My reaction is "Where's the paragraph about the Japanese soldier who was prosecuted after WWII as a war criminal for dunking an American soldier to get him to talk and being convicted and committed to 15 years hard labour"? There was such a paragraph in the news item I saw about that yesterday. Maybe it was a different article by somebody else.
Another reaction is that America fighting the crusades over there is problematic because the real cause for human wars is alpha male territorial dominance hierarchies in genocidal tribal conflict for hunter-gatherer and mating rights.
That process has been encoded as a summary of history into human DNA so strongly that people not at war organize pretend wars, like rugby, gridiron, soccer, cricket and easily get lured into wars when they have no need of hunter gathering and mating, but their territory is fiddled with, or they want adjacent territory, compulsively, mindlessly, just because is.
They are megalomaniacs acting out their millions of years of hard-wired, encoded DNA, stimulated in the crucible of a wayward childhood where they had to compete, often violently, and were not properly brought up to soothe the savage beast.
That cause, over eons, resulted from the breeding capacity of humans and chimps to overburden their hunting and mating grounds with lots of spare young males who either went and got more land of their own. Or, they would gang together and take over the existing tribe, doing away with the established order.
The first is far preferable to the second, for the alpha male establishment of chimps or humans. So, the spare young males were sent out to the borders to skirmish, or conduct all-out-war with the neighbouring tribes, who are doing the same.
The human imperative became to breed flat out so that the tribe had more young blokes than the adjacent tribe. To breed flat out required territory, which would enable the tribe and warriors to be more numerous and therefore more successful.
It was the opposite of a virtuous circle. It was a spiral of continuous mass death by war. It was the four forces of the apocalypse expressed in one of the four horses of the apocalypse. It helped create human intelligence. So in one way, it was good - the crucible of genocidal war was a major driver of human alchemy.
So to the present.
USA, and the rest of us, versus Islamic "Rule the World" Jihad.
Islamic Jihad and the mullahs are just carrying out their chimp-like DNA-driven propensities. They think it's a divine admiration of Allah. In fact they are just homo sapiens sapiens, not hssn, [homo sapiens sapines nouveau], carrying out their breeding and mating rites, driven by their atavistic avaricious manias throbbing in the base of their brains. They offer each other a patina of "for the glory of Go-", but it's just monkeyness on a grand scale.
They are in fact crowded. They are in fact low on hunter-gatherer resources despite their oil supplies, with poverty common. They would love to have 70 virgins, but they are all taken, what with harems and four women to a bloke in the establishment. They have got to do the eons-old thing, go to the borders and establish new lands and get new girls. It's a natural imperative they are playing out.
In the other corner, weighing 400 lb, is the undisputed heavy-weight champion of the world, Uncle Sam. Sam has reach, firepower, height, money, friends, and likes a good fight, also being monkey-brained.
But, Uncle Sam has NOT been breeding like a bunny. He does NOT have hordes of spare young males. His tribal mates are operating on the principle "The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth" and are clicking away in cyberspace for $100,000 a year. They are busy. They have girls if they want them. They don't have a child production imperative as they are safe behind Uncle Sam.
Uncle Sam has to hire his team of supporters, and pay 10 x as much as Islamic Jihad, just by way of a signing bonus, let alone ongoing salary and running costs, keeping his team in the manner to which they've become accustomed. And his team does NOT want to die. They are thinking of it more as a footy game, where they'll have play, pay, then go home and watch re-runs on tv with their families.
Even with 300 million in the tribe, Uncle Sam doesn't have the numbers needed to take on 1 billion over there, in a sportsman-like way, in which operations are confined to Queensberry rules for them, but Calvin-ball for Islamic Jihad.
If the rest of the world joined in, our side would have the numbers, but few of the others wish to go right into the middle of the Islamic Jihad tribe and fight Queensberry rules against Islamic Jihad Calvin Ball, with suicide bombing included and huge numbers of spare, low value, young Islamic Jihad males with nothing to lose, reputation to gain, and possibly 70 virgins in the hereafter.
The rest of the world thinks "Better to meet them at our borders" if they can cross the mountain, swim the ocean. Or the rest of the world naively don't realize what's going on - umpty million of the Islamic Jihad team are in Europe, and the Europeans think things are hunky dory, although they are now being killed one by one, in the style of Van Gogh, or bus-full by train-load. By the school-full in Beslan.
