Re: [OT] Iraq


"LX-i" <lxi0007@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:SbadnSDaL696DmvbnZ2dnUVZ_qiinZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
docdwarf@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

That is not 'moving the goalposts' Our definitions are rather different,
it seems.

Not the definitions, the framing. But yes, they are.

That's irresponsible - best voiced by then Secretary of State Colin
Powell. He called it the Pottery Barn principle - "you break it, you
buy it."
So... the United States brings it, the Iraqis break it and it then
falls upon the United States to bring in more. Seems more like 'they
break it, *we* buy it.'
We didn't break the democracy, we broke their existing government. We
need to leave them with a functional, potent government.

We've established that already, there have been elections... remember the
happy purple thumbs? It is theirs to do with as they want.

So we should just pull out, and let the insurgent come in and kill
everyone associated with the new government? What does that benefit them?

I saw a chart that the Iraqi parliament has accomplished 8 of 17
"benchmarks" suggested to them, while the Democrat Congress chiding
them for missing benchmarks has accomplished 1 of the 7 things on
which its candidates ran leading up to November 2006. Who's missing
the target here?
I've seen charts that show the project I'm working on is on time, on
spec and under budget.
Ah - but this chart was illustrating actual fact! :)

The chart I referred to was claiming to do just that, too... and perhaps
it did, until a Corner-Office Idiot said 'Oh, and while you're at it, can
you give us the inverse-barometric pressure sort, too?'

Sorry to hear that...

Not according to those whose assertion that the military's job is 'to
kill people and break things'. You want training, hire DeVry
Institutes.
So how do the people in the military know how to kill people and break
things? Are they just naturally gifted in this area, and we've been
oh-so-fortunate as a nation that they enlist? If you're training a
*military*, it makes sense to use *military* trainers.

If military matters are all that are being taught then bring the folks
who need training over to the USA... there are a bunch of closed and/or
underutilised bases that can be used for this purpose.

I don't think that would be effective. I've been there, and I've been to
several bases, and I've yet to see a base that looks like the Middle East.
Training them in the environment in which they're expected to perform is
more effective. Plus, with the situation over there, a lot of it is OJT -
they need security *now*.

I'd love to. But, I'd rather the bullets be fired at those who know how
to evade and retaliate than for them to be directed at the Iraqi
legislature. If unguarded, it would probably take very little time to
assassinate every governmental leader over there now. We're back to
buying what we broke...

Were that scenario to be played out... once again, *we* would not be the
ones breaking the democratically-elected government of the Iraqis,
*someone else* would be breaking that we installed by complying with our
mission objectives.

As old as you are, I'm surprised you're being this naive. If I give you
something that someone else comes and takes away the minute I turn my
back, I haven't really helped you.

Government has no money of its own.
This seems to be contradicted by the busily-humming presses of the
Bureau of Printing and Engraving and the Mint. Governments say 'this
is what will be accepted as money', make it and insure the circulation
of it... or at least they've seemed to do so over the past few years.

If government has no money then how, pray tell, does a currency
devaluation work?
The government prints the money - but if printing the money were the
solution to funding the government, why have taxation at all? "Spend
all you want, we'll print more!" would make a great political slogan...

These questions are answered in most basic textbooks of Economics... do
you really need them repeated here?

I've taken economics (recently, in fact). What stood out to me is the
inefficiencies (AKA "deadweight loss") caused by government interference
in the free market, through taxation, subsidies, regulation, and price
controls. When people work, their earnings are given to them, for the
most part, in money. That money is *theirs*, not the government's. For
the government to be able to spend money, they have to either print it, or
take it from their citizens. If they print lots of it, its value will
decrease rapidly - so, they take it from their citizens.

Through withholding taxes, most people have no clue how much they actually
pay in taxes. Just because they don't know it, though, doesn't make it
any less morally wrong.

