War is bad. Defending against war, that can be justified. But starting a war, well that is presumably very bad. Not that starting a war could never be justified. Just that the bar should be set really high. Not it sort of seems like war might help something. No, you, and those watching you, should really worry that you are accepting excuses to start a war for other reasons.
the World Bank supplies loans to third world countries (it puts them in spiraling debt), is headed by NATO countries, and is NOT a humanitarian organisation. So its not really a good source to find out what people in Africa, or Middle East or Asia are doing vis a vis poverty.
In fact, most crises are dealt with by humanitarian non-governmental organisations and are caused by war and genocide (where are these weapons coming from?). We have been campaigning for years to cancel 3rd world debt - how can peasant farmers pay you? and why should they, they've been self-sufficient for thousands of years and just because the World Bank/IMF gave some masochist who calls himself president (Aka Mugabe) a massive loan, does that mean the peasants who never voted him in in the first place need to pay the "World Bank" and join your economic system; they're tribal people, that's how they lived for thousands of years until Europeans enforced false borders around them and now they cannot migrate and preserve their traditions.
Did you know that most of these countries are being bled dry because they export most of their produce to pay for debt (cotton, flowers, vegetables, tea, rice) whilst being paid pittance? Due to an unfair system of governance and land ownership imported from - you guessed it - the West. So when will you learn to leave other cultures alone and let them help themselves? We're not stupid you know!!!;-)
Unfortunately in Iraq, America instated the Saddam dictatorship, funded the dictatorship and then started a war and put in a puppet government because the dictatorship the US funded didn't follow your orders anymore. And NO - You are told the killings are done by Iraqis - from a good Iraqi friend of mine I know that there are American air raids are a fact of life now that people live with and die with.
Back to foreign policy: 63% of Americans don't even have a passport so you know very little about the world outside Pizza and Hollywood. You're in the Matrix, babies, fed on all the crap that's being fed into your minds and bodies. If you want to learn about the world you really need to talk to people in these countries that you invade and then you would understand that their people (the general populace) do not want you there, are trying to put their own lives in order - so what are you doing there?
Lining your pockets apparently. (How many of the post war rebuild contracts have gone to NATO countries (US/UK/France)- for you it's just another colony)
Having friends and family in Libya, Iraq, Frankfurt, Pakistan, Columbia, Spain and the Congo, I would say anti-US sentiment is not an imaginary or an accident. You're not helping yourselves.
(P.s. I don't think the Native american's are too happy with you Guys either)
A way forward - unfortunately Obama is as good as it gets, (at least he speaks to us!) and it doesn't matter if you chop the head off, the rest of the machine is still there. It's up to you to educate YOURSELVES, re-organise YOURSELVES and leave the rest of the world alone. (But where would you get your oil, iron ore, copper etc?) Oh dear, you might have to cope with one less gas guzzler or a few less luxuries in contrast to Afghanistani peasants who've never lived beyond their means and are getting crucified and made homeless for nothing.
Perhaps a better direction to take would not be "what do WE need - self-defence and greed" but how do we wish to EVOLVE within the world. You need to wake up and understand you share this world with others, but in fact America is behaving like the tyrant/dictatorship (does any other country march into the US, bomb your children and tell you what to do? Perhaps you could eat less and watch less TV and have a less satiable appetite for war and violence? NBC publicizes war as a sport/its a vote winner for most of you)
We are EQUALS (America/Europe vs the rest of the world, native or not) and until this fact finally sinks in, you will always be at odds with those cultures around you that you fail to understand or show any recognition, appreciation or respect for. It's a shame, you might just learn something, about the world beyond just feeding yourselves entertaining yourselves and socialising. Have you asked elders from the Natives, Africans, Asians, Arabs what your governments have been doing these last 100 years. The enslavement hasn't stopped - it's alive and kicking, except the bodies aren't shipped to you now, they're working in factories to pay off IMF loans enforced onto them - is that fair?)
