« Our Ignorant Electorate | Main | Moderation in Defense of Moderation » Quote of the Day06 Sep 2007 06:32 pm Kenneth Walz: "To say that militarily strong states are feeble because they cannot easily bring order to minor states is like saying that a pneumatic hammer is weak because it is not suitable for drilling decayed teeth." Hat tips to Farley and Travis Sharp. Comments (21)
I thought he was dead. He may not be a neocon, but he is still creepy. 
Sounds like something Kenneth Waltz would say as well.
Well, that ranges from the "Duh!" comment of the day to the "That has no relation to anything that's going on here - but it's very wise" comment from a movie I saw once. The bottom line of course is that a half trillion dollar military budget is basically useless if you don't have a conventional military anywhere even remotely willing to fight you, and also useless to bring order to "minor states." It's like having a huge upper body muscular development while you're stuck in a wheel chair. Of course, just like the peace movement never understood that nukes were never intended to be USED - just PAID FOR - people don't realize that the US military's job is to be PAID FOR - not actually USED - except where being used can contribute to somebody getting PAID FOR it. In other words, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and who knows where else eventually, none of which has anything to do with "defending the United States." The sheer amount of corruption in the United States makes it literally impossible for anyone to see what is going on. ALL the discussions about what to do about anything take place inside a context of state corruption that makes Nero look like a three-card monte guy on a street corner.
Yes, but what if your government promises you that they have secret evidence you can't see which shows that the teeth in question are hiding illnesses of mass destruction, and furthermore are a danger to the entire body? Would you then choose to side with the dento-fascists hankering for a new Molar Caliphate and threaten our security, or would you stand up for America while we send in a pneumatic hammer force to assist the mouth in a rough but necessary tradition to better dental hygeine?
Sure, but sometimes you need a dentist, and not a new driveway.
If you have a decayed, infected tooth and the only tool the dentist has is a pneumatic hammer then the dentist is "weak" (and lame, ill prepared, unprofessional and poorly equipped) and the tool is worthless. Bush is that dentist.
"True. But also irrelevant".
If you have a decayed, infected tooth and the only tool the dentist has is a pneumatic hammer then the dentist is "weak" (and lame, ill prepared, unprofessional and poorly equipped) and the tool is worthless. Bush is that dentist. You would dare embolden the cariests by denigrating the authority of our Commander in Teeth in a time of War? Liberals like you make me sick. He is our only line of defense against the spread of gingivitohadists.
Last time I looked, dentists get a lot more respect, and a lot more money, than road builders.
The bottom line of course is that a half trillion dollar military budget is basically useless if you don't have a conventional military anywhere even remotely willing to fight you, and also useless to bring order to "minor states." Not at all. You assume that all humanitarian constraints on a "progressive democracy's " conventional military facing a foe observing no humanitarian restraints are etched in stone. That countries will want to "go the extra yard, bend over backwards" to maximize terrorist civil liberties and make Geneva no longer reciprocal, but obligatory in all circumstances on "the good nations". I would say that is only going to fly in a "we are trying to win hearts and minds" situation. If advanced nations wish to make the foe fear them and respect them, rather than like them - all those precision conventional assets are very handy for wiping out all electricity, dams, major bridges, telecomms, water treatment and pumping stations, all mass transit nexus points. Grain storage and processing facilties, all ports and airports. Take out a smaller foe's Navy and AF in a very short time. Order can be brought to 4GW foes with conventional munitions, quickly - Apply the pneumatic hammer, watch the targets crumble. Just for now, the price is higher than we want to pay.
The complete insanity of Chris Ford's view that it would be possible to "liberate" Iraq by completely destroying it would be less disturbing if it wasn't shared by a large portion of GOP voters, and a significant segment of the Bush administration.
The crazy neo-Confederate guy is right. No more can our dental technicians hold back due to liberal fears about the stability of our nation's jaws. The toothal foe must be tackled, and our pneumatic hammers must be deployed without shame and without restraint to any mouth which seems to harbor toothy trouble spots. With sufficient time, it may be necessary for those who have experienced our massive pneumatic hammer dent-ervention to learn how to live on different diets, perhaps liquid-based diets, but frankly, this is their problem, not ours.
Of course we're "strong". We can blow shit up like nobody's business. problem is that doesn't necessarily get that much. One of these days those cowboys better learn that what we're trying to do in a place like Iraq is more like drilling teeth than knocking them out.
Of course we're "strong". We can blow shit up like nobody's business. Problem is that doesn't necessarily get you that much. One of these days those cowboys better learn that what we're trying to do in a place like Iraq is more like drilling teeth than knocking them out.
"Order can be brought to 4GW foes with conventional munitions, quickly" Well, if your definition of order includes chaos, I suppose this is true. But that's why in conventional war, you don't speak of bringing 'order' to the enemy.
