Posted on 08/28/2008 10:01:46 AM PDT by AJKauf
There is just something comforting in that predictable, bipolar world, where two grand adversaries face each other in a real-life game of Risk. It’s like two arch enemies at battle. Neither can ultimately defeat the other, yet they seem to complement each other perfectly. As the Joker endearingly told Batman in the Dark Knight, “Kill you? I don’t want to kill you. What would I do without you? … You … you complete me.”...
(Excerpt) Read more at pajamasmedia.com ...
So Russia invading Georgia was Bush’s fault?
If we use that same line of thinking with Iran for example, we will indeed be defeated by way of fear to act.
Yes, we can defeat them, in more ways then one, and we cannot afford to be fearful of every consequence of every action taken in response to what is essentially a threat to life and liberty and it is not emerging, it is here now.
If we CAN defeat them, please tell us how?
Launch some nukes? Mutual Assured Destruction.
Land war? Nope.
Naval Blockcade? Uhn-uh.
Air Attack? Across a country that big?
If you know, please tell us.
Yes, the Cold War is back. In a weird way, the entire planet missed it a little bit. Many are relieved that it’s back, even in a small way.
Nature hates a vacuum. A “weakened” US leads directly to the enemies of freedom becoming stronger. Even the threat of an Obama Presidency is causing the planet to lapse. If he’s elected, expect a long period of chaos, as everyone grabs for pieces of everyone elses pie.
For the last several hundred years, Russia has been constantly in a state of hot and cold war with the world, because of its relentless appetite for territorial expansion. Russia remained in a state of cold war with the rest of the world even after the official “Cold War” ended. Its vast espionage operations remained intact even as Western intelligence agencies rushed to cut their budgets. It continued to supply weaponry to failed states even as the West cut back on supporting pro-Western dictatorships.
Same way we beat them before:
Be strong, resolute, and richer. If we stay committed to freedom we will prevail. If we go the progressive (socialist/marxist) direction we are lost and the Soviets will have won.
Simple huh?
It’s actually a nice little conundrum. We are strong, they were strong. Once the Soviet Union collapsed country’s all over the world started think “hey we don’t need those Americans anymore”. As new Russia gets stronger you will have your Chamberlain’s but eventual those same country’s that thought they no longer needed us will be praying that we come to their aid, or they will be swallowed/assimilate into the Russian machine.
Same way they defeated us in Vietnam, and we defeated them in Afghanistan. By arming proxies. The Russian lust for territorial expansion can be met with costs so high that they will think twice.
We cannot shoot down their missles. We have EXPERIMENTED with it, and have been successful. However, we do NOT have an anti-missle sheild in place, and it’ll take several years to do so IF Congress authorizes the project INSTANTLY.
I don’t see that happening.
Not possible.
Not so long as they supply half of Europe’s oil demand at $118/bbl.
The bottom line to this argument is that “If we don’t have an external enemy, we fight among ourselves, and it is easier to fight an external enemy.”
And that is not only wrong, but insane. James Carville may be a mercenary partisan, but he is not going to try and kill Karl Rove with a car bomb, or visa versa. Though we endlessly joke that they will. It is nothing more than a joke.
Americans have been taunted by our attention seeking politicians for so long that we have forgotten that most of us would prefer it if they would just shut up and do their job and quit bugging us. Our desire for an external enemy, or even internal unity, in many ways just shows our fatigue with their endless political jawboning.
Despite what the MSM says, American love negative campaigning. But only during campaign season. Yet this is a far cry from needing to kill people before they kill us.
From the founding of America, we have understood that the only nations we can trust or have as friends are other real democracies. For this reason, our best presidents have been the ones that try to spread democracy around the world. Our worst presidents are the ones who don’t think the rest of the world is “ready” for democracy, and even doubt whether democracy is right for America.
We may doubt the friendship of some of the real democracies, but between us, there is no more will to fight each other in war, despite their eating snails and not bathing. And if the rest of the world would finally give up on dictatorship and tyranny, most of us would be content to forget the rest of the world even exists.
But we have learned the hard way that nobody who is not a real democracy cannot be trusted, and somehow, someday, there is a good chance we will get into a fight with them. So this is the continual Cold War. It has been around since George Washington and it has never ended.
So be happy, we can both argue among ourselves and still have enemies to struggle against. Maybe not Russia, maybe just some pissant country like Cuba, but it doesn’t matter.
I have to disagree with you there...remember when north korea launched that missile that crashed into the sea? Why did they have a childlike temper tantrum? because we shot it out of the sky...the recent failure of irans missile? we shot it out of the sky....4 years ago, a tank mounted laser shot down a 155mm howitzer round IN FLIGHT....not once but 3 times...we have cpb, brilliant pebbles, hi power laser, abm systems and the computing power to run them ( which was the main pitfall in these systems )...this is not including phalanx systems, minuteman systems, and so on and so on...we have had a viable missile defense system since the early 90’s.....and one on paper since the early 80’s...that is why the soviet union collapsed in the first place, their missile inventory suddenly became obsolete..
This is what you get when you let retards write philosophy. Listen, just knowing how to operate a keyboard isn't enough. You first have to have a clue.
We’re eight years in and the GWOT’s impact on the silver screen has been a parade of socially conscious tearjerkers. Absent are the heroic epics where American values and might decisively triumph over the enemy. If anything, GWOT films mostly chronicle the loss of American innocence
He writes like he thinks these movies simply arise unbidden out of the potting soil of American culture. No, sorry, they have writers, and these writers are mostly hacks who haven't got a clue. Mainly they haven't got a clue because they get their information from one another. One movie becomes the basis for the next movie, and in the end all they know about the world is what they've learned from watching their own movies.
Some will say the lack of heroic GWOT films is because America-hating liberals control Hollywood. Maybe, but that excuse isn’t good enough.
Actually, thats exactly what is happening. You may not like the excuse but its pretty close to the reality of it. They are churning out crap that has no basis in anything beyond their own paranoiac fantasies, and the fact that normal people aren't buying it doesn't even faze them. They figure there is something wrong with the public.
Their product does, however, feed the paranoia we face overseas. Sadly, most of what the world knows about us comes from Hollywood, and if all you know is what Hollywood told you, you don't know anything at all.
If you look at hoagy62's comments, it is obvious the both of you perceive the U.S. as somehow weaken'd in some way, yet both of your perceptions on this, and Putin's are wrong.
We are not weak and not over extended. That is a myth that we have not been able to correct, and perhaps they simply want it to float as the dominant perception for the moment.
There is very little standing in our way to bring our naval fleet back out of mothballs for a large blockade if needed, and our Air force is fully capable of attacking multiple targets in three different parts of the world at the same time if required.
We have over 1 million men and women under arms and available, and the notion that Iraq is somehow hogging all of it is ridiculous. What Iraq is doing, is taking a large portion of the budget, but a simple vote in Congress will change that.
This brings me to the real problem that we do have, and that is the American People. I capitalize "People" for emphasis because they are the weak point. If you look around, no attempt is currently being made to get them on board with a military response in this matter, and without them, we will likely do nothing. This is what Russia sees.............This is why they do this now, during our political silly season.
If our hands are tied in any way currently, it is 100% related to politics, and that's the facts.
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