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Originally posted by Arodin:
He's a politician. Of course he lied.

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Originally posted by Radhil:
Except that we have quite a few soldiers still being shot at. I'm sure they'd take issue with your apathy and attitude that situations should just resolve themselves, or that what's going on is "no longer a matter of any significance".

Pardon me, but I'll continue to care. And I'll continue to talk (or argue) with others that do.

Radhil Trebors
Persona Under Construction

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As a matter of fact, I consider you the apathetic one. You'd rather live in the past and stay in that comfortable globe of "Bush Lied" self-righteousness than discuss something that actually means anything.

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The Iraqi people are screwed, maybe a little less screwed at the moment than they were a year ago, but screwed nonetheless. And things will be getting much worse before they get better. Particularly if Bush wins the election and we destroy another country or two in the area.

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Originally posted by Radhil:

Now - ignoring the insult, 'cause we can trade 'em all day - that's a far better and far more interesting statement than the one you opened with. And I'd agree, it's a topic well worthy of discussion.


I'm a practical guy. I'd prefer some other discussion with less straw men and less fanatics. It's politics that forces me to be political. Ain't irony grand....

To be honest, I don't think I've seen a serious discussion of how to fix our current problems. Either on fan board or politico comments or even from the supposedly serious campaigns. That's the only reason I haven't participated in one yet.

But if you'd like to lead, feel free. I'll follow. What're your ideas? Let's hash 'em out.

(am I still apathetic now? )

EDIT - Anti minus one.

Radhil Trebors
Persona Under Construction

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Originally posted by CrevanReaver:
Now if everyone would throw their own personal ideologies away for a second and just look at the facts they would see the honest truth. Bush didn't lie, he was mislead. He had the United Nations, Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin, George Tenet's CIA, and even the odd behavior of Saddam Hussein telling him that there were WMDs. After so much pressure, he had to believe that Iraq was an imminent threat.

Don't get me wrong. I think going into Iraq, at least the way we did, was a big mistake and I'm pissed off at Bush. But not for lying, instead for quite frankly being gullible.

John Kerry has recently said he still would have voted to go to war with Iraq in October of 2002 even if he knew everything he knows now. That in itself shows Kerry's either a panderer or even more gullible than Bush.

By the way, Al Qaeda probable salivates at the idea of a Nader presidency. He's the worst of three evils.

Click on the website below for a candidate with the right answers!

http://www.badnarik.org

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Unless we collectively and individually define our goals, then our ideas will be subject to "mission creep".

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Originally posted by Signym:

Some people want to control Iraq's oil so that "we" can control OPEC.

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Others (on this board) want to remake to entire Middle East, with Iran next in their sights, so that Israel is safe from attack.

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Some people want permanent American bases there to replace the Saudi bases that we are leaving.

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Originally posted by Radhil:
Goals: I'd go mostly with what Geezer said, and Japan is probably the best example of what we've done before. Mostly democratic state in place - you could go farther than that, but let's leave the social and economic engineering to be worked out by said democratic state (which might be a reversal goal - it could be argued we're already doing such engineering *sigh*). Preferably a lenient and secular democracy, but if we end up with a sharia(sp?) fundamentalist gov't, so long as they didn't "enforce" elections with local thugs and have females stoned for face exposure I think I'd take it. Relative security, on a par with other MidEast states in the area, who have the occasional car bomb or natural disaster but generally plod on with uninterrupted lives.

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My own personal desire for a goal would also be to leave with a decent morale among the Iraqis. Strategically, it's the only way we can make sure the Qaeda goons will move in and set up recruiting stations as soon as we leave.

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Morally, it's just the right thing to do after the hell we put them through. The rest of you can aim as you like - this'll be what I'm trying for. Higher than sky to aim, but hell, we're crazy anyway.

