Getting Tired of This

[creightonfcb]

Some of the mainstream media continue to compare the situation in Iraq to Vietnam. Shockingly in one way they may be right. We are tying our troops hands in this war as we did then. If we would let our troops do what they are capable of, we could have won this war 10 times over. The detractors and nay sayers have a right to be heard but do more harm to morale and give more aid & comfort to the enemy than anything else. If we lose, you have democrats & the media to thank.

Here here! :thumbup:

Grimalkin
Camp Habbaniyah, Iraq

 

[qubehead]

I think we should change tactics and do unto Osama what he is trying to do to us. He wants to wreck the U.S. economy with another incident(s) and judging from what happened to the stock market after 9/11 this is not a fantasy goal.QUOTE]

HOORAY!! I thought I was the only one who thought in those terms. I've found GWBush's conduct of the war a big disappointment; he means well, but seems immovably committed to doing the conventional thing, as distinct from the *right* thing.
As for wrecking the enemy's economy: Cliff, you're on the right track but I don't think you've gone nearly far enough with it. For an entire human lifetime, the Mideast's oil has distorted our policies, poisoned our alliances, been a knife at our throats.
It's got to go.
Great wealth should not belong to savages. What I'd love to do is this: whomp up the biggest, deepest-burrowing, most radioactively filthy bombs we can invent and drop them into the oil fields of Saudi Arabia (just them to begin with, *maybe* the example will save having to do others). Render their oil unrecoverable and/or unusable. *Destroy It*. Our economy will suffer and recover. *Theirs* will be flatly gone. Thrown upon our own (considerable) resources, oh, just see how fast we come up with alternatives.
Politicians of a certain stripe will howl, of course, but they can't un-nuke the oil. Ditto our backseat-driving 'allies'.
Other pros and cons suggest themselves, but I'll stop here and open the floor for comments/rants/&c.

 

[leon.pugh]

That's how some bearded dudes in caves also think.

When you look at Afghanistan today, you have to ask - what happened to all those nice people, like we saw in Rambo III?

Clarifie response please.

Leon

 

[cliff355]

Great wealth should not belong to savages... whomp up the biggest, deepest-burrowing, most radioactively filthy bombs we can invent and drop them into the oil fields of Saudi Arabia

If somebody else did that I wouldn't necessarily wring my hands, but the U.S. might be able to solve the problem in a way that would look better in American history.

This is a place where people like Thomas Edison, James Watt, Henry Ford and Bill Gates get major things done that nobody thought they could do. Rather than blow up the oil and force change, maybe all it would take is a U.S. president to draw a line in the dirt and provide the necessary prompting. Kennedy's moon program is one example of this, and the Manhattan Project is another thing that comes to mind.

Gas-burning machinery could become an item on "The History Channel" within what remains of my lifetime. If oil occupied the same status as ready-mix concrete, I'm thinking that would quiet things down in the middle east more than hammering away at them with the worlds most powerful army.

The "most powerful army" approach is what everybody else does, with the same results we're getting. Alexander the Great, Queen Victoria and M. Gorbachev all hammered Afghanistan with "the worlds most powerful army" and as far as I know the Afghans aren't speaking Greek, Russian or the Queen's English as a result of it.

 

[Thomas Linton]

The tinfoil makes my head itchy.

Try aluminum foil. It works for me. :thumbup:

Yes, and if the Russians start to sell 700,000 barrels for €35 million to China and the Saudi's figure out €35 million buys more than $42 million - what happens when everybody starts using Euros.

The British and Japanese will be upset.

Seriously, what a given currency buys depends of the exchange rates. We knifenuts know that when we buy from another currency area. Swedish knives went way up a few years ago when the Euro went way up against the Dollar -- almost doubled in exchange value in a few months.

Currency today is just X's and 0's in computers and is freely exchanged. You can buy any commodity in any freely-exchanged currency - Dollars, GBP's, Yen, Euro's.

Exactly, if they don't have dollars maybe they invest in Europe or Asia

They invest Dollars in Europe and Euros in Asia. They invest their X's and 0's where they think they can get a return. No more. No less.

That's what I was trying to say. When the money gets low you just print more (self-loan to bolster the economy). If the predominant currency was Euro, you would have to have more collateral than just a note to yourselves to print less when times get better.

There is no collateral.

