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 : Israel to U.S. : Now Deal with Syria and Iran -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sea_urchin who wrote (15743)	7/21/2007 12:26:58 PM
From: sea_urchin	Respond to of 22250

This Is How Empires End by Patrick J. Buchanan antiwar.com >>Responding to the call of Pope Urban II at Claremont in 1095, the Christian knights of the First Crusade set out for the Holy Land. In 1099, Jerusalem was captured. As their port in Palestine, the Crusaders settled on Acre on the Mediterranean. There they built the great castle that was overrun by Saladin in 1187, but retaken by Richard the Lion-Hearted in 1191. Acre became the capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the stronghold of the Crusader state, which fell to the Mameluks in a bloody siege in 1291. The Christians left behind were massacred. The ruins of Acre are now a tourist attraction. Any who have visited this last outpost of Christendom in the Holy Land before Gen. Allenby marched into Jerusalem in 1917 cannot – on reading of the massive U.S. embassy rising in Baghdad – but think of Acre. At a cost of $600 million, with walls able to withstand mortar and rocket fire, and space to accommodate 1,000 Americans, this mammoth embassy, largest on earth, will squat on the banks of the Tigris inside the Green Zone. But, a decade hence, will the U.S. ambassador be occupying this imperial compound? Or will it be like the ruins of Acre? What raises the question is a sense the United States, this time, is truly about to write off Iraq as a lost cause. The Republican lines on Capitol Hill are crumbling. Starting with Richard Lugar, one GOP senator after another has risen to urge a drawdown of U.S. forces and a diplomatic solution to the war. But this is non-credible. How can U.S. diplomats win at a conference table what 150,000 U.S. troops cannot secure on a battlefield? Though Henry Kissinger was an advocate of this unnecessary war, he is not necessarily wrong when he warns of "geopolitical calamity." Nor is Ryan Crocker, U.S. envoy in Iraq, necessarily wrong when he says a U.S. withdrawal may be the end of the American war, but it will be the start of bloodier wars in Iraq and across the region. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari also warns of the perils of a rapid withdrawal: "The dangers vary from civil war to dividing the country to regional wars ... the danger is huge. Until the Iraqi forces and institutions complete their readiness, there is a responsibility on the U.S. and other countries to stand by the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people to help build up their capabilities." In urging a redeployment of U.S. forces out of Iraq, and a new focus on diplomacy, Lugar listed four strategic goals. Prevent creation of a safe haven for terrorists. Prevent sectarian war from spilling out into the broader Middle East. Prevent Iran's domination of the region. Limit the loss of U.S. credibility through the region and world as a result of a failed mission in Iraq. But how does shrinking the U.S. military power and presence in Iraq advance any of these goals? Longtime critics of the war like Gen. William Odom say it is already lost, and fighting on will only further bleed the country and make the ultimate price even higher. The general may be right in saying it is time to cut our losses. But we should take a hard look at what those losses may be. It is a near certainty the U.S.-backed government will fall and those we leave behind will suffer the fate of our Vietnamese and Cambodian friends in 1975. As U.S. combat brigades move out, contractors, aid workers and diplomats left behind will be more vulnerable to assassination and kidnapping. There could be a stampede for the exit and a Saigon ending in the Green Zone. The civil and sectarian war will surely escalate when we go, with Iran aiding its Shi'ite allies and Sunni nations aiding the Sunnis. A breakup of the country seems certain. Al-Qaeda will claim it has run the U.S. superpower out of Iraq and take the lessons it has learned to Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. The Turks, with an army already on the border, will go in to secure their interests in not having the Kurdish PKK operating from Iraq and in guaranteeing there is no independent Kurdistan. What will America do then? As for this country, the argument over who is responsible for the worst strategic debacle in American history will be poisonous. With a U.S. defeat in Iraq, U.S. prestige would plummet across the region. Who will rely on a U.S. commitment for its security? Like the British and French before us, we will be heading home from the Middle East. What we are about to witness is how empires end.<<

To: sea_urchin who wrote (15743)	7/22/2007 5:37:33 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22250

