No matter how bad the regime is, we can make it worse.
We have never learned this collectively in America, because in our own country a guy on the street is typically there for a reason, and no matter what that reason, if he can get one finger on the ledge above him he can pull himself back up, start anew, and make something of himself.
In a world full of anti-Americanism, tens of thousands from around the world pile into the US annually, even as our own government transforms into a police state. Our neighbours across the border and around the world will uniformly take a sh*t on the US at any given opportunity but never hesitate to hold out a hand in times of want. And like a bunch of dupes, like an overindulgent father of some crack-whore ex-sorrority daddy's girl who keeps getting picked up for shoplifting, we always come bail them out.
Daddy makes this mistake, because he erroneously believes that the stupid cunt will change this time. America makes this mistake, because we believe that we are the "keepers" of the world -- often arrogantly, occasionally brutally, and sometimes with the most sincere of intentions. But we are wrong to do so, morally wrong.
Look at our "regime change" in the Phillipines. That country is to the US government as the average welfare mother is to the state of New York. Look at our "regime change" in Cuba. Cuba is to the US like that black sheep in the family that finally got cut off; for a while everyone was worried he'd show up on the doorstep one Thanksgiving, but hell -- the younger kids wouldn't even recognise a picture of him, so just leave it in the past.
For a more concise view of the syndrome I am describing, look no further than our last regime change, Afghanistan:
Right here.
Already the Taliban creeps back into Afghani lives. Already "The soldiers and police who were supposed to be the bedrock of a stable postwar Afghanistan have gone unpaid for months and are drifting away."
And naturally, this is chalked up as a failure of the US. It's our own fault. What we need to do is provide more troops, more money, give them just a little more time, send them some schoolteachers and doctors and while we're at it some new mothers to breastfeed the whole fvcking lot of them for a year or two until they get well and truly back on their feet. Then, they swear, seriously, swear to Allah -- no more Taliban. No more terrorists. Hallelujah, we've seen the light.
The policy of regime change doesn't work, because the tyrannical regimes which are so offensive to most Americans (like FF and myself, two people otherwise who probably could not be more ideologically counter to one another)
would not exist if they were not built on the backs of worthless, spineless, piteous scum who deserve every moment of misery their life affords them.
White, black, hispanic, arabic, aryan, hindu, asian. Rich, poor, middle class. Left, right, middle. Man, woman, child. Regardless of the circumstance of birth, which none of us can control. This isn't about an oil-soaked backwater anymore than it's about the tropical paradise that the Phillipines was for about one micrometer of it's timeline.
These words should be permanently engraved on the hall of every government of every culture which walks this earth from now on, as they are as true today as they were four hundred years ago, and will still be true in four hundred more, in four thousand, and at the end of human civilisation:
"The oppressor has nothing more than the power you confer upon him to destroy you. Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own? How does he have any power over you except through you? How would he dare assail you if he had not cooperation from you?"
--Etienne de la Boetie, 'A Discourse of Voluntary Servitude'
America dared to declare it's independence and freedom from tyranny over two centuries ago, and fought an awful war in which we were outmanned, outgunned, and outclassed by our enemy and in which our support was practically nil. We had the French for military support, hooray. After the first Constitutional Convention the only country on the planet that would recognise the US as a sovereign nation was frickin MORROCCO. Yet from this we rose to become the most prosperous and advanced nation in the history of mankind. Our error in the policy of regime change is rooted in the noble abstract that we want better for fledgling democracies than we had coming up. Parents do the same with their kids; I certainly do so for my own son. But it is folly, plain and simple. Because if these people were worth saving, just like America did they would have gotten the ball rolling on their own years ago.
Things here are on a downward slide; I doubt that anyone on either side of the bipartisan sphere would deny that. We have better things to do with our time, money and the lives of people who dedicate themselves to the preservation of the Constitution and the institutions of liberty than to go sh*t-kicking
a bunch of guys around Iraq on possibly false pretenses. Let Hussein have them, and if the rest of the Arabic world won't recognise an homicidal maniac when they see him coming, let the whole Middle East be transformed into the Union of Secular Islamic Republics. Look how well it worked for the Soviets -- hell, wait twenty-five years and check in on the EU.
Bring the troops home. Bring the money home. Bring the leaders home. Subject Iraq and other nations which make threats to the US, whether or not they can follow through with them, to the same degree of economic and diplomatic quarantine to which we subjected the Soviet Union and it's satellites. Like any parasite, tyranny can only live so long as it has a host. Leave this host lest it infects others. Leave it to die and rot and let it's carcass be an example to future generations if they care to look and learn.
