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Foreign Invaders crisis cost $150B in 2023, forcing some areas to cut police and fire services: report Israel kills head of Hezbollah Intelligence. Status: Not Logged In; Sign In International News See other International News Articles Title: Poland would like a permanent U.S. military base Source: HotAir URL Source: https://hotair.com/archives/2018/05 ... e-permanent-u-s-military-base/ Published: May 28, 2018 Author: Jazz Shaw Post Date: 2018-05-28 19:02:28 by Tooconservative Keywords: None Views: 9146 Comments: 100 Word has leaked out that Poland has delivered a proposal requesting a permanent American military base in their country and they’re willing to put up a couple of billion dollars to help make it happen. What should have been a fairly normal diplomatic request, however, has turned into a complicated mess before it could even be officially announced. Questions were immediately raised as to not only how or if this should happen, but even who came up with the proposal in the first place. (Politico) Poland wants a permanent U.S. military presence — and is willing to pony up as much as $2 billion to get it, according to a defense ministry proposal obtained by Polish news portal Onet. The Polish offer reflects a long-standing desire in Warsaw to build closer security relations with the U.S. and put American boots on the ground. The push dates back to Poland’s entry into NATO in 1999, but has taken on added urgency in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region four years ago and aggressive posture toward the alliance. Coming just over a month before NATO leaders gather in Brussels for a summit, the Polish initiative is bound to anger Russia, and will be looked at with skepticism by European allies that want to improve relations with Moscow, such as Italy and at times Germany. The first, and strangest thing about this proposal is that it was already sent to Washington, but it came directly from the Polish Defense Ministry. That may not sound all that unusual since their Defense Department would obviously be involved in such planning, but Defense never even told their Foreign Ministry about it, nor did they consult with President Andrzej Duda. Much the same as with the United States government, Duda is Poland’s Commander in Chief. You’d think someone would mention it to him before they committed to spending $2B constructing a foreign military base on their own soil. Duda has had a fairly good relationship with President Trump thus far and, as a NATO ally, has taken a bit more of an adversarial approach toward Russia. But that complicates the picture even further. Poland is justifiably worried about the situation with Putin ever since the hostilities in Ukraine began. Poland shares a border with Ukraine and only has Belarus as a buffer between themselves and the Russian border. But given that things are a bit “tense” between us and the Russians at the moment, it makes entering into such an agreement even more complicated. And, of course, the Russians jumped on the story almost immediately expressing their disapproval. (Reuters) The Kremlin said on Monday that gradual NATO military expansion towards its borders did not improve security or stability in Europe as it commented on media reports Poland is seeking to secure a permanent U.S. military presence on its territory. “When we see the gradual expansion of NATO military structures towards our borders…, this of course in no way creates security and stability on the continent,” Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call on Monday. Do we really even need another base over there right now? We’re supposedly focusing on closing and consolidating bases in that region to tighten up the Defense budget. Even with the Poles kicking in a couple of billion, this is still going to cost us some cash and we already have a rotating military presence in their country anyway. We’ve supposedly been on track to close 15 more bases in Europe, including some in Germany, since 2015. Assuming we’re still moving forward with that plan, how do we justify a new base in Poland unless we want to officially ramp up the cold war yet again? We have a solid ally in Poland and cooperation with them probably isn’t a bad idea. But a permanent military base? The benefit to Poland on any number angles is obvious, but I’m not sure what it really does for us. Perhaps we should hold off until Duda has had a chance to make his official position known and set up a call with Trump to discuss this. Poster Comment: The Poles are begging Trump to Make Poland Great Again. I can't recall any of our allies offering to pay billions to build a new base for us to flock to. Maybe the Qataris did for our navy base but I don't recall that they paid either. I think the Poles are hoping to woo us out of Germany where Merkel has gotten more unfriendly and has an embarrassing military. Poland's military is scrappy with good equipment for the most part. Poland would like to be our new military hub in Europe instead of Germany. Post Comment   Private Reply   Ignore Thread   Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 90. #5. To: A Pole (#0) Poland would be a good place to have a base: it would place US forces well forward and provide assurance that Poland will remain free of anybody's domination. Let's put a base there. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-29   6:42:54 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #8. To: Vicomte13 (#5) Let's put a base there. I'd prefer that to our bad ally, Germany. And it is expensive to have bases there. We're closing a few of them already. We can keep our big German base with the advanced hospital facilities, close the rest, and move into Poland/Hungary/Czechoslovakia. Cheaper to base troops there anyway, especially if the Poles help foot the initial cost (which they'll eventually make back due to our basing of troops and equipment there over, say, a ten year period). Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-29   9:33:05 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #9. To: Tooconservative (#8) Even better: get out of Europe and cut the size of the US military sufficient to balance the budget. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-29   9:54:31 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #10. To: Vicomte13 (#9) (Edited) Even better: get out of Europe and cut the size of the US military sufficient to balance the budget. I'm not sure that even I want to get entirely out of Europe. They may need further American supervision of their petty tribal squabbles. I'm still trying to recall any other country that offered us such a deal to build a base in their country. Poland's offer is the only one I can think of. They're willing to cough up $2B. That ain't chicken feed. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-29   10:04:40 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #18. To: Tooconservative (#10) They may need further American supervision of their petty tribal squabbles. What are we,their daddies? Let them settle their own shit,and just deal with the survivors if they don't want to listen to verbal reasoning and/or the UN. In some cases,like any case involving Muslims,sell or even give infantry weapons to anyone killing them. Including both sides of any Muslim vs Muslim conflict. sneakypete  posted on  2018-05-29   10:27:51 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #19. To: sneakypete (#18) In some cases,like any case involving Muslims,sell or even give infantry weapons to anyone killing them. All of those boat people coming from Africa, and those people coming out of Syria. Put them in camps, train them as a military, fully arm them, and send them back with a supply line to overthrow the oppressive regimes they fled and take over. Then they go home and stay there. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-29   10:29:29 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #24. To: Vicomte13, sneakypete (#19) All of those boat people coming from Africa, and those people coming out of Syria. Put them in camps, train them as a military, fully arm them, and send them back with a supply line to overthrow the oppressive regimes they fled and take over. Then they go home and stay there. I thought we tried that. Didn't they call it the Bay of Pigs?     : ) We've tried it elsewhere too, along with setting up our own fake governments-in-exile and all the rest. That is how we got into Iraq to begin with. Maybe this is the kind of thing we should try to avoid. All our meddling in troublespots like the Mideast seem to bring rather bad results. Reagan was smart enough to keep out of it, at least he was after the Beirut airport bombing. If we only make things worse, we should try to minimize or eliminate our presence in these countries. Other than trying to stabilize them against organized bandit/terrorist elements like ISIS, we should play no roles and keep very quiet. I still don't know how we will ever get out of Afghanistan. It's a real problem, our special forces are being exhausted by these unending campaigns. We can't win a final victory over the Pashtun/Taliban unless we kill every last one of them. And they won't ever give up the fight until we leave. Then they subjugate Kabul and the rest of Afghanistan and reimpose full sharia law. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-29   14:44:06 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #36. To: Tooconservative, Vicomte13, sneakypete (#24) I thought we tried that. Didn't they call it the Bay of Pigs? In Machiavelli there are answers to almost all political questions, (the most of them in his Discourses on Livy): How dangerous it is to trust to the representations of exiles. It seems to me not amiss to speak here of the danger of trusting to the representations of men who have been expelled from their country, this being a matter that all those who govern states have to act upon almost daily; and I touch upon it the more willingly, as Titus Livius gives a most memorable instance of it, though in a measure foreign to the subject he treats upon. When Alexander the Great went with his army into Asia, Alexander of Epirus, his brother-in-law and uncle, came with his army into Italy, having been called there by the banished Lucanians, who had held out the hope to him that by their means he would be able to seize that whole country; and when Alexander, upon their assurances and the hopes held out by them, had come into Italy, they killed him, because they had been promised by the citizens of Lucania permission to return to their homes if they would assassinate Alexander. We see, then, how vain the faith and promises of men are who are exiles