Post
by cynik » Wed Sep 03, 2008 11:38 pm
"Waving paper dictated by a ruthless thug and declaring peace, who does that remind one of?"
Al Malaki's press secretary?
Anyway, I can't believe I am commenting on this forum. Who is broken drum? Surely there can't be two folks as rabidly asshole as frogen on the one forum?
Freediver, you impress me with your discussion of intellectual responsibility. Chomsky is the guy I heard say it first, but you are wasting your time with guys like frogen and brokendrum. They are not in it for the ideas. They are in the discussion for the feelings. Conflict junkies. Such folk have learned that the pleasure of being hated is exquisite, so long as you can identify with a bigger, more powerful tribe.
But anyway, enough of them. What of Georgia?
Well, NATO was created to keep the Germans down, the Russians out, and the Americans in. (Of Europe)
Now Germany exports more than the US, Europe is dependent on Russian oil & gas to be competitive with US industry, and the overwhelming majority of Europeans I meet want the US out. So......
What is NATO for? Who wants it? What threat does it protect us all from?
See, this is where I depart company from chomsky and his theory of intellectual respnsibility IN PART. Chomsky has devastating logic, and sure, if you buy into the democracy myth, it works. If the governments we(you) elect really do have sovereign power, and they are not vetted by an elite before we get to choose one, then OK, what Chomsky says is true. And, of course, it is absolutely true that guys like frogen can be analysed for their quality with reference to their unwavering expertise on countries far, far away. They can't speak any languages, they haven't any friends from there, but they know evil when they see it, and evil is always OVER THERE.
So, I see the facility of Chomsky's view. He comments on the US because he is a US citizen, and who cares what he thinks about Russia? Not the russians, that is certain. But NATO sells weapons. It is a gun club and a drive through porno cinema all rolled into one big shitty deal. For 50 years we were told NATO existed to protect us from the soviet union. Then the soviet union went away, but NATO stayed. The threat went away but the gun sales increased. So how does that affect the Chomsky doctrine of intellectual isolationism?
I would say it knocks it fairly squarely into the shit can, but I could be wrong.
The bottom line is that US power is diminishing, and NATO is on the way out of europe. You folks will not hear that in the west, because you have no real source of information regarding political and military matters, but I would estimate that this is so, from my personal experience.
(in the following paragraph read "those who make the calls" for the word signifying the country. ie "UK" = heriditary lords, france = heriditary lords, Russia = FSB etc)
In fact, I see the US attempts to start a war in Eastern Europe as hugely desperate, and I suspect they might fail. Firstly, France and Germany do not respect the US culture, and they dream of a Europe that is the centre of the world again. Secondly, the UK has become irrelevant in European politics, as Russian energy supplies have allowed continental industrial capacity to grow regardless of English speaking shenanigans in the middle east and Turkey. Thirdly, eastern europeans do not want a war with russia. Only the very small minority of them with US passports and financial dependence on the US want a war with Russia, and the rest fear the USA.
It will be interesting to see what happens if the UK is forced to leave the EU. If this occurs (and one can think of numerous pretexts for the action) then the major european industrial powers will be falling over themselves to form a pact with Russia. At the expense of the eastern European states, who will become, once again, the meat in the european sandwich.
There is talk of US overstretch, and this should be seen in conjunction with a hostile europe. I don't mean overtly hostile, i mean silently, grudgingly hostile. The west ought to be mindful of the European capacity to leave NATO high and extremely fucking dry in Eurasia and the middle east. It could happen faster than you could say "Vichy France".
If the Russians can wait until the US has troops bogged down hopelessly in Irark and Afghanistan, and can then ignite Kosovo, Iran, Syria, pakistan and Turkey, then what will Georgia be? One small part of a front line that stretches from Rome to China.
Think about what that would mean, having a front line of occupied territories stretching from Rome to China. If this scenario transpire, can anyone see the mighty, mighty USA sending forces to Europe when eastern states are divided between Russia and Germany once again, and NATO is forced out?
