Democrats & Liberals: Archives

Oddly enough Rumsfeld seems to be tweaking that idea. While spending has increased he does want a smaller, more technologically advanced military - which is not necessarily a bad thing. The problem is that while new tech means our troops have a higher chance of living the cost will become prohibitive unless the number of enlisted troops are downsized. But now there is the issue of where our troops are stationed.

We are overstrechted as is and our presence is literally world wide. There is no doubt that we would have to shorten our reach to accomodate such a change - not a bad thing either - but will the warhawks approve that?

Adam, perhaps the stretched troops is why this following story appeared this evening:

Peacekeepers to Haiti.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell called urgently today for talks among opposing forces in increasingly chaotic Haiti, but he said that “there is frankly no enthusiasm” for sending armed peacekeepers to the country.

Now there was no soviet threat? C’mon guys.

That would be two illegal wars? The Cold War, and the invasion of Iraq?

Oh, there was a Soviet threat, Eric. It’s just that we could have kept up a decent arsenal (Mutually Assured Destruction was in place, you know) and just waited them out. Communism was going to fall anyways, and not much of what we did during the Reagan years assured that, aside from agreeing to Glastnost and encouraging Perestroika.

We could have sat by and watched their system collapse, and started off the post cold war years on a better footing.

The trouble, I think, is not so much that the Neo-Cons are evil, or feeding their own greed, but rather that they lack a kind of skepticism, which they find repugnant in others. They want to believe the worst. 9/11 gave them more power, because the worst happened. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

The Neo-Cons have been given many opportunities to work for the national defense, and to improve our intelligence around the world, and this is what they give us: exaggerated intelligence, and very expensive wishful thinking.

The Atlantic Monthly confirms the conclusions on Soviet spending by the way- they remained level during the eighties, and the Russians did not try to match it.

The consensus is that two things led to the soviet system’s demise: 1)It’s command economy, which inhibited innovation in crucial areas, and took the disciplining forces of the market out of play, and 2) it’s military spending.

The narratives that the Neo-Cons arrived at would have us believe that Reagan, in his defense spending excesses, saved the world. The reality is, Soviet defense spending was wearing at the capabilities of the Soviets to compete with the US long before Reagan got into office, and the technology of the soviets was lagging behind ours, creating a business advantage the Soviets, with their unwieldy command economy, could not match. As they struggled, the Soviet system developed large budget deficits, which of course cut down on the economic power of the nation further.

The truth is, rather than leading us to victory, the Neo-Cons are leading us ever farther down the road to repeating the mistakes of the Soviet system in terms of our military. In terms of everything else, Bush seems to be taking care of our domestic imitation of the Soviet’s degradation of the economy, libertarian style.

Instead of imposing too much government on the economy, Bush imposes to little, letting debt and fraud create friction with the economy, and holding on to policies that weaken the dollar considerably against foreign currencies. Additionally, he is unwilling to repeal tax cuts that have essentially caused the bulk of the deficit. Blake Ashby had it right when he said that Bush’s tax relief was actually a tax deferral. Right now we spend as much on paying down our debt as we spend on defense. Does he want our children to equal our spending on Social security with the costs of his deficit spending?

Here’s some additional stuff I dug up. I hope y’all enjoy it.

Article One.
Copy of Time Article on Neo-Con mistakes.

Here’s an article about Iraqi reconstruction that should give you pause.
Not for the faint of heart

We could have sat by and watched their system collapse, and started off the post cold war years on a better footing.

It was the Left, you may recall, who saw the Soviet Union not as a threat but as a better alternative to the US capitalism. In hindsight everyone’s position is that soviet communism doesn’t work. But this was in fact disputed by the left. In some cases it is still disputed.

I know that that’s what’s being said. Marxism would only be discredited if the Soviet Union had created the kind of society that Marx and Engels foresaw as a socialist society. But when Marx and Engels talked about the dictatorship of the proletariat, they had a very special conception of what that meant. It meant that the majority of the people, the working class, would be in charge of the society. They did not mean by dictatorship of the proletariat that a political party would represent itself as total spokesperson for the working class. In fact, not only would a political party not be the spokesperson, but certainly not a central committee, certainly not a Politburo, certainly not one person. Marx and Engels did not envision that kind of dictatorship.

Eric, about half the country is liberal, or tends towards liberal. Yet professed Christians make up far more than half the country. Marxists and Communists, by definition, are Godless, do not participate in religion. Even if every professed atheist in the country (about 15% of the population) were a communist, that would fall far short of making America even a quarter commie, much less half.

Well then you have to start calling a number of Christian’s communist, which means you’re doubting people’s faith.

You can find atheists and lukewarm believers in the Republican party, too, so that kind of removes some other people from the communist label as well.

You’ll probably find that most of the remaining liberals who aren’t Christian are as materialistic as anybody in this country. So, in the end, the real commies and marxists are really scarce.

