An appropriate tongue lashing...
Posted by Fountainhead24 9 years, 8 months ago to Government
This administration has taken a country of incredible strength and made us look like a nation who brings a knife to a gun fight. The world is laughing.
Obama needs to get in front of this ISIS business before it is too late. To me, it is the most important global issue right now. Have you seen some of the more graphic pics? How about after watching these madmen cut off your daughter’s head you are made to pick up your headless child’s limp, body for a photo-op like they made some villager man do.
The atrocities reminded me of Pol Pot
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is evil. They need to find him and kill him like yesterday. It is at a critical stage now because Turkey politically has just gone radical while it is still a member of the EU. Iran has just kicked women ought of many college programs. Lebanon is just a country of refugees and within a stone throw of an invasion of ISIS.
The map under ISIS will explode if something isn’t done NOW.
The problem is the laat couple years Obama doesn’t get his morning briefings. Remember the meeting notes are written down then given to him by his staff? He has never had to answer to this or explain this procedure to any satisfaction.
From your lips to a F/A-18 pilot's ears. I wish you were in charge.
He thinks the USA and the Constitution he has called a "list of negatives" (that's close enough) needs to be taken down several pegs and has succeeded in doing just that.
IMO, the 2013 Liar Of The Year Winner is a freaking traitor on several levels.
But an attempt to impeach him will just play into the hands of the Demorat (oh, good golly my accursed spelling typos!) Party. In fact, they've been rooting for such an attempt with a big fat race card waiting in the wings.
Friends are cringing
They're more concerned about putting women in combat arms slots than they are about winning the next battle.
The problems with terrorism all throughout the world is their underlying ideology of bigotry and hate. Until you can help them throw that out the window and embrace a "western" culture of respect and true tolerance, you will never be able to defeat the terrorists - just kill them off and spawn new ones.
It's the same problem with liberalism: you have to confront them with the reality of the consequences of those decisions. Without that, they will continue to live in their alternate reality of rainbows and unicorns.
If you don't address the motivation and mindset, you'll never encourage a change in behavior.
After they read reports on what is going on in Europe in reaction the Hamas war, the credibility of "respect and true tolerance" is nil.
Ever since it all started, I believed and still do, that this is a religious war. There is plenty of evidence that the leaders use the religion as their guiding principle. They also use it as the basic law and the source of their authority for being ruthless tyrants. The only hope I see is to confine them to a limited territory and let the stew there in the hell of their own making. Let those who escape live free with us as long as they behave. Any transgression with the hint of fomenting their hellish misdeeds among us must be cause for swift extradition into their assigned territory. No excuses, no sympathy. It is a life or death fight. Yes, the territory will develop nuclear weapons. Any use of them must cause an overwhelming retaliation in kind. If it is a threat of mutual annihilation, we must make sure that only one side gets annihilated. We will pay a heavy price for ignoring the true nature of this evil.
I completely agree - the conflict is based on religion. There is a religion/philosophy (Islam) which preaches its own enforcement by coercion, manipulation, and deception and which is directly antithetical to what we enjoy here in the United States (or used to).
I agree that it is time that our administration call a spade a spade and acknowledge the source of the problem, but they have been unwilling to do so for six years and I see little changing in that regard. As such, until there is moral clarity as to 1) who the enemy is, 2) what they stand for, and 3) what the goal of the enemy is, it is pointless for us to put our troops in harms' way in any meaningful way.
On your most important point: it would be near criminal to send our soldiers in the harms way without clear understanding on answers to why? where? and how? These questions and answers are basic management stuff. The strategic thinking and choosing must be thoroughly thrashed out and a strategic plan put in place before one even considers the three tactical action issues above. Nothing ever goes exactly according to plans. So, on top of these requirements we are enumerating, there must be in place a cohesive decision making team of experienced and highly capable and LOYAL (by loyal I mean wholly dedicated to do the best for the country, without conceding anything to the drive to score political points for self advancement) people to take corrective action, amend the plans and cogently react and rapidly implement changes. My gut feeling is that we have none, or nearly so, of the above. Incompetence and hesitation mostly prevail. Even though I refuse to ever feel sorry for myself, I have to say: poor us.