Re: ...where is it going to get the strength now or ten years from now to raise the 500,000 troops it will need at a minimum? And even if it did, how are these average Americans, steeped as they are in complete ignorance of the world outside their borders, and utterly unfamiliar with any other language or culture, going to be successful in fighting an insurgency in the Middle East? If the U.S. military is right that it takes at least ten years to overcome an insurgency, where is the plan here and now to educate tens of thousands of Americans in Arabic to prepare for living a decade or longer in a foreign culture? I'm afraid the above argument against US warmongering misses an important, if eery, point: the US doesn't have to commit hundreds of thousands troops to wage war and bring about the necessary "regime change"... Was Japan defeated and brought into US submission by a massive military landing/invasion? Nope: it just took two little nukes (over Hiroshima and Nagasaki) to bring home the point to the Japanese leadership.... What Would Happen if a 20 Megaton Nuclear Explosion on a City of 3 Million? Ground Zero Within 1/100th of a second, a fireball would form in every direction from ground zero enveloping downtown and reaching out for two miles. Temperatures would rise to 20 million degrees Fahrenheit, and everything -- buildings, trees, cars, and people - would he vaporized. 2 to 4 Miles from Ground Zero The blast would produce pressures of 25 pounds per square inch and winds in excess of 650 miles per hour. These titanic forces would rip buildings apart and level everything, including reinforced concrete and steel structures. Even deep underground bomb shelters would be crushed. 4 to 10 Miles from Ground Zero The heat would vaporize automobile sheet metal. Glass would melt. At this distance, the blast wave would create pressures of 7 to 10 pounds per square inch and winds of 200 miles per hour. Masonry and wood frames would be leveled. 16 Miles from Ground Zero The heat would ignite all easily flammable materials -houses, paper, cloth, leaves, gasoline, heating fuel - starting hundreds of thousands of fires. Fanned by blast winds still in excess of 100 miles per hour, these fires would merge into a giant firestorm more than 30 miles across and covering 800 square miles. Everything within this entire area would be consumed by flames. Temperatures would rise to 1400° F. The death rate would approach 10070! Beyond 16 Miles The blast would still produce pressures of two pounds per square inch, enough to shatter glass windows and turn each of them into hundreds of lethal missiles flying outward from the center at 100 miles per hour. At 29 miles, the heat would be so intense that all exposed skin, not protected by clothing, would suffer third degree burns. Even as far as 40 miles from ground zero anyone who turned to gaze at the sudden flash of light would be blinded by burns on the retina and at the back of their eyes. Within minutes after the bomb exploded 1,000,000 would die. Among the 1,800,000 survivors, more than 1,100,000 would be fatally injured. Another 500,000 would have major medical injuries from which they might recover if they received adequate medical care. Less than 200,000 people would remain without injuries - with very few doctors and with only limited medical facilities. source: Physicians for Social Responsibility pamphlet www.prs.org 24aug01 mindfully.org Nuclear Insanity DL Ennis August 31, 2006 americanchronicle.com

To: sea_urchin who wrote (15743)	7/22/2007 5:43:27 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22250

My current read: Savage Perils Racial Frontiers and Nuclear Apocalypse in American Culture By Patrick B. Sharp Revisiting the racial origins of the conflict between “civilization” and “savagery” in twentieth-century America The atomic age brought the Bomb and spawned stories of nuclear apocalypse to remind us of impending doom. As Patrick Sharp reveals, those stories had their origins well before Hiroshima, reaching back to Charles Darwin and America’s frontier. In Savage Perils, Sharp examines the racial underpinnings of American culture, from the early industrial age to the Cold War. He explores the influence of Darwinism, frontier nostalgia, and literary modernism on the history and representations of nuclear weaponry. Taking into account such factors as anthropological race theory and Asian immigration, he charts the origins of a worldview that continues to shape our culture and politics. Sharp dissects Darwin’s arguments regarding the struggle between “civilization” and “savagery,” theories that fueled future-war stories ending in Anglo dominance in Britain and influenced Turnerian visions of the frontier in America. Citing George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil,” Sharp argues that many Americans still believe in the racially charged opposition between civilization and savagery, and consider the possibility of nonwhite “savages” gaining control of technology the biggest threat in the “war on terror.” His insightful book shows us that this conflict is but the latest installment in an ongoing saga that has been at the heart of American identity from the beginning—and that understanding it is essential if we are to eradicate racist mythologies from American life. Patrick B. Sharp is Assistant Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Liberal Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. oupress.com