US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

[Kepler]

Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

Wars of Pure Defense: an interesting review of the literature.

WPD would meet actual attacks on national territory while declining to devastate the invaders’ home territory and society. It would therefore undertake no colossal overseas operations, invasions, surrenders, occupations, and the rest. Nor does WPD require granting semi-magical war powers to state bureaucracies while rationalizing the damage done to law and liberty. We could quit agonizing over the “laws” of war, except perhaps to exceed them on the side of humanity. The world-striding U.S. unitary executive, stripped of his mercenary companies, could shrink into a glorified sewer commissioner. Alliances would be the exception, never the rule. Agreements whereby an attack on Micro-Magnesia is fictitiously seen as an attack on U.S. soil would not arise.

With invaders repelled, there would be little to do except to arrange prisoner exchanges and discuss damages, perhaps in a real peace treaty (out of fashion since 1945).

Where mere money is concerned, pure-defense planning would surely be cheaper than constant preparation to invade and bomb the world. With respect to a pure-defense budget, libertarian realists have made useful suggestions (despite the lack of commitment to strict nonintervention). Earl Ravenal’s “Case for Adjustment” (Foreign Policy, 81, Winter 1990–1991) outlined a massive reduction of U.S. defense spending simply by assuming withdrawal from Europe, protection of sea lanes and essential allies, and a minimal nuclear deterrent.

[joecct]

Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

Happy Bay of Pigs Day!!!

[Kepler]

Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

Happy Bay of Pigs Day!!!

Nice to see we can still f-ck up on that scale or larger.

Case agents I’ve interviewed at the Joint Terrorism Task Forces in Washington and San Diego, the forward operating base for some of the Saudi hijackers, as well as detectives at the Fairfax County (Va.) Police Department who also investigated several 9/11 leads, say virtually every road led back to the Saudi Embassy in Washington, as well as the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles.

Yet time and time again, they were called off from pursuing leads. A common excuse was “diplomatic immunity.”

Those sources say the pages missing from the 9/11 congressional inquiry report — which comprise the entire final chapter dealing with “foreign support for the September 11 hijackers” — details “incontrovertible evidence” gathered from both CIA and FBI case files of official Saudi assistance for at least two of the Saudi hijackers who settled in San Diego.

Some information has leaked from the redacted section, including a flurry of pre-9/11 phone calls between one of the hijackers’ Saudi handlers in San Diego and the Saudi Embassy, and the transfer of some $130,000 from then-Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar’s family checking account to yet another of the hijackers’ Saudi handlers in San Diego.

An investigator who worked with the JTTF in Washington complained that instead of investigating Bandar, the US government protected him — literally. He said the State Department assigned a security detail to help guard Bandar not only at the embassy, but also at his McLean, Va., mansion.

The source added that the task force wanted to jail a number of embassy employees, “but the embassy complained to the US attorney” and their diplomatic visas were revoked as a compromise.

Former FBI agent John Guandolo, who worked 9/11 and related al Qaeda cases out of the bureau’s Washington field office, says Bandar should have been a key suspect in the 9/11 probe.

“The Saudi ambassador funded two of the 9/11 hijackers through a third party,” Guandolo said. “He should be treated as a terrorist suspect, as should other members of the Saudi elite class who the US government knows are currently funding the global jihad.”

But Bandar held sway over the FBI.

After he met on Sept. 13, 2001, with President Bush in the White House, where the two old family friends shared cigars on the Truman Balcony, the FBI evacuated dozens of Saudi officials from multiple cities, including at least one Osama bin Laden family member on the terror watch list. Instead of interrogating the Saudis, FBI agents acted as security escorts for them, even though it was known at the time that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens.

[St. Clown]

Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

Has anybody else been following the reports of Russian and Chinese fighter jets intercepting and making dangerous maneuvers against US surveillance planes in international waters lately? The Chinese incident even proved fatal to a Chinese pilot when he crashed his J-8 into an American surveillance plane some 135 miles off the coast of China. All 24 American airmen survived the crash, but had to make an unauthorized emergency landing at a Chinese airport, destroying all sensitive equipment and data en route.

The Russians, it's believed, are doing this more as sending notice to the Polish government, even going so far as to buzz an American warship in the middle of the Black Sea, again in international waters, while performing training maneuvers with a Polish helicopter. Meanwhile, in response to these issues and increased Russian posturing, we've been loading up friendly European nations close to Russia with warplanes, mostly F-15s and F-16s, but also a group of F-22s.

On one hand, I'm inclined to believe it's all just sabre rattling, but on the other hand the Russians and Chinese are playing a very dangerous game - even beyond the one dead Chinese pilot.

I don't like this particular brand of chess at all.