I guess if the situation were to improve it would take genuine efforts within your culture to change for the better, instead of sit in a food/sex stupour whilst your administration just does whatever it wants. You actually have to work within the system if you want it to change - but that would take effort commitment and work, which unfortunately too few people (except the ambition and power hungry) seem to possess anymore.
Unfortunately the only way out of this that I can see, is independent nations (Africa, Middle East, India, China, Russia - the ones who haven't sold their souls) galvanizing their solidarity and working to oust the US influence from the rest of the world. So that hopefully one day the White House will understand the meaning of the word "NO" and will stay out of another man's business.
And if there are terror attacks or hatred towards the US, with your track record, it's to be expected, isn't it? Generations in many countries have suffered from wars that have been started and fuelled by the US.
P.S. Who makes most of the weapons in the world and Would American arms manufacturers have anything to gain from these wars? ;-)
Personally I just get on with my life work, work with humanitarian organisations (Amnesty International, Stop the War Coalition, Red Cross) and if I die young then I die but with a smile on my face that I'm not contributing to legal genocide.
No one is personally responsible for the actions of their government, but being blind to their actions because you're too busy having fun or working to pay their wages makes you culpable and a part of the problem. You have to inform yourselves wisely and speak up on mass if you want the balance of power to shift. Remember that your administration serves YOU (not the other way around) but while the majority of the US public have a "not my problem" attitude, the military can and will do what it likes. Public opinion needs to be changed through raising awareness and challenging the status quo (aka Vietnam protests), if the current state of affairs is to change, but in light of the "war on terror/ 9/11" spin no one is willing to speak up) I mean who gives a shit if you massacre a few million muslims, (for oil) huh? I mean "muslim" is practically a dirty word these days (Is this any different to the hate campaign/genocide organised by the Nazis towards the Jews? But because you guys smile and have good manners and everyone sucks your ****, no one seems to mind!)
TGGP, you're deep under the crush of your own bias on this one, IMO. Unlike most topics, it's hard for me to engage you on this because your bias fastens you so tight to your conclusions that there's not much of a starting point.
Chimps do something very similar, so it must be *very* old.
Long form of my thoughts, Google Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War.
Short form, population growth leads to a resource crisis. The bleak outlook turns up the gain on the spread of xenophobic memes. The warriors are synched up to attack by the memes, they attack and win or lose the population is reduced which solves the resource crisis. Rinse, repeat.
(I can go into detail about how the human practice of taking the young women of the losers led to the selection of war as a gene strategy if you want.)
It's possible to end war, but only if we can keep the population growth lower than the economic growth.
I think a technocratic analysis would favor intervention in Libya. As I see it, a significant risk of regime change in Libya is that the surface to air missiles that Libya has will be exported and used against civilian air liners.
An air war against Libya will tend to either destroy locations where those missiles are stored and any missiles stored there, or will encourage them to be used against military aircraft which are much better prepared to evade them and which typically have a single pilot and not hundreds of passengers.
The cost to the US is the cost of the cruise missiles, cost of wear and tear on equipment, the cost of any lost aircraft, the cost of fuel, the cost of any armaments used, and the lives of any service personnel lost. The benefits are that this is fabulously great training. Every pilot and support person that participates will be a little bit better skilled afterward. All armaments have a useful life. This is an opportunity to purge the inventory of older armaments without paying to dispose of them safely.
The Libyan air defenses are pretty primitive and have been largely destroyed. The plane that was lost was lost due to mechanical failure (as I understand). Mechanical failure is an unavoidable risk (and an acceptable cost) of any training mission.
Gaddafi is a loose cannon who is erratic and unpredictable. He has sponsored terrorist attacks against civilians in the past. He may do so again. Who will follow after Gaddafi without a no-fly zone is unknown, but is likely to be someone more like him who may also sponsor terrorist attacks against civilians, rather than someone less like him who will not. Gaddafi is pretty old and isn't going to live forever. There will very likely be regime change within a decade no matter what the external world does. This is an opportunity to have an influence on that process of regime change. I think that the price of that opportunity is imposing a no-fly zone. I think the price is worth it.
As Tyler Cowen said, even an argument against thinking in terms of narratives is going to be perceived as a narrative.
