What the Obots think of anybody who disagrees with them

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MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

ravingdave,

The Baathists didn't want a stake in the new government. At least if you believe the reports from the time. They wanted their old control back. Square that circle.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

ravingdave
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Post by ravingdave »

JohnSmith wrote:Love the title of this thread, and the content. Because, you know, as of yet I have seen a hundred threads Obama bashing, and very few in support. I've never seen an 'obot' attacking anybody over anything. Maybe I just hang around the wrong parts of the internet?
As of yet, I haven't seen him do anything different than any other politician. Where's your guys hatred of him stem from? Because you lay it on pretty thick around here.

You are of course correct. But you are only seeing a small part of the bigger picture. In most forumns across the internet, the Obots are in superior numbers and are much more vociferous than are the people who are opposed to his agenda. (i.e. the Grownups.)

If we seem a bit severe in our criticism it is because we have read and seen stories that most people have not. Stories which paint a far uglier picture of what is occurring in our country than what is reported on the News and Entertainment Networks.

I peruse a lot of "right-wing" websites, and they come up with information that is sometimes astonishing concerning Obama and Co. Just today I read an article from a Former Navy man who is in contact with Navy personnel involved in the recent Pirate/Captain Phillips hostage situation. According to this account, Obama screwed the whole thing up from beginning to end, but not a word of his idiocy has leaked out of the Mainstream press. And it won't. They own him.

From My perspective, the ideas of Obama and co. represent a threat to our liberty and our very lives. The "Obama Youth corp." (yes, they actually called it the "Obama Youth corp." before people pointed out the similarities to the Hitler Youth corp. and then they changed the name.) sent chills up my spine.

If you want to see things that will make you go Hmmmm.... I can give you a list of websites to peruse, and then if you don't get as scared as the rest of us then you just don't understand what's going on. :)


David

ravingdave
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Post by ravingdave »

MSimon wrote:ravingdave,

Is it a possibility that no matter what we did we would have had a civil war on our hands for reasons Tall Dave (most recently) and I have mentioned?
Yes, of course. A civil war may have happened anyway, but I think the civil unrest could have been guided in for a soft landing as opposed to the crash that we had. A civil war would have been a bigger crash, but what we had was a crash none the less.
MSimon wrote: You know Civil Wars of various strengths are not unusual in situations like post war Iraq. What Bremer did was only one way into that situation.

And it worked out to the good. Iraqis got a taste of their new masters and decided that how ever much they hated Americans they could work with them. Another thing that it got was an Army the Iraqis could respect. In the end Iraq will be more stable for the experience.
One of the ideas that I have always considered to be a fallacy is the belief that because something worked out the way it did, it was the optimal way that it could have happened.

You might argue that the civil war worked out to the good, but in light of the fact that the machine powered farming equipment was right around the corner (the implementation of which made Slavery uneconomical and therefore doomed) and 600,000 people might not have died. Would that have been a better result ?
MSimon wrote: It may have been a good thing to get the civil war out of the way first. Even if that was not the plan. It may have saved 30 years of unrest. It may have also welded together the Iraqi Nation. We will never know.

The important thing is that the situation was retrieved before Bush left office. And not with helicopters leaving from the top of the American embassy.

That depends on your perspective. I have always thought that the greatest danger facing this countries is the inevitable consequences of Liberalism, especially in regards to financial collapse. As the Presidents attention seemed to have been focused too much on Iraq, and not enough on preventing Liberalism's ratcheting onslaught, the President has delivered us into the hands of our gravest enemy. Socialism.

We would have been FAR better off to have left Iraq alone altogether. This is a case of winning the war, but losing the peace.

David

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

One of the ideas that I have always considered to be a fallacy is the belief that because something worked out the way it did, it was the optimal way that it could have happened.
Wars of any size never work out optimally.

No plan survives contact with the enemy.

The secret is to keep adapting until the other guys give up. Note that insurgencies typically last about ten years. The one in Iraq lasted 4 or 5. That seems to be closer to optimal than to a complete failure.

