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Forums - General - Decline and fall of the US.

binary solo on 05 August 2010

I think it just needs to be accepted that the US's time as the biggest economy in the world, and the baddest ass on the planet is coming to an end, and China will be the global economic (and hence military) power. And India won't be far behind. America will have to be content with 3rd place.

We just need to hope that before China gets to first place that it moves from authoritarian state to democratic free state.

20 years ought to do it for the transition.



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HernanDroid on 05 August 2010
binary solo said:

We just need to hope that before China gets to first place that it moves from authoritarian state to democratic free state.

20 years ought to do it for the transition.


It is very easy to blame China for the things they do IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY, but many of this things were done by Europeans and now by the USA in the whole world . . .

Can you tell me when was the last time China messed with any other country in an agressive way ?



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Lostplanet22 on 05 August 2010
binary solo said:

 

We just need to hope that before China gets to first place that it moves from authoritarian state to democratic free state.

20 years ought to do it for the transition.

Well you should follow China spotters/bloggers... They all can say what is wrong in China but almost of all agree that the China today has improved a lot compared to the China of 10 years ago :).

 

Just hope we can say the same about USA :).



 

Badassbab on 07 August 2010
HernanDroid said:
binary solo said:

We just need to hope that before China gets to first place that it moves from authoritarian state to democratic free state.

20 years ought to do it for the transition.


It is very easy to blame China for the things they do IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY, but many of this things were done by Europeans and now by the USA in the whole world . . .

Can you tell me when was the last time China messed with any other country in an agressive way ?

China has a history of imperial aggression. In the 70's they invaded fellow communist Vietnam  to 'teach it a lesson' as the Vietnamese had driven out the awful Khmer Rough regime from Cambodia. But point taken.






Badassbab on 07 August 2010
Killiana1a said:
Badassbab said:
Rpruett said:
Badassbab said:

America has been through doom and gloom before. Civil War and the Great Depression spring to mind. It will come back. Weaker than before since there are other rising world powers and economically it's not dominant like it is militarily but even militarily it's been challenged. It's having a tough time putting down the Taliban insurgency who are mostly armed with 40 year old Soviet weapons and have limited financing and this has hurt it's prestige.


Meh, Militarily we haven't been challenged in a long, long time.  Taliban insurgency is not related to military strength in anyway.  We could rumble through the Taliban blowing up every building, location and position where we think we would find terrorists.    We use restraint because this isn't a war as much as a transfer of power. This isn't military force as much as a police force.

Militarily, we rumbled into Afghanistan / Iraq and had virtually no resistance. 

Not really. I mean sure you could nuke every part of the country but that's not victory at all. Russia, Pakistan, India etc could do that. There are over 140,000 troops from the most powerful military body in the world with the most advanced weaponary against something like 40,000 odd Taliban armed with old Soviet arms. To not call the fight against the Taliban a war is ludicrous. It's known as the War in Afghanistan. And the US has been blowing up every building, location and position they think the enemy is in otheriwse they wouldn't be doing their job properly. And to say you rumbled through Afghanistan and Iraq isn't saying much. Iraq was incredibly weak through the Gulf War and UN sanctions and Afghanistan was hardly a military power and not even unified under the Taliban, in fact most of the foot soldiers fighting on the side of the US were from the Northern Alliance.

For the US putting down an insurgency is once again proving to be far tougher than winning a conventional war. I think in any conventional war the US would win though at great cost against some of the major powers.

I have a contrarian view on Afghanistan and Iraq:

Both were practice rounds for future urban conflicts for us and every participating nation who pledged troops.

Currently, August 2010 is the end of conventional military operations in Iraq. This has been noted in the media, but has flown under the radar.

As for Afghanistan, we are engaged in a civil war. The Taliban can be any Afghani citizen, but they dare not distinguish themselves with a uniform or noticeable piece of clothing because they would put a bulls eye on their forehead. Instead, they hide their weapons in the basement when the patrols come into town and then stone their wives and cut off the noses and ears of runaway brides once the patrols roll out.

What we should do in Afghanistan is prop up a pro-US dictator and give him carte blanche to root out and exterminate the Taliban like the rats they are.

