This is kind of long but is very interesting. I would like your comments. http://www.aei.org/news/newsID.19912/news_detail.asp

 

Hi Mike W,

That speech was like watching a basketball game. We see Great Britain pass the ball to a wide open U.S. and then the U.S. begins dribbling around looking for someone to pass to. We're in the stands on our feet shouting, "Shoot! Shoot for godsakes!!"

BTW, I like Krauthammer, a very original, prescient thinker. His outline of the shape of the world in the next half-century was worth the read alone.

regards

 

We are a very young country by world standards.Yes,we are very powerful,but it seems we are doing a lot of fighting on foreign soil to benifit others as much as ourselves.We help a lot of countries who are unwilling to help themselves.We play too much big brother.A lot of our current problems with terrosist stems from our support of Israel,where we were playing big brother.So I think it has as many bad points as good.

 

Krauthammer is one of the great minds of our time. He has hit the nail on the head. Human nature does not change. The only question is what to do about it. After 911 we can no longer wait untill the wolf is at the door, we must hunt him down and kill him before he kills us. You can not reason with the Islamists any more than you can reason with a wolf. There will always be people who say" if we would only feed the wolf he will leave us alone", this only allows the wolf to gain strength for his attack. People who think this way have lived too long being protected by those who see reality and having seen reality choose to act.--Jack

 

That speech is almost a standard current Republican Party, of which I am a registered member, oracle. With the exception of the historical references, isolationism and being somewhat abbreviated for applause periods, I heard the same words at a Republican fundraiser. As usual, it omits my primary interests, how we bear the cost of attempting to be world policeman during our declining economy and promotes larger government to bestow human rights, on our dollar, to selected nations offering no commercial return, two absolute 180s to Republican principles.

We funded the Marshall Plan to rejuvenate Europe for one reason and one reason only, to facilitate markets to receive our exports made possible by war production capacity and proceeded to get rich. I don't see our current dollars on war and pseudo-humanitarian rationale going anywhere but in the toilet. Bin Laden is still at large, Iraq is a financial sinkhole, we have serious economic problems with spending deficits and a trade imbalance that is scaring the rest of the world, our bond investors, and a Republican administration involved in vote chasing primary education and social security funding programs that would make a Democrat proud.

Aside from that, he's a very eloquent writer.

 

George,

This is the same argument that was used by some prior to the Marshall Plan. Substitute Germany for Iraq.--Jack

 

The pencil has already been put to the numbers and there's no possible US financial gain from long-term occupation of an Iraq with armed resistance. We won't even regain our investments. Our intelligence assumed a swift, favorable reaction to democracy from the Iraqi population, primarily based on testimony from Iraqi dissidents who hadn't even lived there for years. After the military objective was achieved, we discovered Cleric power, fresh from years of being subjected to a minor, local governing status by the dictatorship, flexing their muscles with majority support from the predominately Shia population. That'll make a system of government separating church and state an interesting study.

Germany and surrounding countries were totally devastated from WWII, but they did have agriculture and broad industrial potential, which would respond to capital investment and provide sound domestic economic bases for those countries within a short period of time. I haven't cracked a political science history book in a lot of years, but I don't remember reading about much opposition to investing in Europe as versus our current situation in Iraq. The domestic economy, after a brief period of absorbing returning military, was very hot as our meteoric rise to being industrial king was cranking up. It was a situation of you couldn't miss; we had a lock on mass production of everything from consumer to industrial goods.

I can't compare Iraq to Germany as there are too many differences. Among them a one product industrial base under constant attack by insurgents, a population with civil war having ethnic overtones almost a given and the vast cultural and belief system differences. To me, that's apples to oranges before or after the military action.

I still think the original intent was disruption of the Mid-East and easing the pressure on Israel with Iraq's oil as the financial prize. The rest is just fluff from things not coming together as planned.

Gillespie was recently in town for a brief luncheon (I didn't attend). I was told he's now consumed with the political campaign and fending off conservative membership concerned about our fiscal problems, so Iraq won't be a big issue within the party if it remains status quo.

 

To many words...it hirts to read LOL