from their own country. As to their faith, we have to bear in mind that, whenever they can return to their country by other means than your assistance, they will abandon you and look to the other means, regardless of their promises to you. And as to their vain hopes and promises, such is their extreme desire to return to their homes that they naturally believe many things that are not true, and add many others on purpose; so that, with what they really believe and what they say they believe, they will fill you with hopes to that degree that if you attempt to act upon them you will incur a fruitless expense, or engage in an undertaking that will involve you in ruin. The example of Alexander of Epirus, just cited, will suffice to prove the truth of this; but I will add that of Themistocles the Athenian, who, having been declared a rebel, fled to Darius in Asia, and made such representations and promises to him if he would attack Greece, that Darius allowed himself to be persuaded to undertake it. But when Themistocles found that he could not fulfil those promises, he poisoned himself, either from shame or from the fear of punishment. And if so eminent a man as Themistocles could commit so great an error, we may judge to what extent men of less virtue allow themselves to be misled by their desires and their passions. A prince therefore should be slow in undertaking any enterprise upon the representations of exiles, for he will generally gain nothing by it but shame and serious injury. And as cities are rarely taken by surprise or by means of secret intelligence with those within, it seems to me it will not be out of place if I treat of this in the following chapter, and at the same time give some account of the method practised by the Romans in taking cities. (Discourses, 2nd book, chapter XXXI) A Pole  posted on  2018-05-30   3:29:05 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #38. To: A Pole (#36) My writings often resemble Machiavelli in their political realism. They are not popular here among the moralists. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-30   9:36:55 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #39. To: Vicomte13 (#38) They are not popular here among the moralists. Nothing but the Party Line is ever popular with moralists. That way they can avoid having to do all that hard thinking stuff. sneakypete  posted on  2018-05-30   21:01:53 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #40. To: sneakypete (#39) They are not popular here among the moralists. You're agreeing with Vic who only a few posts back on this thread was suggesting the way to solve the Pashtun problem in Af/Pak is by using bacteriological weapons to poison their water supplies and create a genocide, confining the intended victims within their geographical area until they all die, then resettling the land. If that isn't a Final Solution, I don't know what is. I suppose that makes me a hopeless moralist to some people who have no problem with the idea of America applying Nazi extermination policies to entire populations. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-30   22:03:12 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #42. To: Tooconservative (#40) (Edited) I suppose that makes me a hopeless moralist to some people who have no problem with the idea of America applying Nazi extermination policies to entire populations. The Nazis were neither as smart nor as technologically advanced as we are. Nor were their enemies as deserving of death as ours are. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-31   10:52:34 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #44. To: Vicomte13 (#42) The Nazis were neither as smart nor as technologically advanced as we are. So we could kill them all off as long as we were subtle about it and maintained a veneer of plausible deniability. Nor were their enemies as deserving of death as ours are. An arbitrary distinction that doesn't mask the actual policy of appropriation of private property, genocide, and illegal population transfers. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-31   11:01:52 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #45. To: Tooconservative (#44) (Edited) So we could kill them all off as long as we were subtle about it and maintained a veneer of plausible deniability. An arbitrary distinction that doesn't mask the actual policy of appropriation of private property, genocide, and illegal population transfers. You've gotta break some eggs to make an omelet. They started a war by attacking me. They are the enemies. I want my enemies dead. They inflicted loss on me and mine. Taking their stuff after they are dead compensates somewhat for the costs they inflicted on me. None of it had to happen at all if they had not attacked me and tried to kill me. But they did. And they failed. Now I have the right to kill them, and anybody who picks up a weapon to fight alongside of them. They started it. I'll finish it. We both could have lived. You leave me alone, I'll certainly leave you alone. But if you attack me and mine, you are going to die. And anybody who takes your side is going to die with you. That's the way it is. If God doesn't like it, he can intervene to stop it. The Muslims are relying on him to do so. Now, of course, I can't actually unleash a descolada on them. If I could, I would have already. Since