The Cradle of Civilization or....

....the Death of Civilization?

According to the currently popular fountain of knowledge (Wikipedia), "The cradle of civilization is a term referring to locations where, according to current archaeological data, civilization is understood to have emerged."  There were actually several "cradles", but the first was generally acknowledged to be in Mesopotamia, which roughly corresponds to modern day Iraq and Syria.

It seems to me this area is today more like the world's hell hole.  Is there anything good going on there?  I'm not seeing it.  Will this be where civilization ends?  There is obviously an abundance of oil and gas in the region, but little else that the rest of the world seems to have any use for.  If it wasn't for that, I think the rest of the world would just as soon let 'em fight it out among themselves.  

I believe it was Donald Trump (OK, one point for The Donald) who recently said the world was better off when Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi ruled Iraq and Libya. The people who live there would probably not agree, or maybe they would, I dunno, but at least there was a regional status quo that contained the dysfunction.  Now every little sicko guy with a kufi (beanie) thinks he is some sort of Islamic Grand Poo-Bah.  The sad part is the poor ignorant masses there seem to believe in and are willing to die for them. 

I've been reading a book titled Gideon's Spies by Gordon Thomas..."The Secret History Of The Mossad" (Israel's version of our CIA, only better).  It's a good read, and not terribly biased.  I've been amazed to learn how many plots and other evil deeds the Israelis have been able to foil.  They are brilliant, and yes, cunning, vicious, and devious, too.  They have to be....for them it's "do or die".

Despite Israeli's shortcomings, and I'll admit they are numerous, I still believe they are the closest "friends" we have in the region.  Of course they play us when it suits their needs, just like we play everyone else when it is in our interest.  But still, if anyone can cut the legs out from under Iran and all the rest of the whack jobs there, IMHO it is Israel.  

I hope our next President, whoever he/she is, will support Israel.  For if we don't, I see the cancer that is Islamic fundamentalism continuing to spread far and wide.  To think we can negotiate with and trust these radicals is absurd. 

I know this might sound all doom and gloom, but I don't mean for it to.  In fact, I'm optimistic that the good guys, led in the region by Israel, will eventually, somehow, prevail.  I think the Europeans are rapidly coming around to seeing the light, too.  Hey, I'm just calling it like I see it.

OK, skewer me now if you want.

S

I'm not feelin' the love

Remember my recent post about the creeping anarchy I saw around the world?  I'm not so sure it's "creeping".  Seems to me it's about to break into a jog, if not a sprint.  Consider this:

Mid East meets West

Unless you live under a rock you'll know that the Mid East is currently in turmoil.  Really, really deep doo-doo, actually.  It's their normal state of affairs.  Literally millions of refugees have fled the wars in Syria and Iraq, and now are trying to escape the barbarism of ISIS, too.  Many hundreds of thousands have made their way to Europe, looking for a better, or at least safer, life.

According to EU rules, open borders theoretically allow those in any EU country to move freely around and into any other EU country.  This is now being challenged, and strained.  It's really a sad situation.  All these migrants want is to not be shot at, to work, to provide food for their families and a roof over their heads.  It's something we can all sympathize with. 

Here's the problem:  Germans, possibly because of their lingering national guilt due to their dark WWII-years, have been surprisingly accommodating to these refugees, while many other countries have not been.  Germany expects 900,000 to arrive just this year.  (To put this into context, it would be like 3,000,000 refugees arriving in the US in just one year.)  That's quite a social burden to take on.  Most of the rest of Europe can't or won't, and it's threatening the cohesion of Europe, such as it is. Yet the migrants keep coming.

Things are getting more tense and desperate by the day, which historically will lead to an eventual breaking point.  And every terrorist attack, such as the French train shooting a few weeks ago, strengthens the case of the anti-immigrant factions who see in every refugee a latent terrorist. 

So when is this breaking point going to be reached, and when it happens, what form will it take?   Beats me.  All I know is that the Europeans are being re-active, and not pro-active.  They fell behind the curve early and will probably never make up the lost ground....a situation that anarchists dream of.