If you're right about technocratic division, I would expect technocratic arguments on either side. The Center for a New American Security is a Dem-aligned think-tank once regarded has having the Obama admin's ear, closely associated with population-centric counter-insurgency in the vein of Petraeus and (more closely) McChrystal. It's take on Libya is not about purity but about how poorly thought out how actions were. Is there an analogously technocratic argument to the contrary? I suppose under your "meta-technocratic" framework people might be reluctant to give the real reasons for our actions, but to me this absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
"I really have a hard time seeing today’s China, Iran or Russia making a move like this. It’s pretty much what you should expect from a technocrat-deprived administration which acts before it thinks without any clear conception of end-game. I don’t know if I’ll go so far as Larison in saying that it might make the Bush admin look good in comparison, but that’s the order of incompetence we’re talking about."
Seems like narrative push to me rather than best faith analysis of the present and recent past.
I agree that there's no grand strategic narrative. I agree that the reaction was very human and klugey. The whole point of technocracy is to avoid that!
A unipolar power should not have to "get in front" of a revolutionary wave. It may often play more of a role in crushing said wave. Libya was not a longstanding client that we had any deep interests/commitments with. It is a recent Nixon-goes-to-China on a very small scale. Berlusconi may be more tainted by association with Kadaffi, but he isn't lifting the weight. The U.S has credibility from previously exchanging bombs with Kadaffi, and I'm unaware of any popular perception that our interest is behind him retaining power. At a time when we're already tied up with Afghanistan & Iraq, I don't see how taking on Libya is supposed to greatly improve our perception.
I really have a hard time seeing today's China, Iran or Russia making a move like this. It's pretty much what you should expect from a technocrat-deprived administration which acts before it thinks without any clear conception of end-game. I don't know if I'll go so far as Larison in saying that it might make the Bush admin look good in comparison, but that's the order of incompetence we're talking about.
Konk, I like your analysis, although I think it shares my weakness of too many words, not enough quant analytical rigor.
As to this comment "However the most likley scenario seems to be that Asians will eventually be considered White in the US."
I doubt Asians will become white, because I don't think any constituency needs it. I do think the elite of China are likely to expand their sphere of representative influence to all East Asians, the way the Wasp/Ashkenazi elite of the USA are functionally doing for all folks of European descent.I do think a global elite with heaviest representation of Wasps, Ashkenazis, Han, and Brahmins (maybe in that order) is plausible, because of the unique combination of high IQ fraction, network advantages, and demonstrated ability to get mass external populations to see them as representative.
I think "meta-technocratic" iwas a poor word choice on my point. What I'm trying to get at is technocratic in the context of hecklers/the real social geography.
"There was some talk about legitimacy, but most western leaders didn’t really have their legitimacy at stake (they continue to support “moderate” Arab regimes to no detriment)."
I think that's bullshitty on your part. For a complex of factors things got hotter in Libya, and more attention was drawn and then locked in to the narrative. I'm more skeptical of the narrative that there were greater Western or neoconservative grand strategic interests in Libya. As you pointed out yourself, Khaddafi was a functional Western ally and the rebels have more suspect elements. So I think this is the West trying to get in front of a legitimacy crisis initially (a successful Libyan revolution that they weren't on the side of the "people") and then ended up caught in their own momentum when things actually broke in Khaddafi's favor.
To bring in other regimes where the momentum and and global grassroots attention broke differently seems to me to be at least autistic and at most bullshitty.Here I don't see selectivity due to grand strategy but rather all-too-human klugey attention and reaction.
I'm not sure what you are indicating by "meta-technocratic". Something like Schelling's rational commitment to irrationality?
There was some talk about legitimacy, but most western leaders didn't really have their legitimacy at stake (they continue to support "moderate" Arab regimes to no detriment). Media folks did seem caught up in the excitement of the "Arab spring", but "to be young then was very heaven" is not a technocratic sentiment. The U.S reaction to Egypt, appearing to accept the demands of protesters while installing a practically identical successor, fits your description better.
you need to give more things plz!!
the World Bank supplies loans to third world countries (it puts them in spiraling debt), is headed by NATO countries, and is NOT a humanitarian organisation. So its not really a good source to find out what people in Africa, or Middle East or Asia are doing vis a vis poverty.