But of course, you’re going to consider some people communists, even when they don’t consider themselves communists. Some may be honestly confused about themselves, but I think you’re confusing socialist tendencies, (which can range from belief in moderate social welfare programs, to people who want to nationalize and subsidize left and right) with communist sympathies. It would be rather difficult to call some of the people who favor social programs communists, because the true balance of their political beliefs doesn’t constitute that kind of political picture.

I do think some social programs are of great value. But I’m a confirmed Catholic, I believe in free markets (in the classical, rather than recent sense of those terms), and I have supported most of the wars of recent time. This current one is a very rare exception.

What I do not support is waste, because waste kills flexibility. That’s what killed the Soviet Union. It grew to be a military power, in fact, so much, that it’s primary industry was it’s defense industry. The Military Industrial Complex, which Eisenhower warned was going to creep up on us, absolutely strangled the Soviets. In the end, with our advances, and their governments dependent on military support to maintain their power, they were put into a position where they were good at little else.

Do we want to end up that way? A country reduced to a few profitable industries, but stagnant in every other regard? We’re better than that, and we need to be better than that. Trade will not always go perfectly, our industries, including those that constitute national interests, will not always be best left to foreign interests. Living with a global economy will be important, but more importantly, having the flexibility to pull back and move forward when we have to is a higher priority. We must not leave our economic interests entirely at the mercy of foreign interests.

That is, in fact, part of what paralyzed us during the pre WWII period. If any other belligerent power should arise, we should have retained our ability to function effectively as an economic power under less than ideal geopolitical conditions.

We would have been better served during the Reagan years to have had a more streamlined, better paid army, with good efficient technology on our side, than to be saddled with all the wasteful defense spending and questionable programs like the Strategic Defense Initiative. Additionally, if we weren’t so focused on facing a military power that really wasn’t such a threat, we could have played on the weakness of such an economically weak system, and possibly brought the Soviet system to an even faster close.

We could have done that, instead of nearly imitating it ourselves. Our policies need to succeed by well-defined goals and genuine, meaningful success for us and our interests, not by simple luck and brute-force methods.

I find it amusing how now, 15 years later, it’s so obvious that the USSR would collapse under its own weight. Reagan and the military build-up had nothing to do with it.

I read a “Learn to Count in German” book with my kids that explained that East and West Germany “decided” to reunite.

Amazing what you can convince yourself of if you try hard enough.

When I speak of communism I realize there are few who would actually refer to themselves as communists. It is the meme, or system of thought to which I am referring. “Critique the Message, Not the Messenger.”

While official Soviet communism was anti-diety, I prefer not to refer to anyone as godless. It’s a political debate in my mind. So that is a non sequitur as far as I’m concerned.

In fact I do know athiests in the Republican party, ones who detest the Christian Right.

I also know a devout Christian who’s entire political philosophy agrees with communism in everything but name. Incidentally he is also one of my favorite people to talk to and debate.

Socialism and socialist tendencies are all descended from the same parent. Whether or not someone is aware of the origin of their worldview, it still has an origin and I feel inclined to point that out.

As for the Soviets. Communism destroyed their economy. It was not some mythical military industial complex.

What Reagan did, in contrast to the left, was make it crystal clear that the Soviets would be obliterated if they tried to annex Europe or the United States. It is not and was not clear that they wouldn’t have tried to invade every country on earth if they could have gotten away with it. It is after all the stated goal of communism to bring the whole earth under it’s banner, by force if necessary.

If you truly think they weren’t much of a threat, I think you may be underestimating the goals and intentions of the Soviets.

We find ourselves today faced with another foe with the same stated goal. Instead of godless totalitarians they are god-ful totalitarians.

So, will you be going to see, ‘The Passion’?

Ah, yes. Memes. A term invented by a godless socialist! That word is the invention of the rather staunch evolution advocate Richard Dawkins.

Now Richard would look at the argument and say that to adapt to a consumerist, rather religious society, Marxism would have to drop a great number of its traits. Memes, like genes, their biological equivalent, would have to mutate into something altogether different. If it has changed that much, the label is misleading, and I believe that is the case.

The Military Industrial Complex was no myth in Russia. At the end, it was practically all that was working, all that was bringing in money. and it was much of what they were spending their tax dollars for.

As for what Reagan did, I hardly think he was the first, or the last president to say to the Soviets they weren’t going to be allowed their expansionist aims. I mean, heck, it was the left that went into Korea, Johnson and Kennedy who got us into Vietnam, the Democrats who help the Elder Bush get into Iraq the first time.

I do think the Soviets were a threat. Many other Democrats felt that during the Cold War years. I just think we were equal to that threat at the time the “B Team” report came in.

I think it’s harmful to view any human enemy as being absolute, whatever their political philosophy. Things don’t work that way. Al Quaeda’s not all powerful, and it’s not useful to look at them that way. I know some Irish terrorist once said that defenders against their people have to be right everytime, but the terrorists only once, but I also know that terrorists can commit foolish errors too. A terrorist, to avoid justice and carry out his plans has to be right every time in keeping his cover, or keeping his plans secret from the authorities. The authorities only have to be right once to capture and neutralize one of them.

And yes, I am going to see that movie.