I cannot permanently solve the problem, I'll just continue to politically support a forever war on them, and whatever sort of internal surveillance and intelligence is necessary to stop the Muslims from ever doing it again - their human rights are superseded by my right to protect myself, to the extent necessary. I'll support the party that keeps the army in the field over there, and the pay the taxes to do so, and support the military and intelligence that does so. I'll do so until I get war weary and am ready to give up. I'm nowhere near war weary there. Nope. War in Afghanistan is not really all that expensive. And it's hands on combat training for the troops. I will that it should continue for as long as it takes. That could very well be forever, just like the war on organized crime. There will always be more criminals, so we will always be at war with them. We will never be able to disarm the police and close the prisons. Likewise, we will have to keep an armed paramilitary in the field forever, for all ages, and pay for it by taxes, because the alternative - letting the criminals win - is unacceptable. In Afghanistan it's the military versus the domestic paramilitary. Other than that, I see no distinction. If we have to be there forever, then we're there forever. We have the money for it. It's very much like Israel and the Palestinians. The Palestinians claim they will fight forever. Ok. Then they'll have to be fought forever. Budget for it, and do it. Some enemies are a chronic disease that has to be managed on an ongoing basis by force. Force costs money. So you raise the taxes and spend the money in perpetuity. So be it. So what? Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-31   11:23:15 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #47. To: Vicomte13 (#45) (Edited) They started a war by attacking me. They are the enemies. I want my enemies dead. They tolerated a rich Saudi who had inherited about $300M that he spent on clinics/schools. Especially fundamentalist schools. Bin Laden attacked us from his Afghan compounds where he was comparable to a minor warlord. There is no evidence that the Taliban government knew or approved of his 9/11 attack. Our invasion of Afghanistan was to eliminate him and his gang of terrorists. In Afghanistan it's the military versus the domestic paramilitary. Other than that, I see no distinction. If we have to be there forever, then we're there forever. We have the money for it. We are exhausting our special forces across the Mideast. It's a serious problem for the Pentagon who have issued repeated warnings that we are overstretched. Now, of course, I can't actually unleash a descolada on them. If I could, I would have already. Fine. You admit what your moral standard actually is. And it sounds a lot like being a Nazi to me. I'm not sure why you're using an obscure term from an old sci-fi novel to disguise your real intent. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-31   11:59:09 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #48. To: Tooconservative (#47) We are exhausting our special forces across the Mideast. It's a serious problem for the Pentagon who have issued repeated warnings that we are overstretched. Hire more. The country is full of young poor people who want a way out. So create the job, fund it, train them. If you create the force structure, the people will come to fill it. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-31   12:22:32 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #50. To: Vicomte13 (#48) Hire more. The country is full of young poor people who want a way out. So create the job, fund it, train them. If you create the force structure, the people will come to fill it. 75% of America's young people are physically unfit for military service. We've been told this repeatedly. And the ones who are fit enough have a lot of other choices. Were it not for family loyalties to serve in the military, I think we'd already be in deep trouble with staffing special forces. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-31   12:35:50 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #52. To: Tooconservative (#50) 75% of America's young people are physically unfit for military service. We've been told this repeatedly. No we haven't. We're told that 71% of youth are not fit for military service, for all reasons, including lack of a high school diploma, criminal records, ear adornments. A great number of the requirements are simply the prejudices of the guys who run the military enacted into requirements. Change the requirements, and you can fill the ranks. The other big reason is obesity, but that's not a reason at all. You can extend basic training to include a fitness period, and within a year any young person can be fit for military service. Sure, as with all other things, if the pinheads who currently set the standards are allowed to continue to enforce their own prejudices, we can make it such that nobody can qualify, but if we need to qualify huge numbers of people, we can, by opening up the standards. Physical fitness is something that can simply be imposed upon young people, no matter how fat they are, by controlling their food supply and making them exercise. Yeah, you won't get combat ready in six weeks. It may take a year, but you certainly can get there, if you need to. But if we don't change the standards and have insufficient special forces, we can buy a lot more drones and fly them all over those valleys, day and night, and zap whoever moves. We're in Afghanistan to stay. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-31   13:10:04 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #55. To: Vicomte13 (#52) No we haven't. We're told that 71% of youth are not fit for military service, for all reasons, including lack of a high school diploma, criminal records, ear adornments. We read reports from the military in recent years that they're simply too fat, too physically limited, or in too delicate health to be soldiers. The numbers are worse than you admit. And that is for ordinary military service, not even addressing the high need for recruits with the physical and mental qualities of special forces troops. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-31   13:21:54 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #57. To: Tooconservative (#55) they're simply too fat, too physically limited, or in too delicate health to be soldiers Fixable: you make the induction training longer. And you rely ever more heavily on drones, which don't require fitness. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-31   13:24:10 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #60. To: Vicomte13 (#57) Fixable: you make the induction training longer. And you rely ever more heavily on drones, which don't require fitness. Drones can't do everything. And the military and public have limits to what they'll tolerate in the way of real killing robots on the ground. You still need capable and hardy soldiers, and especially soldiers with the qualities of special forces fighters. You don't replace special forces so easily from a crop of overweight gender-bending tattoo freaks who hang out on Facebook all the time. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-31   13:54:53 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #61. To: Tooconservative (#60) And the military and public have limits to what they'll tolerate in the way of real killing robots on the ground. You still need capable and hardy soldiers, and especially soldiers with the qualities of special forces fighters. You don't replace special forces so easily from a crop of overweight gender-bending tattoo freaks who hang out on Facebook all the time. Oh well. We're still not getting out of Afghanistan anytime soon. So the folks who grouse will have to keep on grousing. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-31   13:58:38 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #62. To: Vicomte13 (#61) There's nothing at stake there really, other than national pride. At what point do you finally admit that you have no real interests in some backward country? I also think that Pakistan will never let us have a victory there. They have their own primary geostrategic outlook and they have a stake in keeping Afghanistan as it is currently due to their overarching concern over war with India. To ever fix Afghanistan, you'd have to invade Pakistan as well and then invade/occupy Waziristan and the other border tribal areas. IOW, an operation much bigger than even Vietnam was. And one more likely to fail. Until we face that, we'll keep throwing away lives in Af-Pak for no good reason. And I don't believe you can retain quality military personnel in a fight that they know you don't intend to actually win. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-31   14:06:30 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #63. To: Tooconservative (#62) (Edited) There's nothing at stake there really, other than national pride. Maybe. I look at it differently, but given the "Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out" "Napalm the ashes" approach I took above, I can't really talk seriously on this subject on this thread. My actual "if I were President" position is...I would have to see the actual intelligence, all of the secret stuff that I don't know and can't glean from the news. Afghanistan is an odd deployment, in an odd place. I have pretty good - not absolute, but pretty good - confidence in our intelligence/national security folks to have good assessments of what is going on in an essentially non- political theater like Afghanistan. (I have considerably less confidence in them on a central theater such as Ukraine, where they all have such deep- seated animus to the IDEA of making peace with Russia that I think it severely clouds their professional judgment and the intelligence they give is biased and unreliable - and that they themselves don't realize it, because they are such "true believers".) IN Afghanistan and Somalia I think they have pretty good intel. I suspect that, given Obama's campaigning to get out, then his actual escalation and entrenchment there, and given Trump's silence on the place, that there are very good, strong, rational reasons why partisans of far poles both realize we need to stay. Nor do I get the sense that there's a Vietnam-style "bamboozle the people" campaign going on with regards to Afghanistan. I suspect that by sitting there as we are that there are some very important things getting done that fit importantly into our overall security posture. Now, if I were Deckard, I'd go negative and think that it has to do with clandestine profits on the opium trade being used to fund black