In fact, most crises are dealt with by humanitarian non-governmental organisations and are caused by war and genocide (where are these weapons coming from?). We have been campaigning for years to cancel 3rd world debt - how can peasant farmers pay you? and why should they, they've been self-sufficient for thousands of years and just because the World Bank/IMF gave some masochist who calls himself president (Aka Mugabe) a massive loan, does that mean the peasants who never voted him in in the first place need to pay the "World Bank" and join your economic system; they're tribal people, that's how they lived for thousands of years until Europeans enforced false borders around them and now they cannot migrate and preserve their traditions.
Did you know that most of these countries are being bled dry because they export most of their produce to pay for debt (cotton, flowers, vegetables, tea, rice) whilst being paid pittance? Due to an unfair system of governance and land ownership imported from - you guessed it - the West. So when will you learn to leave other cultures alone and let them help themselves? We're not stupid you know!!!;-)
Unfortunately in Iraq, America instated the Saddam dictatorship, funded the dictatorship and then started a war and put in a puppet government because the dictatorship the US funded didn't follow your orders anymore. And NO - You are told the killings are done by Iraqis - from a good Iraqi friend of mine I know that there are American air raids are a fact of life now that people live with and die with.
Back to foreign policy: 63% of Americans don't even have a passport so you know very little about the world outside Pizza and Hollywood. You're in the Matrix, babies, fed on all the crap that's being fed into your minds and bodies. If you want to learn about the world you really need to talk to people in these countries that you invade and then you would understand that their people (the general populace) do not want you there, are trying to put their own lives in order - so what are you doing there?
Lining your pockets apparently. (How many of the post war rebuild contracts have gone to NATO countries (US/UK/France)- for you it's just another colony)
Having friends and family in Libya, Iraq, Frankfurt, Pakistan, Columbia, Spain and the Congo, I would say anti-US sentiment is not an imaginary or an accident. You're not helping yourselves.
(P.s. I don't think the Native american's are too happy with you Guys either)
A way forward - unfortunately Obama is as good as it gets, (at least he speaks to us!) and it doesn't matter if you chop the head off, the rest of the machine is still there. It's up to you to educate YOURSELVES, re-organise YOURSELVES and leave the rest of the world alone. (But where would you get your oil, iron ore, copper etc?) Oh dear, you might have to cope with one less gas guzzler or a few less luxuries in contrast to Afghanistani peasants who've never lived beyond their means and are getting crucified and made homeless for nothing.
Perhaps a better direction to take would not be "what do WE need - self-defence and greed" but how do we wish to EVOLVE within the world. You need to wake up and understand you share this world with others, but in fact America is behaving like the tyrant/dictatorship (does any other country march into the US, bomb your children and tell you what to do? Perhaps you could eat less and watch less TV and have a less satiable appetite for war and violence? NBC publicizes war as a sport/its a vote winner for most of you)
We are EQUALS (America/Europe vs the rest of the world, native or not) and until this fact finally sinks in, you will always be at odds with those cultures around you that you fail to understand or show any recognition, appreciation or respect for. It's a shame, you might just learn something, about the world beyond just feeding yourselves entertaining yourselves and socialising. Have you asked elders from the Natives, Africans, Asians, Arabs what your governments have been doing these last 100 years. The enslavement hasn't stopped - it's alive and kicking, except the bodies aren't shipped to you now, they're working in factories to pay off IMF loans enforced onto them - is that fair?)
I guess if the situation were to improve it would take genuine efforts within your culture to change for the better, instead of sit in a food/sex stupour whilst your administration just does whatever it wants. You actually have to work within the system if you want it to change - but that would take effort commitment and work, which unfortunately too few people (except the ambition and power hungry) seem to possess anymore.