Spain is almost over the insurgencies left over from the Napoleonic Wars.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

djolds1
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Post by djolds1 »

MSimon wrote:He is wrecking the US economy. Ala Jimmy Carter and FDR.
Not yet. So far what he's done isn't much different than what McCain would've done. Concrete actions. The rest is talk, but not reality yet.
Vae Victis

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

As the Presidents attention seemed to have been focused too much on Iraq, and not enough on preventing Liberalism's ratcheting onslaught, the President has delivered us into the hands of our gravest enemy. Socialism.
We are getting the government we deserve. Lessons will be learned. Too late? Quite possibly. But there is absolutely nothing effective Bush could have done to prevent the stupidity of the people who voted in the last election from prevailing.

Utopia always sells better than unemployment. As usual we will not get utopia and unemployment is going to get very bad. So the voters were suckers. You have a plan (other than hard experience) for wising up the marks?
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

So far what he's done isn't much different than what McCain would've done.
And that is the most disappointing thing about the choices in the last election.

Here is something I posted on my blog during the election season:

Image
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

ravingdave
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Post by ravingdave »

MSimon wrote:
One of the ideas that I have always considered to be a fallacy is the belief that because something worked out the way it did, it was the optimal way that it could have happened.
Wars of any size never work out optimally.

No plan survives contact with the enemy.

I've heard it said that Napoleon at Austerlitz Not only planned his own troops movements, but planned the enemy troops movements to perfection as well. :)
MSimon wrote: The secret is to keep adapting until the other guys give up. Note that insurgencies typically last about ten years. The one in Iraq lasted 4 or 5. That seems to be closer to optimal than to a complete failure.

Spain is almost over the insurgencies left over from the Napoleonic Wars.
I think if we had done things differently, we wouldn't have had even 1 year of insurgency. The Media wouldn't have been able to beat the "Iraq war is a failure" drum for the next 3 years, and the Democrats wouldn't have been able to get anywhere.

David

TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

A difference of opinion is not a falsehood.
Depends what you mean. The notion we could have avoided disbanding the Iraqi Army is false, whatever anyone claims here in 2009, unless we re-introduced the police state. Conscripts don't come back to work voluntarily.
Let me be blunt ugly. The shites are much stupider than the sunnis. This is why the 35% of sunnis could govern the 65% shias.
Sunni Arabs are closer to 15%. The Shia are around 65% and the other 20% are ethnic Kurds (who are Sunni, but hate the Arabs). The Sunni Arabs have a long legacy of power-seeking, whereas the Shia are quietists who believe suffering is good for the soul (you may have noticed they flay themselves in their festivals).
Yes the Iraqi army was a mess, but it represented employment for everyone in it,
True, at least for the officer corps, and one of the first things Petraeus did was institute a pension for old army officers. It might have helped to do it sooner.
The Iraqi army could have been rebuilt by attrition of the worst offenders
No, it couldn't. The Saddam-era Iraqi Army used WMDs against Kurds in Halabja and gunned down tens of thousands of Shia in the 1991 uprising. Iraqis would not accept it.

Even beyond that, they were not an army in the sense that we understand the concept, but more of a giant graft system held together by the ISI putting guns to heads. A U.S. corporal has more initiative and responsibility than a colonel in most Arab armies.

The old IA was irredeemable and unworkable.
I think if we had done things differently, we wouldn't have had even 1 year of insurgency.
Possibly true. OTOH, the biggest enemy we faced was probably simple ignorance. A few years of free press and cell phones might have been necessary just for us all to agree on consensus reality. Some of the things Iraqis believed in 2003 are pretty astounding, and reminiscent of the story of the N Korean woman who blew up that KAL airliner because of what she believed about her country. Police states inflict incredible trauma on a society.
Last edited by TallDave on Fri Apr 24, 2009 9:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ravingdave
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Post by ravingdave »

MSimon wrote:
As the Presidents attention seemed to have been focused too much on Iraq, and not enough on preventing Liberalism's ratcheting onslaught, the President has delivered us into the hands of our gravest enemy. Socialism.
We are getting the government we deserve. Lessons will be learned. Too late? Quite possibly. But there is absolutely nothing effective Bush could have done to prevent the stupidity of the people who voted in the last election from prevailing.

Utopia always sells better than unemployment. As usual we will not get utopia and unemployment is going to get very bad. So the voters were suckers. You have a plan (other than hard experience) for wising up the marks?

