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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: aladin who wrote (122957)	1/9/2004 3:55:39 PM
From: marcos	Respond to of 281500

'If I kept responding to posts you made with trite comments about something you hadn't even argued' John, you just did that, and you're replying to a post in which i called you on it -g- .... but all right, fair enough, i did not do much reading before responding to those two lines of yours, i plead shortness of time and the General Chaos of Life ..... it follows from that however, that my motivation was your two lines, not 'to defend this idiot' ..... thing is, this thread is so split between advocates and opponents of the neocon Roll Them Tanks Early Roll Them Tanks Often programme, that fine distinctions between our myriad classes of idiots can get ground beneath the tracks - often i find myself disagreeing with points made by Jacob, Win, just about everybody else here, but comes time to post and the greater more glaring disagreement rises to the fore .... such is life, i guess eh Can't see where Jacob says anything here about euro exclusivity - #reply-19664938 ... just looks to me like he feels their alternative to neocon Roll Em policy is superior, that he'd like to see it emulated to some degree by his country ...... he may have a point - i own a track machine by the way, big heavy snorting iron thing not unlike a tank in some respects, great fun to operate and you certainly get visible concrete results in a hurry, however my wife would never permit me to weed the rosebed with it ..... now i could defy her wishes, i clearly have the horsepower to do so, however on anticipating the results of such an action, i tend to reflect that it would be better not having to eat my own cooking till the end of time, and i nuance it up like the suaveist frenchman you ever did see, don't necessarily take the earplugs out but i nod and smile so she thinks we're having a 'dialogue' [we call this Diplomacy], then go bulldoze something less controversial [we call this Peace] foreveryactionthereisanequalandoppositereaction@nuanceton.motionlaw.int

To: aladin who wrote (122957)	1/9/2004 5:15:13 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

hear, hear. from someone on a parallel track of argument, having received the same irrelevant sneers from Win. He can't bother to read the posts he responds to; then at least he could have sneered on topic.

To: aladin who wrote (122957)	1/10/2004 12:32:01 PM
From: Noel de Leon	Respond to of 281500

"If you look at the orginal post I was responding to - it was making the preposterous claim that the emergence of freedom and democracy in eastern and southern Europe was an entirely North Western European phenomena." Nonsense, read your own post. Win is saying that the European model is better(...American influence "freeing the east" is pretty debatable."). Has nothing to do with claiming that "...the emergence of freedom and democracy in eastern and southern Europe was an entirely North Western European phenomena." Here the key word that destroys your own argument is "entirely". Remove "entirely" and you two can agree to disagree on the relative influence of US and European models on democracy in the southern(?) and eastern Europe. "If you want to look at the original 3 posts: Message 19664938 With this tidbit: Europe has a much better model, of how to spread democracy and liberalism, than the U.S. Europe has steadily, incrementally, spread democracy from NW Europe, to the south and east. To which I responded: Message 19667422 With the exception of Spain and Portugal, Europe did nothing to spread democracy south and east. The Balkans are the most current example of European impotence. American influence freed the east and permitted democratic movements to take hold. Provacative? Yes, but no more so than the one to which it responded. Now you enter the thread with: Message 19668086 Not that I want to get into the problem of conservative dogma masquerading as history, but American influence "freeing the east" is pretty debatable. The immediate cause of the collapse of the East German government was the mass exodus of Ossies to West Germany . The freedom of movement that allowed this to happen arguably owes a lot more to the long term effects of Kissinger's détente and its predecessor, Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik, than it does to Reagan era saber-rattling. American influence had its part, but Europe played a role too. I know it's the holiest of conservative dogma that "Reagan won the cold war", and if your version of "history" has to fit on a bumper sticker, I guess that's ok. But that version of history willfully ignores a lot of conventional reality. Not that that's unusual or anything. The other issue here is that the local never-ending demonization of Germany for not getting with the W program totally ignores the tremendous effort and expense involved in German reunification. Anyway, Germany is hardly unique in not getting with the program, most of the rest of the world doesn't much hold with it."

To: aladin who wrote (122957)	1/10/2004 6:25:11 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

To clarify: The successfull European model for extending democracy and liberalism, is the European Community (and its precursors, the Common Market and Coal and Steel Community). That's what I was referring to. Before then, Europe tried all the wrong ways to create unity, and they all ended in bloody disaster. In fact, it is precisely the disasters of WW1 and WW2 and the Soviet Empire, which created the conditions necessary for the success of today's Community. The Germans, the center of the Community, who pay most of the bills, they are pacifists and multilateralists. If the Germans had not given up their previous militant nationalism, the Community couldn't exist. Does it take a disaster as bad as WW1 and WW2, to get a nation to see the futility of using force in international relations? If so, the future for the U.S. is bleak. The U.S. is, today, committed to maintaining "order" and "stability" in the world, the same way the Roman Emperors did, the same way Napolean and Stalin did. Little defeats, like Vietnam, apparently aren't enough for any permanent change in our national habits. Having learned nothing, we will go on to bigger disasters.