Remember reading of those days when having big 'ol oceans around us kept us isolated from all those pesky foreign problems?  No more.  We're no longer immune from the wars in the Mid East, the stock market crash in China, or pollution originating anywhere in the world.  All those problems will find us, too, probably sooner rather than later. 

In retrospect, do you think maybe we should have left Iraq, and Libya, and Syria, and all the rest of that blighted region alone?  They were in a bad situation for sure, but are things any better today after all our meddling?  We were told the goal was to get the bad guys over there before they could get to us here, but I fear the opposite....we've only accelerated the process.  

Yes, I'm a political science nerd.  It's gonna be interesting (for me at least) to see how all this eventually shakes out.  Keep your powder dry.

S

Careful what you wish for

Americans tend to view things in absolutes.  One-issue politics is a good example.  A candidate can be an otherwise smart, all-around good guy perfectly capable of leading, but if he/she crosses you on your one hot-button issue, he's out.  We refuse to take a little bitter with our sweet, and it often blows up in our face.

The Mid-East today, complete with its radical Islam, is a textbook example.  Back during the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, President George H W Bush had a clear shot at taking out the Iraqi dictator.  But George The First listened to the Saudi King (I'll just call him Ralph because I'm too lazy to look up his real name) who told him to be careful, that taking out Saddam would upset the balance of power in the volatile region.  Bad as he was, we might end up with someone worse.

But we like to wear white hats, and wear white outfits, and ride white horses.  We're the Good Guys, always fighting for "Truth, Justice, and The American Way".  There's really nothing at all wrong with that....it's a genuinely noble idea, actually....but it often doesn't play well in the cold, cruel, REAL world.  

Sure, there are no doubt sinister motives behind much of what we do, but it's always sold to the American people as "taking the high road".  And because we're basically good people, we buy it.

The old USSR first stirred the fire ant pile when they invaded Afghanistan back in '79.  The Afghan's, aided by other Muslims around the region and the US, showed them how to fight dirty.  (We didn't give a flip about Afghanistan at the time. We just wanted to poke a sharp stick in the Rooski's eye.)  That's where the shit originally hit the fan.

Saddam Hussein tortured and killed his opponents and gassed his Kurdish citizens.  Bashir Assad (Syria) did the same.  Libya's Muammar Qaddafi had horrendously bad taste in costumes uniforms.  Oh, and he killed anyone who looked cross-eyed at him.  And given half a chance we would have popped a cap in any number of other Mid-East dictators, too.  (Truth be told, including the Saudi royal family, also.  Their treatment of women and their cruel form of Islamic justice rightly rankles us.)  The world would be a better place if they were gone, right?  Right??

OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!  We indeed helped make it happen, either overtly or covertly.

But here's the problem:  Despicable as those people are/were, their replacements (or lack of replacements) are worse, just as Saudi King Ralph predicted.  Despotism/anarchy reigns in the Mid-East today, and it's in these conditions that al Qaeda and Islamic State flourishes.  We brought this on ourselves.

Our intentions were so honest and pure....we wanted to share our wonderful way of life with the downtrodden.  We want them to enjoy freedom and the good life, too.  But based on the fact that they didn't RSVP to our invitation, I'm guessing they don't want it.  To many of them, killing/bombing/beheading is just a way of life.  "Sniper", "bomb maker", and "blade man" are probably legitimate career choices recommended by Mid-East high school guidance counselors.  

Maybe we should have just left them alone?  Maybe we should just sit back and watch 'em hack each other to pieces.  There apparently isn't much we can do about it anyway.  *Note to self....we'll need more popcorn*

Sometimes there isn't anything wrong with wearing a slightly soiled hat.

S

What is that definition of insanity again?

"Doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results."

Why can't we get the Mexican drug cartels to line up for a photo op like this?

 

The United States has a serious problem with drug cartels physically venturing into US territory to expand their base of operations.  Do we go to the UN and ask that they put together a coalition to come help us?  Do we put in calls to France or New Zealand or South Korea and ask them to come to our aid?  NO!  It's in OUR back yard, making it OUR problem.

