Comment on PJM "David Zucker Commits Hollywood Treason"

Not Blacklisting but Blackberrying same result different technology. A distinction without a difference brought by the same people who think that lawyers create content, as opposed to the valuable work they do in protecting property and clearing transaction obstacles away. Their addiction to politicking, intrigue and cruelty shows an emotional life frozen in adolescence.

Aug 21, 2008 - 10:04 pm

Comment on Belmont Club "Choose"

When this ends the Georgian government must be backed in asserting its right to expel every non-citizen from Georgian territory. In Georgia, as in the United States, accepting a foreign passport or claiming dual citizenship must give the government the right to declare the lose of your original citizenship and therefor the lose of all right to be in the country’s territory. When this is finished the only Russian troops permitted anywhere on the planet south of 44º N should be embassy guards and staff, with no more than 50 each in all but a half dozen countries.

Good morning sports fans.

Fred I think you have to be careful about letting your emotions get repressed. Why don’t you tell us what you really think? Seriously despite the frustrations and costs the President was right to stay focused on a humane transformative approach to Iraq and he is right to establish our moral superiority in the Caucasus. Once that is done it is my sincere hope that things are rearranged to make the loss to the Russians unambiguous.

Now we see the Chinese are continuing to team with the Sudanese and Saudis to perform ethnic cleansing for oil in North Darfur. We do not need that for a host of reasons. Perhaps we can encourage them to consider other resources that are closer (cough due North cough) to home?

Cannoneer (a BC poster),
Re: your bit on the Russian officer returning the stolen car, in a few years we should get a run of books by former Russian officers giving their opinions of the “oppressed minorities” that Putin sent them off to kill and die for. The Russian officers probably identify far more with the avowedly European Georgians.

buddy (a BC poster),
It isn’t crazy because it is the way Putin and company look at the world. When training a dog you quickly learn that it is not profitable to expect the dog to think like a human being. Fortunately humans are sophisticated enough to think about how a wolf or dog views a situation and then act in a way that fits the beasts expectations. Putin is human, more or less, but he does have very fixed prejudices and expectations. That does not mean that he is stupid. He is not, the bear is intelligent. The Nazis and the Soviets always had strong common elements, just look at their art.

A friend of mine was repeating the TV propaganda. “The Georgians ran away leaving their ammunition behind I saw it on TV.”

The interim score for Putin’s brilliant effort at playing a Napoleon

1. The Black Sea is lost to Russia.
2. The Caspian Sea oil is largely lost to Russia.
3. The American’s have a clear shot at Iran any time they want to.
4. The Chinese are pissed at Putin and open to a deal at the expense of Russia.
5. The EU and Nato have not been more united and pro-American in decades.
6. McCain is much more likely to be the next US President.

Genius sheer genius.

Comments on Belmont Club "Voluntary Amputation"

This war could flip as fast as the Russian adventure at the other end of the asian landmass did just over 100 years ago, The Japanese eliminated the Russian Navy in 45 minutes. The Russian Black Sea fleet with troop transports could vanish just as fast. If it becomes a shooting war I expect the first shots will be the disappearance of Russian submarines followed by surface ships desperately and hopelessly running in panic. The Turkish government and their military are deciding which way to jump right now. Could they allow a Russian triumph? Yes but how could that be in their interest? Even if it came with a German promise to support EU membership it would not be worth having in Putin’s world. Better for the Turks to line up with the East Europeans and Americans and the real pro-American Sunnis of Iraq. The Iranians may be more likely to find allies among the Kurds.

Aug 11, 2008 - 8:07 pm

OldSalt:
I’d like to say that I’m shocked and amazed of the number of posters on this forum and others who treat this as some sort of internal dispute between a bully (Saakashvili) and an ethnic minority, with the Russians in effect doing a very bad thing, but probably the only thing they could do.

It’s the FSB/KGB playbook - period. Or, it’s the pre-WWII isolationist playbook, avoid foreign entanglements, and the such. Take your pick. Neither describes the real world as it is.

Then there is the absolute fantasy (no insult intended) of perhaps giving nucs to Georgia, of rushing the 82nd Airborne in to key points (followed by what? their reduction via 500 Russian tanks and local air power?), of blowing Iran to hell just because it might make Putin feel bad, or of miracle resupply of superman SOCOM operators changing defeat to victory overnight. It’s not happening, folks.

And of course, there’s the obligatory “it’s all about oil.. oil is bad.. oil causes war..”.

Let’s get serious here, people.