Unfortunately the only way out of this that I can see, is independent nations (Africa, Middle East, India, China, Russia - the ones who haven't sold their souls) galvanizing their solidarity and working to oust the US influence from the rest of the world. So that hopefully one day the White House will understand the meaning of the word "NO" and will stay out of another man's business.
And if there are terror attacks or hatred towards the US, with your track record, it's to be expected, isn't it? Generations in many countries have suffered from wars that have been started and fuelled by the US.
P.S. Who makes most of the weapons in the world and Would American arms manufacturers have anything to gain from these wars? ;-)
Personally I just get on with my life work, work with humanitarian organisations (Amnesty International, Stop the War Coalition, Red Cross) and if I die young then I die but with a smile on my face that I'm not contributing to legal genocide.
No one is personally responsible for the actions of their government, but being blind to their actions because you're too busy having fun or working to pay their wages makes you culpable and a part of the problem. You have to inform yourselves wisely and speak up on mass if you want the balance of power to shift. Remember that your administration serves YOU (not the other way around) but while the majority of the US public have a "not my problem" attitude, the military can and will do what it likes. Public opinion needs to be changed through raising awareness and challenging the status quo (aka Vietnam protests), if the current state of affairs is to change, but in light of the "war on terror/ 9/11" spin no one is willing to speak up) I mean who gives a shit if you massacre a few million muslims, (for oil) huh? I mean "muslim" is practically a dirty word these days (Is this any different to the hate campaign/genocide organised by the Nazis towards the Jews? But because you guys smile and have good manners and everyone sucks your ****, no one seems to mind!)
Saira, London
so true
Watch and learn: http://overpopulationisamyt...
TGGP, you're deep under the crush of your own bias on this one, IMO. Unlike most topics, it's hard for me to engage you on this because your bias fastens you so tight to your conclusions that there's not much of a starting point.
Where does war come from in the first place?
Chimps do something very similar, so it must be *very* old.
Long form of my thoughts, Google Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War.
Short form, population growth leads to a resource crisis. The bleak outlook turns up the gain on the spread of xenophobic memes. The warriors are synched up to attack by the memes, they attack and win or lose the population is reduced which solves the resource crisis. Rinse, repeat.
(I can go into detail about how the human practice of taking the young women of the losers led to the selection of war as a gene strategy if you want.)
It's possible to end war, but only if we can keep the population growth lower than the economic growth.
Keith Henson
I think a technocratic analysis would favor intervention in Libya. As I see it, a significant risk of regime change in Libya is that the surface to air missiles that Libya has will be exported and used against civilian air liners.
An air war against Libya will tend to either destroy locations where those missiles are stored and any missiles stored there, or will encourage them to be used against military aircraft which are much better prepared to evade them and which typically have a single pilot and not hundreds of passengers.
The cost to the US is the cost of the cruise missiles, cost of wear and tear on equipment, the cost of any lost aircraft, the cost of fuel, the cost of any armaments used, and the lives of any service personnel lost. The benefits are that this is fabulously great training. Every pilot and support person that participates will be a little bit better skilled afterward. All armaments have a useful life. This is an opportunity to purge the inventory of older armaments without paying to dispose of them safely.
The Libyan air defenses are pretty primitive and have been largely destroyed. The plane that was lost was lost due to mechanical failure (as I understand). Mechanical failure is an unavoidable risk (and an acceptable cost) of any training mission.
Gaddafi is a loose cannon who is erratic and unpredictable. He has sponsored terrorist attacks against civilians in the past. He may do so again. Who will follow after Gaddafi without a no-fly zone is unknown, but is likely to be someone more like him who may also sponsor terrorist attacks against civilians, rather than someone less like him who will not. Gaddafi is pretty old and isn't going to live forever. There will very likely be regime change within a decade no matter what the external world does. This is an opportunity to have an influence on that process of regime change. I think that the price of that opportunity is imposing a no-fly zone. I think the price is worth it.
As Tyler Cowen said, even an argument against thinking in terms of narratives is going to be perceived as a narrative.
