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One of the greatest things about America is that one morning an 18 year old boy wakes up, reports to basic military training in an all-volunteer army, and becomes a soldier that will fight and die for the freedom of speech of a neo-Chamberlin.

I think the current situation fits the description of a war, exactly. And I don't want revenge, but I'd like to have justice.

And as a father who has an 18 year old son, I don't care if the entire Middle East wakes up to a pyrotechnic mushroom cloud in the morning.

Won't hurt the oil one bit! :p

I am not anxious to start a shooting way because I could use further economic recovery and a good sell opportunity. (The Dow usually looses about 500 points as soon as ordinance starts being dropped.) The prospect of a double dip recession is not one I look forward to.

George,
Capitulating to what you think are the terrorists' demands will do NOTHING. There is an anger and a hatred that runs so deep that if you gave them everything but the absolute destruction of Israel and all Jews, they would still be disappointed. Your solution won't work. What MIGHT work is if more moderate Muslims took on the battle themselves for movements within their religion. They need a reformation and they need it soon or we may all suffer. The fanatics think that everyone who does not believe as they do should be killed. And if they themselves die in the process, a paradise with several dozen virgins await them. Many mainstream Muslims do not believe this. As I'm not Muslim, I can't pick up this mantle. But here's hoping (and praying) someone does.

penny

Hi, I have been away for a while and after reading some of this I can see that I haven't missed much. You all are wasting your time trying to reason with this character. He is not listening. His is a philosophy based on platitudes and wishful thinking and is impervious to logical reasoning. If only we could all UNDERSTAND one another and TALK things through the whole world would live in peace.

His view is that all governments are equally corrupt and evil. There is basically no difference between the government of Iraq and our own. All people in the world think in basically the same way, want the same things, and are motivated by the same principles.

His is a world that is uncluttered by hard choices and unsavory compromises. All black and white. A few very simple principles that, once the whole world sees, will bring utopia for us all.

To him there is no evil, just misunderstanding. And the hard task of enlightening us poor benighted fools. Those who have encountered genuine evil are puzzled by his point of view and for good reason.

George is actually a very bright fellow but not particularly wise. Not a lot of "street smarts". He is very glib but every one of his arguments boil down to the very simple principles I have outlined above. Even the smallest concession from him to your (our) point of view would require an epiphany of a sort that would bring his simplistic model of the world crashing down around his ears.

If you do not believe me then go back and read through his posts and point out where he has addressed any but your most trivial arguments.

I'm outta here.

I'd like for George to read this news article and then tell me that he thinks we should give these people what they want in order to appease them:

Looney Left disses the US, wants wo...and Christopher Columbus was a terrorist

We already have world taxation, although it is mainly through assessments on nations paid to the United Nations. The idea that is proposed in this article seems ludicrous at best.

Do we need a better method for stabilizing the economies in the third world than the International Bank and the IMF? Yes. However, stabilization is coming on its own with the number of third world nations each year that are adopting the dollar as their own currency and through such treaties as NAFTA, GATT (which is a good start but has major flaws in workers rights and environmental standards) and the free trade zone being negotiated for all of the Americas.

Cuba as a role model? ROTFLMAO

Christopher Columbus a terrorist? See comment on Cuba.

JBryan...

your post was excellent. We've all encountered a few George's and that's an excellent summation of their well-intentioned but misguided viewpoints.

Here's a really interesting article that I first heard of yesterday on the radio. What is interesting about it is that it is written by a leftist for a leftist magazine (Dissent). The article is titled, "Can There Be a Decent Left?" and is written by a Harvard professor.
click here

Here's a quote:

The radical failure of the left’s response to the events of last fall raises a disturbing question: can there be a decent left in a superpower? Or more accurately, in the only superpower? Maybe the guilt produced by living in such a country and enjoying its privileges makes it impossible to sustain a decent (intelligent, responsible, morally nuanced) politics. Maybe festering resentment, ingrown anger, and self-hate are the inevitable result of the long years spent in fruitless opposition to the global reach of American power. Certainly, all those emotions were plain to see in the left=s reaction to September 11, in the failure to register the horror of the attack or to acknowledge the human pain it caused, in the schadenfreude of so many of the first responses, the barely concealed glee that the imperial state had finally gotten what it deserved. Many people on the left recovered their moral balance in the weeks that followed; there is at least the beginning of what should be a long process of self-examination. But many more have still not brought themselves to think about what really happened.

