Anti-Subjugator

After I finally got the word "subjugate" and thus had a complete image of how I divided the world up, and what was causing all the conflicts, I started chatting to thousands of people on IRC, to try to find out whether they would support the Iraq war now that they had this phrase - "fight subjugation". I gave away my MSN ID when asked, the end result being I have heaps of contacts, and I've no idea who any of them are. So I regularly get contacted by complete unknowns.

The other day I got contacted by someone who had as the message in his ID "u mess wiv one paki all pakis cum to kik fuck out of ya". Anyway, I asked him about his message, and why he didn't put "humans" instead of "paki". His answer was "everyone has a religion". I asked him if he was a racist, a religious bigot, a nationalist, or all three. I didn't get a sensible reply to that. So I told him:

Mess with one anti-racist and all anti-racists will kick the fuck out of you.

Mess with one anti-religious-bigot and all anti-religious-bigots will kick the fuck out of you.

Mess with one anti-nationalist and all anti-nationalists will kick the fuck out of you.

It's not actually true, but it should be. But then, his original wasn't true either. People are looking for an identity, and they're all choosing the wrong one. I was looking for my identity too. It took me 37 years, but I eventually found what I was looking for - the anti-subjugators. Actually, the rest of message 666 too, but it is my opposition to subjugation in particular that defines me.

I've still no idea why the simple line "fight subjugation rather than occupation" doesn't resonate with the whole world. One possible explanation is that the rest of the world largely runs on "emotional intelligence" rather than making a gigantic effort to make sure that their brain is as logical as a computer. But given that there is already a name for doing that - rationalism - I would have expected the rationalists to be on board. Yet at the site that I actually learnt the word "rationalism" from, the guy in charge actually supported John Kerry, the guy who betrayed our South Vietnamese allies. All this means that there's a hell of a lot of work left to do. In the meantime, watch out for the racist, religiously-bigotted, nationalist Pakistanis. They might kick the fuck out of you.

I read an article mentioning a "one percent doctrine". Basically, if there is a one percent chance that Pakistan is giving nuclear secrets to Al Qaeda, we should act on the danger as if we were in imminent danger, rather than suffer the effects of the 1% actually coming true. I agree with this. This is a mathematically correct thing to do. P(x) * E(x). ie the probability of x happening times the effect of x happening. The equation shows that denuking Pakistan is far higher priority than checking Arab Muslims at airports. Yet we are outwardly only working on the latter problem.

I say "outwardly" because I don't know if the US plans to denuke Pakistan or not. If I were in charge of the US, I wouldn't be opening a warfront with Pakistan at this moment in history either. I'd be doing exactly what the US government is already doing, which is taking down the hostile governments first, and doing scientific research on human behaviour at the same time. And also military doctrine experiments too. The 3.5-week Iraq war with 100 allied casualties shattered previous military thinking (as I predicted it would). Actually my prediction was not quite accurate, as I was expecting mass defection and a victory in 3 days (how long it took tanks to reach Baghdad). I didn't expect anyone to be dumb enough to fight a losing battle so that they could remain oppressed. But that was one of the benefits of liberating Iraq - finding out just how dumb these people are (from a western point of view).

I'd like to draw your attention to two comments by ableiter here and here

Paul, how about a modified carpet bombing? The best Radar in the World is the SPY-1 that is used on Ageis ships (SPY-1b is the latest version, IIRC). It cannot detect a B2 above 45,000 feet. So we send over B2's at 60,000 feet and use the new bomb racks to drop 108 200lb JDAM's on 200 Prominent Islamofascists. It will get the job done without indiscriminate killing, which is what gets Americans upset.

Paul, you cannot make religous fanatics cower. You cannot intimedate them. You don't reason with them. you cannot bribe them or negoiate in any way. All you can do is kill them. While the Montefort solution DOES work. It is not a viable option umder current political conditions. Eventually those conditions will change to the point where it is not only acceptable, but mandantory. Ay which point Arabs will become exitinct. The whole idea behind OIF is starting off a chain of events that doesn't end with Pika Dans in Muslim Cities. Electing Kerry will be a big step toward Nuclear war in the ME. It doesn't look good for Bush right now. 'course Dukakis was ahead 57 to 39 at this point in his election campaign and we ALL know what happened there.


This is exactly right. The Arabs actually don't realise what danger they are in. After 9/11, the proper response to this was "Ok, set up the nukes, but BEFORE unleashing them, how about we go and knock on a few doors and ask "WHY did you do this?"". And that is effectively what has been done. I've always wanted to know why Arabs burnt American flags instead of pictures of Saddam. Saddam killed hundreds of thousands of Arabs, making him an Arab hero. WHY? Please answer this, and then we'll let the slaughter begin. But we'd really like an answer to this, as it will aid our knowledge of psychology. It could come in useful for some internal problems we have.

And guess what? That's EXACTLY what happened. The answers that the Iraqis were able to provide gave us the knowledge we required to fix problems at home. To turn criminals into police. What made some people criminals and some anti-criminals? The answers were in Iraq. Theoretically some sort of psychoanalysis could have been done within Australia to find out what was causing Australian criminals to harm others instead of protect others. I basically did try to do this myself. But I never knew the distinction between philosophy and religion. Or even psychology.

I concentrated on religion, and noticed that these people were often Christians who seemed to have gotten the idea that "Jesus died for our sins, let's get our money's worth". They had their ticket to Heaven simply by saying "I'm a Christian". So I basically identified religion as the problem and sought to eradicate it. I used to debate people trying to get them to be atheists, or at least, non-Christians. I thought atheism was the answer based on the fact that I wanted to protect rather than harm innocent people. I thought that Christianity was harming society. But other than conversion to atheism and stringing up criminals, I didn't have any other solutions to the problem.

Until the Iraq war. Then I could see that identifying what was causing some people to want to liberate others (and they were clearly visible in the comments section of the Iraqi blogs), while others were trying to keep a dictator in power, would likely provide a solution to the longstanding problem of Australian criminals. Australians who are happy to liberate Iraqis should be equally happy to protect ordinary Australians. ie me. I could solve the problem of criminals wanted to violate MY human rights if I could find out what was causing people to back a sadistic dictator like Saddam. But it was easier to identify what was causing ME to want to protect the Iraqi people from Saddam. I couldn't put it in words other than to say "it's bloody obvious - just do it - how can you NOT want to do it?!". The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow was that I was an anti-subjugator, and while it is debatable how I became one, the reason others apparently aren't is that either they grew up in the free world without authoritarian parents so have never experienced subjugation, or grew up under dictators so never experienced not being subjugated - and you need to have experienced BOTH in order to become an anti-subjugator. That's "thinker"'s theory, anyway.

Anyway, let's hope the "chain of events" continues before the Arabs all die because Americans cop a nuke, get fed up, and instead of realising that it's their own stupid fault for not continuing the conventional war when they had a chance, start nuking people instead. When the nukes hit America, I'll be the one saying "don't nuke them - liberate them and fix them", but no-one's going to listen to me. They prefer to call me names now, when it's actually me that's trying to save both the Americans and the Arabs, Muslims et al. In fact, I've done everything I can think of to save as many people on both sides as possible. But when it comes to the crunch, there's a limited amount of hurt to the free world that I'm willing to withstand in order to spare those still in the enemy camp. I do indeed have "love thy enemy", more than anyone else in the world in fact, but I'm not going to allow the innocent to be harmed by them. This is the correct moral equation. It took me 37 years to find it, but there it is.

Someone asked some excellent questions of "liberals" (left-wing spin for commie ratbags who support sadistic dictators in an attempt to bring down global capitalism) here and was thinking of asking Foddy to respond. However, it doesn't matter, Foddy's soulmate has had a crack at it here. Actually, it's a damn good attempt at an answer, and I'm quite impressed. It's still wrong though. Let's go through it. I'll mark the original with "R" for "Republican" and the other quoted stuff is from this presumed Democrat...