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Al-Sadr: Hell. With Sistani, the only respected Shiite on both sides, now out of the picture, I'm honestly not sure what to do with the guy. Before they started bombing Najaf, I would've made an offer for the merging of his Brigade with the Iraqi army. But I think they tried that tack anyway. If we invade or shell the mosques, we're fucked, that's certain. I don't think the Iraqi Guard yet has the manpower and certainly not the morale, if their previous desertions are any indication, to handle it, so we'd probably have to force the issue. Sadr may be using them and committing blasphemy himself by using them as bases, Allawi might order us in, but no Shiite is gonna give a good damn about any of those things. It'd tip the populace of Iran into wanting open war, and we'd turn what might be a handful of foreign invaders and bombers here and there into a veritable flood. The only thing I can come up with is to take out Sadr, hard and fast, best surgical hit we can come up with even if it means invading one site, and then back off the army bulk so Najaf can cool down and the Brigade can start to disperse without their leader. Maybe pushing in on the mosques will get us close enough to pin his location for such a thing, and we won't have to invade the mosques in full. I'm not smart enough to know if that effect would work too slow or work perfectly, but it's the best course I can see. Sadr won't surrender, and while he's preaching his fire, neither will the Brigade. The Shiites would still be pissed, but the clerics would be distracted while they jockey for position (none of them are as well recognized as Sadr or Sistani, I think), and with a little luck, it might all cool down to a dull simmer before any one of them starts rallying jihad again.

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One More Thing: One crazy plan I thunk up is to gut the current government. Iraqis think they're American puppets as it is, and they're probably not wrong. Keep the framework, but set loose the people. Announce elections immediately, security be damned - we held elections in the middle of our Civil War, we can do it here - put it on a three month fast track timetable. Make sure the election boards are staffed locally and quickly and publicly, no Halliburton contracting - corruption would be a problem, but at least it'd be Iraqi corruption, and can be dealt with by those involved. It'd kill a lot of bad attitude the people currently have, I think. Thoughts on this?

Radhil Trebors
Persona Under Construction

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Yes but Saddam was a SECULAR tyrant, which is why we used him against Iran. So obviously your goals extend beyond "fundamentalist" Islamic dictators to include.... who???

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My hope is that a true (and honest) taste of capitalism and freedom will convince the Arabic world that they don't need to rely on religion to feed them.

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That's right. It's no longer a matter of any significance.

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I'm concerned with our soldiers being shot at. I'm concerned with what's going to happen to Iraq in the next few years. Please explain to me how determining whether Bush lied or not is going to change one iota of what is going on in Iraq today.

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Originally posted by rue:
Just wanted to point out some erroneous equations.
It is NOT true that capitalism = democracy = independence = secularism = 'freedom' .

capitalism - an economy of government in service to business (as opposed to one of business in service to government, which is socialism)

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Originally posted by Geezer:
Huh? My Webster's Ninth New Collegiate defines capitalism as: an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision rather than by state control, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.

Does the definition change in later editions?

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Originally posted by HKCavalier:
...So why don't you come back to the grown-up table and talk about what special affinity democracy has for capitalism, if any?

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Originally posted by SignyM:
However, if you look into the actual workings of capitalist countries, you'll see that the only aspect where reality and definition coincide is the part about private ownership of the means of production.

As such, I would argue that there are really no capitalist countries.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Indeed, finding a "pure" system of any economic form is impossible. But my beef with the British, and then American version of capitalism is not so much that it's over-regulated but that politicians place too much favor towards business. In other words, it isn't an "level playing field" free market, but one that's slanted towards large businesses and specifically towards large coporations. And I'm not talking about subsidies (although that in itself is a problem) but the entire history and structure of of our policies.

What people don't remember is that Adam Smith envsioned a free market not just between consumer and producers but also between businesses and laborers. However, throughout the history of British and American industrialization, governments invariably intervened on behalf of business in the labor/ business market: writing laws favorable to corporations and unfavorable to worker associations; granting rights to corporations that other entities didn't enjoy; militarily enforcing cheap labor abroad; using army, police and private security agencies to bust heads and break up unions internally.

So while business consolidated nationally and then internationally, labor was forced to negotiate from individual and local levels. If our laws and interventions had not been so persistently pro-business, the current economic landscape would be different.

The other thing that people don't realize is that the whole concept of capitalism depends on competition. The LAST thing that business wants is competition, and large corporations have a myriad ways of stifling it- Microsoft is a prime example of how monopolism makes capitalism a moot point.

Just as an aside to Libertarians, this is where I find a fatal flaw in their arguments. They are so individualistic that they would rather lose power singly than protect themselves cooperatively.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
I think it depends on "for whom and where". Also, you have to look at what might be a "sound business decision" in light of the overall world context.

We in the United States have a wonderful standard of living because we were protected from the ravages of WWII by oceans. At the end, we were literally the only industrialized nation left standing. (My husband, who grew up in post-war Hungary, likes to remind me that at the end of WWII there was only one bridge left and a few running trucks.) This gave us a significant edge to our technology, military, and currency. I don't think we can attribute that to capitalism per se but more to geographic fortune. I also happen to think that we are about to run out of our historical capital, but be that as it may....

