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


To: Noel de Leon who wrote (128676)4/8/2004 12:14:15 AM
From: Maurice Winn  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 281500
 
<The added twist of an expected dope shipment is a very twisted and all too plausible idea.>

Noel, the point of the opium/heroin is that the weakness of the USA would thereby be used against them. Counterintuitively, the inclusion of opium/heroin makes the other cargo easier to slip past customs.

Condoleezza will no doubt say that nobody thought of it, just as nobody had thought of hijacking aircraft and using them as weapons of mass destruction. I personally had sat just behind the cockpit on a big airliner and was amazed as I could have just stood up, taken 4 steps and taken over. Of course I didn't say anything to the aircrew because they'd stupidly think I was making a threat.

Similarly, if the FBI gets wind of my dastardly opium/heroin/nukes plan, they'll probably arrest me for planning terrorist attacks, which Condoleezza will say nobody could have predicted. So I won't bother mentioning it to them.

I don't think I've ever had ideas I've expressed to authorities given more time than it takes to toss them in the trash can or delete them from the in-tray. So I don't bother much any more. I just look after number one, other than some minor efforts to be a do-gooder. Quite a few ideas I have offered have come to pass, after great expense and official statements that "We'll investigate and make sure such a thing never happens again", closing of stable doors behind bolted horses and general covering of behinds.

Here's another idea. Don't introduce a draft, which is a criminal, press-ganging, serfdom approach to state power, suitable for medieval Europe Kingdoms. Offer more and more money until the ranks are filled with the talented people who are sought. All the cant about respecting our troops, standing behind them and blah, blah, blah is hypocrisy. Standing behind them is right! Well behind! Out of sight behind!!

Say they want another 200,000 super-duper troops, with brains, ethics, physical talents, enthusiasm, multilingual and other skills. If they offer, say, $300,000 a year with $500,000 per year family income guaranteed in the event of death or serious injury, then that would involve $60,000,000,000 a year. Round it out to $100 billion a year. That's chump change for the USA, with a colossal GDP.

There's no need for conscription. It's pure cheapskate thievery to think of stealing the bodies of involuntary press-ganged serfs.

I'd be interested to hear the case from those in favour of conscription.

I think with that level of payment, it would attract a LOT of talented young men. Forget the women and equal employment drivel. Almost none of them have the necessary abilities or attitudes to do a good job in direct face to face confrontation where muscles matter, though they can no doubt do a good job in back-office roles. Out in the dirt and dust of foxholes, they'd have trouble even peeing! A guy can pee in a Coke bottle and chuck it out into the desert.

Mqurice

PS: The USA could have saved itself a lot of grief by being gung ho for a NUN occupying Saddam's presidential palaces in a constitutional conference. But no, the PNAC Rulz OK plan was put into effect.