[joecct]

Has anybody else been following the reports of Russian and Chinese fighter jets intercepting and making dangerous maneuvers against US surveillance planes in international waters lately? The Chinese incident even proved fatal to a Chinese pilot when he crashed his J-8 into an American surveillance plane some 135 miles off the coast of China. All 24 American airmen survived the crash, but had to make an unauthorized emergency landing at a Chinese airport, destroying all sensitive equipment and data en route.

The Russians, it's believed, are doing this more as sending notice to the Polish government, even going so far as to buzz an American warship in the middle of the Black Sea, again in international waters, while performing training maneuvers with a Polish helicopter. Meanwhile, in response to these issues and increased Russian posturing, we've been loading up friendly European nations close to Russia with warplanes, mostly F-15s and F-16s, but also a group of F-22s.

On one hand, I'm inclined to believe it's all just sabre rattling, but on the other hand the Russians and Chinese are playing a very dangerous game - even beyond the one dead Chinese pilot.

I don't like this particular brand of chess at all.

Turn on the fire control radar and paint the bahstahds as they come in. They'll get the idea.

Turn it up full blast and you'll fry the electronics (and the pilot) if the jet gets too close.

[walrus]

Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

few hundred more "advisors" into Iraq, Apache Helicopters and mobile rocket launchers go with them

[joecct]

few hundred more "advisors" into Iraq, Apache Helicopters and mobile rocket launchers go with them

Tar Baby

[Kepler]

Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

Tar Baby

Bingo.

Just. Walk. Away.

[dxmnkd316]

Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

Jeebus.

http://gawker.com/venezuela-is-more-...ver-1771612576

[Kepler]

Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

Jeebus.

http://gawker.com/venezuela-is-more-...ver-1771612576

The government could probably survive everything in that story except: no TV. No TV means nothing to do but go out in the streets. We should change the expression, "every country is three days without TV away from a revolution."

In the US that's probably true of the internet now, too.

[Kepler]

Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

German far right party explicitly denigrates a minority religion in its formal platform. What could go wrong?

[joecct]

Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

If you're stealing the other guy's signs, don't brag about it. Or, the sorry state of journalism.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifes...f12_story.html

[Kepler]

Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

Far right forces Chancellor to resign over opposition to immigration and minority religion. In Austria. I feel I've seen this somewhere before...

[dxmnkd316]

Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

Far right forces Chancellor to resign over opposition to immigration and minority religion. In Austria. I feel I've seen this somewhere before...

Does anyone else sense a long-term, worldwide story arc (call it the "Post-WWII Peaceful Era") coming to an end here in the next 5-10 years? It just seems like things are going to ****. At home, the Right seems to be fracturing and a portion of it seems to be getting more and more militant. Abroad, you have South America at a tipping point where Venezuela is f*c*k*d and Brazil is trying to play catch-up; Combine that with a massive refugee and terrorism crisis throughout Europe coupled with a potential fracturing of the EU; China is struggling now that their shadow economy has been exposed and is extremely sluggish; China, Japan, and the US are becoming more and more embattled over the South China Sea; Global warming continues to loom and God only knows when we're going to have our next major natural disaster.

I know things are always generally ****ty, but it just feels like things are more ****ty in the last 5-10 years than they have been in the previous 20-50. Am I imagining this?

[Kepler]

Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

Does anyone else sense a long-term, worldwide story arc (call it the "Post-WWII Peaceful Era") coming to an end here in the next 5-10 years? It just seems like things are going to ****. At home, the Right seems to be fracturing and a portion of it seems to be getting more and more militant. Abroad, you have South America at a tipping point where Venezuela is f*c*k*d and Brazil is trying to play catch-up; Combine that with a massive refugee and terrorism crisis throughout Europe coupled with a potential fracturing of the EU; China is struggling now that their shadow economy has been exposed and is extremely sluggish; China, Japan, and the US are becoming more and more embattled over the South China Sea; Global warming continues to loom and God only knows when we're going to have our next major natural disaster.

I know things are always generally ****ty, but it just feels like things are more ****ty in the last 5-10 years than they have been in the previous 20-50. Am I imagining this?

There's a longstanding hypothesis that the really dangerous movements like fascism rise not during the depths of a depression, when there is unity and empathy, but afterwards during the recovery when people on the bottom realize that privileged people have recovered but they haven't. That's when they come to believe the game is rigged: bailouts for the rich, austerity for the poor. Combine that with global dislocations and a refugee crisis and the rise of nationalist / racialist rhetoric is inevitable -- particularly when it is fueled by the rich who are desperate to change the subject. It's always the same targets: liberals, socialists, racial and ethnic minorities, religious minorities, the same old litany.

In the 30s it took half of Europe. Post-WW2 the US stopped it with helicopters dropping money via the Marshall Plan. This time the EU doesn't have the money and the US is plagued by half of its political system being saboteurs, so I guess we'll see. Stock up on antibiotics and girls just in case -- they never lose barter value.