If you're right about technocratic division, I would expect technocratic arguments on either side. The Center for a New American Security is a Dem-aligned think-tank once regarded has having the Obama admin's ear, closely associated with population-centric counter-insurgency in the vein of Petraeus and (more closely) McChrystal. It's take on Libya is not about purity but about how poorly thought out how actions were. Is there an analogously technocratic argument to the contrary? I suppose under your "meta-technocratic" framework people might be reluctant to give the real reasons for our actions, but to me this absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
"I really have a hard time seeing today’s China, Iran or Russia making a move like this. It’s pretty much what you should expect from a technocrat-deprived administration which acts before it thinks without any clear conception of end-game. I don’t know if I’ll go so far as Larison in saying that it might make the Bush admin look good in comparison, but that’s the order of incompetence we’re talking about."
Seems like narrative push to me rather than best faith analysis of the present and recent past.
But I'm no expert.
I agree that there's no grand strategic narrative. I agree that the reaction was very human and klugey. The whole point of technocracy is to avoid that!
A unipolar power should not have to "get in front" of a revolutionary wave. It may often play more of a role in crushing said wave. Libya was not a longstanding client that we had any deep interests/commitments with. It is a recent Nixon-goes-to-China on a very small scale. Berlusconi may be more tainted by association with Kadaffi, but he isn't lifting the weight. The U.S has credibility from previously exchanging bombs with Kadaffi, and I'm unaware of any popular perception that our interest is behind him retaining power. At a time when we're already tied up with Afghanistan & Iraq, I don't see how taking on Libya is supposed to greatly improve our perception.
I really have a hard time seeing today's China, Iran or Russia making a move like this. It's pretty much what you should expect from a technocrat-deprived administration which acts before it thinks without any clear conception of end-game. I don't know if I'll go so far as Larison in saying that it might make the Bush admin look good in comparison, but that's the order of incompetence we're talking about.
Konk, I like your analysis, although I think it shares my weakness of too many words, not enough quant analytical rigor.
As to this comment "However the most likley scenario seems to be that Asians will eventually be considered White in the US."
I doubt Asians will become white, because I don't think any constituency needs it. I do think the elite of China are likely to expand their sphere of representative influence to all East Asians, the way the Wasp/Ashkenazi elite of the USA are functionally doing for all folks of European descent.I do think a global elite with heaviest representation of Wasps, Ashkenazis, Han, and Brahmins (maybe in that order) is plausible, because of the unique combination of high IQ fraction, network advantages, and demonstrated ability to get mass external populations to see them as representative.
I think "meta-technocratic" iwas a poor word choice on my point. What I'm trying to get at is technocratic in the context of hecklers/the real social geography.
"There was some talk about legitimacy, but most western leaders didn’t really have their legitimacy at stake (they continue to support “moderate” Arab regimes to no detriment)."
I think that's bullshitty on your part. For a complex of factors things got hotter in Libya, and more attention was drawn and then locked in to the narrative. I'm more skeptical of the narrative that there were greater Western or neoconservative grand strategic interests in Libya. As you pointed out yourself, Khaddafi was a functional Western ally and the rebels have more suspect elements. So I think this is the West trying to get in front of a legitimacy crisis initially (a successful Libyan revolution that they weren't on the side of the "people") and then ended up caught in their own momentum when things actually broke in Khaddafi's favor.
To bring in other regimes where the momentum and and global grassroots attention broke differently seems to me to be at least autistic and at most bullshitty.Here I don't see selectivity due to grand strategy but rather all-too-human klugey attention and reaction.
Seems weird to suggest that the US started the Libyan war.
I'm not sure what you are indicating by "meta-technocratic". Something like Schelling's rational commitment to irrationality?
There was some talk about legitimacy, but most western leaders didn't really have their legitimacy at stake (they continue to support "moderate" Arab regimes to no detriment). Media folks did seem caught up in the excitement of the "Arab spring", but "to be young then was very heaven" is not a technocratic sentiment. The U.S reaction to Egypt, appearing to accept the demands of protesters while installing a practically identical successor, fits your description better.
I would hate to be the President or running a popular blog read by unruly readers.