Currencies today are "backed" solely by the "full faith and credit" of the issuing governments. "Value" is an idea held by "experts." When an economy is perceived by the world currency markets to be relatively "stronger," the currency issued in that economy goes up in relative value. (And its goods are more expensive outside its borders, lowering volume of exports, if not value of exports.) So if the EU could lower unemployment from its current high levels, the Euro would go up vs. the Yen, Dollar, and GBP. If the US lowered its deficits, the Dollar would go up vs. the Euro, GBP, and Yen.

That's my thoery and I'm sticking to it.

I have found that no more than three creases should be used in the hat. Four or more may cause misapprehensions.

 

[Nordic Viking]

Good post Thomas,

I will submit it for review, at our annual tinfoiler meeting, and see what our skeptics have to say

 

[Thomas Linton]

I am curious as to why you say linking the hashahseens with modern suicide bombers is a reach.

The ones that we have captured alive (due to bad wiring in their vests and such) have almost all reported the type of training used by the hashasheens, i.e. drugs and a promise of a one way ticket to heaven....

One stemed from the other. Looks pretty plain to me...

If "we" is you, I listen with interest, to the extent that you may share.

Otherwise, I am guided by the statements of Yoram Schweitzer (ten years with Mosad and consultant to the gov't of Isreal on terrorism). He says they have no evidence that drugs were used to train any of the suicide bombers in Israel. He personally interviewed over eighty terrorists, including failed suicide bombers and their handlers. He has access to the body if information gather by Israel over yeasr of sad experience with the subject. Israel has experienced both Shia and Sunni suicide bombers.

There is wide-spread belief that drugs are used to train terroists, among other beliefs.

There are many reports of suicide bombers behaving as if they are drugged in the monents before they strike. I cannot find reports of blood tests to verify these observations. Perhaps what is being witnessed is the mental state of one who believes he or she is approaching the gates of Paradise.

For two interesting articles on the subject:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9327.htm

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/soapbox/rehov.asp

Drugs do not seem necessary when dealing with folks who, by Western standards, are already insane.

I know that I do not know for sure.

 

[Thomas Linton]

Some of the mainstream media continue to compare the situation in Iraq to Vietnam. Shockingly in one way they may be right. We are tying our troops hands in this war as we did then. If we would let our troops do what they are capable of, we could have won this war 10 times over.

How? What, specifically, would they do if their hands were not tied?

 

[Thomas Linton]

I think we should change tactics and do unto Osama what he is trying to do to us. He wants to wreck the U.S. economy with another incident(s) and judging from what happened to the stock market after 9/11 this is not a fantasy goal.QUOTE]

HOORAY!! I thought I was the only one who thought in those terms. I've found GWBush's conduct of the war a big disappointment; he means well, but seems immovably committed to doing the conventional thing, as distinct from the *right* thing.
As for wrecking the enemy's economy: Cliff, you're on the right track but I don't think you've gone nearly far enough with it. For an entire human lifetime, the Mideast's oil has distorted our policies, poisoned our alliances, been a knife at our throats.
It's got to go.
Great wealth should not belong to savages. What I'd love to do is this: whomp up the biggest, deepest-burrowing, most radioactively filthy bombs we can invent and drop them into the oil fields of Saudi Arabia (just them to begin with, *maybe* the example will save having to do others). Render their oil unrecoverable and/or unusable. *Destroy It*. Our economy will suffer and recover. *Theirs* will be flatly gone. Thrown upon our own (considerable) resources, oh, just see how fast we come up with alternatives.
Politicians of a certain stripe will howl, of course, but they can't un-nuke the oil. Ditto our backseat-driving 'allies'.
Other pros and cons suggest themselves, but I'll stop here and open the floor for comments/rants/&c.

Because virtually all goods, including food, is delivered by motor vehicles, there would be wide-spread starvation. No soup for you! :grumpy:

No way to tell if our economy would be harder hit than that of "savages." Tyoically, the more complex economies are hardest hit by doslocatinos of supply systems.

It would be costly to win the resulting war with the entire world on the other side.

And the Chinese certainly agree that we should not be wealthy.

 

[Thomas Linton]

Technology is a hope to free us from oil.

. . . The "most powerful army" approach is what everybody else does, with the same results we're getting. Alexander the Great, Queen Victoria and M. Gorbachev all hammered Afghanistan with "the worlds most powerful army" and as far as I know the Afghans aren't speaking Greek, Russian or the Queen's English as a result of it.

Very true, although English is the official language of what used to be the COlony of India.

2000+ years later, Iskander is still the "boogyman" in the entire region. "Be good or Iskander will get you."

Turn over the butt of your HI. The all-seeing eye of Iskander is watching.