As for the whole doom and gloom discussion, meh, the US is not the only nation feeling it at the moment. Europe, Japan and others are not doing as well as they were 5 to 10 years ago. We would be worse off as a planet, but fortunately we are not.

No you should not be propping up anymore dictators in any part of the world ever again. I long for the days when the 'propping up' artificial regimes by self righteous imperialist foreign powers comes to and end.






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MARCUSDJACKSON on 07 August 2010
zgamer5 said:

wow i never thought that the bush administration was that bad.



me either



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Killiana1a on 08 August 2010
Badassbab said:
Killiana1a said:
Badassbab said:
Rpruett said:
Badassbab said:

America has been through doom and gloom before. Civil War and the Great Depression spring to mind. It will come back. Weaker than before since there are other rising world powers and economically it's not dominant like it is militarily but even militarily it's been challenged. It's having a tough time putting down the Taliban insurgency who are mostly armed with 40 year old Soviet weapons and have limited financing and this has hurt it's prestige.


Meh, Militarily we haven't been challenged in a long, long time.  Taliban insurgency is not related to military strength in anyway.  We could rumble through the Taliban blowing up every building, location and position where we think we would find terrorists.    We use restraint because this isn't a war as much as a transfer of power. This isn't military force as much as a police force.

Militarily, we rumbled into Afghanistan / Iraq and had virtually no resistance. 

Not really. I mean sure you could nuke every part of the country but that's not victory at all. Russia, Pakistan, India etc could do that. There are over 140,000 troops from the most powerful military body in the world with the most advanced weaponary against something like 40,000 odd Taliban armed with old Soviet arms. To not call the fight against the Taliban a war is ludicrous. It's known as the War in Afghanistan. And the US has been blowing up every building, location and position they think the enemy is in otheriwse they wouldn't be doing their job properly. And to say you rumbled through Afghanistan and Iraq isn't saying much. Iraq was incredibly weak through the Gulf War and UN sanctions and Afghanistan was hardly a military power and not even unified under the Taliban, in fact most of the foot soldiers fighting on the side of the US were from the Northern Alliance.

For the US putting down an insurgency is once again proving to be far tougher than winning a conventional war. I think in any conventional war the US would win though at great cost against some of the major powers.

I have a contrarian view on Afghanistan and Iraq:

Both were practice rounds for future urban conflicts for us and every participating nation who pledged troops.

Currently, August 2010 is the end of conventional military operations in Iraq. This has been noted in the media, but has flown under the radar.

As for Afghanistan, we are engaged in a civil war. The Taliban can be any Afghani citizen, but they dare not distinguish themselves with a uniform or noticeable piece of clothing because they would put a bulls eye on their forehead. Instead, they hide their weapons in the basement when the patrols come into town and then stone their wives and cut off the noses and ears of runaway brides once the patrols roll out.

What we should do in Afghanistan is prop up a pro-US dictator and give him carte blanche to root out and exterminate the Taliban like the rats they are.

As for the whole doom and gloom discussion, meh, the US is not the only nation feeling it at the moment. Europe, Japan and others are not doing as well as they were 5 to 10 years ago. We would be worse off as a planet, but fortunately we are not.

No you should not be propping up anymore dictators in any part of the world ever again. I long for the days when the 'propping up' artificial regimes by self righteous imperialist foreign powers comes to and end.

It worked in Iran until Carter was elected PoTUS. If Carter had given the Shah full support along with an unlimited supply of US munitions, then we would not be in the situation the world is facing now with a bunch of nutjob clerics running Iran and allowing that blowhard, Ahmadinejad to take the blame with his touting of a nuclear Iran.

As for propping up dictators, it makes sense in regions where they have a history of dictatorial rule and know nothing of democracy other than stuffing ballot boxes and assassinating opposition candidates.

In cases such as this, I fully support propping up dictators if it is in the best interest of world stability and averting a nuclear war. Yes, it may be antithetical to Western democracy and ideals, but some regions on this planet, due to their history, will never develop a democracy on their own, henceforth in the best interests of world powers, it makes cold-hearted political sense to prop up and support dictators.