Walt Frazier - Rejected!!! My post was in response to "any conventional military is useless". Besides the Carthage, Sherman's March, Grozny approach, a conventional military not making "nice, nice" with a foe has other options: 1. The Chicom "Borg" approach to Tibet. It will be assimilated, overwhelmed by Han Chinese masses now pouring in. Resistance is futile. Tibetans that have are executed or are put in forced labor camps making trinkets for the free market. 2. The cleansing solution. How much trouble will the long-standing grievances of the Sudetan Germans cause these days? What are the odds of their insurgency succeeding? None. They have been cleansed. Partition, a variant of cleansing, has been used successfully throughout history. 3. Conquest and eradication. How powerful is the thuggee resistance these days? The communist Chinese movement in Malaysia or Indonesia? 4. Population Push-back and land seizure by a conventional army to negate a guerilla force. Historically, has worked very well against Native Americans or other hunter-gatherers/nomadics occupying several thousand square miles with little use of the land, and worked for all those hunter-gatherers/nomadics against less successful tribes. Few if any of the NAs were the orginal inhabitants of human-free virgin land. Most defeated and got rid of other pre-existing tribes as the Euros and Asians and Bantus did. Classically, this is the tactic that won the Ibernian peninsula back from Islamics. No guerilla Jihad was possible, because they were pushed back to other land they held. 5. The "Transfer" solution. Rather than kill off, enslave, or try to assimilate terrorists/freedom fighters/guerillas - pick up the whole pack of them and move them to some remote place where they can make less trouble. Russia loved this. Lots of remote places. Also used by the USA against English Loyalists, nettlesome NA tribes like Seminoles, Apaches and far less nettlesome and undeservedly screwed Cherokees. other 4 Civilized Tribes. Also a great way (historically speaking) to get rid of a troublesome, dangerous minority - get your troops set - tell them to move on, get converted, get enslaved, or get dead. A favorite Muslim tactic. Also used quite regularly by Christians, Romans, Greek States, Muslims when Jews antagonized the locals too much and were told to move on or get ghettoized and confined to only certain jobs and transactions with the host population -instead - if they wished to stay to minimize what all those cultures considered their "trouble-making". 6. Complete national conquest with a conventional military, with troops ready and willing to put down insurrection. 7. Nuke 'em. 8. The new era conventional military of the USA, which now has the power to defeat a people and neutralize their threat through use economic global structures, of precision munitions and sensors. No occupiers for guerillas/terrorists/freedom fighters to resist. Obviously we did not excercise that option in Iraq. Liberals would hate it. But if used, it would mean an opposing nation without fuel, electricity, most communications. With organized military formations detected and eradicated. With militias and resistance cells with no one to shoot at. With a nation having the option to submit to behavior changes to get all that back, or stay stranded and dark. Or escalate further into taking out more infrastructure a nation or tribe needs to function. Water and sewage infrastructure. Nothing allowed to move on roads patrolled by UAVs from above. Manufacturing taken out. No air flights in or out allowed. 9. Send ACLU lawyers and NGO heads like Kenneth Roth and George Soros into Injun Country, armed with writs, many signed with the Supreme Moral Authority of the UN itself, requiring the bad guys to desist.
The reason why strong states are unable to bring order to weak states is because they are unwilling to use their full strength. Now it is quite obvious that the US military could turn Iraq into a parking lot (to quote the late Curtis LeMay speaking on the subject of Vietnam) and the IDF could turn the West Bank and Gaza Strip into parking lots. However, for both good and bad reasons, they have chosen not to do so. This should be contrasted with the actions of the US, Britain, and Germany in WW 2 who would have been quite willing to turn their opponents into a parking lot if they had had the capability of doing so. As Richard Dawkins has argued, by the morality of WW 2, Donald Rumsfeld looks like a humanitarian if compared with Sir Arthur Harris.
SLC: Uh, yeah but we're supposed to be saving the Iraqis not slaughtering them.
Chris Ford, 1) What constitutes "success" in your view? What role do moral or humanitarian values play in a successful war? Are they relevant in your view? 2) You talk of defeating "an opposing nation," of war against "a people" by the convential USA army. Did "a people" attack us on 9/11, or a transnational band of disaffected and alienated, half-Westernized, searching-for-identity-in-Islam (as some in this country embrace, say, the CSA) young men? If a "people," which?
Re Junius Brutus "SLC: Uh, yeah but we're supposed to be saving the Iraqis not slaughtering them." Don't believe the crap coming out of the White House. The US armed forces are in Iraq to preserve its oil reserves (the second largest in the world) for US use. As I have stated often on this blog, the Iraq invasion is about oil. It is not about freedom for the Iraqi people, democracy, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Al Qaeda or any of the other bull shit rationals claimed by Dubya or his acolytes in the press (e.g. Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Kevin Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, etc.). Unless and until the US dependence on imported oil is greatly reduced, these types of adventures will continue.
Comments closed September 20, 2007. |
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Heads in the Sand
Must be a bad day for quotes. That's not exactly...catchy.
Posted by Brandon Claycomb | September 6, 2007 6:39 PM