To have money, it has to take that money from its citizens; this
taking of money, taxation, being done at the point of a gun. (You
don't pay, you go to jail.)
Oooooo... guys with guns, the Libertarians (sometimes referred to as
'Jefferson's Mistakes') can be far away. Guys with guns take stuff
that says 'this is a product of the Mint/BPE... but that's not
government property, right?
Quibble over how I describe it, but it's true.

I have not quibbled, I believe I have shown the argument to be wrong.

No, you seized on the word "guns" and went off on Libertarians.

When the government takes *my* money to give it to someone else (not
the aforementioned "common" things), *that's* socialism.
Not according to the definitions cited previously about 'collective
ownership of the means of production' and 'goernment administration of
the distribution of goods'. Governments which have functioned on any
decent-sized scale have always, to the best of my knownedge, have had
the power to take a buck from over here and put it over there; if doing
so is 'socialism' then all governments, by that criterion, are
socialist... and that appears to be an absurdity.
Call it absurd if you want. It's not USSR-level socialism, but it is a
form.

It does not fit any of the criteria given in the definition...

It *does* fit the criteria given in the definition. If you don't see
that, or refuse to admit it, then this part of the discussion is going
nowhere.

"Government administration of the distribution of goods." When they
take *my* money, and distribute it to *other* people, how exactly would
you categorize that?

Not this again. 'Money', by definition, is 'something generally accepted
as a medium of exchange, a measure of value, or a means of payment'; that
kind of stuff, in the USA, is, usually, manufactured, controlled and
distributed by the government.

I'm guessing that you feel the recent campaign finance reform restrictions
are perfectly fine too, then, right? Since "money" is all the
governments, they don't have to give us any! When money is part of your
earnings, it becomes your property. Your definition does not take that
into account, and is that omission (and I have to believe it's
intentional) makes that partial definition irrelevant to this discussion.
Personal ownership of property (whether real, intellectual, or monetary
assets) is one of the founding principles of this country.

Should I go across the street, take one of our neighbor's 5 cars, and
give it to the folks two streets over who only have 2?

No more than you should be allowed to declare war, establish treaties,
raise and maintain an army and other such Stately Matters. Some things a
country does, some things an individual does... been that way for a
while, too.

If it's immoral for a person to do it, then it's wrong for a group of
people to do it as well. The things you listed at Stately Matters are the
things I do think the government should be doing. But even if I were to
raise and maintain an all-volunteer army, I wouldn't be taking it by force
from people.

<snip>

I am tired of wars. I am tired of our leaders coming to us and saying "here
is why we have to go to war, and here is why it is righteous, and will be
different this time from all those other times when it didn't work out". I
see war as a lose-lose proposition. No side wins, they may lose less, but
they still lose and government reframes it as winning because they need
people to support the next war, and the next.... Without knowing what the
dead could have accomplished it is impossible to really know what was lost.
How many potentially great contributors have been lost to war? Why can't
nations stop acting like little children and act more like adults? Why
can't we talk to each other and be as aggressive at preventing war as we are
at fighting wars?

Given what happened in WWII it is difficult to see how all war could be
abolished. Would Ghandi's method have worked against the nazis? I think not
given their willingness to kill all who opposed them. If we must have war
than I think it should only be for the purpose of saving lives. Only if more
people will be killed by not going to war than by going to war. Maybe that
is naive. Maybe we have to fight for things like freedom. I don't have and
don't know all the answers, but I know I am sick of war and historically it
does not seem to worked out well. We need to somehow evolve beyond it
before our technology has eached the point where we cause our own
extinction, and I think that time is approaching faster than we might like
to think.

Thou shall not kill. Some say that is a mistranslation and should be thou
shall not murder. I wouldn't like to bet my soul on it. I think God is sad
when any human kills another for any reason, even if they are killing
inorder to save lives. Life is precious and we should not be so willing to
waste it. Perhaps I am predjudiced because of recent events in my life. I
hope I can live my life without ever having to kill another person.

Sorry I guess I am rambling. I am in a strange mood after seeing so many
young babies in church today.


.

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