Badassbab on 08 August 2010
Killiana1a said:
Badassbab said:
Killiana1a said:
Badassbab said:
Rpruett said:
Badassbab said:

America has been through doom and gloom before. Civil War and the Great Depression spring to mind. It will come back. Weaker than before since there are other rising world powers and economically it's not dominant like it is militarily but even militarily it's been challenged. It's having a tough time putting down the Taliban insurgency who are mostly armed with 40 year old Soviet weapons and have limited financing and this has hurt it's prestige.


Meh, Militarily we haven't been challenged in a long, long time.  Taliban insurgency is not related to military strength in anyway.  We could rumble through the Taliban blowing up every building, location and position where we think we would find terrorists.    We use restraint because this isn't a war as much as a transfer of power. This isn't military force as much as a police force.

Militarily, we rumbled into Afghanistan / Iraq and had virtually no resistance. 

Not really. I mean sure you could nuke every part of the country but that's not victory at all. Russia, Pakistan, India etc could do that. There are over 140,000 troops from the most powerful military body in the world with the most advanced weaponary against something like 40,000 odd Taliban armed with old Soviet arms. To not call the fight against the Taliban a war is ludicrous. It's known as the War in Afghanistan. And the US has been blowing up every building, location and position they think the enemy is in otheriwse they wouldn't be doing their job properly. And to say you rumbled through Afghanistan and Iraq isn't saying much. Iraq was incredibly weak through the Gulf War and UN sanctions and Afghanistan was hardly a military power and not even unified under the Taliban, in fact most of the foot soldiers fighting on the side of the US were from the Northern Alliance.

For the US putting down an insurgency is once again proving to be far tougher than winning a conventional war. I think in any conventional war the US would win though at great cost against some of the major powers.

I have a contrarian view on Afghanistan and Iraq:

Both were practice rounds for future urban conflicts for us and every participating nation who pledged troops.

Currently, August 2010 is the end of conventional military operations in Iraq. This has been noted in the media, but has flown under the radar.

As for Afghanistan, we are engaged in a civil war. The Taliban can be any Afghani citizen, but they dare not distinguish themselves with a uniform or noticeable piece of clothing because they would put a bulls eye on their forehead. Instead, they hide their weapons in the basement when the patrols come into town and then stone their wives and cut off the noses and ears of runaway brides once the patrols roll out.

What we should do in Afghanistan is prop up a pro-US dictator and give him carte blanche to root out and exterminate the Taliban like the rats they are.

As for the whole doom and gloom discussion, meh, the US is not the only nation feeling it at the moment. Europe, Japan and others are not doing as well as they were 5 to 10 years ago. We would be worse off as a planet, but fortunately we are not.

No you should not be propping up anymore dictators in any part of the world ever again. I long for the days when the 'propping up' artificial regimes by self righteous imperialist foreign powers comes to and end.

It worked in Iran until Carter was elected PoTUS. If Carter had given the Shah full support along with an unlimited supply of US munitions, then we would not be in the situation the world is facing now with a bunch of nutjob clerics running Iran and allowing that blowhard, Ahmadinejad to take the blame with his touting of a nuclear Iran.

As for propping up dictators, it makes sense in regions where they have a history of dictatorial rule and know nothing of democracy other than stuffing ballot boxes and assassinating opposition candidates.

In cases such as this, I fully support propping up dictators if it is in the best interest of world stability and averting a nuclear war. Yes, it may be antithetical to Western democracy and ideals, but some regions on this planet, due to their history, will never develop a democracy on their own, henceforth in the best interests of world powers, it makes cold-hearted political sense to prop up and support dictators.

If you mean propping up dictators works in the best interests of the American Elites then yes you're right. However I think the people should decide without foreign interference about who should be in power. Iran did have a democratically elected President in power in the 50's until the CIA and M15 engineered his overthrow. His crime? He put the interests of his people first and foremost above that of Western Corporations. Democracy only if they vote the 'right' way. And even if America is trying to export democray (which it's not) then surely there are better ways to do it then by bombing a country to smitherens and then occupying it for many years? Not exactly a good sell. And why not 'export' it to it's allies in the region that are anything but democracies? And those nutjob clerics you're talking about haven't invaded any country last I heard.