Plus, the rest of the world thinks, as the Americans said of the USSR and Afghanistan "Let's give them their own Vietnam". [Brzezinski] Which was a big mistake. Helping Osama against Gorby turned out to be not all that bright [and it seemed stupid at the time = to me anyway].
Not long later, Osama turned to the USA and gave them the same. It seemed that Islamic Jihad did NOT love Americana after all [surprise surprise].
The rest of the world feels a certain schadenfreude in the bossy, hubristic, USA being mired in Iraq. Plus, it's a lot easier to let somebody else do the fighting - like the USA leaving New Zealand to fight the Nazis [with help from some others] while the USA hid behind the ocean and made money selling materials, until Japan did a Pearl Harbour on them.
Unfortunately for the USA, Iraq wasn't really a hot-bed of Islamic Jihad, though it had the propensity to become so, though it did indulge the idea by sponsoring suicide bombers in Israel and in various other ways.
King George II [the chimp Nero as some unkindly call him] had been a cheer-leader at sports functions in his youth, so this was a no-brainer for him. The USA needed the oil, the women of Iraq needed rescuing, Saddam, Uday, Qusay were brutes in the opposing side who were pushing the boundaries, and it would be a jolly lot of fun to show just who is top monkey on Earth. Then we'd all be home for tea and a party after scoring some touchdowns.
Unfortunately, no-brainer wars and no-brainer investing are equally hazardous. Our big brains were not needed for picking coconuts. They were produced in the crucible of more difficult projects.
So, one side has the numbers and is playing Calvin-ball, for keeps, the other is playing a game and is self-limited to Queensberry rules, wanting to be home for tea and tv.
I suspect the USA will declare victory and leave, pointing out the democratic majority in Iraq wants them to leave.
Except that, the USA might stop playing and get real. Pull out the stops so to speak. Cancel the "We are doing this for the locals to improve their lives" cant and nuke them. In the end, that's what genocidal tribal alpha-male dominance hierarchies are about. The big brains are not just for show. They are to do the down and dirty deeds necessary to gain and maintain pre-eminence.
When involved in Calvin ball, the rules can change quickly.
The passage of time will sort things out nicely. Once again, children will laugh and play, the past forgotten, or not yet learned.
With a bit of luck, China's megalomaniacs will have a go at Taiwan, and King George II can really unleash what-oh, using the equipment and soldiers they have trained for such major geopolitical sovereign to sovereign conflict. Saddam lasted no time - one Globalstar orbit and it was all over. That's what the USA is better at. The one-on-one swapping of individuals at the border, or right inside the ants' nest is NOT their forte; even if it's 10:1, it's a loser.
The USA could clear some landing areas on the coast of China with neutron bombs, land troops and drive in tanks to Beijing and be there in a couple of days, conducting a re-run of Tienanmen Square tank operations. Easy peasy. If China did anything naughty, such as launch a rocket at the USA, with a big bang on board, the USA could finally use their vast arsenal which they went to all that trouble to invent and build.
Peak People would have occurred. Peak Oil too.
It would be a lot more fun than door to door horrors in Iraq.
It would certainly "Clear the air", and a lot more besides.
WWIII got serious on 911. Talking about the Nazis all the time gets tedious. People don't go on about WWI. It's time we had our own BIG war, instead of living on past glories. Russia could join in and rebuild the USSR. Germany could solve their unemployment problems at a stroke. France's force de frappe would finally get some action; attacking NZ via the Rainbow Warrior was not real action for real men.
More likely, the USA will slink back to base, licking wounds, Iraq will go back to Saddamistic ways. China will just wait and expand economic power. Islamic Jihad will be battled at the borders. Europe will stew in their mess of their own creation, with a continual IRA-style insurgency by Islamic Jihad. Borders will tighten against Islamic Jihad. Iran will perhaps get, or not get, a bomb. Get seems more likely since that's what they want. Pakistan already has the Islamic bomb.
What will really happen is that genetic engineering will result in accelerated production of hssn, everyone will buy phragmented photon CDMA cyberphones and we will have a breakout everywhere of peace, light, harmony, happiness, health, prosperity, longevity, fun and love.
And we'll all live happily ever after.
Mqurice |