I beg to differ with you somewhat on the "western culture" subject. US culture is an outgrowth of theirs. Their long history of class societies colors also, somewhat, their present. I think that "civilized living" was most conspicuous there during the 1800s, under the pax Britannica and during the peace after the Napoleonic wars and (with the exception of the Franco-Prussian war) up to WWI. I think that communism is a cancer to the human society and, after the Lenin's and, later, Stalin's regimes, it was deliberately spread elsewhere. Socialism is the name for early phases of communist takeover. It also serves as a euphemism for communism, because the latter acquired such a negative reputation. It is always a version of seeking a utopia, i.e. a more or less visible detachment from reality and reason
American founding fathers accomplished an unprecedented feat: they based our society first and foremost on recognizing the uniqueness of the individual and basing the entire system on principles of individual liberty, rights and freedom.
I think that we cannot claim much distinction from Europeans. Our troubles started with the great society in the 1960s. I see it as a price we have to pay for not having dealt with racial issues earlier. Notice that nowadays, the euphemism for the euphemism for communism is progressivism. As the saying goes: the more it changes, the more is stays the same. Where I grew up, the saying went: the wolf changes his fur, but never his nature.
In sum, I am sort of a fatalist. If the human nature is what I think it is, if I am right that the most precious and most advanced thing in the world is the reasoning human mind, if I am right that IN THE LONG RUN good always wins over the evil, and, finally, if I am right that healthy and sane human beings have a deep seated moral compass that at the most basic level will urge them to choose good over evil, then, I think, free individuals will survive and prevail. That, though, does not preclude our having to live through another thousand years of Dark Ages.
Since we are tinkering with some of these grandiose concepts, I have a question for you: how and where will a species to follow homo sapiens develop?
As a grand concept called humanity, I think that there are several avenues which we are going to have to address at some point that will define us:
1) What overarching ideology are people going to buy into?
2) What kind of catastrophe will be the catalyst for change?
3) What kind of mindset is going to survive said catastrophe?
I think that answering those questions is going to be key.
Thank you. Whether US is as deep as Europe in the "proverbial stuff" that tends to hit a random fan, or a little less, does not matter that much. It is the overall trend that counts and is, in my opinion, in the wrong direction.
Let me take a shot at answering your questions.
1. Some combination of Objectivism and Libertarian. Fundamentally, I expect more a explicitly articulated, form a philosophical point of view, expression of that ideology, graspable to a majority of the midsection (2 standard deviations range around the mean) of cognitive abilities of humankind.
2. Any one of many possibilities: a nuclear war with Muslims, a misguided release of a pathogen that extinguishes say 30% of humanity within few months, but also a collision of the Earth with a large asteroid, an unprecedented earthquake with multiple large volcanic eruptions etc. etc. I think that a human caused one would be much more likely to focus people's minds on reality, than the one which some mystic could ascribe to a superior power be it imagined or from another planet.
3. The most rational, the most physically enduring, the most fearless, the most focused on their children, the most technically skillful and knowledgeable.
What do you think?
History tells us that people tend to put aside their differences when something greater is on the line - usually their freedom, etc. It is what has happened all throughout history. WW II was an example where once the US was bombed at Pearl Harbor and we had no choice but to join the fight, there was no more awesome force than the _United_ States of America.
Why? What was it that motivated us?