ops all over the place. I expect that there is SOME of that going on, but that that is not the reason why we persist under W, then Obama, and now Trump. So, my ACTUAL position is that I do not have enough real information to fully understand why we are dug in there. I don't believe it to be merely a matter of pride. I don't see Obama or Trump as being Nixonian figures, and I don't see Obama in particular doubling down there so hard MERELY over matters of national pride. So, I think that the reason we're in Afghanistan is an unknown unknown that I don't have access to, but that the President does, and that successive Presidents have taken a rational decision to remain, one they do not articulate because the reasons themselves are at least partially clandestine. Therefore, I cannot say in truth exactly what I would do about Afghanistan. I don't have the information to make a real assessment. That's an actual answer - not a glib "Kill 'em all" answer. That is what I would actually do, were I President. Were I running for President, until I see the inside data and understand what, exactly we are doing there at a clandestine level, I can't form an opinion. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-31   17:16:32 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #64. To: Vicomte13 (#63) Afghanistan is an odd deployment, in an odd place. It's a bad deployment in a completely pointless place. There can be no victory there because there is nothing to win. Not for us. There wasn't anything there worth Britain's or Russia's efforts to conquer it either. It's an annoying place but that is no reason to try to garrison that graveyard of empires. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-31   17:22:22 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #65. To: Tooconservative (#64) It's a bad deployment in a completely pointless place. I know you truly believe that. I have no basis on which to form such a strong judgment. I need to see the facts that drive our decision, and given that those are Top Secret, unless God starts talking to me about such things (these are not the things God and I talk about, if you're wondering), then there isn't any way I'm going to know. So I'm either going to have to form a judgment that I know is uninformed, or I'm going to just have to trust the national leadership. In this case, I do trust the national leadership. W, Obama and Trump - three vastly different men from three different poles of the political universe - all maintained the deployment. I believe there's an actual reason for that, and I also believe that I will never know the reason for sure, not for many years. For now, I give the Trump Administration the benefit of the doubt. Whatever changed Obama's mind seems to have likewise influenced Trump's. Both of those men are pretty smart, in my estimation, and I think they probably made the right call so far. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-31   17:39:48 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #66. To: Vicomte13 (#65) W, Obama and Trump - three vastly different men from three different poles of the political universe - all maintained the deployment. Then why can't they articulate a reason for us to be there? Churchill and FDR never had much problem telling us why we needed to fight the Nazis or the Nips. Maybe you're way too trusting. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-31   18:03:11 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #81. To: Tooconservative (#66) Then why can't they articulate a reason for us to be there? Because the reason itself is secret. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-06-01   11:15:56 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #82. To: Vicomte13 (#81) Because the reason itself is secret. A fundamentally un-American idea, that the citizens should tolerate wars whose reasons to drag on for over a decade are that the cause of the war is "secret". It's illegitimate to have secret wars or wars where you lie about your war objectives. You've abandoned democracy entirely at that point. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-06-01   11:26:08 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #84. To: Tooconservative (#82) A fundamentally un-American idea, that the citizens should tolerate wars whose reasons to drag on for over a decade are that the cause of the war is "secret". It's illegitimate to have secret wars or wars where you lie about your war objectives. You've abandoned democracy entirely at that point. I'm a French aristocrat and a (bastard) Dutch Royal. "Democracy" is a system of choosing leaders to me, not an ideal that inspires passion for its own sake. I want good, effective, intelligent leadership that fulfills my moral imperative. I think that can come just as easily, maybe more easily, from a Catholic absolute monarch as from a democracy. If I were to pick the one single element of national government that is most likely to be correlated with a stable, peaceful land - whatever the culture - it would be monarchy. When I look at Europe, the Americas and Asia, I see this borne out, albeit imperfectly. That said, history has bequeathed us a democratic republic, so that's what I live and that's what we have to work with. When it comes to the reason we're in Afghanistan, I think it probably has to do with aspects of anti-terror