R:"And let's dispense with silly arguments about whether we should've gone into Iraq in the first place. Shoulda, woulda, coulda."

"Well, the history of this decision is consistently being rewritten by the right. As the war has gone worse, the decision has magically become more bipartisan. Certainly the Democrats were very very stupid to vote for the authorization"

Sometimes I wonder if the Democrats are actually doing all this as part of a psyop. Was South Vietnam abandoned as part of that same psyop?

"but it was the President who made the case for war based on claims of Al Qaeda - Iraq - WMD"

Which was exactly the right thing to highlight, although the real aims were much more than that.

"and it is he who made the final decision to move from authorization to walking away from the UN to war."

Walking away from the UN? The UN is a collection of dictators, who I hope the US humours purely as part of a psyop.

R:"First, I'm wondering what you think the result of an American withdrawal would be? And we really have to ask that about two spheres, the internal Iraqi results, and the effect on America's security."

"There will be a bloody fight within Iraq for control of that nation. Whether that will be bloodier than the current civil war, I can't say."

That's what the fight already is. The insurgents somehow think they can beat the democratically-elected Iraqi government, and are willing to throw their lives away on this fantasy. Removing US aid from the good guys in this battle is insane.

"But it will be a bloody confrontation without the added carnage of American troops."

So America shouldn't protect its allies? Ok, with friends like you, who needs neutrals?

"On the domestic front, it will be better to have our troops not playing - essentially - pattycake with Iraqi forces who would just as soon betray them."

The Iraqi forces are not like that. Even if some of them are, you should sack them to make sure the Iraqi forces have good guys in them, as far as you can tell. This is called helping allies, a concept that is apparently alien to selfish Democrats.

"Instead we would be back on track hunting down Al Qaeda and their affiliates instead of nation building."

Currently you've actually arranged for Iraqi security forces to kill Al Qaeda, as well as other anti-Americans. In fact, you've even got them spending their own resources on fighting a mutual enemy. You'd think that would be an impossible feat to accomplish, but that's what Bush has managed to set up. But instead of helping our allies fight our mutual enemies, you want to abandon them? Quite apart from the moral depravity of such a treacherous decision, you walk away from the fight that you say you want America to engage in.

"The postwar plans, if you can call them that, thought we would prop up a guy like Chalabi and Iraq would have some kind of democracy (everybody remember Bush's second inaugural speech?)."

They installed a guy called Allawi, and Iraq did indeed have some kind of democracy. A pretty bloody amazing democracy in fact. 300+ parties compared to America's 2.

"That isn't going to happen."

It just did.

"They want Sharia law."

No they don't. They didn't remotely vote for that. What they've actually voted for is something pretty damn close to a typical European country. Not exactly, but pretty damn close. All the important protections of human rights are in there. Saddam is no longer allowed to rape Iraqi women. I'm sure you're happy about that, right? It shows in your writing. Humanist Democrat and all that.

"They don't want a secular, progressive republic."

They voted for a pretty secular, capitalist government. I don't know what you mean by "progressive". That's normally left-wing spin for "we like stealing from the rich to bring them down to our level". Some progress.

"They'll pick what they want."

They did. And it's not too bad.

R:"Do you reject the "you broke it, you bought it" idea?"

"I didn't outright, but it's clear there's nothing we can do to fix what we broke."

It was already broken. It's being fixed now. When women are being raped by their own government in a holocaust, it's as broken as it'll ever be.

"The simple act of us being there is preventing that"

No it isn't.

"either through the Iraqis leaning on us to clean up all their messes"

Iraqis are not some singular entity. Only a racist would think such a thing. There are good Iraqis who are bravely fighting for freedom, facing other Iraqis who are causing a mess.

"or resentment provoked by having their country occupied by the world's sole superpower."

Anyone who resents being liberated is part of the problem that needs to be fixed. We don't need to fix it all at once, but we need to make sure things are moving in that direction.

"The moment to fix it has passed us by."

Nothing has been passed by. It's a work in progress, and the results so far have been phenomenally successful (a higher voter turnout than the US for example), although it would have been nicer if there had been less terrorists turn up in Iraq so that they could turn up in the US instead so that the coalition soldiers could go to the US to do battle instead. Hang on.

R:"Do you think the Iraqis will find a way to cobble their state together? Do you think it will descend into a civil bloodbath? If so, then why don't we have any responsibility to try and prevent it?"

"As I stated above: this is going to happen. Either it happens when a Democratic president withdraws or it happens 10 years from now."

The cobbling or the bloodbath? 10 years is a hell of a lot of time for the Iraqis to establish a massive military.

"The only difference is the amount of U.S. troops who die in the process and the gaping holes in U.S. security that linger on."

The gaping holes are enemy states still existing. They are currently being closed off. What's the reason you don't want that relatively small number of US troops to die? Most of them are happy to be helping Iraq, so it's clearly not for their sake. If you have some other urgent problem you want to work on, we can discuss that. In fact, I even agree with you. It stops being strategic to do nation-building in Iraq after November 2007 when the Iraqis are due to take over their own security.

"I'm saying we pay up front instead of the 30 year mortgage."

Pay what?

R:"Compare and contrast with Kosovo and Darfur."

"In neither situation are Americans actively occupying and being killed."

So? That's the whole point. Democrats think they should go in and occupy and get killed. Anyhow, they are occupying Kosovo.

"In Darfur, it's clear work has to be done internationally"

What exactly do you mean "internationally"? You mean getting China to agree to bomb their partners in crime? Do you think that is likely? Are your morals set by whatever China agrees to?

"but there's no clear mission militarily."

There is. Topple the Sudanese dictator and install someone like Allawi. Don't do the next step of installing democracy so quickly though.

"Even so, the general idea of helping the dispossessed militarily is not invalid"

Wow! We may be able to cut a deal after all. Now why don't the Iraqis and Iranians qualify as dispossessed?

"but if we're going to do it it ought to be clear what the endgame is supposed to be"

The endgame is a rational, humanist, non-subjugating government, preferably, but not necessarily, implemented via democracy.

"(and sold honestly instead of with talk of mushroom clouds and terrorist cells a plenty, cue Iran spin)."

No, we can't do that. If we do it honestly, there's more chance of getting a hostile alliance formed against us. YOU, as an INDIVIDUAL, have to sell it honestly, and let our governments concentrate on "we're only targetting security threats, none of you nasty dictators need to get scared and form a hostile alliance".

R:"What if Iraq turns into a Taliban-like cesspool, and becomes a base for terrorist operation against the US in the same way Afghanistan was?"

"It currently is a haven"

It's hardly a haven. It's more of a magnet. Having Al Qaeda drawn to US soldiers, instead of civilians, in a foreign, rather than domestic, battleground, is actually a good thing, at least from the US point of view.

"and that's with thousands of American troops on the ground there."

Yeah, killing terrorists.

"We can hunt terrorists, and that should be our armed forces primary mission until the Al Qaeda threat is eliminated."

The best way to hunt them is for the US forces to yell out "yoohoo" and the terrorists come running to suicide against them. You'd think the terrorists wouldn't be so stupid to do that, but somehow, someone has managed to convince them that if they keep suiciding against hard targets, they'll win. Maybe the Democrats with their psyop are doing a good thing? The only reason I'm wary is because of the abandonment of South Vietnam.

"But it isn't the time to build brand new nations now, not at this cost."

If it were white Jews being gassed, what cost would be worth their liberation? A peacetime military budget? Regardless, unless you're willing to nuke all Arabs and all Muslims off the face of the earth, you don't have any choice but to do nation-building in Iraq. There isn't actually an alternative if you want to start rolling back the mentality that causes suicide attacks in order to get 72 virgins. Nation-building in Iraq is one step in that process. Do you actually have a process at all?! Or do you think leaving the virgin-seekers loose won't have any ill-effect, such as, maybe, let's see, 9/11?

R:"Do you think that the Iraqis can build a stable, functioning democratic state?"

"Maybe, I don't know. But the path to get there is clearly not with American handholding."

