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The Jobs Crunch
randall_burns writes "Neither major party is accurately describing or combatting the Jobs Crunch that Americans are facing. Bad immigration policy-and bad trade deals are combining to decimate the middle class in America."
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The funny thing about Iraq is that in the span of a few months we seem to be in a position (ironically, France was involved in this, except that in helping them withdraw from the disaster at Dien Bien Phu because they got their asses bitch-slapped, we screwed them out of a bunch of $billion-blood dollar contracts with Saddam Hussain) which took us over 10 years to get in with Iraq (counting 1954, first US involvement, to mid-1960s when the build-ups got serious, but not really, if you count the first Iraq War a part of all this, as well as the no-fly zones, etc., finally peaking with the US invasion of Iraq).
But now we have two local badddd-asses constantly trying to poke red hot pokers into the eyes of Uncle Sam, instead of just one.
GW keeps harping on "vote for me and we'll win this!", when perhaps he should take a cue from Nixon, and be working to let Kerry win, so he's not the 2nd Republican to preside over a US withdrawl (retreat?) from one of its conflicts.
Which sucks. Because if you believe the 90-10 rule, I would bet that 90% of what we're doing in Iraq is good, moral, right, honorable, appreciated, etc., but we just don't hear that, do we. Instead we hear of the 10% bad stuff: the prison fuckups, we continue to hear of Islamists capturing other Islamists and cutting off their heads [do they say a prayer for them first? is getting beheaded a bad thing for a Moslem?], not withstanding all the other people they get their bacon grease-stained hands on, yet the Arab world does not appear to be doing anything at all about it, and every day a few more Americans are killed every day in little terrorist attacks (why not ask for Israel's advice on how to deal with these). Where are the imams declaring in the press that the terrorists killing foreigners are unjust, because they are killing indiscriminately, not for the betterment of Islam, but merely for the advancement of their putrid dreams of power?
A very real change in Iraq policy would need to send some serious messages. It might even require some mass civilian casualties. Drop a BLU-82 or MOAB on Tikrit and Fallujah. Stop interrogating Iraqi detainees, but killing them and letting dogs and pigs eat at their rotting bodies. Let them know that these little kidnappings and chicken-shit roadside bombings will be punished 100-fold, 1000-fold.
And in the diplomatic circles, the US needs to air all the dirty shit hiding in the closets of countries who will, of course, be pissed off by this kind of action. France & Algeria. France & unilateral nuclear testing. France and unilateral terrorist activities. Russia & Chechnya. Recent, modern stuff. And on and on and on. If we're going to act all imperious and such in the world's affairs, better go whole-hog into it.
Post-WWII democracy worked because the countries involved and their citizens had no other choice. We need to create the same kind of situation.
Instead, we appear to be in a continuously reactive mode. We are reacting (by not appearing to really do anything) to terroristic bombings and kidnappings. If it was domestic, the FBI would be all over it, and the perps WOULD be found, and at least where they are at isolated and surrounded with a lot of hot lead projectors. But now, they fade into the dark.
We are reacting to hit-and-run mortar attacks, because so many of our troops are holed up, etc., and the political fear of civilian casualties, for better or worse, sort of creates and abets this situation.
Maybe we *SHOULD* pull out most of the serious hardware, and leave the job to the Greenie-Beanies and SEALs, along with some conventional forces (maybe a Marine flotilla and a carrier or two in the Gulf) to back them up, and a few strategically placed conventional units near by, but out in the open.
We (or Iraq) also needs to somehow "flip" one or two highly influential people against the status quo, to help turn the tide and isolate (what is isolated is more easily removed) those who do not see the light.
Of course,
Lets clarify this one. They in Europe have a ton of social programs that NOBODY can pay for that the US does not.
Lets be very clear about this, Europe is going through some major problems themselves. The left leaning folks are making it difficult for Europe to restructure.
Overall the problem is one where the Western Societies have to find a place for themselves. This is the globalization coming back to bite us in the butt.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"