curricular framework and standards for a world transformed by globally accepted and internationally transcendent principles. [htp://www.civiced.org] When Republican Tim Pawlenty came into office in 2002, he and the state legislature dumped the Profiles in Learning, which is a clone of Goals 2000. That in turn was a bastard child of Outcome Based Education and other efforts to dumb down, destroy, disenfranchise, and reprogram our children. A group of the elite, this time history professors at the University of Minnesota, protested the end of Profiles and whined about new history standards that don't make America look bad enough. They want to continue to revise curriculum and particularly revise history so that white Westerners and Christians are consistently portrayed as the world's bad guys.

The reasoning is that they want to recreate citizens of the world rather than citizens of the United States. To do so one must demonize as much as possible the United States. In that regard, they must also continue to paint the West as evil racists and the moral equivalent of the Taliban. In fact the Taliban would probably be more acceptable to the history professors at the U of M.

Minnesota's educational deconstructionists are no different than deconstructionist reactionaries from any other university. Nor are they different from most of the leadership on the left or the establishment right. As EdWatch points out:

"When Minnesota's Federal Curriculum, the Profile of Learning, was repealed, the Senate Education Committee Chairman removed language from the law that would have required the Standards to 'promote and preserve' the founding principles of our country, as stated in the Declaration of Independence. These founding principles include national sovereignty, unalienable rights, self-evident truth, life, liberty, and property. Not surprisingly, today's standards battle once again centers on these exact same principles."

There is a fatalistic acceptance on the part of parents and the citizenry on one hand and a diabolical effort to deconstruct this nation in state legislatures, universities supported by taxpayers, schools, as well as the powers that be in Washington.

No matter what we want, feckless globalists, (read fusion of Marxist/fascist/corporatist/bureaucrat classes) will continue to dish out their own noxious brew. Our acceptance of that will excellerate our ruin.

Suicidal Economics

How can our elite be so dumb? How can they continue to promote the destruction of the U.S. through economic policy?

* We must begin NOW to put vast amounts of investment dollars into basic scientific research; including reigniting the space program. If we don't, advancement in technology alone will not keep this nation on the cutting edge. This in turn will further erode our slim list of economic "comparative advantage." Comparative advantage is the mantra and Holy Grail of the economic and political set. Nonetheless, our comparative advantage is getting no help in D.C.

As William Hawkins of U.S. Business and Industry Council tells us: "Examples of how things work in Washington permeated the omnibus appropriations bill passed by the House on December 8. The bill spends $328 billion to fund 11 government departments through next September, and $492 billion for other non-military purposes."

The measure was riddled with pork-barrel projects "earmarked" for favored congressional districts. Yet, the National Institute of Standards and Technology will have its budget cut by 12 percent ($81 million) in 2004. Its scientific and technical laboratories will experience a budget cut of 4.3 percent ($15.2 million).

On one side of his mouth, President Bush speaks of improving U.S. manufacturing position vis a vis the world, particularly in critical manufacturing and the relationship with China.

Nevertheless, Hawkins insists, that so-called "effort" is belied by administration/establishment actions: "NIST's Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) budget is slashed by 63 percent, from $106 million to $39.5 million. The MEP’s national network of centers was created to help small- and medium-sized manufacturers modernize their operations. The Bush administration, through the Commerce Department, had requested a 90 percent budget cut for MEP to essentially kill the entire program. In a $2 trillion Federal budget, the amount “saved” is trivial, but the message sent is unmistakable."

James Sasser, who served as U.S. ambassador to China from 1995 to 1999 and was a U.S. Senator before that, recently told Bloomberg news: “The Chinese really don't do any lobbying. The heavy lifting is done by the American business community.”