Phaedrus
We have never learned this collectively in America, because in our own country a guy on the street is typically there for a reason, and no matter what that reason, if he can get one finger on the ledge above him he can pull himself back up, start anew, and make something of himself.
In a world full of anti-Americanism, tens of thousands from around the world pile into the US annually, even as our own government transforms into a police state. Our neighbours across the border and around the world will uniformly take a sh*t on the US at any given opportunity but never hesitate to hold out a hand in times of want. And like a bunch of dupes, like an overindulgent father of some crack-whore ex-sorrority daddy's girl who keeps getting picked up for shoplifting, we always come bail them out.
Daddy makes this mistake, because he erroneously believes that the stupid cunt will change this time. America makes this mistake, because we believe that we are the "keepers" of the world -- often arrogantly, occasionally brutally, and sometimes with the most sincere of intentions. But we are wrong to do so, morally wrong.
Look at our "regime change" in the Phillipines. That country is to the US government as the average welfare mother is to the state of New York. Look at our "regime change" in Cuba. Cuba is to the US like that black sheep in the family that finally got cut off; for a while everyone was worried he'd show up on the doorstep one Thanksgiving, but hell -- the younger kids wouldn't even recognise a picture of him, so just leave it in the past.
For a more concise view of the syndrome I am describing, look no further than our last regime change, Afghanistan:
Right here.
Already the Taliban creeps back into Afghani lives. Already "The soldiers and police who were supposed to be the bedrock of a stable postwar Afghanistan have gone unpaid for months and are drifting away."
And naturally, this is chalked up as a failure of the US. It's our own fault. What we need to do is provide more troops, more money, give them just a little more time, send them some schoolteachers and doctors and while we're at it some new mothers to breastfeed the whole fvcking lot of them for a year or two until they get well and truly back on their feet. Then, they swear, seriously, swear to Allah -- no more Taliban. No more terrorists. Hallelujah, we've seen the light.
The policy of regime change doesn't work, because the tyrannical regimes which are so offensive to most Americans (like FF and myself, two people otherwise who probably could not be more ideologically counter to one another)
would not exist if they were not built on the backs of worthless, spineless, piteous scum who deserve every moment of misery their life affords them.
White, black, hispanic, arabic, aryan, hindu, asian. Rich, poor, middle class. Left, right, middle. Man, woman, child. Regardless of the circumstance of birth, which none of us can control. This isn't about an oil-soaked backwater anymore than it's about the tropical paradise that the Phillipines was for about one micrometer of it's timeline.
These words should be permanently engraved on the hall of every government of every culture which walks this earth from now on, as they are as true today as they were four hundred years ago, and will still be true in four hundred more, in four thousand, and at the end of human civilisation:
"The oppressor has nothing more than the power you confer upon him to destroy you. Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own? How does he have any power over you except through you? How would he dare assail you if he had not cooperation from you?"
--Etienne de la Boetie, 'A Discourse of Voluntary Servitude'
America dared to declare it's independence and freedom from tyranny over two centuries ago, and fought an awful war in which we were outmanned, outgunned, and outclassed by our enemy and in which our support was practically nil. We had the French for military support, hooray. After the first Constitutional Convention the only country on the planet that would recognise the US as a sovereign nation was frickin MORROCCO. Yet from this we rose to become the most prosperous and advanced nation in the history of mankind. Our error in the policy of regime change is rooted in the noble abstract that we want better for fledgling democracies than we had coming up. Parents do the same with their kids; I certainly do so for my own son. But it is folly, plain and simple. Because if these people were worth saving, just like America did they would have gotten the ball rolling on their own years ago.
Things here are on a downward slide; I doubt that anyone on either side of the bipartisan sphere would deny that. We have better things to do with our time, money and the lives of people who dedicate themselves to the preservation of the Constitution and the institutions of liberty than to go sh*t-kicking
a bunch of guys around Iraq on possibly false pretenses. Let Hussein have them, and if the rest of the Arabic world won't recognise an homicidal maniac when they see him coming, let the whole Middle East be transformed into the Union of Secular Islamic Republics. Look how well it worked for the Soviets -- hell, wait twenty-five years and check in on the EU.
Bring the troops home. Bring the money home. Bring the leaders home. Subject Iraq and other nations which make threats to the US, whether or not they can follow through with them, to the same degree of economic and diplomatic quarantine to which we subjected the Soviet Union and it's satellites. Like any parasite, tyranny can only live so long as it has a host. Leave this host lest it infects others. Leave it to die and rot and let it's carcass be an example to future generations if they care to look and learn.
Phaedrus