Most of Africa, South and Central America, and Russia are capitalist basket cases. They have private/ coporate ownership-the hallmark of capitalism- but they are neither democratic nor properous. When capitalism was instituted in Russia, Poland, Argentina, Chile, and Nicaragua, the standard of living plummetted for most people while a few became fabulously wealthy. India, which is becoming "more" capitalist, is seeing a growing middle class- but also a growing POORER class.

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Originally posted by rue:
Africa is the other face of capitalism.

Your standard of living is good because people are starving elsewhere. Many countries appear to do well because, having gotten an early start (the industrial revolution in Europe and the US), they've managed to exploit the rest of the world.


(The Adam Smith theory had a theoretical flaw in that it didn't model what would happen if a business got so large it dominated its environment.)

There are many models one could use to try to represent how capitalism actually functions. The one I favor is what I call the 'Ponzi scheme' model: since profit is the difference between costs (ultimately, wages) and selling price, the guy who makes the Mercedes can't afford to buy it, he buys a Hyundai. The guy who makes the Hyundai buys a motorcycle, the guy who makes the motorcycle buys a bicycle, the guy who makes the bicycle buys shoes, the guy who makes the shoes goes barefoot, and the guy not in the loop starves.

The US has managed (for now) to export its poverty - with exceptions.

If you look at barrios, slums, ghettos, and other concentrations of poverty in the US, you would see the functional equivalent of colonies just like the other capitalist, western nations used to have.

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What I'm hearing from you and SignyM is either past history which can't be changed, or how bad everything is due to capitalist democracies, but no alternative proposals.

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When I look at your "Ponzi scheme" (another mis-definition, BTW)

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I see 7 out of 8 putting food on the table and improving their lives.

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And if there's that much money floating around, even the guy at the bottom could probably find a job providing services, if he wanted to.

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Without someone risking the capital to build the Mercedes factory, they'd all be on the dole.

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And the reason that the family of the guy in Africa where they get the bauxite for the engine block is starving isn't because they don't pay enough for it, it's because his government nationalized the mine, set his wages below a living wage, and jail or kill him if he protests.

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Various US governments at various times have been on both sides of the labor-management issue. Britain in the '70s just about ran their auto industry into the ground by catering to labour at the expense of sound business decisions.

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Originally posted by rue:
Trust me, you wouldn't want to hear mine.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
I'm going to discuss what Rue brought up but from a slightly different angle about the difference between economic and business decisions. Looking at the macroeconomic scale, let's say that starting today we track production and consumption. By the end of the week (Saturday) we total up all produced goods- everything from locally-produced fish-paste to supercomputers. Now these businesses have to cover their expenses: utilities, labor, raw materials, finance charges, rent, taxes and so forth. Then add what they think they can get away as "profit" to generate a final price. In sum, the value of goods produced is (say) a trillion dollars and the amount of money paid to labor is 900 million. No matter how you slice and dice the data, the amount paid to "labor" is ALWAYS less than the value of goods produced on a global scale. And each time that cyle turns over, the difference gets bigger and bigger.

The issue is- What becomes of those unsold goods? Or conversely, what happens to that "excess" money (profit)? Is there are mechanism by which it re-enters the "food chain" and can be used to consume those "excess goods"?

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spend it, save it, or re-invest it. If they spend it, part of it ends up as wages for the folks who work at the places they buy from. If they save or invest it, pretty much the same thing happens at another remove.

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Originally posted by Geezer:
That's right. It's no longer a matter of any significance. The fanatics on both sides are never going to change their minds, and us folk in the middle are so tired of seeing that poor dead horse get beat that we don't care much anymore. Maybe somewhere down the road there'll be an impeachment or and exoneration, and we'll read about it in the paper.

So you pro and anti guys go ahead and prepare for the crucifiction, or canonization, or whatever, and the rest of us will worry about stuff that can actually be resolved.


"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Originally posted by SignyM:

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spend it, save it, or re-invest it. If they spend it, part of it ends up as wages for the folks who work at the places they buy from. If they save or invest it, pretty much the same thing happens at another remove.

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Except that savings and re-investment exacerbate the imbalance. Once the imbalance grow large enough, you wind up with an economic depression.

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