That is not clear at all. All indications are that the American handholding has produced the fundamental building blocks we wanted - a high voter turnout, large number of volunteers to professional security forces, etc etc.

"It just gives them a crutch and gives us a tangled up military with a consistent casualty count."

If you're not willing to see American soldiers ever die to help others, you basically need to either hire foreign troops and disband your current military, or simply admit that you don't want to help anyone other than yourself, no matter how much danger (rape, torture etc) they are in.

R:"Are they just not suited for Democracy as a people? If so, what are their deficiencies?"

"They've shown little to no interest in a Western style democracy."

And that 70% turnout at the elections was what? Someone told them they could get free donuts?

"They're hamstrung by tribalism and religion (so is a lot of American politics, especially on the right, frankly)."

So you don't want the Iraqis to have something that looks like the American system. Check.

"It's all about the Sunni, Shia, Kurds, and Sharia Law. Us wishing Ben Franklin upon them does not make it so."

They are closer to Franklin now than they were under Saddam. They now have some essential tools like freedom of speech. You haven't seen what the effects of freedom of speech are on the Iraqi people yet. Let's see what it looks like after a century of that. How the election results change over time. The last x thousand years of dictatorship didn't produce anything worthwhile.

R:"The other half of the question is what effect will it have on American security? Will it embolden terrorists? Will our withdrawal make it more or less likely that terrorists will begin marshaling forces for another 9/11 style attack? Why?"

"Withdrawal from Iraq will help American security, again, our forces will not be babysitting a nation but be engaged in fighting terrorists instead of nation-building."

They are fighting terrorists already. Yes, they're doing some nation-building as well. Quite frankly, if you want to stop the nation-building component of it, that wouldn't be as bad as abandoning our allies completely. They can reconstruct themselves from here. Or why don't you just scale the reconstruction down to 10% of the current level rather than be a complete skinflint?

"The reason we haven't had another 9/11 is because the terrorists haven't sought to pull of an attack like it. Do you really think it's that much harder to commandeer a plane or ram a truck into a nuke plant or pull of some other spectacular attack now than it was six years ago?"

I think 9/11 was a lucky shot, and that's the main barrier to doing harm.

"They waited 8 years between attacks on the World Trade Center, I don't think our occupation of Iraq has really rocked their world so badly they're not prepared to do it again."

Al Qaeda can no longer operate freely. They're a shadow of their former self.

"The way we and the rest of the world has been getting these guys is through precise investigative work or luck like with the Fort Dix and Miami crews. I guess the short version is: they're already preparing for the next attack, I'd just rather us not be stuck in Iraq at that time so we can prevent it or avenge it."

You're not stuck in Iraq. You can leave anytime. You're advocating leaving right now, before it is time to avenge anyone. If you can leave now, why not leave when you have someone to avenge? As for the prevention, exactly how will transferring troops from fighting terrorists in Iraq to bases in the US prevent any terrorist attacks?

R:"On the Global War on Terror more generally, will a withdrawal from Iraq help or hinder that effort?"

"Help. See above."

See above.

R:"Or do we need to make an effort at all, other than some Special Ops stuff here and there, and intelligence, prevention, and law enforcement operations otherwise? What would be the US's military role after a withdrawal from Iraq? Does the US military actually have much a role beyond repelling an invasion?"

"A lot of this stuff involves more Special Operations and detective work than the random smashing of things, but for objectives like finding Bin Laden in the hills of Pakistan or wherever will require heavy military lifting. And that's fine because that's about protecting America and finding the terrorists at war with America."

So you want to invade nuclear-armed Pakistan right now? Rather than working with the Pakistani government which is moderately friendly at the moment. If you wanted to attack Pakistan immediately to stop them getting any more nukes, damage limitation, I'd understand. But when they're already doing the police work required to arrest terrorists, and we have other targets available, it makes more sense to go after the ones who aren't cooperating.

R:"Are we doomed to fail at achieving anything worthwhile in Iraq?"

"On balance, yes."

In reality, no. We've already achieved the vast bulk of what we wanted, and now we're merely securing that victory using locals.

R:"Why? Is it something organic to Iraq, or simply a problem with the current president?"

"It was never a good idea to invade and occupy Iraq in the first place."

There was no realistic alternative other than genocide.

"It was compounded by this president's frankly idiotic leadership:"

You just don't recognize sheer brilliance when it's staring you straight in the face.

"the lack of planning"

The plan was to react to whatever we unearthed in Iraq. Did the Iraqi people really support Saddam 100% as the referendum showed?

"the political calculations involved in selling the war"

They were necessary.

"and spinning the reality of the war (especially leading up to the '04 and '06 elections)"

It hasn't so much been spun as you fail to recognize reality.

"and just overall frankly criminal behavior."

There's nothing criminal about ending the 1991 Gulf War.

"War in Iraq? Bad. War in Iraq led by Bush? Disaster."

It isn't a disaster. We've got everything we need. If you want to see a disaster, take a look at the rest of the Middle East. Now THAT is a tough nut to crack. And unless you're planning genocide there, I'd like to see what practical alternative you have.

R:"Would another administration be able to achieve some reasonable level of peace and stability?"

"Nope. Either we get out and salvage what we can or we stick with the failed Bush strategy. The choices are now Bad and Worse. Bad means less American deaths and our forces no longer tied up in nation building."

The forces aren't tied up unless you have an immediate plan to use them elsewhere. I have a plan that begins in December 2007. What plan do you have?

R:"What if you're wrong?"

"Putting aside the fact that I was right 5 years ago (along with a lot of the nation) that it was wrong to invade Iraq"

No you weren't.

"the idea that we should keep doing something stupid"

It's not stupid.

"in favor of an idea that's more sane yet untested is kind of silly."

No, you haven't presented a more sane idea. In fact, you don't even understand what this war is about. There are enemies of America throughout the world, and they ALL need to be wrapped up. Iraq is one of many battlegrounds where anti-American people are being shot, with a lot of help from non-anti-American locals.

"We're hitting ourselves in the face"

No, you're killing the enemy, at incredibly low cost.

"and while we don't know what will happen if we stop, at least if we DO stop we'll at least stop hitting ourselves in the face."

You'll instead let the terrorists hit civilians. Great step forward.

R:"I mean, you're advocating a policy change that will have wide-ranging effects. It's not enough to say that everything will be OK. You have to show your math. You have to explain why you're not just whistling past the graveyard."

"See above. We've tried it the conservative way for a long time now."

4 years is not a long time.

"It isn't working."

It is.

"Greeted as liberators."

Half the country did. Finding out what was wrong with the other half is a question you should have devoted your life to answering. Did you?

"Stand up, stand down."

Well, the "stand down" hasn't happened. YET. But we can do MOST of that in December 2007. Will you be happy then?

"Surge, etc."

The surge has put more troops in Iraq ready for the liberation of Iran.

R:"And, keep in mind that you are essentially betting the future of left-liberalism's credibility on national security on the outcome of that policy."

"Considering the alternative and what it has produced, I say "all in"."

The Democrats don't even realise what they did to the South Vietnamese today.

R:"There's a reason why the Democrats were kept away from the national security switches and levers for 12 years after Jimmy Carter, and were only allowed to return when we were having a holiday from history in the 1990s."

"It's not my fault America was stupid enough to vote for Ronald Reagan."

The problem is them being stupid enough to vote for the party that hasn't apologized for frogmarching millions of South Vietnamese allies into commie gulags.

"And in a lot of ways Reagan, and to a greater extent, Bush I, were sane about these things. Neither was dumb enough to launch a preemptive war of occupation in the middle east."

There was never a time it could be done.

"When President Bush I invaded Iraq he had a goal and an exit strategy backed up by overwhelming force."

This war is far more complicated. It requires either a culture change or a genocide. It's not just a matter of using overwhelming force. We actually needed the exact opposite. Make it clear to the Iraqi people that we weren't there to conquer them. This was pretty successful. The Iraqi people pretty much know that the US isn't in charge. Sadr's goons and insurgents running free helped them understand that. And then they could cheer their indigenous forces when they finally turned up.