The most alarming thing about the current world situation, from my point of view, is the utter hubris of the US military community. They honestly think they are strong enough to do anything. They think that satellites, silicon chips and jet fighters make them utterly invincible. And yet, they consider themselves such mighty warriors because.... why, exactly?
Because they put down a rebellion by their lap dog Saddam Hussien, and their lap dogs in Afghanistan?
See, the western media (the left wing media) described the "invasion" of Iraq and Afghanistan, but from the Russian or European point of view, this was simply the USA cleaning house. Both those states existed as the creations of US foreign policy, and both were seen as US friends turned bad. The US was not seen to be winning a war in either case. It was and is simply seen as getting bogged down in its own sprawling mess.
Now from this perspective, the US military pride in how they kick ass is laughable. The US military beat up a man in chains, and is telling the world it will take on all comers. Putin is laughing himself to sleep at night, listening to US military "experts" talk about what their electronic toys can achieve.
Look now at what actually happened in Georgia, and then consider the ramifications. Georgia began a military action that was supposed to take Russia by surprise. Begun at the start of the Chinese Olympics, the attack by Georgia was supposed to have driven the Russians back in disarray. Yes, it was expected that the Russians would regroup BUT it was not expected that they would do so as quickly as they did. You see, the Georgians were the aggressors BUT they would still be within Georgian territory. So if the russian army took three weeks to get organised, by that time the USA and UK could have shipped huge numbers of "peacekeepers" to the region. And this would have made Russia the aggressor, had they responded to the earlier Georgian attack.
But it didn't pan out that way. Unfortunately, all the US training and high tech US equipment counted for nothing. The georgian soldiers cut and ran, and the Ruskis totally fucking smashed them. If you watch Robert Gates talking about the incident, he even makes a joke about how badly the Georgians got their ass handed to them. He said that although he deplores what the Russians did, he makes no comment thereby regarding HOW they did it. Cue mischievous little smile. Gotta love Bobby Gates.
You'll note that at the start of the conflict, before the Georgians fled, they were bragging that they had shot down numerous Russian aircraft. That was true. Sort of. They got a few, and that is no mean feat at all. It is WAY better than the sand monkeys did against the USAF. BUT.... the current doctrine of defeating air power to defeat the Russian force is based on Afghanistan, and fails to take into consideration the use of massed armour.
Once the russians started losing aircraft, they simply sent the aircraft towards supply lines, and went at the georgian front line with massed armour. And thusly, smashed it to fucking pieces in a matter of hours.
THAT is what thinking people want to take away from the Georgian incident. US hubris is at dangerously high levels. For a country that has so often proven the advantages of using brute force, it's military strategy has become righteous and ignorant of basic battlefield realities.
Germany had a bigger technological gap between itself and the Soviet union when it decided it would thrash the untermensch and take their lands. So did Napoleon.
We have just seen what will happen if our troops try to fight Russia as though Russia is some dipshit little colony, and anyone who can look at the georgian experience and advocate a land war in europe on military grounds is snarling batshit fucking crazy.
So now we have a delicate situation in Europe. NATO is on the way out, and the English speaking peoples are increasingly having to commit troops and LIMITED military resources into previously friendly regions. (colonies, if you must be vulgar)
We continue to see ourselves as the "sole superpower", as the rest of the world begins to see us as a sick old man. We are shaking sticks and making big threats, whilst those we threaten smile and sharpen their knives, and wait for us to make a crucial mistake.
My own prediction is that a ship will go down in the straights of Hormuz, forcing the US to move into Iran. Then the Ruski's will have an open hand, and Europe will clearly see the writing on the wall.
For those who are ignorant and deluded enough to think the US is loved by the rank and file of Europe, consider Yuckashenko and his SINGLE DIGIT approval rating. Cheney is going there just now, which has got to be the worst move one could possibly imagine. Sending a member of the gestapo to Russia? Are you out of your fucking mind????
Anyway that is the european report, not that anyone ever listens to me.
Tshcus und, nah klar, do svedanya, schlumpies!