I am saddened that all of you think that liberal thinkers are misguided souls who need to be infused a good dose of common sense. Though, initially, I fully supported a military action against Al Qaeda, I completely understand George's positions on the issue. There are many dimensions to the problem. You may view George's approach as utopian, but at least, he's attempted to propose several different alternate ways to address the situation. Most of you are simply rooting for the "kill them all" approach. While, this may appear to be effective now, it will never produce long-lasting result, unless we keep the campaign going on indefinitely. I don't think it un-American to point out the flaws of our international policies. In fact, it is because we love our Country that we want it to be the best: powerful, but fair and equitable.

I have so wanted to jump in on this but haven't had a spare moment. Still don't so this will be short and probably inarticulate!



Is there a map of the world where each country is labelled with a religion? If so, if Israel is wiped off the face of the earth does that mean an end to the Jewish religion? If Mecca disappeared is that the end of Islam?




Sounds reasonable. Looks like Indonesia may have to decide real fast. If Al Qaeda regroups there I don't vote we wait for them to attack again. If they are allowed to regroup there then the Indonesians are basically giving them their stamp of approval. Is this a holy war? I don't believe so, I think that is just a line to motivate followers. However, the fact that the big guys of the Islamic faith don't seem to be condeming bin Laden and his followers says that they believe he's fighting a just war. The question is does this include all Muslims or do we have to split them out by country? Do we include US Muslims, UK Muslims, French Muslims, etc.....?

All this said, the enemy is now without a face and spread across half the globe. It's a difficult war to fight. Frankly I think it will come to nukes as we'll run out of patience. Warnings will be issued, the next attack on US soil will result in the removal of "xxxxx" city from the face of the earth. At some point the countries sheltering the bastards will finally take notice and start doing something about it.



Yeah it will. These bombs are messy. Would be a better application of a neutron bomb.




It will take generations to remove the source of their anger and we don't have the time. Sooner or later one of them will get hold of a weapon(s) of mass destruction and we can't afford to take that chance. Besides, we shouldn't have to live with the constant threat of violence over our heads. George if you really want to do something start lobbying for more funding of cleaner and cheaper use of energy sources, such as the sun, and start asking questions where the fusion energy programs are. If we can wean ourselves from oil we can solve a whole heck of a lot of problems and leave the middle east to mire in it's own problems. Much of our problem is political - the oil lobby has big dollars to keep the status quo. We got a lot of desert for collecting solar out here. Just need a cheaper way to collect and store it. Where's the lobby for that?

Remember once upon a time the Persian empire was mighty (politically, scientifically and artistically), and the US was a nobody. They had their chance and threw it away - all that's left are some nice carpets. I challenge you to name any other contribution to humanity.

One thing to add - I think George Bush showed extreme restraint on Sept 11 and the days following, in not launching a nuclear attack on several countries while many in the media and others were calling for it. I know of one person who emailed the president daily explaining why it was vital not to wait in launching a few ICBMs.

There is a strong lobby for that. I believe almost ALL of our problem is the oil industry and its desire to keep us dependent on their product.

If you read back in what I have said (and God knows I have said a lot in this thread!) you will see I have advocated for us to do just what you suggested. In fact, I was roundly attacked for even suggesting that the reason we chose the course we did in Afganistan (i.e. take over the country instead of just rooting out Al Qaeda) was because President Cheney had been negotiating with the Taliban up through August for an oil pipe line through Afganistan and getting no where in the neogitations.

I have not even mentioned the interesting opportunism of our sudden stratgeic alliance with Russia since 9/11, which just happens to have the largest oil reserves in the world in Siberia which the oil industry has been chomping at the bit to get to.

Bush1's war had nothing to do with Kuwait and everything to do with stationing American troops to protect the oil industry's resources in the Middle East. I believe Bush2's war has much the same agenda.

Alternative sources of energy? We already have them and President Cheney's Energy Plan only pays lip service to it for political reasons. But then, he does not want us to know who it was who helped him formulate that energy plan.

And we need not do much to get out from under the yoke of Middle eastern oil, which would then allow us to withdraw our troops from there. Statistics show that a simple 5% drop in gasoline consumption would eliminate the need to get Middle Eastern oil or to drill more in Alaska. But we have seen how quickly Bush attacjed and made sure the Congress killed any thought of increasing the gasoline efficiency standards for automobiles in the past week.

