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Post by jdredd on Aug 28, 2021 0:38:49 GMT -5
I remember when I was a kid growing up in the 50’s there were billboards along the highways saying “Get the U.S. out of the U.N.” But the fact was The U.N. was just another tool of America, designed to give legitimacy to what we wanted to do anyway. Now, of course, we don’t even need that, we just do what we want to do and assert it’s legal because we say it is.
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Post by jdredd on Sept 3, 2021 22:22:02 GMT -5
So what is the future of our role as world’s policeman? Even Republicans say we needed to get out of Afghanistan, they just didn’t like how Biden did it. So where will we intervene now? How many Chinese are we willing to kill to save Taipei?
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Post by jdredd on Sept 16, 2021 16:23:32 GMT -5
One of the reasons given if we go to war over Taiwan is if we don’t we will lose or “credibility”. Same excuse for staying in Vietnam and Afghanistan. What everyone gets to decide is how many lives our “credibility” is worth. If you believe our loss of it will lead to more war, I guess it is worth a lot of American and Chinese lives. I’m skeptical.
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Post by jdredd on Nov 13, 2021 4:20:12 GMT -5
We fought in Korea to “save” Korea, and we fought in Vietnam to “save” Vietnam. Will we now fight China to “save” Taiwan? Shouldn’t we do a cost/benefit analysis first? Oh, I suppose because of our “honor” we have no choice. Shades of 1914.
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Post by jdredd on Dec 7, 2021 20:27:10 GMT -5
So we are committed to defend Taiwan. And South Korea. And Israel. And maybe Ukraine. We’ve been doing this for 80 years now,, since we basically went to war with Japan for the sake of China. How long can we keep it up? And there are nutcases on the right who want to go to war with “internal enemies.” What is the risk of biting off more than we can chew?
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Post by jdredd on Oct 12, 2022 13:07:28 GMT -5
One of the joys of old age is that when you know your demise is relatively imminent, you can just look at the way things are and go “Oh well”. Such as the fact that we are the “Policeman of the World”. Is that bad? It’s just what it is for many historical reasons. Still, an “America First” attitude seems to be rising. Why not? “Workers of the world, unite!” was a bust. Marx WAS a crackpot.
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Post by jdredd on Mar 11, 2023 14:20:15 GMT -5
The song says “everybody wants to rule the world”, but I think it may be more accurate that everyone wants to “save” the world. In their own way, of course. It looks like liberals are really into “saving” the Ukraine. We do have a long history of “saving”;Europe from itself, whether it was the Kaiser or Hitler or the Bolsheviks, and now it’s Putin. While there are some saying maybe we should “save” ourselves, mostly on the right, I suspect that liberals would say by saving Ukraine, we do save ourselves. I suspect the problem is we can’t “save” everyone, and people are getting tired of us trying. Will we try to save Taiwan? Are we just “saving” China from itself? Depends who you ask. As I said before, it will get harder for us to “save” the world as we go broke, and maybe that’s the only solution to our addiction to saving everyone else. Sorry, Gen Z, you will have to pay the price for Boomer(and now Gen X) vanity.
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Post by jdredd on Mar 28, 2023 22:39:18 GMT -5
Listening to the “Goodfellows” from the Hoover Institute, and they are of course warmonger neocons. And they are counting on Zelensky’s Big Push to revive Ukraine’s fortunes. Could happen, I guess. Plus, of course, they have to slam China to boot. Let’s just keep pushing Russia and China together. Of course, they think a Russian defeat will deter China. Maybe what we need is something to deter the US from meddling in Chinese and Russian affairs. Fat chance.
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Post by jdredd on Jan 10, 2024 2:55:53 GMT -5
Here’s Bret.in the NYT:
“ But there’s a deeper cause: the fading away of Pax Americana — the idea that the United States has a duty, rooted in values and interests, to police the global commons, defend embattled allies, deter anti-American dictatorships and punish major violations of international order, like Iraq’s seizure of Kuwait or Russia’s invasions of Ukraine. The thought that Washington should be the world’s cop is now considered, on a bipartisan basis, to be an idea whose time has passed. The Trumpian right wants an America that’s out only for itself; the progressive left wants to delegate the job to multilateral organizations like the United Nations.”
The Neos don’t want to face up to the possibility that our days as policeman of the world may be numbered. Nothing lasts forever. All empires eventually fade. We are just one of a multitude of nations. We’ve been pretty crappy at it anyway. But sheer momentum should keep us meddling in everyone’s affairs for a while. The Neos really believe we are following our values more than just our interests. Maybe it’s their “values” that suck. ,
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Post by jdredd on Feb 3, 2024 3:52:10 GMT -5
I’ve changed the title of this thread because it seems more and more to me we are not the world’s policeman, but its hit man. And now we have Iran in our sights.
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Post by jdredd on Feb 4, 2024 12:37:31 GMT -5
Todays NYT headline: “ U.S. Says It Hit a Houthi Cruise Missile That Threatened Red Sea Ships”. That’s the big event of yesterday? By the way, I hear that the Houthis are not attacking Chinese ships. Is that because China is part of the evil “Axis of evil”? Or simply because China does not meddle in Arab affairs? No Chinese bombs are killing Gazans.
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