"Neither one of those Republican presidents had the stupidity to invade and occupy a country based on "trust me"."

You just don't understand what is required to wrap up the anti-Americanism. It's basically a mental disease that needs to be eradicated. You need to cure it, or commit genocide.

"And yes, President Clinton presided over more or less peace and prosperity. Imagine that."

Well, he couldn't do much at the time. 9/11 actually brought the plans forward. I wasn't even ready to start kicking arse in the Middle East at that point. I was still concentrating on getting Europe secure in NATO.

R:"So, other than sunny optimism, what assurances can you give that the consequences of quick pullout from Iraq will be relatively painless?"

"Nobody said it would be painless or bloodless, nor am I optimistic about the near future at all thanks to the repercussions of our current situation. But again, it's going to be hell anyway, the question is how much American lives, money and security are we willing to throw into the mix."

Perhaps you can arrange to ask those Americans actually risking their lives if they are happy to be there, so that you can take that out of the equation. If you're unwilling to pay for it, maybe you can arrange some sort of tax scheme where Republicans pay for the extra costs of the war, while Democrats pay for the extra cost of social benefits?

"If there was any hope of a decent outcome, there would be support for it."

There is hope. There's not just hope, there's no alternative. Either this succeeds, or you commit genocide. There's no other way to wrap up the anti-Americanism. Well, I guess suicide would work too.

"But we've screwed the pooch. We are in the abyss and I don't see the sense in digging any deeper in hopes of finding a pony because its not there."

There's no abyss. All the important things that were required have already happened. One of those important things was locals signing up in droves to join the new security forces. That was the end of the line of the anti-Americans having control of a state. After that it was a straightforward technical problem for the US military to transfer control over to them. It doesn't happen as fast as you would like, but that's a separate issue. Hell, it didn't happen as fast as I would have liked either. Unfortunately the insurgents get to vote on that. You actually need to INVESTIGATE this phenomenon. What is causing some people to oppose liberation, while others risk their lives signing up to the new security forces? Why are Iraqis on opposite ends of this war? There is an answer to this question, which I've outlined already. You didn't even understand the need to answer the question. The most important question in the history of humanity in fact. What causes people of the same race, religion, sex and nationality to shoot at each other? And which ones are our allies, and why? The answers were there in the Iraqi blogs, if you had bothered to look. The information from there is now available here.

There was some brilliant stuff said in the Iraqi blogs, and here is one from the comments section of an Egyptian blog"

"And this is where I see the problem in today's world. Back in the 1930's, Hitler needed a powerful and well disciplined military, a good economy, a fanatized population, and a strong backcountry in order to wreak the havoc he indeed did. Fast forward to the early 21st century. For our present Hitlers, all of that is not needed since having a setting off a few nukes (irrelevant how it was obtained..., a big and wet kiss for the Dear Leader) will wreak a far worse havoc than Hitler did. The bar to set the world on fire has been drasitcally lowered, and this is why the West has to pre-emt the Saddams, the Ayatollahs, and the Dear Leaders.

We cannot wait for them to arrive to our shores. Because if they do, then the first step will be nuking instead of landing what the West can easily fight back.

Vilmos Soti"

Hopefully the fact that this was written by someone other than me will increase the chances of Joe Bloggs being able to actually understand it. However, here begins my own attempt at explaining the strategic situation in the world today.

First of all, our ancestors really stuffed up. After Nazi Germany was defeated, they should have immediately demanded the Soviet Union leave Eastern Europe. In fact, they should have demanded democratization and demilitarization of the USSR, the same as Japan got. The USSR actually started WWII. It wasn't just the Germans alone. They did it together.

Anyway, the past is the past. We need to deal with the mess we inherited rather than cry over spilt milk. The fact is that our ancestors let the enemy acquire nukes. Until those nukes have actually been rounded up and collected, we may still be hit by one or more. The danger is far from over. Russia, China and Pakistan have the nukes of greatest concern. The Russian ones are in the hands of someone who is obnoxious and scowls a lot, rather than an actual enemy, and probably not that much different from the French ones. The Chinese ones would potentially be used against us in a showdown over Taiwan, but we can probably avoid that conflict, and the Chinese don't really appear to be hostile. They seem to be interested in western consumer goods rather than trying to cause us harm. I'm not greatly concerned about them either.

The ones in Pakistan however, could be used not just against India, which is part of the free world (although historically completely immoral, allying with the Soviet Union during the Cold War), but against other members of the free world. We need to collect them. This is actually the largest threat in the world today. Al Qaeda is just a joke. It has limited ability to do harm. It is state actors with nukes that we need to be concerned about. And obviously stop state actors like Iran and North Korea from obtaining them in the first place. Until the nukes are collected, and without the ability to see into the future, we don't yet know how many nukes will strike the free world before the enemy's nukes are eliminated. It's bloody tough to get them too.

A tough calculation needs to be made to decide how to work through this minefield. These enemy countries could directly or indirectly unleash their nukes at any time. We'll never know for sure the absolute best way to get our hands on them. We can only do our best with the information we have available. The calculation with a country like Iran is quite straightforward. We can get to their nukes before they get to them themselves. To get to Pakistan's nukes, we have the following scenarios:

1. Nuke that country off the planet, to reduce the risk of them getting any to us.

2. Be nice and not use nukes on them, and use conventional weapons instead. But Pakistan manages to get off a nuke in response.

3. Be nice and not use nukes on them, and use conventional weapons instead. Pakistan does not get off a nuke.

If we choose option 1, then people will scream that we should have gone with scenario 3, that Pakistan was "never" going to nuke us.

If scenario 2 plays out, people will be screaming that we should have chosen option 1.

If scenario 3 were to play out, that would be the best option. But it's really tough. We can't predict that. It's probably safer to go with option 1. But even that isn't certain. There's no certainty. We can only do our best. If scenario 2 plays out, we should definitely nuke them in response, so that the next people who try this on won't repay our kindness with nukes.

This is the dilemma that we face. It's far more important than Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda will keep to another day. They will do a minor amount of damage in the meantime. If we can get the state actors over to our side, we can then start dealing with non-state actors like Al Qaeda. Actually, we can tackle both problems at the same time, which is indeed exactly what is happening. Maybe that is what people don't understand. The main game, geostrategy, was going on long before Al Qaeda reared its head. The process of dealing with individual criminals (or an unusual grouping of them like Al Qaeda was), is something that goes on within Australia already. No-one really knows how to stop criminals. It's what we have police for though. It's not something for the military to deal with.

That's basically all the threats in the world at the moment. Eventually we want to have institutions set up so that America can't one day decide to conquer or blackmail the world. But countering a theoretical risk from the leader of the free world is an issue for another day, and I only include it because at the end of the day we need to dot our Is and cross our Ts. So that the world looks nice with checks and balances, and we can explain to everyone that their human rights are protected as much as we can possibly think of.

But really, it's time to ban the bomb! At least the enemy bombs! It was the commies who tried to ban just the free world's bombs, for obvious reasons. And I'm trying to do the exact opposite, as I was then, for equally obvious reasons.

Note that these threats to the free world from state and non-state actors are purely security issues. The task of liberating the world is separate. However, the two things normally get combined, as they should. The obvious people to free are the ones who are enslaved by one of our enemies. To kill two birds with one stone. And the most strategic country to free right at this moment in history is Iran. It will be strategic in December. Not now. We need to see how the Iraqi security forces handle themselves when they take over in November. If we leave now, we'll spoil the experiment. And the results of that experiment are an important future reference.

Ok, here's another attempt to get geostrategy out of my head, and into word form so that mortals can understand what is required. My brain has been constantly analyzing threats to myself, the free world, and innocent people in general, for decades. E.g. I wanted to just kill all Australian criminals, to protect their next victim. I could never see the benefit in keeping these people doing harm alive.