Hawkins argues, "When Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative Charles W. Freeman testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management on December 9, lawmakers were told the that while there were two China-specific safeguard mechanisms under Section 421 of the Trade Act allowing American industries to cope with market disruptions caused by “increasing economic integration with China” Hawkins adds in parenthesis (yes, he did use the term “integration” rather than “trade”)

Integration? What that means is that globalism and globalists now run things and it also means the dilution of U.S. economic and political power. It means globalists have no concern for U.S. national security or the survival of the U.S. as an independent nation. Exports from the U.S. are still leaving this country in the form of critical dual use technology to China. A nation that is more of a mercantilist fascist state than anywhere close to free market capitalism. They don't have the ethical, legal, moral, background, nor is there the will to BE a truly free state with free market capitalism. China wants to be a hegemonic power, retaining their own markets in the end and keeping our investment money, capital and ideas. That is what the dimwits among globalists and transnationals will discover somewhere between 2010 and 2012, if not sooner. Whenever some lame brain apologist for the Bush administration blathers on about free trade and free markets and improving "exports" to China, what it actually means in Orwellian terms comes from the mouth of Chinese Premier Wen as he spoke to 400 of the Fortune 500 last week.

Premier Wen was upset with restrictions on the export to China of high-tech products with potential military applications saying, “I ardently hope that the relevant U.S. departments will make a clean break with those obsolete concepts and anachronistic practices, and throw them into the Pacific Ocean.” As William Hawkins concludes, "What China wants is technology and capital with which to build what Beijing calls “comprehensive national power.”

All I can say is, do not expect the Bush administration or any Democrat, Libertarian connected to the establishment to change this situation. At least Bill Clinton was more open and upfront about stealing us blind to feather his and Hillary's campaign fund nest.

He and the idiots in the Commerce Department, which the Gingrich Revolution had promised to get rid of, gave away critical technology to China through Loral and Hughes. Nonetheless, in 2003-04, establishment Republicans are simply more disingenuous or in denial about their part in giving away the store to China to further the interests of transnational corporations.

The Ministry of Plenty

How about a little truth telling on economic matters and failed theories.

*Admit the truth about the U.S. economic predicament. All things are not as they once were. Nor do old theories or mantras apply in an era when capital, labor, products, ALL factors in production are mobile. That is basic to theories of the gods of free trade, David Ricardo and Adam Smith. They lived in a world where ALL factors in the economic free market or trade equation were NOT mobile. That is what "comparative" advantage and free trade theory are all about. The investment capitalists insist that "free" transference of capital to other countries does not change the equation and that movement of capital to other countries works as well.

My math wonk son calls that inability to see all the factors in an equation a lot of wishful thinking. It is the influence of the dynamic fitting factor. In math or economics, the dynamic fitting factor is akin to banging on PVC pipes that don't fit – until they do. However, the pipes, and theories, may not hold water or sewage for that matter. During the cold spell they will burst causing a lot of destruction and subsequent reinvestment. The same holds true for the particular theories of free trade that were based on the world of the 18th century. Nonetheless, Cato, Heritage, and a whole bunch of "experts" bang away on the PVC economic pipes until they fit and their particular theory is justified. Meanwhile, they ignore the obvious.

Certainly, hardheaded ideologues might revue economic theory in the possibility they do not fit any longer and should be reworked or replaced altogether.

Meanwhile, the cheer leaders at National Review, Wall Street Journal, Alan Greenspan, radio and TV personalities, ideological think tanks, etc., tell us 300,000 new jobs have been created in the last few months, and at any given moment 10,000 jobs are disappearing to be replaced by 10,000 other jobs.

From upstate New York to the Carolinas, from Colorado to Texas, the loss of jobs is not compensated for by the rising stock market. The investor class benefits from that and Alan Greenspan can make cavalier comments about how the U.S. does not need manufacturing jobs while we need more waves of immigration "to keep costs down."

In early December, Federal Reserve's Alan Greenspan told us that we simply need to let jobs go to other countries because that is the way it has been since the '50s. Certain economic sectors and the jobs that went with them began migrating to Japan, China, Mexico et al.

Mr. Greenspan is also telling us not to be concerned about manufacturing jobs disappearing at an alarming rate. That is the way of the world, at least in the world of Alan Greenspan and the economic and political elite in New York and D.C.

Greenspan remarked in Dallas recently, "We can thus be confident that new jobs will displace old ones as they always have, but not without a high degree of pain for those in the job-losing segment of our massive job turnover." What he doesn't tell us is that the new jobs being created are primarily in the service sector in retail sales, food service, and other lower paying areas.