The reason for the lack of stability in the region is because of constant outside interference and artificial regimes in power propped up by the West. It's plain to see. And what nuclear war in the region are you talking about? Between whom? The only country threatening any country is the US and Israel against Iran which is completly illegal under international law. Iran is surrounded by an awesome array of firepower all around. It has a hundreds of thousands of US troops to it' east and west and a hostile powerful neighbour in Saudi Arabia and Israel. It spends less on it's military than most countries to it's West (and East even). Iran is hardly a threat. It's military is mostly defensive in nature with quite limited offensive capability. If there really was democracy in action then there wouldn't be any Foreign troops in the region.






HernanDroid on 08 August 2010
Killiana1a said:

It worked in Iran until Carter was elected PoTUS. If Carter had given the Shah full support along with an unlimited supply of US munitions, then we would not be in the situation the world is facing now with a bunch of nutjob clerics running Iran and allowing that blowhard, Ahmadinejad to take the blame with his touting of a nuclear Iran.

As for propping up dictators, it makes sense in regions where they have a history of dictatorial rule and know nothing of democracy other than stuffing ballot boxes and assassinating opposition candidates.

In cases such as this, I fully support propping up dictators if it is in the best interest of world stability and averting a nuclear war. Yes, it may be antithetical to Western democracy and ideals, but some regions on this planet, due to their history, will never develop a democracy on their own, henceforth in the best interests of world powers, it makes cold-hearted political sense to prop up and support dictators.

 

In most of the cases, the dictators generate even worse problems than the ones the country has before.

 

Look at Argentina, Chile(Pinochet), Peru(Fujimori), Venezuela(Hugo Chavez), Iraq(George Bush), North Korea, etc, etc, etc.

Many of them were not impossed, but still they acted as dictators, Hugo Chavez is elected "In a democratic way", but he uses a lot of goverment-related money to buy the people, and since they are living sort of good, they dont care about the democratics, the comunist, etc, etc. That's one of the problems supporting dictators bring with them.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Back to economics, i still believe the USA are doing what they need to do in order to be back to "before-crysis" times. We have sort of a similar crysis here in Colombia in 1998 and it took us 12 years to recover ourselves and be few months to gain "Investment Grade" again.



You may find a mirror trying to find the other side of the world

Killiana1a on 08 August 2010
Badassbab said:
Killiana1a said:
Badassbab said:
Killiana1a said:
Badassbab said:
Rpruett said:
Badassbab said:

America has been through doom and gloom before. Civil War and the Great Depression spring to mind. It will come back. Weaker than before since there are other rising world powers and economically it's not dominant like it is militarily but even militarily it's been challenged. It's having a tough time putting down the Taliban insurgency who are mostly armed with 40 year old Soviet weapons and have limited financing and this has hurt it's prestige.


Meh, Militarily we haven't been challenged in a long, long time.  Taliban insurgency is not related to military strength in anyway.  We could rumble through the Taliban blowing up every building, location and position where we think we would find terrorists.    We use restraint because this isn't a war as much as a transfer of power. This isn't military force as much as a police force.

Militarily, we rumbled into Afghanistan / Iraq and had virtually no resistance. 

Not really. I mean sure you could nuke every part of the country but that's not victory at all. Russia, Pakistan, India etc could do that. There are over 140,000 troops from the most powerful military body in the world with the most advanced weaponary against something like 40,000 odd Taliban armed with old Soviet arms. To not call the fight against the Taliban a war is ludicrous. It's known as the War in Afghanistan. And the US has been blowing up every building, location and position they think the enemy is in otheriwse they wouldn't be doing their job properly. And to say you rumbled through Afghanistan and Iraq isn't saying much. Iraq was incredibly weak through the Gulf War and UN sanctions and Afghanistan was hardly a military power and not even unified under the Taliban, in fact most of the foot soldiers fighting on the side of the US were from the Northern Alliance.

For the US putting down an insurgency is once again proving to be far tougher than winning a conventional war. I think in any conventional war the US would win though at great cost against some of the major powers.

I have a contrarian view on Afghanistan and Iraq:

Both were practice rounds for future urban conflicts for us and every participating nation who pledged troops.