First of all, the ultimate goal is rational, humanist, non-subjugating governments, preferably instituted via democracy. Well, when I say "ultimate goal", it's the first step on the way. We still need to merge our countries ala the European Union, and address crime within our countries, standardize etc etc. There's plenty of great things to do, but first we need to free people - WITHOUT jeapordizing our security. How do you do that? The most obvious way is to start by defeating our enemies, which means we can kill 2 birds with 1 stone.

Foddy's goal appears to be to bring down America, and so, just like the commies before him, spends all his effort complaining about America allying with some friendly despots instead of pushing our allies into our enemy's camp so that America can be defeated. You never heard commies complaining about the Soviet Union's human rights abuses. In actual fact, America is actually on record complaining about Uzbekistan's human rights abuses, which you can see here. It's pretty hard-hitting. And you could even say that the US has made a major error by verbally attacking an ally, when it has enemies undefeated. America is very lucky indeed that it can afford to do this. It does one good thing which is to mention every other country in the world too, even Australia, so that Uzbekistan doesn't get spooked. Regardless, America is on record as saying what it stands for, even if it doesn't have the luxury of being able to fix every problem simultaneously, and certainly doesn't have the luxury of attacking allies.

I thought I had already explained the principles of geostrategy and warfare already, but for some reason it's still too difficult for others to get their head around. So I'll have to do it in many posts to come, and eventually I hope to find someone who can translate complicated strategy into something ordinary people can understand.

Anyway, Foddy has quoted some twit called Craig Murray in a speech he made to the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London in 2004. Let me fisk it.

"How can it advance the war on terror to back a totalitarian dictator who terrorises and impoverishes his own people?"

Exactly the same way that backing the USSR helped us win the war against Nazi Germany.

"If Karimov is part of the "Coalition of the willing", is on "our" side in the war on terror, then that war cannot be the straightforward clash between good and evil which the politicians are selling."

It's more complicated than that. It is indeed a clash between good and evil, just as our war with Nazi Germany was, but in both cases, we managed to rope in other evil people onto our side, to help us actually win. The time to turn on allies is after the current battle has been won. Just as WWII made way for the Cold War.

"It is, in fact, about something else."

It is, in fact, not.

"It is about the advancement of American military power in areas central to the control of oil and gas"

No, it's about the advancement of the entire free world, not just America, across the entire damn world, not just the bit of the world with oil and gas in it.

"US oil and gas interests are served by backing an unpleasant dictator in Tashkent"

But not backing someone similar in Iraq? So regardless of whether we're attacking or supporting someone, it's always for oil?

"willing to give them a dominant position in Central Asia"

No, we're willing to let them sell their oil on the free market. Exactly as we "allowed" the Soviet Union to do. And Venezuela. And come to think of it, every other country with any resource at all.

"just as they are served by toppling one in Baghdad."

And if we do topple the Uzbek dictator, you'll claim that was for oil too. And if we are neutral with a dictator like Turkmenistan, it's only because they've got oil too. I'll tell you who's obsessed with oil. It's YOU. Not Bush.

"This is nothing to do with the advancement of democracy."

It does. If we can replace a dictator with a democracy, and by doing so turn an enemy into a dictator, then we do indeed want democracy. Democracies take no resources to maintain. It's the ultimate goal. You end up with countries like Australia who use their OWN resources to HELP you of their OWN FREE WILL. Regardless, you twerp, YOU should have done it because YOU wanted democracy in Iraq, regardless of what reasons Bush may have had in your fertile oil-obsessed imagination.

"If it were, why has the US government put so much effort into shielding the Uzbek government from criticism in international fora such as the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva?"

Because if you're going to pick on people's human rights, how about starting with countries that are enemies? We had to do the same thing during the Cold War too. When you have a threat in front of you, you do whatever you need to do to keep your allies on board.

"If the US believes that backing Karimov is producing stability in the region, that is a remarkably short-term view."

No, it's a long-term view. In the long-term, we'll have every country in the world allied with the US, and then we can start pointing fingers at allies that aren't up to our standards yet.

"Uzbeks know they are miserable and getting poorer, and their government is deeply repressive and, increasingly, hated."

As did the Iraqis, the Iranians etc etc also. So?

"They are being offered no liberal, democratic alternative."

Just like the Iraqis, the Iranians etc etc also. So?

"Indeed Karimov's propaganda tells them that the system they have now is freedom and democracy, and they don't think much of it."

Just like the Iraqis, the Iranians etc etc also. So?

"The only opposition to Karimov they often encounter is the underground Mosque movement or Hizb-ut-Tehrir."

Which is actually an enemy.

"And terrible torture and persecution increasingly radicalise these groups."

Or the other way around. We didn't get this radicalization under Saddam, so the theory is crap. If you want to pressure the Uzbek government into basically banning Islam altogether to prevent this radicalization, we can discuss that.

"The system is building up towards inevitable violent confrontation."

Just like Iraq, Iran etc etc, that ended up in victory for the dictator, as usual.

"That could be five or seven years away"

Or never.

"but I have no doubt that as things stand at present we are heading for a catastrophic model of regime change."

Just like Iraq, Iran, etc etc. All crap.

"And thanks to US support for Karimov, the result is likely to be anti-Western."

You mean like the Russians loved us after the Cold War because we didn't support their dictator during the Cold War? Time to update your whacky theory. If the Uzbeks don't understand why we can't afford to look too closely at our allies, then just add them to the enemy list.

"The targeting of the US and Israeli Embassies in Uzbekistan shows that we are creating a whole new race of people who hate the West."

No, they're being created by Islamists, who have no interest in helping protect the free world.

"Young Uzbeks are attracted to radical Islam because we are giving them no viable alternative to Karimov."

There is an alternative. Help us defeat the enemies of the free world so that we can eventually get to you. You can help by urging the Uzbek government to declare war on Iran, as the highest priority. The faster we get this over with, the faster we'll be in a position to help you. This is actually THE most crucial thing to understand. If you can understand why it is in YOUR interest, quite apart from the Iranian people's interest, to get America to topple the Iranian dictatorship, then everything else falls into place. The Kurds made exactly the same mistake. It's not time for Kurdish independence yet. We can help the Kurds reach their aspirations at a later date, but there are other problems to deal with. During the 1980s, the Kurds did the wrong thing by fighting Saddam. We were engaged in a war against Iran, and Saddam was our temporary ally, and the Kurds harmed our cause. If they want help from us, they need to ask us what WE want, and what OUR strategy is, and whether THEIR goals can be INTEGRATED into that plan. And they CAN! All they need to do is ASK. We'd LOVE to help the Kurds. But they can't hurt our security, otherwise they will actually be declared enemies. I'd like to say "it's not that complicated", but apparently while it's simple for me to understand, people who haven't been contemplating the problem constantly for decades don't find it simple. And I have so far been unable to come up with a "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Geostrategy including Kurdish and Uzbek aspirations".

"Supporting Karimov is creating, not combating, Islamic fundamentalism."

No, Islam is causing Islamic fundamentalism. If you want to stop it, forcibly convert people out of Islam. And kill those who resist.

"I strongly commend to you this Human Rights Watch publication, Creating Enemies of the State, which documents the brutalising of a society."

I strongly recommend you read my blog and use your brain and stop being an enemy of the free world. I tend to arrange for enemies of the free world to be shot.

Today I have an interesting analogy. This is one of these concepts I have in my head, and I have hitherto assumed everyone else had, but I have since learned not to make such assumptions, and to instead begin the laborious process of teaching people how to think.

Anyway, in computing there is a language called "C", which is basically the equivalent of "English". It is ubiquitous. Every platform on the planet has a C compiler available. However, there are still some companies where you won't actually find it installed, because it costs money, and on an IBM mainframe, that can be a lot of money, when it is not a commonly-used language. For most people, there is a free compiler called "gcc" available, so they can use that rather than have nothing. Except for IBM mainframe users. Who up until very recently (2004) had no free C compiler available to them, and could have been in a position of having to write code in a non-standard language instead.