The real deal, however, is quite different than tap dancing done by economic talking heads or Alan Greenspan.

According to the statistical analysts at Challenger, Gray and Christmas, supported by information gathered from the U.S. Department of Labor and Commerce, and extensive analysis by the Northwest-Midwest Institute: "low paying jobs dominate the U.S. economic report." Job creation was the heaviest in lower pay scales. Retail, temporary help service firms, and food and drinking establishments were some the top job creators. Weekly earnings in each average $366, $318, and $225, respectively. All are 30 percent to 57 percent below the national average of $521 per week for all industries. Manufacturing still hemorrhaged jobs. Manufacturing lost another 24,000 jobs, making it the 37th consecutive month in which jobs were lost. Since January 2001, 2.6 million manufacturing jobs have disappeared. More workers were forced into part-time jobs. 1.4 million workers said they were only able to find part time work, up 27 percent from 1.1 million a year ago. Two jobs are better than one. To make ends meet, 7.5 million Americans worked two or more jobs in October, up from 7.3 million a year ago. The number for which the primary and secondary jobs were both part time increased six percent from 1.7 million to 1.8 million Long-time joblessness persisted. Nearly 1 out of 4 unemployed Americans have been out of work for 27 weeks or more. The largest percentage-47 percent-of those experiencing prolonged joblessness are white-collar workers in management, professional and related occupations as well as sales and office occupations. Participation rate remains at 12-year low with 34 percent of the population neither working nor looking for work.

According the Challenger report, it will take 100,000 to 150,000 jobs created each month just to keep pace with population growth. An additional 125,000 to 150,000 new jobs each month is what will be necessary to pull us out of the current severe hiring slump."

Challenger continued: "With factors like technology, outsourcing and consolidation working against job creation, any job market rebound we see in the near future will be relatively small. It is not helping job seekers that productivity continues to climb, which makes it easier for companies to further delay hiring plans, which we anticipate will happen." Yet we are told over and over, things are looking up, the stock market is over 10,000 and all is right with the world. So you do not have a job? They are about to turn off the electricity: hurry up – Wal-Mart and Home Depot are hiring.

You were an engineer and you now remodel homes or work at Starbucks – tough. You should have gone into law. Lots of money in litigation you dope. Holy cow, 2.34 of the Gross Domestic Product is litigation. You should have read the signs when we ditched the space program, science and math education, for social engineering, bra burning and the war on poverty in the 60s.

In the words of George Orwell in his sci-fi prophecy, "1984:

"The Ministry of Plenty's forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at one-hundred-and-forty-five million pairs. The actual output was given as sixty-two millions. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, marked the figure down to fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been overfulfilled."

Alan Greenspan and the hidebound stock market traders, overpaid CEOs, unfathomable, Byzantine corporate shenanigans, think tanks, Department of Commerce, financial gurus, en toto, are no better at economics than the way business is conducted by Winston and his colleagues in the Orwellian future of "1984."

It is remarkable that so many adopt the suicidal tendencies of our various elite. It is time to press a new elite into service. Time for the grassroots in the states to reject the old elite and replace it. Time for the states to reclaim their power under the 9th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution.

End the revolving door of legislative, academic, business, and bureaucratic intrigue in the Washington-New York power nexus. It is unacceptable. What do you think?

Next time: The disconnect between Bush, steel tariffs, Iraq and the WTO. Central planning from Bretton Woods, GATT, WTO until the present. Indiana Legislature replaces 20 percent of American workers with outsourcing and H-1B and L-1 visa holders. Policy-making elites, NGOs and the grassroots revolt. More immigration silliness and education for the masochistic masses.

Contact Diane at alden@newsmax.com


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Government
KEYWORDS: ballotinitiatives; bush; charlescolson; citizenfailure; clinton; conservatives; democrats; education; greenspan; immigration; jamessasser; joblessness; judicialtyranny; ministryofplenty; mn; nafta; nationalsuicide; oligarchy; orwell; popularculture; republicans; richardneuhaus; robertbork; timpawlenty
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To: John W
One out of how many? Where are the others? Free and well, I suppose.
21 posted on 12/16/2003 5:22:04 PM PST by SkyRat (If privacy wasn't of value, we wouldn't have doors on bathrooms.)
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To: SkyRat
Please explain the logic behind "if you can't catch them all,don't catch any".
22 posted on 12/16/2003 5:25:54 PM PST by John W
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To: John W
There is none.