1) This is well planned, naked Russian aggression. The situation on the ground in S. Ossetia was and is irrelevant, and particularly so to Putin. The Russians identified Georgia as a strategic goal on their shopping list for national expansion, and they’re just going to take it. They want the black sea naval base, they want the oil pipeline, and they want the strategic military road network (Southern terminus of the Sukhumi Military Road, the Georgian and Ossetian Military Roads).

2) Putin is a man of great ambitions. He has already set Russia on a course to restore the USSR. If Gorbachav and Yeltsin were the authors of the USSR’s demise, Putin will be the father of a new Union. The FSB is back in full force. Putin has eliminated by force every potential political opponent as well as the free press. He has set a path of confrontation against the U.S. for the past five years, and has returned to the prior Soviet strategy of working to isolate and divorce American from Europe.

3) Energy: Again, lose the left-wing Al Gore storybook fantasy. Natural resources are a strategic concern, and oil is the top concern - bar none. He who controls the world oil supply (if it can be done), controls the world. Oil is not evil. Oil is freedom for America and the West. Those who would deny America access to oil only strengthen our enemies. Those who are enemies of “oil” are also enemies of freedom.

4) We need to view the current Russian campaign and a potential Georgian capitulation in the long view. My heart goes out to the Georgians, but as Saakashvili said, it’s in their hands now. Air superiority, 500 tanks a 5:1 advantage in troops trumps anything the Georgians will put in the filed. Much as France and Eastern Europe were lost in the early days of Hitler’s Blitzkrieg, Georgia may very well be lost to Russian. It’s is vital for the future of Georgia that the nucleus of their leadership and military not share the fate of the Polish military officers and families in the Katyń Forest. They are not fighting for territory, but for survival.

The world cannot wish away tyrants. While America might be able to ignore an insignificant little dictatorship minutes from her shore (that would be Cuba, folks), we cannot ignore a reinvigorated, rearming, territory-hungry Russia, a man of continental ambitions such as Chavez, or a lunatic such as Iran’s Ahmadinejad.

The first lessons I learned and took to heart during my Navy officer training was America’s position in the world as an island nation, the importance of “free sea lanes of communication”, and the value of power projection versus playing defense from one’s own back yard. We need to recognize Putin’s game. We would tend to think “limited excursion”, because the west simply could not fathom a nation state seizing control of another nation state by force. WE would not do it, not in Iraq, not in Iran, not in post WWII Europe, so certainly, no other civilized society would do so. Banish that thought from your FSB-confused little minds, and look at the facts as we know them.

Russian is making it’s move, and Putin will not stop unless stopped. He may not have the remilitarized society he needs to fulfill his ambitions, but he’s been moving methodically to put those pieces in place. A lot of planes, tanks, and submarines can be put into service in 2-3 years, if a country has the will to do so, and the petro-rubles.

We need to think in terms of a long term, military campaign. It may be a cold war, it will certainly be a hot one at times, but it’s not our choice and yet it’s coming. Whether Obama or McCain is the next President is now a pivotal issue. I really do not have a dog in that hunt, i.e. I can support neither candidate based on their history. However, at this point, the fantasy-world-view of the Democrats may prove fatal for America’s future security.

You want change that you can believe in? Well, ask a Georgian about the relevant value of change. It’s time to get real, America.

Aug 11, 2008 - 7:54 pm

Old Salt,
That was publishable. That was worth money. You said it better than I did.

Aug 11, 2008 - 8:30 pm

The one part of this equation that I am having the hardest time getting a handle on is Soros. If the Georgian government is a Soros funded and run operation then why would it align itself with American power projection into Iraq and Iran? We have Putin, the Chinese, Bush and Soros (he of the Invisible Empire) playing four way chess here. Clearly it is in America’s interest to see Putin lose but what else is a desired result? No physicist can model even a three body problem.

Aug 12, 2008 - 6:56 am

Comment on Belmont Club "When you see The Southern Cross for the first time"

The problem with Suez was that it went down the same weekend the Soviets invaded Hungary. Dulles and Eisenhower had supported the British position to the extent that we withdrew from funding the Aswan Dam project. That precipitated Nasser’s seizure of the canal. Anthony Eden did not include the American’s in the Sévres negotiations with the French and Israelis and Eisenhower did not feel bound to a non Nato action taken without prior consultation.

Of course I would like to believe that I would have been gifted with such insight that the effect of this humiliation of our allies on Britain and France and Nasser and other enemies would have given me pause. We can grant Fletcher (a BC poster) this much. The world would probably be a better place if Nasser had been defeated. The European allies would still have needed to undergo a painful readjustment to a post colonial world. Fletcher’s seething hostility to America is the British equivalent of Pat Buchananism. Eventually he will run into the embrace of the enemies of all he cherishes to punish the ally he despises.

Aug 5, 2008 - 10:10 pm