IBM mainframes were the last unconquered territory. I used to work on IBM mainframes and I know what it's like to not have a C compiler available. It's tragic. So, for decades I dreamt that one day we would get a free C compiler on the mainframe, so that the world would be safe for C programmers. That day came in 2004. There's been a lot more work done since then, and the project (GCCMVS) is now in sourceforge and a new release is expected imminently (there's just some bug in VM being ironed out by someone else at the moment - but we're talking weeks to a month or so). The new compiler is about 3 meg in size. On MVS 3.8 there's about 9 meg in total available to the user.

Anyway, to get a compiler that is native to MVS, you need to have a tool to build it. The gcc C compiler is actually written in C itself. Therefore, to the tool you need is another C compiler! What this means is that in order to build gcc native to MVS, there is a 3 stage process.

Stage1: Compile gcc using some other C compiler (or a cross-compiler).

Stage2: Compile gcc using the output of stage1.

Stage3: Compile gcc using the output of stage2.

stage2 and stage3 need to be confirmed to be identical. Once they are confirmed identical, it means that the stage2 compiler is a native MVS compiler, and it has the ability to rebuild itself if you want to make improvements to it. It is totally "clean". It no longer has any relation to the original compiler used to build stage1.

Now let's look at the cleanliness of Iraq.

The one thing America didn't want to do was to force anything down the throats of the Iraqi people. All they wanted to do was to stop Saddam or anyone else from forcing something down the Iraqi people's throats, and see what the Iraqis came up with of their own free will. However, that's quite a difficult feat to accomplish. Because the US was bound by the Geneva Convention and had become an occupying power. Iraq was technically under US military rule. That was technically the situation, but what did America actually DO?

The first thing they did was get together the Iraqi exiles who had wanted to replace Saddam with a democracy, and sat them down into a Governing Council. No-one knew what these autonomous actors were going to come up with, but they weren't technically given any power. They were just an advisory committee. And they weren't meant to have anything to do with security. However, the US did exactly the right thing, and deferred to them on all matters. The IGC didn't do anything particularly bad. They made up crap about US forces killing women and children in Fallujah, and they stopped the Turks coming in to help, but nothing that did any real damage.

These people then went on to form the Interim Government, and Iraq technically became sovereign. Although the fact is that the US military could have toppled them anytime it wanted, just as it could do in Zimbabwe at any time it wanted. But that's completely irrelevant. The fact is, Iraq was sovereign. Not only that, but the IIG was a group of people who were willing to give Kurds independence, and they made that official. So the Kurds now know that it is only the Turks that are stopping them from being independent, they've already got the green light from the Arab Iraqis.

The next step was that the IIG set the rules for elections for a Transitional Government, which would in turn create an constitution. This was also done. And then the Iraqi people voted on that constitution and had the ability to veto it. They didn't. They overwhelmingly approved it. And then finally they elected a new permanent government based on that constitution.

And the moment that was done, we had the equivalent of a stage3 compiler. Every scrap of Iraq's government is now totally native. The constitution was voted for by the Iraqi people, and the government was elected totally by Iraqis based on the constitution that they themselves chose. America didn't have a damn thing to do with any of that, even though it kickstarted the initial process.

That means that the US has *NO* responsibility for anything in Iraq that anyone doesn't like. If you have any complaints, you need to take it up with the Iraqi people. The 300+ parties that they chose from were a totally autonomous Iraqi phenomenon. The US didn't create or back a single one of them. The most you had was some US blog readers financially supporting one party created by some Iraqi bloggers. That party got nowhere though. A great disappointment for me personally. The Iraqi people certainly didn't live up to the hopes I had regarding them, but it's not the end of the world. What they came up with on their own was interesting too, and we now at least have a starting point to try to figure out how to make the Iraqis "normal".

But what I'm very happy with is the PROCESS that the US has used to ensure that they're not forcing anything onto the Iraqi people. They have deliberately withheld from doing anything at all. If the US had done ANYTHING, it would have spoiled the experiment. We wouldn't have found out what the Iraqi people would do of their own free will. Now we know, and we can take appropriate action. Iraq is as clean as GCCMVS running on 31-bit MVS.

UPDATE: I've gone back and answered all the old comments as well, back to 2007-04-22 when I ran out of time. There might be another pause before I answer the answers to the answers though.

This is what Carter had to say about Blair:

"When asked to characterise the close relationship between the US and British leaders, the former Democratic president said: "Abominable, loyal, blind, apparently subservient.""

Right. As unbelievable as it sounds, we kicked over stones the world over, and we actually managed to find one single decent left-wing politician who cared enough about Saddam's torture chambers and rape rooms to put an end to them. I'm not exactly sure why I've never mentioned him before. I've been focussing on Bush for so long that I never thought to stop and thank Blair. Sorry Tony! I love you! Believe it or not, I probably have as many differences with Bush as I do with Tony. Their foreign policy is basically identical so I've never had to choose one. And I am mainly concerned with foreign, not domestic policy. Because the people who are in grave danger are all foreign. They're the people I'm trying to get to. Everyone in our countries just needs to dial 000 or 911 or or 999 or 112 to get their human rights protected.

There was one disturbing thing I heard from the British government, which was talk about how they're not they're not going to repeat Iraq in Iran. I'm not sure who that came from so may not be Tony's final opinion. Regardless, it was said so long ago that it doesn't matter. We need a fresh statement from them to see what they think about a December strike.

However, one thing I did hear from Tony, or the British (can't remember) was someone saying that the murder rate in Iraq was higher now than it was under Saddam, and Tony/British replying "the difference is that the murders are not state-sanctioned anymore". This is the absolute heart of the matter. The Iraqi government will eventually get a grip on crime. It has been empowered to do that. But there wasn't a damn thing the Iraqi people could do about Saddam's crimes. A criminal had taken over an entire country and held it hostage, and no-one could do anything about it. And that is the worst sort of murder. Murder which you can't report to the police, because it's the police doing the murder. Having someone you know murder is bad enough already, without finding out that it isn't even illegal and there's no-one interested in helping you obtain justice. Living like that is not living. In other words, Tony gets it. He's on my side. On the side of justice.

Speaking of justice, let's look what Carter has come up with:

"Mr Carter was US president from 1977 to 1981. He won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for what presenters cited as decades of work towards peace and economic justice."

Economic justice, eh? Would taking away Saddam's access to the entire Iraqi nation's oil revenue and putting it in the hands of the Iraqi people count towards "economic justice"? If so, when will Bush get his Nobel Peace Prize? If you want people to have improved standard of living, we have working models already in South Korea and Taiwan. What has Carter done to install sensible economic policies (ie capitalism) across the world? Has he been telling the African dictators that if they don't copy Taiwan immediately, he's going to ask the US President to topple them? That would actually make a difference.

But in keeping with tradition for the Peace Prize, ie giving it to terrorists like Arafat and Mandela, the Nobel goons have given it to Carter, someone who supports Palestinian terrorism against Israel, at least while he's sucking from the Saudi teat.

How do the Americans vote people like this into office? Next they'll be nominating a Soviet agent like John Kerry as President without batting an eyelid. Oops.

Australia's most famous terrorist, David Hicks, is now back in Australia. What a disaster. It shows the depravity of a large number of Australians that they actually wanted this terrorist back instead of being strung up like any other criminal in the same situation in US custody would be.

While I personally oppose the death penalty, and we can debate that, the fact is that the US HAS the death penalty, and Australians should not be seeking better treatment for Australian criminals in US custody than any other nationality. It's basically the equivalent of racism - nationalism.

And instead of Australians putting pressure on the Australian government to pressure the US government to send David Hicks back here, they should have instead been putting pressure on the Australian government to apologize profusely to the Americans that our country produced a terrorist, and explained exactly what measures we intended making to try to teach Australians the values they require to FIGHT terrorism rather than BE a terrorist. We should have been disowning this creep. And we should have gone out of our way to tell the Americans that we didn't want Australian terrorists to be treated any better than non-Australian terrorists. We aren't racist. Whatever rules you have for everyone else, make sure Australians have equal treatment. If anything, to prove we weren't racists/nationalists, we should have been telling America to make sure he had the LOWEST priority.