IMO, I believe it was that we had a cause that joined us together and that cause was Right. We were opposing the oppression of fascism from Germany and imperialism from Japan (though we kind of had to band with the Communists to get it done). Our very way of life was threatened: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness was genuinely in danger. The Constitution and all its virtues were in danger. The thing was, it was a very physical threat - one easy to visualize and one that was heavily publicized so as to bring everyone to act with one purpose. People were asked - and complied - to sacrifice fuel, metal, etc. in order to help the war effort. And that effort of sacrifice made people put skin in the game and be invested in the outcome.
I think that the spread of militant Islam will eventually be a threat to the entire world and will likely be the cause of WW III. China isn't ready to take on the US for control of the Pacific - it needs another 30 years and they are content to wait. Russia really doesn't have the navy or air force to start another war. They'll try to re-absorb some of the previous states of the USSR like they have done with Crimea, but they aren't going to risk outright war as the aggressor.
Islam doesn't care. They have a cause they believe in supported by an in-grained ideology. They have a defined enemy (the Zionists, beginning with Israel and then on to the United States). And they have numbers - hundreds of millions willing to go to war.
I think that there will ultimately be a clash of culture between the Western World and Islam which will result in war. The only remaining question will be how many people will be willing to stand up for freedom and fight - either politically or physically - to preserve it.
If a calamity were to occur, I think that those who want to survive will. Those with a motivation to defend freedom have a better cause and will take the steps necessary.
Obama sits in the box seats and will write his critique of the "play" when he gets back from his vacation. Are we part of the action, or as the Japanese put it in 1941, a "sleeping tiger?" We have become a disappointment to some, and a comedy act to others. Neither of these is proper for the leader of the free world. Sorry about the mixed metaphors, but it's the only way I can illustrate this mixed-up country that the Obama regime has sunk us into. Unless he is a total idiot, Obama knows that all we have to do is to stand up to Putin. Rattle our sabers and with economics be firm and he'll back down. He has no choice. His country is a façade with no true strength behind it. The Middle East is a different matter, and a whole 'nother discussion.
It is embarrassingly obvious that the only reason Congress have turned their positions of service and honor to endless terms of office as 'civil servants', like the janitors who clean the floors and change light bulbs, is because, with unlimited wealth and unconstitutional taxation powers, they enrich themselves at the burden of Tribute Slaves. Term limits would help abate the practice. Abolition of the FED and IRS coupled with Congressional Term Limits would also be a great limitation on largesse redistribution. I would also repeal the 17th Amendment, restoring states rights and voice. The confusion writhes in the mind of the electorate who can't distinguish between a popularity contest and a representational republic filtering popular contests through the state legislatures; and in the case of presidential elections, the Electoral College.
But I have far better odds of winning Powerball than getting to see that.
Fire his cabinet, Put in people who love the country and the constitution, reinstate the real American soldiers he fired for not being his brand of commie, and then Resign from public life and go somewhere else. As soon as possible.
You forgot leave the public eye and keep quiet afterward. Show some dignity and class for once, foreign though that may be for him.
Sorry if I omitted anyone's favorite.
Tell us how you REALLY feel :)
What has he done with his hand? He's traded in the Aces he was dealt because he has no intention of actually winning the hand. His goal is not to have America come out a winner, but to return all America's "ill-gotten gains" - minus a nice little commission to his cronies and campaign bundlers.
I am not knowledgeable enough on foreign policy to comment, but I generally want the US to do less abroad. It seems to me US could have said we don't support NATO expanding to more countries. In my non-expert view of foreign policy, NATO expansion antagonizes Russia more than it acts as a deterrent against a future war. If there were a war with a non-NATO country there would be consequences. If there were a war with a NATO country in eastern Europe, would US really treat it as an attack on US?
All this means I generally agree with just watching, as the critic in the article said.
Also, in general I prefer to dismiss extremists groups rather than aggrandize them. I don't know enough to say if this is smart with Hamas b/c Hamas is more than a gang of extremists.
I had an idea for a carpet bombing exercise. Flechette bombs with up to 100,000 per bomb, exploded about 5,000 ft AGL over large masses of people, esp military formations and movements.