So why does the world always start chanting U...S...A... when it hits the fan in the Mid East?  In case you weren't aware, Turkey is a formidable power in that region.  So is Iran.  And obviously so is Israel.  And don't forget Saudi Arabia and Egypt.  If ISIS succeeds in Syria / Iraq, those countries have an immediate problem.  It's in THEIR back yard.  (America's problem with ISIS will be a bit longer range.) 

What I want to know is, what are THOSE countries gonna do about ISIS?  IMO those countries should be in the starting lineup.  We should be in the bull pen.  Those countries have their own planes and bombs.  We know this because WE sold them to them (along with Russia, the UK, France, and a few others).  

They save their weaponry for parades and fly-overs (and occasionally crushing a dissident group at home) while we expend ours.  While they spend their money on massive social programs for their citizens, our infrastructure crumbles, our schools struggle for adequate funding, and our food banks have trouble meeting demand.

Ever since Vietnam showed the world our military Achilles heel we haven't been able to defeat a guerrilla-style enemy.  That's because we value life.  We won't wipe out a city block to get one bad guy for fear of killing innocent civilians.  It happens, and we agonize over it, but we do make a valiant effort to prevent it.  Our guerrilla enemies have no such conscience.

We've become a foreign policy "Jack of all trades, master of none".  We try to be everywhere, but we actually accomplish very little.  Trying to prop up "countries" that were just figments of some post-WWI European diplomat's imagination is a lost cause.

I say let "those people" thrust and parry among themselves.  Let them decide their own borders.  Let them organize themselves by clan or tribe or whatever.  Let them establish their own balance of power.  It will be bloody, yes, but even if we try, we can have very little (if any) lasting influence.  It's called "reality".

We need to be backing up the Mid East regional powers who are truly on the front lines, and not the other way around.

Just sayin'.

S

Did these guys ever read a history book?

It's amazing to me how ignorant our "leaders" are.  Both parties need to require their elected lap-dogs to attend a class and educate them on the realities of the Mid-East.

President Brick O'bama has okay-ed the use of US surveillance drones to keep an eye on ISIS forces (the ultra-radical Islamic terrorist group) operating in Syria and Iraq.  What he hasn't authorized is the use of force against ISIS fighters across that line in the sand marking the border between Iraq and Syria....we don't want to violate Syrian airspace.

Here's the problem with that thinking: SYRIA AND IRAQ AREN'T REAL COUNTRIES!  Neither are Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, or Saudi Arabia.   They aren't now and never have been.  

They are "nations" with borders arbitrarily set up by the victors (Britain and France) after World War I.  During that Great War the two decided quietly to divvy up the Mid-East after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire (Turkey), who was fighting along side eventual losers Germany and Austro-Hungary.  

According to the Sykes-Picot Agreement France would exercise their sphere of influence over the northern part of said territory (the current areas known as Syria and Lebanon), while Britain would oversee their sphere of influence over the southern part (now known as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, and Israel).

But "national identity" was a foreign concept to the Arabs.  Their society was (and still is) organized around "families", which are part of "clans", which are part of "tribes".  They routinely band together to form temporary alliances when their short-term interests merge.  But when their interests change those alliances break up and new alliances with former enemy tribes take their place.  Regional politics are always fluid, therefore national boundaries are meaningless to them.

They don't give a rats ass about "borders".  Kurds don't see themselves as Turkish Kurds or Syrian Kurds or Iraqi Kurds.  They have no allegiance to any nation-state.  To say that we shouldn't violate "Syrian" airspace is a farce, as there is no Syria, and therefore no Syrian airspace to violate.  There are only various families and clans and tribes which congeal now and then into interest groups.

I'm not saying we should or shouldn't go after ISIS forces across that mythical line on a map that defines Syria, but just that that shouldn't enter into our decision.  And above all, we should give up on trying to introduce "democracy" to the people of the region.  They will never swear allegiance to any "country".  Why should we waste American lives and national treasure trying to set them up?

Screw 'em!

S

So what shape should we make the wheel this time?