But that's not the point. I'm sharing RLK's opinion:
-----
We are fighting at least three wars.

1) One against Mohammed and all his disciples.

2) One against international socialism.

3) One against internal political and economic deterioration at home that will leave us an oppressed politically correct third world nation.
-------

Catching Hussein won't help with 2 and 3. Since I assume that Saddam wasn't the only one supporting Mohammed, maybe even a small unimportant gear in a big machine, catching him won't have much impact on 1 either.

That's what I was trying to say. A Victory, yes, maybe a big one. But the end of our problems? I don't think so.

Maybe I'm too pessimistic, but I can't shake the feeling that there is a lot of trouble ahead. Or to paraphrase an old chinese curse:" We live in interesting times"
23 posted on 12/16/2003 5:47:58 PM PST by SkyRat (If privacy wasn't of value, we wouldn't have doors on bathrooms.)
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To: SkyRat
...I can't shake the feeling that there is a lot of trouble ahead.

Yeh, me too, a bad feeling in the gut. We're unmoored, our institutions are corrupt. We're going to learn self-reliance, and a lot of other stuff. Some sort of unforeseen "9/11-like" event will put us over the edge. Maybe 5, maybe 10 years, no more. My opinion. Hope I'm wrong.

24 posted on 12/16/2003 6:41:34 PM PST by Phaedrus
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To: Theodore R.
bump...thanks for the post.
25 posted on 12/16/2003 6:48:25 PM PST by Lady Eileen
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To: John W
Hussein WAS, at a minimum, a financial supporter of "Mohammed and all his disciples".Or,do you disagree?

--------------------------------

That role has been exaggerated to rationalize reason for the war and create the image of a superpowerful boogieman who must be deposed. Anyone in a nation with a serious proportion of Islamic population is required to pay homage in some way to Islam, or he will be assassinated, as was Anwar Sadat. Saddam Hussein wasn't half of what he or Bush claimed he was. I have no use for Hussein. The world will be better off without him. But as the terrorist behind 9/11, which if anybody bothers to remember, is what this whole thing was supposed to be about, Hussein was small fry.

26 posted on 12/16/2003 8:20:41 PM PST by RLK
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To: RLK
We are fighting at least three wars.
1) One against Mohammed and all his disciples

We cannot win against 1 Billion Muslims spread from Morroco to Papua and Zanzibar to Almaty.
I understand the clash of civilizations rhetoric. However, just as the West is split, so too is the Muslim world.
i propose dividing them on ideological and ethnic grounds.

2) One against international socialism.
We gave up when the Soviet Union collapsed.

3) One against internal political and economic deterioration at home that will leave us an oppressed politically correct third world nation.
OK

Saddam Hussein has little to do with any of them. We are losing the three wars while people with high school pep rally mentalities cheer the capture of Hussein, who was little more than a local irrelevant chronic screw-up.
Ba'athis Iraq was a sponsor of Islamist terrorism. One down, 6 to go.
Defeating the regimes will not end the war, but terrorists are weak without state sponsors.

27 posted on 12/17/2003 12:05:31 AM PST by rmlew (Peaceniks and isolationists are objectively pro-Terrorist)
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To: rmlew
You raise interesting points. I've got not much time right now, but let me comment your last sentence


Defeating the regimes will not end the war, but terrorists are weak without state sponsors.



Are terrorists weak without state sponsors? I'm not sure. The idea that terror organisations or worse terror idelogies need a state sponsor sounds like an idea from the last century. In every war the ones who earned most were private cooperations or their CEO's.

There could be several men crazy or corrupt enough to "invest" into terror. After all money doesnt stink.
28 posted on 12/17/2003 6:24:44 AM PST by SkyRat (If privacy wasn't of value, we wouldn't have doors on bathrooms.)
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