And then there is the introduction of the hybrid cars -- if we simply required all cars to be hybrid cars within a few short years, we solve that problem. They work. They are efficient. They are at a price people can afford.

Many people are pushing getting off the addiction we have for Middle eastern oil -- but Bush2 would rather send troops all over the globe a fight a war rather than take a few simple actions to eliminate our need to even be in the Middle east, creating the hostility we now face.

One need not be talking pie in the sky or fantasies. The technology is there to do what needs to be done. And it is economically viable.

But will it get done unde Bush2? I wonder why?

Hmmmm... now let's see. Bush1 is from the oil industry. Bush2 is from the oil industry. Both got elected with massive influxes of money from the oil industry. President Cheney is from the oil industry. Enron's Ken Lay made sure that oil industry representatives were placed in all of the regulatory agencies that may have some sort of impact on this.

But then, if I point these things out I will simply getlabeled as unrealistic, incapaable of rational thought, un-American,a consiracy theorist -- and likely some combination of all of these.

I guess I must be wrong because everyone else who has posted tells me I am. So, let's continue to kill all the Islamic Arabs. After all, 1 Billion people are obviously wrong when they think the US might to anything that is not right and good. Let's continue to send our young men and women around the world to be killed. The world has always been this way and to consider another course of action to stop the killing just is not possible.

And then, let's keep that oil flowing! Yee Haw!

Yo George,


Ever work on a rig? Drilling or Production? Jack-up or offshore? Roustabout, Roughneck or Tool Pusher? Work for Bush's old outfit Zapata? Or maybe Penrod? Nah, you're probably a Schlumberger Mud Man. That's how you became an expert in the oil business!

Son, you ever take the looong view? About what we are going to do when the oil runs out? About who on the face of this ol' Earth is going to have the technology to keep the lights on? Reckon Saudi Arabia or Iran is going to have that technology? Guess who is going to be sitting pretty when the last of the fossil fuels run out - try the U.S. and Europe.

Your grasp of the Energy Business is only exceeded by your acumen in Geopolitics.

No, the reason we're in Afghanistan is because someone decided to attack the US, supposedly in the name of Jihad (that's a holy war not an oily war!). Remember, we asked several times for the Afghan government to hand over the perpetrators (following good police procedure). They decided not to so we took out a search warrant.



No, I think the desire is to not take the country back to the dark ages. What the US needs is a long term plan to wean itself from oil without reducing everyone's quality of life. I don't know where you got your numbers from but I can't believe the middle east is responsible for only 5% of our gasoline. Also, there's different qualities of oil and I seem to remember the middle east stuff is more suited for gasoline (than say some of the north sea stuff which is used for higher quality machine oils - anyone confirm?). Your argument makes a good story, but until the Seabees start putting in the pipeline across Afghanistan it isn't convincing.

The US consumption of oil is not the only issue. When you consider the amount of money poured into countries like Saudi Arabia then look at the plight of the average Joe in Saudi Arabia you can start to see where the frustration comes from. Until this changes nothing will improve. This is not our problem. We've poured enough money into the middle eastern countries - if the wealth had been spread around more in terms of education and industry they wouldn't find themselves in this situation. The King of Saudi needs to clean his own house out before the US has to come and do it for him (as do the other countries):

"Now does he feel his title hang lose around him,
Like a giants robe on a dwarfish thief."
(gotta love MacBeth!)

Sorry - this deserves more attention but I gotta finish work and head home to get an early start on the weekend. Just like to say that this thread has been another educational reading which I much enjoyed (that goes for both sides of the discussion). If nothing else it's provoked much thought. For which I thank you.

The best crude is Texas Sweet or sometimes called Louisiana Sweet, and the price per barrel is generally higher than that of Middle Eastern oil. The Middle Eastern oil requires a more intense refining process within the "cracking towers" in order to process gasoline. Makes pretty durn good diesel, both #1(kerosene) and #2(truck diesel) and fuel oil.

Don't know about the North Sea stuff. If I run across one of my first cousins this weekend (both Toolpushers for Penrod in the NS, 30 on and 30 off), I'll ask.

My brother is a shift supervisor at the Frontier Oil Refinery in Cheyenne WY. He tells me that modern refineries can pretty much make whatever product they want. Of course the actual amount will depend on the quality of crude to begin with. Texas sweet (the gold standard as Jolly has indicated) will yield more gasoline than so called "sour crude" but if they want to make all gasoline they can do it (along with sulphur and other by-products).