Can any of you remember the first Persian Gulf war in Iraq, circa 1990-91?  That was the one where we bombed everything Iraq had of military value for a couple of months, then turned the Army and Marines loose on what was left. 

After only 100 hours, literally, President George H.W. Bush called them off and dictated terms to Saddam Hussein, allowing him to remain as Iraq's dictator.  Ever wonder why that was?  

It was because the King of Saudi Arabia counseled Bush 41 to stop pursuing Saddam, telling him he might stir up (an even bigger) hornet's nest if he wasn't careful.   

And these Boy Scouts should know

What the King meant was, even the region's really despicable tyrants like Saddam Hussein looked pretty tame compared to the other nut jobs itching to step into their shoes.

Truth is, as I've stated before, the people in that part of the world have a different value system, a different way of thinking.  Our Western ideas of "logic" and "decency" just don't translate.  They are simply an uncivilized society. 

No, of course I don't mean every single one of them.  But enough that it makes my statement valid.  While we in the US have our Westboro Baptist Church types, they are just tiny little cells of crazies scattered here and there.  

In Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, on and on....their extremists are a huge percentage (a majority?) of their population.  Say something unkind about their religion or publish an offensive cartoon and they issue a fatwah on your ass.

My point is, they always have and always will fight and kill each other.  That's all they know how to do.  At times they might subscribe to "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and work together, but it's a fleeting arrangement.  Blink twice and they're right back at each others throats.

Now the Sunni Muslim minority in Iraq are on a roll and are vowing to take over the entire country by brute force.  Our concern is that if they do it will open the door for more extremists to train there and eventually threaten us here in America.  

The truth is, even if the Sunni militants (the ISIS) DON'T take over all of Iraq by brute force (they're unlikely to capture Baghdad proper or other Shia strongholds) they can and likely will still train others to come after us.  Count on it.  While it would be nice to keep the bad guys "over there", I'm afraid we're past that.

Make no mistake, this is not an American failure.  It's an Iraqi failure.  We set them up with every material advantage they could possibly need to succeed.  What we can't give them is new gray matter between their ears.

So what do we do?  (Q:  Why does the entire world look to the USA when something "needs to be done"?)  IMHO, and as seen through my pragmatic eyes, here's what I think we should do:  Get some chips and dip and maybe a few beers, sit back, and if we're lucky watch the militants on both sides annihilate each other.  While we should pray they spare the innocents, it's simply out of our hands.

LATE NEWS:  It was just reported that the US will soon send 275 Special Forces to "advise" the Iraqi Security Forces.  So the 150,000 troops we once had there couldn't "fix" Iraq, but now these 275 can?

DUH!  Even rocks are smarter than that.

S

FOR SALE: Iraqi Army rifles....

....never fired....only dropped once.
 

 

The pride of the 10th Annual Baghdad Jaycees Goat Roast and Labor Day Parade has proven they aren't worth a damn when it comes to defending their country.

Observations of a non-military man:  What is it about middle eastern / Arab armies that makes them such lousy soldiers?  I've read that the Egyptian Army fought fairly well at the opening of the Yom Kippur War with Israel in 1973, but other than that they seem to fold up like a card table when faced with anyone actually shooting at them. Snappy parade performers, lousy fighters.

After investing a decade of our time, thousands of American lives, and hundreds of billions of dollars helping get Iraq to the point they can become a self-sufficient, stable, law-abiding citizen of the world, it seems they can't even stand up to the first hint of determined opposition they faced.

Shades of the Fall of Saigon!  Al Qaeda affiliated rebels have seized control of the northern city of Mosul while the Iraqi Army was loading up and making a run for it.  

Now the insurgents are even in control of a formidable armored force left by the Americans for and now abandoned by the Iraqis.  Emboldened, the insurgents are now marching towards Baghdad while the Iraqi Army is melting away.

