Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (259411)	11/11/2005 8:30:59 AM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1576865

"I never did like to take a test this early in the morning... but I'll guess George Bush?" Sorry about that. Oddly enough, the answer is no. The quote is from a speech that General F. S. Maude made when Britain invaded in 1917. The parallels are sort of chilling. They went in under the cover of liberators. They got the League of Nations involved afterwards to give it an air of legitimacy. After a couple of years to stabilize things, they held an election where a king was elected, a constitutional monarchy being the obvious model. After a couple of years, they handed control over to the king, yet still were involved in maintaining security and making sure the king et al didn't make any decisions they didn't like, for example, joining the Axis during WWII. They were there until the 1950's when the British Empire totally unraveled. Went to a lecture last night by Niall Ferguson on "America: from Hegemony to Empire". He is a Brit by birth, a historian by trade. He argues, and persuasively I might add, that the US is an empire in all but name. In his mind, Americans are resistant to the idea for a couple of reasons. For one, they were making very open empire noises until their Philippines experience. That was a quagmire, despite the expectations of rolling in and wrapping things up in days or weeks. The other reason is that a lot of American identity as a country is wrapped up in the Constitution, a very anti-imperial document. That identification with the Constitution is unique among empires, and that means the American empire tends to be more enlightened than others. All in all an interesting evening. Despite his persuasiveness, I don't totally buy into the notion of an imperial US, nor do I see it as a good thing. I do agree with him that the debt is our single biggest problem. And I do agree with him that our incursion into Iraq will almost certainly mean that Iran will become dominant in the Middle East, something that probably wouldn't have happened if we hadn't of stumbled into that mess. I also agree with him that the civil war has already started in Iraq, and we are woefully under-manned to deal with that. He thinks that Iraq will wind up like Ireland, brutal civil war, followed by partitioning and simmering feuds for decades. nrbookservice.com