Naw, not at this point. Hard experience is now exactly my plan. I do advocate an economic war on Liberals/Democrat supporters. Don't buy movies, magazines, newspapers. Don't buy anything advertised on Liberal networks or TV shows. Don't buy anything made with union labor, buy (as much as possible) only from conservative states, avoid funding any organization or people that support liberal causes or ideology.

Have you ever read a book called the Rhinemann exchange ? That's how I feel about dealing with Liberals and the people who support them.

D*mn the NAtional SoZIalists !


David

ravingdave
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Post by ravingdave »

TallDave wrote:
A difference of opinion is not a falsehood.
Depends what you mean. The notion we could have avoided disbanding the Iraqi Army is false, whatever anyone claims here in 2009, unless we re-introduced the police state. Conscripts don't come back to work voluntarily.
Let me be blunt ugly. The shites are much stupider than the sunnis. This is why the 35% of sunnis could govern the 65% shias.
Sunni Arabs are closer to 15%. The Shia are around 65% and the other 20% are ethnic Kurds (who are Sunni, but hate the Arabs). The Sunni Arabs have a long legacy of power-seeking, whereas the Shia are quietists who believe suffering is good for the soul (you may have noticed they flay themselves in their festivals).
Yes the Iraqi army was a mess, but it represented employment for everyone in it,
True, at least for the officer corps, and one of the first things Petraeus did was institute a pension for old army officers. It might have helped to do it sooner.
The Iraqi army could have been rebuilt by attrition of the worst offenders
No, it couldn't. The Saddam-era Iraqi Army used WMDs against Kurds in Halabja and gunned down tens of thousands of Shia in the 1991 uprising. Iraqis would not accept it.

Even beyond that, they were not an army in the sense that we understand the concept, but more of a giant graft system held together by the ISI putting guns to heads. A U.S. corporal has more initiative and responsibility than a colonel in most Arab armies.

The old IA was irredeemable and unworkable.
I think if we had done things differently, we wouldn't have had even 1 year of insurgency.
Possibly true. OTOH, the biggest enemy we faced was probably simple ignorance. A few years of free press and cell phones might have been necessary just for us all to agree on consensus reality. Some of the things Iraqis believed in 2003 are pretty astounding, and reminiscent of the story of the N Korean woman who blew up that KAL airliner because of what she believed about her country. Police states inflict incredible trauma on a society.

You may be right, and it would be comforting for me to believe we could have done it no other way, but I have nagging doubts. In any case, it's done and we have to live with it.

The good news is that IF Iraq becomes a thriving Democracy, then it may be the domino that starts the collapse of the other autocratic governments throughout the middle east. If so, History will be quite kind to George Bush.

David

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

True, at least for the officer corps, and one of the first things Petraeus did was institute a pension for old army officers. It might have helped to do it sooner.
But think of the outcry in 2003 or 2004 if the pensioning of the murderers hit the press. Once the civil war was underway it passed completely under the radar. I had never heard of it. And I try to keep up.

So there are things you can't do under one circumstance that you can do in another. Life is about taking advantage of your opportunities as they appear.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

Don't get wrong, we definitely could have done better, even without the benefit of hindsight. There was way too much resistance to Petraeus' suggestions. They shouldn't have had to put him in charge for his ideas to be put into practice.

Anyways -- Petraeus in '12! Assuming he's available.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

They shouldn't have had to put him in charge for his ideas to be put into practice.
Only in theory. In practice you have to retire a lot of generals and more than a few colonels to get a working Army. I know well the history of two American Wars that prove the point: the Civil War and WW2. I'm not sure there are any exceptions to the rule.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

Roger
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Post by Roger »

djolds1 wrote: I doubt it. Some Dem losses, but minor.
Remember 1934/69 dem senators friend. The downside for republicans is quite large until they rebuild the party. It took us 12-13 years to get started after Clinton stopped party building. And it took Howard Dean to get it done.

2010 19 "R" seats, 17 "D" in the senate are up for election, advantage Dems. Voter reg trends, advan Dems, grassroots organization: Advan Dems. Fundraising, advan Dems.

Start the republican rebuilding now, its gonna take a while.
I like the p-B11 resonance peak at 50 KV acceleration. In2 years we'll know.

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