It's a sad situation.  On the one hand I feel sorry for all the downtrodden in the region, all the women who are treated little better than cattle, the little girls who are denied an education, etc, but the bottom line is it seems beyond our ability, anyone's ability, to bring them into the 21st 20th 19th Century.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and all the rest are simply from a different branch of the Homo Sapien family tree.  Our values are irreconcilable, our brains wired differently.  We can build them all the sewer treatment plants they could possibly use, but they're still gonna crap on the sidewalk.  The only reason we have anything to do with them at all is because of a freak of geography....they're sitting atop an ocean of oil.

I say we learn to live without their black gold, keep far, far away from them all, and let them stew in their own juices.  F___ 'em.

S

At my offensive best....

After reading the "world news" section of the paper this morning (every morning, actually) I once again have to ask myself, what good thing does Islam bring to the world table?  "Militant Islamists attack a mall in Kenya, blow up a church in Pakistan....Iraq, Afghanistan (all the little 'stans' actually), Syria, Libya, Somalia, Mali, kill, kill, kill..."  If they have a dominant Muslim population (with a few possible exceptions such as secular Turkey), they're up to no good.  No?  Show me otherwise.

"Oh, but those are just the militants.  Most aren't like that at all."  Really?  Polls I've seen taken in virtually all Muslim countries show the general population, while not actually taking up arms against the Infidels, expresses overwhelming sympathy for the militants.  Face it.  They simply don't like us.  Round peg, square hole.  Not gonna work.

As I remember from my studies as a child there was a time centuries ago when Muslim countries were leaders in math, science, philosophy, culture, etc.  So what happened?  They don't seem to be leaders in much of anything these days except Jihad.  Why do we have to have relations with them?  For oil?  Sure, I get that.  But we can do business with them without having to otherwise interact with them, can't we?

Seems to me they need our (the civilized world's) cash as much as we need their oil.  "Fill up the tanker, here's your money....see 'ya."  "We want to send our students to your country."  No.  "We want some of your foreign aid to build..."  No.  Any American travels there of his own free will and finds himself threatened with headlessness....too bad.

We constantly hear that isolation is bad.  How so?  If we want to live peacefully and prosperously by ourselves here (in the West), and they choose to live in ignorant squalor there, how is that bad?  Wouldn't we both be getting what we want?

I can see the desirability of globalisation when it comes to interacting with others of similar values.  But it doesn't seem to me we share many values with the Muslim world.  Lets all sacrifice some, put our heads together and find an alternative to their oil stranglehold, and then split the sheets and move forward.  And they can move backwards.  And if a phone rings here from their area code, don't answer it.  

Live and let live, I say.

OK, skewer me.

S

Don't look now, but Dubya's back

Today all five living past and present Presidents will be in Dallas to dedicate the President George W. Bush Library on the campus of SMU.  As a native Texan, please allow me to give you my impression of our (semi-) native son "Dubya".

We all know the early story....he grew up in west Texas in a family with money and prestige.  He partied hard like many most rich kids do and got into his fair share of minor trouble.  Big whoop.  He was President of the Texas Rangers when they were little more than a door mat, and sold out (and did very well) to run for governor.

He wasn't supposed to win but he did, beating HRH Ann Richards.  She took him too lightly and it cost her.  Dubya was actually a very good governor.  Reasonable, responsible, able to work with both parties in the legislature.  So well in fact that the Democratic Lt. Governor at the time endorsed him for re-election.

He might have come across as a tongue-tied doofus compared to the urbane veteran politicians in Washington, but that wasn't him at all.  (Just ask Ann Richards.*)  Ex:  His grades at Yale were better than those of John Kerry. 

He was a natural to fill the vacuum in the Republican Party leadership.  There was a lot of Republican money itching to take back the White House, he had his daddy's Rolodex, and probably a bit of a swollen head after his success in Austin.

In the strangest election in our history he won, and IMO was immediately steamrolled by the Washington political establishment.  Those guys eat little west Texas boys for breakfast.  He fell under the influence of long-time political heavyweights like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, which I think really came back to bite him hard later.  

Cheney, the ultimate insider, especially seemed to have his ear.  He seemed to have the knack of wanting something, and then making Dubya think it was his idea.  I trust Cheney about as far as I can spit into a hurricane.  (I still don't think Dubya "gets" Cheney's influence on him.)