security and surveillance of Russian and Chinese and Iranian and Pakistani activities, and that all of those reasons are clandestine. I don't think that the public would have anything useful to say on the matter, but that the exposure to the public of the fact of it by a vote would focus attention on it and make the efforts themselves less successful. I don't know this for sure, but it is the feeling of it. The war there is not very expensive or bloody for us anymore - our current casualties there are comparable to the casualties experienced by domestic law enforcement in the US, so I consider the losses to be acceptable on an "in perpetuity" basis. You're an ideologue about democracy. I think it would have been better for the British monarchy to have reasonably settled the issues with the American colonies and for us to be the Dominion of America. But history belongs to the victors, and we have what we have. The Constitutional structure we have works ok, so I'm not interested in changing the system. That said, that there are things that have to be kept secret from the public because of the broader national security interests is obvious to me, and I am not outraged by it the way you are. It does not press any sensitive ideological button for me. I'm a lawyer. I don't think businesses would operate as well, or the legal system, without professional secrecy. And while I don't like excessive secrecy in government, I think that a high level of secrecy when it comes to tracking down and killing bad guys is necessary for us to be able to do it. And I was there at Ground Zero on 9/11 and directly experienced what happens when those sorts of efforts fail. So "fundamentally un-American?" There are those who say the same thing about Catholicism. In that case, I am "fundamentally un-American". So what? There are shitty and stupid things about America that I don't like, and would change if I could. National security secrecy is not one of them. Law enforcement secrecy, on the other hand, I would absolutely eviscerate. Terrorists who bring down buildings in Manahattan need to be spied on, and maybe tortured, to prevent that. The government has to have the power to do that in secret. But stopping people from smoking pot and snorting crack is not an important enough national goal to permit the intolerable level of police intrusion into private life that we have. I would rather legalize all drugs and accept the death toll on an ongoing basis than allow the level of internal police power and aggressiveness we currently experience. I don't think that level of police aggression and obsession with Prussian-style police authority is anti-American - I think it is quintessentially American - and one of the shittiest and worse features of the American character, something about America and Americanism that I would like to see erased. I don't like wars that drag, but law enforcement and its casualties drag on forever until the end of time, and that's about the level of loss we're currently sustaining in Afghanistan, which means that really we're just policing it. Cops get killed in Kansas, and they get killed in Kabul. That's the price of maintaining authority. Oh well. I find it acceptable, and I don't draw an ideological line between doing it over there or doing it here, or any of the Anglo-Saxon nonsense about posse this or standing that. It's all guns pointed at people by men in uniform who serve the sovereign. It's not different, not really. The question to me is: does the REASON we're pointing guns at people to make them obey make sense? To stop terrorists, yes, that makes sense. To stop gays from parading? No, that makes no sense. I don't see the government lying much about the war objective. They say it's the "War on Terror". That's right, grosso modo. It's not that expensive, and I think the government officials doing it know what they are doing, in this case. It makes sense to me. The war on pot is insane. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-06-01   12:46:37 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #85. To: Vicomte13 (#84) all of those reasons are clandestine What about the profits? A Pole  posted on  2018-06-01   13:00:36 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #90. To: A Pole (#85) What about the profits? I don't think there's much in the way of profit coming to the US out of Afghanistan. Sure, a little heroin money to fund CIA black ops to keep Congress - and maybe even in the President - in the dark. That's not ok, but what're you really gonna do? Boys will be boys. I don't think that some back shop US intelligence agencies are controlling the world's opiod trade through Afghanistan. Deckard might have an article on that, but I wouldn't believe it no matter who printed it, except maybe the New York Times? Afghanistan ain't a profit center. We're there for security, intelligence and grand strategic military reasons, and it costs us a lot. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-06-01   15:14:30 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   Replies to Comment # 90. #92. To: Vicomte13 (#90) Sure, a little heroin money How much? A Pole  posted on  2018-06-01 15:29:02 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   End Trace Mode for Comment # 90. Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest

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