Big Ol' Smitty

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I think technically the boomer sub crews and the pilots and missile guys for STRATCOM are the deadliest.

In fact, my new biggest pet peeve, now that I've finally gotten over Iraq, is the US decision to back the Ethiopian overthrow of the ICU in Somalia in '06. It's quite ironic, I think, that Osama Bin Hidin' recently called for the overthrow of Somalia's new president, who was head of the ICU and was deposed because of, yep, the ICU's purported Islamist "extremism."

I don't think I'm doing that, but it may have come off that way. It was intended more as a response to what I saw as XC's portrayal of the US as some sort of megalomaniacal villain. I think if you revisit my posting history, you'll see that I've been a frequent critic of historical and contemporary US foreign policy. I could list wars, interventions, coups, and other various and assorted machinations that I don't like all day.

The problem with goldengreek's defense of himself can be found here.

I pretty much agree with everything Nightwing said--pretty much as usual. I might quibble with the empire part, but I think we pretty much agree on everything but nomenclature. Don't get me wrong, XC, I think American foreign policy has been quite misguided at times. I just don't view it as this singular evil throughout its history. America was not even that active on an international role until around the turn of the 20th century. American foreign policy also has a lot to be proud of: from its role in stopping German militarism in WWI, fighting fascism, Naziism, and Japanese expansion in WW2 to rebuilding Europe and Japan after that war. And even though I may disagree with a number of foreign policy steps taken during the Cold War, I think the ultimate goal and accomplishment of containing communism was an unequivocal good. Finally, I think having a hegemon is a pretty good thing--based on my understanding of hegemonic stability theory. Basically, this theory says that global collective goods (a free sea, global reserve currency, regulated trade, etc.) are underprovided unless a single group or small group of actors picks up the slack. Since in IR, even a small group of actors usually have trouble getting along, it usually falls to the hegemon to provide those goods. I think this is borne out historically, as periods of a single country's primacy have generally been prosperous: from the Pax Romana to the Pax Brittania to the relative peace of the period of post-Cold War American primacy.

Big news today as the most badass plane in the world crashed. These things clock in at just under $150 million a pop, not counting the tremendous development costs, and we're going to have less than 200 of them probably--so a crash is a huge freaking deal. They're also the subject of considerable procurement controversy, which you can read about here, among lots of other places. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123802321736442009.html

Recent news has made Georgia look way more culpable in provoking the summer war than the media let on at the time: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/...,615160,00.html

*picture of goldengreek giving tard stare into camera with douchey bros* goldengreek

It sounds kind of Soviet.

Well, yeah, obviously I was making a generalization there. I was referring particularly to this thread.

One odd thing about this argument is that it's the religious folks who are engaging in moral relativism. "Well, that's just MY system of beliefs. Who are you to question my opinions?" while the more secular, pro-gay crowd is more like, "I don't care about your personal beliefs, it's wrong to be mean to gay people."

I'm completely okay with renaming the DOD the Department of Imperial Affairs, since that's pretty much what it is. It seems pretty stupid to have a "Department of Defense" and a "Department of Homeland Security." What's the difference? Well one defends us, and the other secures the homeland. WTF? And I'm becoming increasingly convinced that our far flung military bases are mostly a good thing, with, perhaps, the exception of those in the Middle East.

Read the court's opinion in US vs Carlton, and then get back to me.

Agree with Byron on how much the GRE sucks and with still fly on how much the LSAT sucks. VX, I work for an education grad program--tops in the state. Of course, the state is KY. Anyway, if you're interested in the Bluegrass region I could fill you in.

Happy to. MAD, or mutually assured destruction, was a theory of nuclear weapon utilization developed during the Cold War. You can wikipedia it, but, basically the US and USSR knew that if one used nukes on the other they were gonna get blown up. It's really scary, but it led to stability and, well, the Cold War staying cold. Missile defense throws MAD--and the stability that came with MAD--out the window. Developing a reliable missile defense would allow an aggressor to lob ballistic missiles at a target, even a target with second strike capability, with no fear of retribution. Even technologies that seem purely "defensive" in theory can have offensive purposes. Think of a wall. Yes, a wall protects me from you. But I can also run out and smack you and then run behind my wall for defense, or throw rocks at you from behind my wall with little fear of retribution.

If you understand MAD, missile defense isn't just a defense. Luckily for Russia, though, it's pretty much just an unreliable, expensive boondoggle.

So, we talk a lot about domestic and economic policy here and, frankly, that's boring to me. I want to discuss foreign policy and national security. Let's start with Russia. They've recently invaded Georgia, engaged in naval exercises with Venezuela, sent bombers to Cuba, bribed the Kyrgyz government to shut down a US airbase, and announced plans for significantly modernizing their military. The Obama Administrations has pushed for a "reset" of US-Russian relations and tried to get Russia to cooperate on the Iranian nuclear issue by holding out the possibility of removing missile defense installations from the Czech Republic and Poland (which the administration probably doesn't even care about anyway). Is Russia a potential threat to US security? How should the US respond to these seemingly aggressive actions by the Ruskies, if at all? How gangsta is Vlad Putin?

You're too fucking cheap to gamble.

No. But to say it's not my business is a little over the top. I didn't say who your child marries isn't your business, I said gay people's personal lives aren't your business. I said this in response to 909's diatribe on the "grossness" of male homosexuality. (Although I think parents who disown/disdain their gay children can fuck right off.)

I'm a little taken aback by the disdain for Creep, Under the Bridge, and STP.

So if, let's say, you didn't want your child to marry a Muslim, should you try to ban all interreligious marriages?

Yeah, I can definitely see that. That's why I'll create confrontational threads here while I probably wouldn't be as confrontational with a religious friend in KY.

No, I guess that Southern Baptist upbringing rubbed off on me ever so slightly.