Then, BAM!  9/11.  Dubya did what most red-blooded Texas boys would do when they get sucker-punched....he got out his can of whup-ass.

Again IMO, 9/11 would have happened regardless of who was in the Oval Office.  Islamic terrorists had been jabbing us since the Carter administration.  Dubya just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Regarding Iraq:  Saddam Hussein laid out too convincing a lie and it cost him.  He wanted the world to believe he had WMD's in order to make him seem stronger than he really was.  Our CIA bought it (led, don't forget, by a Clinton holdover), as did Britain's MI-6, Israel's Mossad, the French, the Germans, and probably many others, too.  Even Colin Powell bought it.  Nothing definitive was ever found, but there were enough shreads of evidence to seemingly corroborate Saddam's tale.  I really DON'T think Dubya lied to us deliberately.

The beginning of the end for Dubya was when the US got into Iraq and proved Colin Powell correct.  Remember Powell's advice?  "If we break it, we buy it."  We broke it, and we couldn't afford to buy it.  Paying for that war was where our financial wheels fell off.  There was more than that, of course, but paying for the war in Iraq financially devastated us.

Regarding the financial meltdown of '08:  Again, Cheney & Co. were in the back pocket of the financial interests.  They got the green light they wanted.  The rest of us got (and are still getting) the bill.

Regarding his Grand Plan for the Middle East:  Too many lightweights, probably academics (Condi?), convinced Dubya that if we could just set up a democratic Iraq that would mirror our free society, the other people of the region would want the same and fall in line, too.  Kum Ba Ya, y'all.  

That might have sounded good on somebody's PhD dissertation, but it didn't mean shit to the average guy on the average street in the average Middle Eastern country.  Again, IMO Dubya really thought this made sense.  He has a "western" thought process, while they will always have an "eastern" thought process.  They are very different.  It was just very naive thinking on his part.

In short, I really do think George W. Bush was/is a good man.  He meant well, truly wanted to do good things that would benefit us and the world at large.  His spirituality is genuine.  He was just out of his league, coaxed along by advisers he shouldn't have listened to into doing things that we'll be regreting for a long time to come. Once you find yourself at the bottom of a deep hole as Dubya did, your options are few and not very good.

Washington is a wicked place.  It devoured George W. Bush, and unfortunately he probably won't be the last.  This isn't meant to excuse Dubya's political failures.  For eight years the buck rightfully stopped with him.

Pity how things turned out.  A lot of us had high hopes for him.  

S

*Actually you can't ask her.  She's dead.

I'm beginning to see a pattern here...with EDIT

I've said for a long time, particularly after watching news clips showing rioting mobs in Muslim countries, "Those people just don't think right." A like comment yesterday on my blog from PT Dilloway, referring to the violence in Libya, said, "In what freaking universe does that make any freaking sense?"

This brought to mind an article I once read that pointed out that in the Muslim world marriage between cousins (known as "consanguinity"), and even brothers and sisters, is common.  A little online research found many credible sources confirming this and offering these statistics:  

Thirty-three percent of all marriages in Egypt are consanguine, as are 48 percent in Libya, 60 percent in Iraq, 70 percent in Pakistan, 67 percent in Saudi Arabia, 40 percent in Syria, 34 percent in Algeria, 63 percent in Sudan, 46 percent in Bahrain, 64 percent in Jordan, 42 percent in Lebanon, 54 percent in Qatar, 45 percent in Yemen, and 54 percent in the UAE.

This has been going on for 1,400 years in the Mideast, and is done in order to keep wealth (?) and power "within the family".   This is why it's so hard for sovereign countries to command the loyalty of their citizens.  People's loyalty goes to their "clan", not their arbitrarily cobbled together "country".

Not surprisingly, research has shown that children of consanguineous marriages have 10-16% lower IQ's.  Can you imagine the consequences of this generation after generation after generation?  Well, they might be able to keep all the camels in the family, but they also have a mighty polluted gene pool!