(NV, who cares what the wool hat crowd says?!?!?!)

 

[Nordic Viking]

(NV, who cares what the wool hat crowd says?!?!?!)

They're all Ushanka Heads

 

[zenheretic]

Great thread, the Political Forum only dreams of having such a mature debate.

Thomas, you are correct that no currency is truly "backed" by anything any longer and that any country can simply print more whenever they like. However there is a cost to this called inflation. As long as the majority of the world oil is traded in US$ rather than Euros, the US can print more currency and let other nations absorb the cost of inflation before it starts to bite us. If the world no longer needs our dollars, say by now buying their oil in Euros, then we have to more responsible by printing a more realistic quantity of dollars. (A realistic quantity is just enough more than the current rate of growth so that expansion can occur, but not so much as to cause rapid inflation of prices of goods.)

Essentially we get to print more worthless paper dollars and trade them for actual products and services. Along with good American know how (research and development), this scheme affords us a very high standard of living where even most poor have phones and cable TV, running water and electricity.

If the world market ever switches to Euros, we collapse economically. That is when your food stock, trading stock, weapon stock, and bunker come into play.

Near as I can tell, the seeds of this theory was planted by the good Nordic Viking years ago, and sown by Ken Cox over time. I have feasted on the crop and it tastes good to me. That doesn't mean there isn't a better way to go, but this theory answers many questions.

We aided the Afghans to keep the Russians from building a pipe line to sell their oil for Euros. We occupy Afghanistan today for the same reason. If this is true, I'm still worried. Russians aren't stupid they figure something else out. If I was them, I'd build a trans siberian pipeline and sell directly to Asia...but I'm not Russian.

 

[Thomas Linton]

Great thread, the Political Forum only dreams of having such a mature debate.

Thomas, you are correct that no currency is truly "backed" by anything any longer and that any country can simply print more whenever they like. However there is a cost to this called inflation. As long as the majority of the world oil is traded in US$ rather than Euros, the US can print more currency and let other nations absorb the cost of inflation before it starts to bite us. If the world no longer needs our dollars, say by now buying their oil in Euros, then we have to more responsible by printing a more realistic quantity of dollars. (A realistic quantity is just enough more than the current rate of growth so that expansion can occur, but not so much as to cause rapid inflation of prices of goods.)

Essentially we get to print more worthless paper dollars and trade them for actual products and services. Along with good American know how (research and development), this scheme affords us a very high standard of living where even most poor have phones and cable TV, running water and electricity.

The problem with this argument is that it is not supported by the facts as to U.S. government finance. The U.S. simply does not print currency ("M1") to support its deficit spending. It borrows the money by selling government bonds, upon which it has never defaulted. This reality explains why so much U.S. debt is held by foreign nationals and foreign governments. (Guess the ratio of U.S. government debt to currency. Or Google.)

If the U.S. simply ran the presses (like Germany famously in the 1920's), no rational person would buy U.S. debt or accept U.S. Dollars in payments since they would lose value steadily (The computers keep track with lightning speed.), both in the U.S. and world at large. Foreign bankers and finance ministers are not dummies - not to mention foreign multi-billionaires.

Other facts, according to the EU and US (trying to find figures with same dates):

1. Consumer inflation: about the same in EU as US.

2. Public debt as a % of GDP: US - 64.7% EU - 63.8% Japan - 158% China - ?????.

Please note: US public debt was 120% of GDP in 1950. So if public debt means doom and gloom, how does one explain that in 1950 the U.S. post WWII boom was just getting started? US public debt as a % of GDP was down to 37% in 1980, up to a post WWII high of 68% in 1997. Now its slightly down.

3. Unemployment: US 5.3% EU 8.8%

4. GDP per capita: US $43,500 EU $24,235

So if you want to explain relative standard of living, please at least consider item No. 4. Compare the same numbers for Germany vs. Romania or Turkey, say, and draw your own conclusions.

If the world market ever switches to Euros, we collapse economically. That is when your food stock, trading stock, weapon stock, and bunker come into play.

Easy to say. Hard to justify with facts if you mean a cause and effect relationship. (A switch to the Euro could mean the U.S. economy had collapsed so the Dollar was no longer stable enough.) The world was using GBP when the U.S. was rising into a great world economic power. Did the switch to Dollars harm the UK or was the dismal state of the UK economy post WWII the result of its spending itelf to poverty fighting the two World Wars? You will find few to question that it was the latter. Pride was hurt, but little else can be proved.