I can remember something similar happening in Malaysia. The Malaysians strung up a couple of Australian drug smugglers. I can remember a Malaysian spokesman saying that he received lots of letters from Australians asking them to string them up. It is things like that that make me proud to be an Australian. There are good people here who don't want criminals protected just because of their nationality or skin colour of any other reason. A criminal is a criminal, and we don't want any association with him. Every one of them is an embarassment, because it means we still haven't figured out how to stop this phenomenon. Our arsehole prime minister called the Malaysians "barbaric". I didn't hear him say the same thing when it was Malaysians being strung up. And I didn't hear him say that when America strung up Americans. It's quite disgusting. I can remember someone writing "crawl, Hawke, crawl" (around 1984) on another issue where he was pandering to America (I think he was publicly badmouthing NZ when the arsehole Kiwis were trying to ban nuclear-powered US ships in the middle of the Cold War). It's a complete embarassment. We're not America's lap dog. Chat with any Australian and you will discover we are no-one's slaves.

Howard's doing the complete opposite though, demanding preferential treatment for Australians and expecting the US to do its bidding. We saw a similar thing from Britain. Britain succeeded in getting some British criminal's charges dismissed. This shouldn't be happening. The US is a sovereign country and has its own laws and the law should be colour-blind. By demanding, and getting, preferential treatment for British/Australians, we are infringing on America's sovereignty and justice. It's unacceptable. I can remember also some Australian Aboriginal murderer escaping a death sentence based on the colour of his skin. It's outrageous. While I personally oppose the death sentence, it is the democratic will of the US people, and it should not be overridden by Australians. I've never heard of the US interfering in Australia to protect American criminals, and I'd be equally outraged if they did.

Honestly, America puts up with so much crap from the rest of the world. Just like the Filipinos. The idiots actually wrote in their consitution that foreign forces weren't allowed in the Philippines. The trouble is, they need US help against the various terrorists. So rather than changing their stupid constitution with a "what on earth were we thinking?", they expect the US to come in and only officially be "trainers", jeapordizing their own safety, above and beyond the normal risks of war! And they expect all this for free.

Honestly, if I were the US, I would just say "I've had a gutful of this nonsense" and start launching some nukes over the entire world so that people have something REAL to whinge about. Well, anyone who survives, anyway. Well, anyone who survives and still has an obnoxious attitude.

Some people wonder why I think I know more than supposed military experts. This despite the fact that supposed military experts come up with ludicrous claims that it would take 600,000 troops to invade Iraq, and there would be tens of thousands of casualties etc. Actually, all those "experts" are doing is quoting from standard military doctrine. That's what normally happens. Reality is it's all a pile of crap. The fact is you can knock over an enemy in 3.5 weeks for the loss of 100 allied lives, or if you make use of locals and play your cards well, you can do it with 200 troops and zero loss of life. If you want to. It's totally up to the US how it CHOOSES to play it. I would have made the same choices Bush made. There's no need to reduce US troop loss to such a minimum that you insist that no more than 200 troops be allowed to be deployed in Afghanistan, and you insist on the locals doing absolutely everything themselves. The option is there, but it's a stupid option. Just as the full conquest with 600k troops (which were supposedly needed in Afghanistan too), is another crappy option (but was also available if necessary).

I get my information from discussions/debates between people with a knowledge of military history and current military capabilities. I watch how the debates go, and I make an assessment of what is logical. I also listen to ex-military people on TV. I've seen people say that multiple people have tried to win a war totally from the air and failed. Even this very fact that people try, means that military experts themselves are divided. Some think it should be possible. Some think it is impossible. Reality is that even if it hasn't worked up till now, even that doesn't mean it's impossible. Who's to say you can't pound the right people into submission? And then what happened? Kosovo in 1999. The war was indeed won from the air. The supposedly impossible had been achieved. This is why I don't trust any supposed military expert. Standard doctrine is simply wrong.

Even the published war manuals are wrong. E.g. I saw someone quoting from the Small Wars manual about how once an insurgency had 2% of the population active, it would succeed. Simple logic was able to counter that. If the government forces have 1.99% of the population in the armed forces, and a modern military with aircraft and tanks. If they are faced with an enemy with 0.5% more combatants, with no heavy weaponry, the government forces will keel over and surrender, will they? It's crap. It's all crap. How anyone can publish this crap and get away with it, I'll never know. If it's part of a psyop, it would make sense. Get the enemy to believe this crap. For what purpose? To make the insurgents believe that they've got a hope in hell of winning? For what purpose? To make the rest of the world believe they have nothing to fear from the US, given that even lightly armed insurgents can beat off the US military? Maybe. That makes some sort of sense.

But if you instead get your information from open discussion forums, the truth comes out. The truth is that if we stick to conventional weapons, the entire world has lost to the US already. All non-US equipment can be systematically destroyed by the US and there's not a damn thing anyone can do to stop it. That leaves the locals to duke it out with pea-shooters. And that's where the psyop to make people believe that pea-shooters can win wars comes in. So long as people believe, REALLY BELIEVE, that pea-shooters can win wars, and all these fancy aeroplane thingos are just an optional extra kind of thing, no-one will create a hostile alliance against the US. If the US was planning on sucker-punching the world, it's done a damn good job of it.

Even I personally want to eventually have protection against the slim chance of a sucker punch from the US. Currently it is only the threat of nuclear retaliation that could stop the US conquering the world. The REAL thing stopping US global conquest is the ideology of the American people - being anti-subjugators. Unless it's all a complete scam, and the American people I talk to are all pretending to be isolationist, anti-subjugators, humanists etc, but beneath that pleasant exterior they have world conquest in their hearts. Technically, there is no way to tell for certain. If you're really paranoid, there could well be a massive conspiracy of 300 million Americans, pretending to be bickering and divided, but in reality they have conquest on their mind. If God suddenly spoke to you one day and said "all this internet/TV etc is all a scam controlled by the Zionists - you've been suckered", what would YOU think? Who would you believe? God or the internet?

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. How to conquer people. Why does anyone imagine it is so difficult? Hitler did it with ease. The conquered people stayed conquered until liberated by a superior military (with great difficulty and a great deal of luck I might add). The USSR conquered Eastern Europe with ease. The revolts in Eastern Europe were put down with ease in short order. This was only ended in 1991, purely because the Soviet Union CHOSE to let them go. They weren't remotely beaten. Has there been a dramatic change since 1991 to make conquest impossible? Not a chance. The gap between the military and civilian goons has only widened. The military has had 16 years of technology added to its arsenal, while civilian goons have added precisely nothing. Conquest, always a walk in the park, just became a stroll.

I was trying to find a message from a Russian I read some time back saying that the Americans were so stupid they were scared of their own shadow. I couldn't find that, but I got something close.

Here we have "bestdefence" writing at "3/12/2004 12:23:06 PM" about what is required to occupy Pakistan. Here is the money quote:

"Occupying force is going to employ the local force to control and rule. That is what British did. It all depends on how you handle it. We see many divisions within Pakistan. Dividing and ruling Pakistan is easy and possible."

And he also explains how Musharaff is ruling Pakistan currently. If Musharaff can do it, why can't America? Saddam ruled Iraq fine. The Iranian dictator rules Iran fine. It doesn't matter a damn what the majority of the country thinks about it. What matters is whether you've organized your armed forces properly. And there are always people who will do whatever you ask of them, so long as they are paid. The Soviets found such people, and the Americans can find such people just as easily. And this is even if you want to shove some horrible doctrine down the throats of the conquered people. The US merely wants to spread rational, humanist, non-subjugating (in that order) government. It's a doddle. A complete and utter doddle.