We (the West) keep trying to lead the Mideast towards our version of how things should be....democratic, governed by rule of law, peaceful, respectful to all, including women, etc.  I'm wondering if their average citizen can even comprehend those concepts?  

Thousands of years of tradition and ignorance and inbreeding are hard to overcome.  IMO we're beating our heads against a brick (or in their case mud) wall.  

S

EDIT:  Oh, the insanity....now they're burning the KFC in Cairo!  Is nothing sacred?

Drill, baby, drill...

I get so sick of opening the news every morning and seeing almost every world news article datelined Syria, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, the PLO, etc.  They're nuts!  I think the Brits opened a can of worms a hundred years ago when they found oil in the mid-east and began transitioning the industrial revolution from coal to oil.  (Well....it's a tough call.  Coal is pretty nasty stuff.)


I'm encouraged that we're making real progress, although almost accidentally, towards energy independence.  It comes with strings attached, and we'll have to be very careful extracting it, but it'll be worth it to be able to thumb our noses at that region.  Shame we didn't take all that money that we've dumped into that black hole over the years and instead used it to develop a way to burn political promises or manure (same thing) or cat hair balls.


They can Shiite all over each other for all I care. 


S

I'd make a lousy diplomat

Doesn't anything newsworthy ever happen in Australia, or Denmark, or Chile?  Every morning I pull up the news and find the same thing day after day:  Iran this, Pakistan that, Iraq...Egypt...Afghanistan...Syria...Libya...etc. I'm sorry, but I flat don't give a rats ass what happens over there.  That part of the world is just a giant hell hole as far as I'm concerned.  It's almost as if blowing stuff up is their idea of having a good time.  And let's face it....if there wasn't oil in that general area, the rest of the world would write it off, too.  


Yes, I believe we should share our food and humanitarian supplies with people who are hurting wherever they are, but that generally isn't the way our foreign aid policy works.  Most of our generosity goes to governments, who promptly split it up among the top politicians and generals, the people be damned.   Last time I looked we had people right here at home who had bare pantries, and we had bridges and roads right here that were crumbling.  And unemployed people right here who would love a job building / repairing those crumbling bridges and roads.  And broke taxpayers right here who are tired of trying to buy friends all over the world.  What is it Dr. Phil says?  "....and how's that workin' out for ya?"  


I doubt I'll get many comments to this post because, honestly, this is about as un-PC as you're gonna get.  I don't care.  This is my vehicle to vent.  Venting complete.


S

You know what I'm SICK of?

Pakistan.

  

I honestly don't care if the sun ever rises over Pakistan again.  Ever.  I really don't.  I'm so sick of opening the newspaper and reading Pakistan this, Pakistan that....and none of it is ever good.  All they want from us is the BILLIONS of dollars of foreign aid we send their way every year.  Money we don't have.  The aid we send is skimmed off by a few at the top, and I'm sure the masses never see a dime of it.  And they hate us.  Why do we have to pay 'em to hate us?  They'll do it for free.  SCREW 'EM!


I know, I know.... they have nuclear technology they could pass on to other radical countries/groups who could use it on us.  So why don't we take all the money we send them in aid and instead use it to put a few hundred thousand Americans to work screening everything that comes into this country?  Every plane load of freight, every shipping container....EVERYTHING! Then we would know (well...more than we do now) what was coming in to our country, and we would have some tax revenue from these Americans who are now working, too.


Oh...and Afghanistan.  It is now estimated that 97% of their gross national income is derived from foreign aid, most of it from the US.  Talk about a bunch of parasites!  Any idea how many Americans we could put to work with all that $$$$?  Or how much we could reduce our debt?


So here's my plan:  We all sell our Land Yachts and drive little mini-cars, we downsize from our McMansions to something more manageable, we quit buying stuff we don't need, we put up windmills and solar panels everywhere, etc, then tell Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and all their buddies to go eat camel dung and wash it down with a Big Gulp of oil.  We don't need 'em, and in fact we'd be better off without them. 


Don't I wish it were that easy.  (But I'm serious about cutting off their foreign aid.  That we can do.)


S