Another funny story: Fooled by Regan's geopolitics

[pyramider]

Originally Posted by Ansley

So is this going to be a thread about planes?

Planes, trains, and automobiles

[WTF]

Originally Posted by discreetgent

As far as suicide bombers goes; RAND is a pretty good research organization. OTOH my point is not about specific individuals but about a society as a whole and I don't think RAND addresses that.

Well then we are back to your point about building the whole world schools and hope......which I argue(d) is impossible and we don't have the money even if it were possible.

Seriously that is neoconic viewpoint....again, I am suprised you have taken it.

I can see Charlie Wilson taking that viewpoint to cleanse his soul............

If we are going to build the world schools and hope lets start here in this country first and then next move on to Mexico....not the Middle East.

[discreetgent]

Originally Posted by WTF

Well then we are back to your point about building the whole world schools and hope......which I argue(d) is impossible and we don't have the money even if it were possible.

Seriously that is neoconic viewpoint....again, I am suprised you have taken it.

I can see Charlie Wilson taking that viewpoint to cleanse his soul............

If we are going to build the world schools and hope lets start here in this country first and then next move on to Mexico....not the Middle East.

You know (I think you would agree) without the money we are spending on wars we would have enough money to build schools here, Mexico and the Middle East.

As far as a neocon point of view goes, just because it may be their viewpoint doesn't automatically make it wrong lol.

[..]

Originally Posted by WTF

We backed a monster because we thought the Soviets worse . We are the new Soviets...what are your thoughts on that?

A writes:

Don't overrate the Soviets - they didn't do any good to the region either. Only their IL-76 got heavy real-life combat testing / bashing, because the taliban "monster" freedom fighters got way too much high-tech armor and loads of money.
Thus the flight crews of the IL-76, learned by "sink or swim" to take-off and landing while at the risk of being shot down by western surface-to-air missiles while having a plane of doing the job, albeit with weak jet-engines.

B texts:

The are many ironies and sarcastic insider jokes. What the Soviets did in their Afghanistan war was already very stupid central-planning thinking. The US had a similar SNAFU; their support for the islamic "freedom fighter" was simply way too much. totally overdone.

e.g. one serve problem of the "Reagan Doctrine" was that it completely overestimated the actual strength of the Soviet Union. (Just like the "offical" Soviets overestimated the strength of the actual Soviet Union.)

The Soviets were thinking like a super-power, with a atheistic and "socialist" (or as it was called in the west: "communist") mindset.

The US was thinking like a super-power, with a very charismatic leader (Reagan for sure was that), and a free-market, capitalist mindset. Some odd mixture of capitalist libertarians and capitalist religious fanatics (e.g. the neo-cons Jesus mafia and fellow sects)

Both -- US and post-soviet Russia -- however still have real problems understanding the complexity of this region.

[..]

Originally Posted by Clerkenwell

You may be forgetting that quite a few countries participate in the Afghan military project (that's the kindest term I could think of). So in one regard it differs completely from the Soviet incursion. It carries the implied legitmiacy of co-operation between developed states.

hehe, the co-operation btwn, all this developed states, reminds me of the co-operation btwn. the constituent republics of the Soviet Union; or the co-operation within the Eastern Bloc.

We are all one big happy family without any culture clashes

[..]

Originally Posted by Chainsaw Anthropologist

Current US Air Force, not Army (the Army doesn't operate fixed wing aircraft with more than two engines) primary transport is the Boeing C-17 an aircraft with double the max takeoff weight of the Il-76.

FYI. Boeing in all it's marketing propagenda is quite mute and slient about the IL-76; unlike avatar Chainsaw Anthropologist, Boeing tries not to make such comparisons.

http://www.boeing.com/bds/mediakit/2...FEXPO_C-17.pdf
http://www.c17foramerica.com/

[WTF]

Originally Posted by discreetgent

You know (I think you would agree) without the money we are spending on wars we would have enough money to build schools here, Mexico and the Middle East.

.

Do you think they are going to let us indoctrinate their children? I'm sure they would let us build all the schools we want!

Originally Posted by discreetgent

As far as a neocon point of view goes, just because it may be their viewpoint doesn't automatically make it wrong lol.

Yes you are correct....but in the case of nation building they are wrong. If nothing else, history has taught us that lesson very well. Nation building is/was a liberal agenda that the neocons co-oped to keep the vast military sectors transfer of public funds to the private sector. A true neoconic Capitalist would fund his own viewpoint and not ask the American public to do so.

Originally Posted by ..

Both -- US and post-soviet Russia -- however still have real problems understanding the complexity of this region.

Agreed. That is why when dg thinks that building schools in Afgan in the nineties might have averted this pickle where we are today shows a touch a naivety. If one looks at the history of the region for the last thousand years it would be a flashing light and rail road crossing alarm going off all rolled into one. STOP.

[discreetgent]

Originally Posted by WTF

Do you think they are going to let us indoctrinate their children? I'm sure they would let us build all the schools we want!

Not talking about indoctrination, just basic skills. My feeling is that basic literacy skills like reading and writing do a world of good. When people are able to read books on their own and not simply hear what books say (be it the bible, koran, poetry, philosophy, etc) they are better prepared to form their own opinions. Would it have made a difference in Afghanistan? Unfortunately we'll never know. Would spending that amount of money been worth a shot? Yeah, I think so. Probably best to chalk this one up to agree to disagree.

[WTF]

Originally Posted by discreetgent

Would spending that amount of money been worth a shot? Yeah, I think so. .

With hindsight....maybe so, though I don't see how it was possible on either end. The political climate at the time was not conductive that endeavor. Reagan and Contagate...... Plus the Taliban was not going to let women go to school an you would not have found much support for building schools for that type of regime.

There, that is the best I can do! lol

[..]

Originally Posted by WTF

Do you think they are going to let us indoctrinate their children?

An interesting, albeit tough question.

e.g. give them Wikipedia content and they may actually like it. or give them CIA World Factoids and they very likely will understand bias and facts.

IMHO there's a strong difference btwn, encouraging education and nation-building since every nation is built upon indoctrination.

[WTF]

Originally Posted by ..

IMHO there's a strong difference btwn, encouraging education and nation-building since every nation is built upon indoctrination.

But that line is being blurred....see google and China trouble.

Isn't indoctrination the goal....look at Texas and their content problem over what is in school books.

So what nation will let you control the content of what their citizens learn? If you believe like I do that no nation will then you do not believe in this silly notion of building schools for other nations. Besides.....do you really want the 4 Billion people that live in poverty to realize that there is a nation that has 5% of the population yet consumes 24% of the worlds energy?


http://www.mindfully.org/Sustainability/Americans-Consume-24percent.htm
Americans constitute 5% of the world's population but consume 24% of the world's energy.

On average, one American consumes as much energy as

• 2 Japanese
• 6 Mexicans
• 13 Chinese
• 31 Indians
• 128 Bangladeshis
• 307 Tanzanians
• 370 Ethiopians

Now that sure info would fire up a a bunch of freshly educated terrorist!