The fact is that most major currencies are freely exchangable and are freely exchanged in mind-boggling amounts every day. Do a Google.

Near as I can tell, the seeds of this theory was planted by the good Nordic Viking years ago, and sown by Ken Cox over time. I have feasted on the crop and it tastes good to me. That doesn't mean there isn't a better way to go, but this theory answers many questions.

Respectfully, it may answer questions, but where are the facts to support it? Very little in the real world is subject to simple answers. Reality is a tangled mess of motives, perceptions, and guesses about the future.

We aided the Afghans to keep the Russians from building a pipe line to sell their oil for Euros. We occupy Afghanistan today for the same reason. If this is true, I'm still worried. Russians aren't stupid they figure something else out. If I was them, I'd build a trans siberian pipeline and sell directly to Asia...but I'm not Russian.

Hard to accept because there was no EU then, and no Euros. The EU was founded several years after the collapse of the USSR, and the Euro followed more years later.

Look, we aided the resistance for the same motives as applied in New Caladonia, North Africa, Italy, France, Belgium, Holland, Romania, Yugoslavia, Korea, Vietnam, and Grenada. It was war against the "enemy," and "cold" only sometimes. It was policy being carried out by whatever means seemed best by leaders on all of the several sides.

Can anyone else here recall when the map seemed to have more "red" each year: Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania; China, Mongolia, Tibet, North Vietnam - then Vietnam, Laos, Angola, and Afghanistan. Failed armed "red" takeover attempts in Greece, Malaya, Korea, and the Phillippines. "Socialist" leaders wooing Moscow in Indonesia, India, Egypt, Cuba, Argentina. I remember serious people talking about "dominoes" and wondering if "they" could be stopped." I remember the blood spilled when the populations in some of those nations tied and failed - or won - the right to a non-red polity.

In Afghanistan, it is as old as the saying, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." This was a period (Is it really twenty years ago?) when the U.S. foreign policy was to openly exert as much pressure on the USSR as possible, short of war, in the belief that the economy of the USSR would collapse. Kissinger made one of many public speeches about that strategy in Cleveland on May 1 ("May Day"), in the mid-1980's. He said the trick was keep up the pressure without provoking war "because their economy is a lie."

No different that British gold paying Prussians to fight the French or French gold paying American colonists to fight the UK.

And are NATO's soldiers from the EU rendering essential assistance in Afghanistan today to keep the Dollar on top? I think not.


And, again, the Russians can demand whatever currency they want to demand, just like the sellers on eBay who accept payment only in a non-Dollar currency. All a matter of convenience. Just X's and 0's in a computer.


In my old age, I believe that incompetence and ignorance (and/or accident) explains far more than conspiracies.

 

[Nasty]

*This* sort of discussion I can take. Thanks to Tom for raising the bar in the discussions.

 

[zenheretic]

*This* sort of discussion I can take. Thanks to Tom for raising the bar in the discussions.

Hehe, as soon as two or more econ nerds start bantering around theories and numbers everyone else falls asleep.

**Caution do not read Econ while driving, it may cause an uncontrollable urge for somnolence.

 

[zenheretic]

The problem with this argument is that it is not supported by the facts as to U.S. government finance. The U.S. simply does not print currency ("M1") to support its deficit spending. It borrows the money by selling government bonds, upon which it has never defaulted.

How does the US pay for that debt? ...With dollars. Lender countries continue to trade us dollars for more dollars (ROI) for two reasons, one you mentioned as it is a safe bet you will get your money back, and two they need dollars to buy oil. Most oil producers only accept dollars for oil.

For the rest of it yes you bring some good points. I can't claim to write a perfect argument and can easily misspeak such as the USSR invading Afghanistan prior to the Euro.

It is a different outlook than you hold, toss it about your head for a few days, mull it over, move the puzzle pieces about. Don't be so quick to shoot new thoughts full of holes.

One measure will be if we get a Democrat for a president the next go around. It will be interesting to see if we pull out of Afghanistan or hang out and let them continue to produce 90+% of the world's opium during that term.

 

[Nasty]

It's neither the perspective nor the subject...it's worthwhile dialogue v. "did too...did not".

I just hate to see our precious supply of electrons wasted.

 

[cliff355]

Turn over the butt of your HI. The all-seeing eye of Iskander is watching.

Now that I did not know. I'm thinking about a re-handle job on a certain Chiruwa AK that has fallen into disuse due to its handle, but if that would be a stick in the eye of Iskander maybe this project should go on hold.