On Jun 17, 10:51*pm, "Michael Shirley" wrote:
On Sun, 15 Jun 2008 22:08:18 -0700, eatfastnoodle *
wrote:





* * * * Look at their defense agreements, military history and joint *
defense *
programs, to include that nice new port the Peoples Liberation *
Army-Navy's *
building there. China and Pakistan are closer to each other than the US *
*
and Germany was in the Cold War. And if you look closely at that, what *
you *
see is that they're defacto members of SCO. And any professional order *
of *
battle in that coalition will include Pakistan in China's column, not *
ours.

That's because Chinese has been on their side ever since the Pakistani
independence, both countries has undergone major political and
economic changes ever since. Yet no matter who is in charge in
Pakistan, generals, politicians, good guy, bad guy, crooks, whatever,
China always stands with Pakistan in their fight with India. Their
relation is fundamentally in line with their strategic interests.
That's why it's so strong. As for the US, I guess everybody agrees
that in the eyes of US government, Pakistan is nothing more than a
convenient ally at best, a tool I would say. As for average joes, the
image of Pakistan isn't that much better than Taliban.

* * * * Yup, that isn't gonna change ever since the Chinese provided weapons *
after the West embargoed them back in the 60's.



One change of approach I would like to say is for the US to give up on
its obsession to stick its noses into other people's business. US used
to be far better a friend during the cold war when Soviet Union used
to send tanks into any of its ally who dared to think about leaving
the Warsaw pact, France kicked American troops out and opened pursued
its own path, US accepted it and worked with France still. *Seriously,
the kind of "Manifest Destiny" attitude ****es off everybody.

* * * * Yup. I think that they do it out of habit. For the most part, not a lot *
of thought goes into our foreign policy at the Government level. Mostly *
it's farmed out to think tanks and Beltway Bandits and a lot of those are *
financed by various tax exempt foundations that front for various moneyed *
interests.

* * * * Your typical politician tends to be ignorant of everything except *
fundraising and media relations. He's overdependant on staff and the staff *
is overdependant on whomever takes them to lunch and gives them some piece *
of research that they're not all that competent to make assessments of.



I'm not an expert on the nitty-gritty details, but please elect
somebody who knows what he's doing and who has at least a little
common sense. WMD issue aside, whether or not the military is
"winning" in Iraq now aside, anybody who has common sense would hope
for the best but plan for the worst even though you are 100% sure the
best case scenario would happen because any sane people would know
that there isn't 100% sure thing. instead, this administration based
its plan on the assumption that US soldiers would be welcomed as
liberators. That's beyond dumb.

* * * * You'll never see it here. Our system selects for the lowest common *
denominator of politician and thus the lowest common denominator is what *
we get. Anybody with real principles or any kind of actual knowledge will *
get filtered out before he can run for city council, let alone Congress or *
the Senate. Structurally, this country is totally incapable of producing *
somebody like Winston Churchill.

* * * * And it gets worse. Most government policy is an outsourced product. That *
worked sort of, in the 50's because the universities were actually *
producing diciplined intellectuals who could apply a little skepticism and *
critically assess information. We're no longer able to produce guys like *
James Schlesinger anymore, because our university systems have lost the *
ability to do that. We ceded the college campuses to the radical left in *
the 60's and 70's and now, as far as producing the technicians who *
actually can create viable policy and administer it goes, they can't. They *
do a remarkably good job of producing fair copies of the New Soviet Man *
though. My youngest is in college now, and she's planning on a career as *
an attorney. When I got a look at what they're demanding that she take as *
core curriculium, I was appalled. A college education these days have *
costs ranging from five to six significant digits and looking at what *
they're being asked to pay for, I can tell you that a modern university *
education in this country is a fraud and things are deteriorating from *
there. Critical thinking skills are out and courses based on the most *
schizoid ideology I've ever seen, predominate.

* * * * The end result is that the formation of policy is in the hands of an *
increasingly incompetent group of people. And the end result of that will *
be that the policies in question will be schizoid, self contradictory, and *
in general, destructive to the continued maintenance of our national *
security.

* * * * My guess is that the future is going to be replete with ever more *
instances of us shooting ourselves in the ass. And anybody who has to *
determine what their relationship is to our government needs to take that *
into account. I'm an American. I've lived here my entire life except for *
some travel as a member of the military. And I can't predict what our *
policy establishment or our politicians will do, simply because they're *
too ignorant to come up with a consistant policy on anything. You have *
some individuals who are competent, but you'll find that Gresham's Law *
applies to government as much as it does anything else-- the bad will *
drive out the good and we're seeing that here.

* * * * So, if anybody's planning on doing anything to preserve Post Renaissance *
Western Civilization in the world, they can expect to do it in spite of *
Washington at least as often as they do because of it.

--
"Implications leading to ramifications leading to shenanigans"-- Admiral *
Elmo Zumwalt, USN.


The kind of the attitude reminded me of a Survivor episode from the
“social experiment" season (in actuality, they just set up 4 different
tribes: Asian, White, Hispanic and Black), the eventual winner, a
Korean guy, tried to recruit one member of a former White tribe by
blackmailing him using immunity idol (there were two groups, one was
made up of former white tribe members, another was made up of remnants
of former Asian and Hispanic tribes, the white has the numbers, so
they could vote out their biggest target: the Korean guy, in a clever
strategic move designed to keep his immunity idol for late use and
reverse their disadvantage in numbers, the Korean guy just told his
target for recruitment: since I got the immunity idol, when it came to
the actual vote, white group's number wouldn't hurt me, and according
to the rule, if the person who got the most vote had immunity idol,
the person who got the second most vote would go home, which would be
you since I would tell my group to vote for you in unanimity.) Not
sure what he should do, the white guy returned to his group and tried
to hint to his group about the situation by telling them: Yes, he is
the biggest threat, but WHAT IF he has the immunity idol, what should
we do? The other three just told him: no, he has no idol, he again
tried to hint them: but we don't know, WHAT IF.... for multiple times,
his tribe mates just refused to even consider the possibility,
disappointed, that guy decided to jump to the other side, end of
story.

This administration and certain ids on this group are exactly like
these three "tribe mates". Every time you tell them Iraq is costing
America trillions of dollars, causing the dollar to tank, causing all
kinds of economic ills, they will just look at you blankly and repeat
the same line: but we are killing terrorists, it's better to kill them
there than waiting for the mushroom cloud here. They have a laser like
fixation on what this administration tell them to the exclusion of
everything else. They will talk about security, security, security for
a whole year without giving a thought to how to pay for the security,
what will be the negative effect on the economy and how it would
impact constitutionally guaranteed freedom this country is founded
upon. I simply can't understand the mindset. Maybe that's why George
Bush was elected twice, because he has zero doubt about the absolute
correctness of his actions. Maybe lack of consideration for
alternative course actions has become the most important quality
people look for. I dunno.