Give me a GDed break. You buy a new industrial strength fog machine?

Militarist:
1 a : predominance of the military class or its ideals b : exaltation of military virtues and ideals
2 : a policy of aggressive military preparedness

I'm talking about the general belief that evey time the USA sends men into harm's way; glory, freedom, democracy, and pretty French girls planting kisses will be the inevitable result. One of the worst things a politician can do, in the eyes of the vast right wing propo machine, is to oppose ANY weapons system. Almost makes you think they're on the payroll of the Heritage foundation and its sponsor, Lockheed.

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Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Oh, you mean in your OPINION that there are militarists. I agree you have an opinion.

B

Ya'all let me know how your stay in the twilight zone was.

Are you kidding me?!? We spend about as much on defense as the rest of the world combined, we've got people planning for another optional war at this minute and you're splitting some kind of hairs on the topic?

Whatever it takes to keep your belief system above the high water mark, I reckon.

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

The job of DoD is to plan for wars. they do that 24-7 considering all manner of scenarios around the globe. The State Dept and the spook agencies run their models for various purposes, too. So does the USDA. So does every other gov and NGO with the resources and interest.

You want the DoD to stop making war plans? Great idea. Next tsunami or hurricane or revolution or incursion by hostiles into areas of strategic interest to the USA, you lead the charge. Without planning. Let's see your body count. I'll just bet folks would look back fondly on the great wisdom of Rummy and co, if you and your ilk were in charge.

Planning for possibilities is one thing. Actively planning an invasion is another. The whole 'preventive war' notion has serious problems. The only way to prevent war is to do the hard, slow work of cultivating mutually beneficial relationships.

How many countries are seeking to bring ruination onto the heads of the Chinese as compared with us? Wonder why that is?

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

When you figure out what the difference is please explain it.

Planning for defense, in the real sense of the word, is always wise. Some of that would involve knowing about the country so we could invade after they attacked us.

But believing we could pre-emptively invade, "surgically" turn a few nuts, adjust a few gears, and change the regime to something everyone would be much more happy with (we're good at that sort of thing), and what's more, actively planning for exactly that is some kind of imperialism, isn't it?

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Planning is different from mobilization and implementation.

Your second paragraph is precisely what we should have done rather than the massive invasion crap that we did do.

I dunno, maybe. But who likes feeling like they've been manipulated? It'll come out soon enough and then we likely end up in a worse position.

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

A bullet to the head of Saddam and his regime of murdering military expansionist kleptocrats would have been a lot better manipulation that 2,500 dead Americans and goodness know how many dead innocent Iraqis.

But we are where we are and failure in Iraq now would be an open door invitation to play this murderous game on American soil.

I'll agree with that. My thought early on that Saddam would be one case where financing and arming the opposition would clearly be OK.

By manipulation I mean putting in a govt. that is so obviously puppet in nature (like the Shah) and keeping them there with enough arms to dwarf the opposition. That kind of stuff can create some long lasting ill will.

As I see it, no one liked the idea of empowering anyone other than Saddam, HW Bush and advisors certainly, so in their minds it was either him or us.

That would have been the trick: helping the opposition dispatch the MF and then getting out of the way enough so that the gubmint had the support of the people. But I'm not sure any kind of democracy is going to work in greater Iraq -- maybe if they do divide into thirds, but holy jihad, batman, these peoples crazy.

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Like Colin Powell said, "You break it, you own it." I think that is a more important doctrine than his so-called, "Powell Doctrine" of overwhelming force and lethality. Because by whatever means you defeat the opposition, you still own the subsequent problem.

Back in '92 and up through today many people faulted George I for not proceeding to Baghdad. I think people are beginning to realize why we did not do that back then. Yes, it left that murderous bastard and his bloc in power to kill tens of thousands of Shia and Kurds following Gulf War I. It is now pretty obvious that had we proceeded to Baghdad we would probably still be there in the late '90's trying to extricate ourselves. Oh well, hindsight is 20-20.

We are where we are.

I'm gonna kill this thread as it has gotten way, way off where I originally wanted it to go....weather, climate, etc.

A thread going off topic? Say it ain't so.

Powell might have a good future in subsequent admins, demo or repo. He looks more and more like the voice of reason.

The break it/own it thing is why I think that maybe Clinton did the right thing in Somalia, as much as I'm sure vets like MM have good reason to resent the whole thing. Not saying he handled it well in its execution, but what kind of victory was there to be had in Somalia? We go in and wipe out 10, 20, 100 thousand of those macho, armed to the teeth primitives and what are we left with? An invivtation to try to implant a government in that place?

And at what point could we have left? There'd have always been more American deaths to avenge. It would have been like Iraq squared.

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Should NEVER have gone in. It was not a place in our strategic interest.

having gone in, we should have left when increased military security was requested. I think that was toward the end of Bush I's reign. So instead of pulling out and letting people starve (how'd that have looked on CNN?), Bush authorized the army to send in some folks, shifting it from an amphibious assault force to an army garrison. Clinton came in and increased the forces but refused to send in armor, depending instead on...wait for it...the UN...for armor. So here we have our forces dependent on the UN forces but without any command authority.

The rest is well-portrayed in, "Blackhawk Down."

Bot

Here's a useful website for folks interested in climate change research.

http://www.usgcrp.gov/

And here's one for coastal risk analysis.

http://www.ncddc.noaa.gov/cra/