Currently, August 2010 is the end of conventional military operations in Iraq. This has been noted in the media, but has flown under the radar.

As for Afghanistan, we are engaged in a civil war. The Taliban can be any Afghani citizen, but they dare not distinguish themselves with a uniform or noticeable piece of clothing because they would put a bulls eye on their forehead. Instead, they hide their weapons in the basement when the patrols come into town and then stone their wives and cut off the noses and ears of runaway brides once the patrols roll out.

What we should do in Afghanistan is prop up a pro-US dictator and give him carte blanche to root out and exterminate the Taliban like the rats they are.

As for the whole doom and gloom discussion, meh, the US is not the only nation feeling it at the moment. Europe, Japan and others are not doing as well as they were 5 to 10 years ago. We would be worse off as a planet, but fortunately we are not.

No you should not be propping up anymore dictators in any part of the world ever again. I long for the days when the 'propping up' artificial regimes by self righteous imperialist foreign powers comes to and end.

It worked in Iran until Carter was elected PoTUS. If Carter had given the Shah full support along with an unlimited supply of US munitions, then we would not be in the situation the world is facing now with a bunch of nutjob clerics running Iran and allowing that blowhard, Ahmadinejad to take the blame with his touting of a nuclear Iran.

As for propping up dictators, it makes sense in regions where they have a history of dictatorial rule and know nothing of democracy other than stuffing ballot boxes and assassinating opposition candidates.

In cases such as this, I fully support propping up dictators if it is in the best interest of world stability and averting a nuclear war. Yes, it may be antithetical to Western democracy and ideals, but some regions on this planet, due to their history, will never develop a democracy on their own, henceforth in the best interests of world powers, it makes cold-hearted political sense to prop up and support dictators.

If you mean propping up dictators works in the best interests of the American Elites then yes you're right. However I think the people should decide without foreign interference about who should be in power. Iran did have a democratically elected President in power in the 50's until the CIA and M15 engineered his overthrow. His crime? He put the interests of his people first and foremost above that of Western Corporations. Democracy only if they vote the 'right' way. And even if America is trying to export democray (which it's not) then surely there are better ways to do it then by bombing a country to smitherens and then occupying it for many years? Not exactly a good sell. And why not 'export' it to it's allies in the region that are anything but democracies? And those nutjob clerics you're talking about haven't invaded any country last I heard.

The reason for the lack of stability in the region is because of constant outside interference and artificial regimes in power propped up by the West. It's plain to see. And what nuclear war in the region are you talking about? Between whom? The only country threatening any country is the US and Israel against Iran which is completly illegal under international law. Iran is surrounded by an awesome array of firepower all around. It has a hundreds of thousands of US troops to it' east and west and a hostile powerful neighbour in Saudi Arabia and Israel. It spends less on it's military than most countries to it's West (and East even). Iran is hardly a threat. It's military is mostly defensive in nature with quite limited offensive capability. If there really was democracy in action then there wouldn't be any Foreign troops in the region.

Not to mention Iran has not waged a conventional war since the Iran Iraq War in the 1980s, while Israel has been and is at war everyday it exists as a nation. If Iran, Syria, and Lebanon tried to attack Israel now, it would be the Six-Day War part 2 without a doubt and with direct US involvement as August 2010 was the end to conventional US military operations in Iraq freeing up a large portion of the US military to militarily support our allies.

Is the creation of the State of Israel the kind of "outside interference" you are talking about?

As for hypocrisy and world powers, history has shown this to be true. Now, as an American and not some absolutist when it comes to ideals, I agree bombing a country to the stone ages under the pretenses of creating a democracy is not a good public relations strategy for exporting Western Democracy.

The best way would be to use the CIA and internal support from the country you want to change in order to overthrow the current regime and instill democracy.

This will not work for many countries and regions across the world because their entire history has been one of oppression by tribal warlords and religious beliefs that allow a man to kidnap his estranged wife and cut off her ears and nose.

In this case, I prefer a dictatorship until the opposition in the country is subdued or annihilated, then the dictator should be compelled (with the threat of CIA assassination) to hold democratic elections.