Unfortunately no-one has collected all this stuff and put it in one spot. So that you can find the reality of warfare. The person I would like to do this with is "ableiter". He used to inhabit the Iraqi blogs. He actually confirmed what I said, that my prediction of Iran being conquered in 4 weeks for the loss of 100 lives was pretty close to the mark. Unfortunately that was done on the Road of a Nations Forum (as opposed to blog) which was hacked and is no longer available. I'll try to regain contact with both ableiter and the Forum owner to see if we can get things clarified for the average citizen to understand military reality.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with this quote from ableiter, on what to do about the US Democrats determined to sell America down the drain:

"I have a solution. A Trade. Mass., Vt., Maine and Conn., N. H., R.I, and N.Y. for Saskatchwan, Alberta, British Columbia and the Yukon. The USA gets more Land the Peoples Republic of Canada gets more people." - ableiter

It appears some people can't see the forest for the trees. I'm talking about withdrawing the bulk of the troops from Iraq in December 2007, and they think that Bush's actions (ie the surge) is the exact opposite of that. And others think that the US forces are spread thin. It's amazing that people can look at exactly the same thing and see two totally different things. Here is reality, for those who need it spelled out to them.

First of all, the Iraqi security forces vastly outnumber and outgun any challenge to their authority. The US doesn't need any forces at all in Iraq to ensure the ISF isn't defeated by these elements. It does however need some presence in order to ensure the ISF don't stage a military coup, or some other country decides to invade Iraq. This is the only feasible way the Iraqi government can be overthrown. So the US forces aren't even tied down in Iraq. Let's look at the other places that have US troops. 38k in South Korea. The South Koreans have one of the strongest militaries on the planet. Not only can they defend against any attack by North Korea all on their own, they could even launch an offensive war if they wanted to, and win. Having US troops there just makes North Korea an even bigger joke, but they're certainly not required.

There are 69k in Germany. There's no enemy in sight. Just a whole stack of NATO allies. They can all be removed at any time, with no effect whatsoever. There's 47k in Japan. Japan is another ally, and while it does have enemies, or potential enemies, such as China and North Korea, neither country is able to cross Japan's moat. Even if they somehow did, they'd still lose. Regardless, in all of these countries, about 100 aircraft would be overkill to ensure that no-one touches any of our allies. So that's 300 aircraft out of a total of 11,000.

Then we have the US troops in continental US. The US is bordered by Canada and Mexico. The Canadians have actually signed up (via NATO) to DEFEND America. Mexico is not hostile either. Does anyone seriously think either country would invade the US? Why should the US fear either of these countries any more than Iceland (with no military at all) should fear the US (which has forces in Iceland). No. The US can afford to move ALL of its troops off the continental US. Regardless, let's leave 10,000 planes in the US, just in case the Canadians try to burn down the Whitehouse again. They should be able to defeat Canada's 485 planes, assuming the Canadians don't manage to get a 20:1 kill ratio. If they do, you've still got those nuclear bomb thingos.

So there's over 1 million US troops available, and not ONE of them is tied down in ANY theatre ANYWHERE in the world. And we've demonstrated the ability to topple a government with 200 troops in Afghanistan and 113k troops in Iraq. That's just what's been DEMONSTRATED, not what is actually possible. Without the ability to rerun Iraq, we'll never know what might have been.

That's what Iran is for. To see just how few troops are required to liberate a country. Can it be done with 20k troops? 20k opens up a world of possibilities. If the number can be brought down to that level, Australia could probably liberate huge countries on its own in future, if for some reason the US decides its fed up with helping others. We need to prove the technology first though. And how can you do that?

Well, we've managed to get the entire world convinced that the US is tied down, and there are no troops available, and the surge (of 20k troops) is not sustainable. So long as the Iranians actually believe this crap, we can use those 20k troops from the surge to go and liberate Iran. The Iranians will need to react to an invasion force of 20k, assuming incorrectly that there are no other troops available. This is the closest we can actually get to a real test. Can the US military be scaled back to 20k TOTAL some time in the future? Maybe. If the Iranians are somehow able to fight the 20k troops, despite US total air supremacy, then 120k troops from Iraq can effortlessly be added. And troops from the other theatres can be called in if even more are required. At this stage we have no idea what the Iranian reaction will be. Will there be more or less defections than were seen in Afghanistan and Iraq? No-one knows. It's vitally important to get that information for future liberations. Ideally we want to have about 20 liberations so that we can predict enemy reaction with more certainty, and write a new military doctrine.

I'll finish with a quote from someone in the Finnish military:

"Here geographic distance is a function of technology, and today this means that Finland is literally only hours from massive and decisive western military airborne power."

This is the reality we live in. Decisive US air power blankets the globe, and with that, most of the world can be freed, and the free world secured. Reality is staring you right in the face, your eyes are open, you can't possibly miss it, but the brain just doesn't register it. Bizarre. Just how many more countries need to be liberated, effortlessly (2 months with 200 troops, 3.5 weeks with 113k troops) before you say to yourself "um, how come the US keeps on managing to liberate people when it's supposedly bogged down and spread thin and the enemy are all supermen and insurgents usually win wars etc etc etc?". If this is all part of a US psyop to make the world believe the US is no threat to anyone because it can easily be defeated, well, it's working great. The US keeps on liberating people, everyone says "the US lost again", and the dictators don't feel the need to form some sort of hostile alliance because, hell, 12,000 Taliban armed with pea-shooters can defeat the entire US Army, and we've got much more than that. Nope, nothing to worry about. I can't imagine MY dictatorship falling, and the population I've suppressed for decades exacting revenge on ME. Nope. Not ME.

There you have it folks. This is the whacky world we live in. I'm not sure we've actually advanced from the days when people used to sacrifice virgins to keep the sun rising. At least they had the evidence that the sun did indeed rise after the sacrifice. In today's world, we have millions of new voters, hundreds of thousands signing up to new security forces, and people look, but can't see. The equivalent would be the sun failing to rise and the Aztecs saying "we've sacrificed the virgins, so maybe the sun is obscured by a cloud that keeps on moving - there's no other explanation - yeah, there it is - just look really really hard and you can see it - yeah, just like the Taliban victory over the US - I can see it, I can really really see it".

UPDATE: The OOB above is undated, but appears to be from around 2002. Here is one dated 2001 and here is one dated 2003.

One thing I don't like about soldiers is when they trot out lines like "no-one loves peace as much as a soldier", pretending that they are arch-pacifists, and they're being forced to fight by warmongering civilians (ie me). It's complete crap. They're as gung-ho as any civilian, and not only that, they've spent all this time training and they're dying for a chance to actually see if they really are the professional soldiers that they have been trained to be. I asked a few pertinent questions of Waheed, and sure enough, US soldiers were whinging about pulling guard duty instead of being able to go out and kill some bad motherfuckers. BTW, I totally support this too. The US troops need to be held back and the work offloaded to locals as much as possible. Those US troops are needed for North Korea, or Pakistan etc, where there's no-one else to offload the work onto. They need to be preserved for when they're needed.

Anyway, here are some quotes:

Quote

"The U.S. Marine Corps reputation for being enthusiastic about combat is not a myth. Recently, the commandant of the Marine Corps got complaints (at one of the "Town Hall" meetings he holds regularly) from marines who were not able to get an assignment in Iraq or Afghanistan."

Quote

"Combat arms officers (infantry, armor, artillery, aviation) see the current war as a rare chance to actually do that they have spent years training for."

Quote

"Let's get Saddam".

Pacifist soldiers my arse. Let's have some honesty here. Soldiers want to kick arse, and I want to give them that opportunity. They can actually use their testosterone for a useful purpose.

The best results the Anglophones have achieved in having the moral fortitude to support liberating the oppressed from state-slavery appears to be:

The US romping in at 69%.

The UK a close second at 66%.

Australia a distant third at 57% (on 2003-04-16), although there was an earlier poll that reached 61%.

Who would have thought that Australia could be beaten in the morality stakes? Australia has stood up for freedom in EVERY war going since creation in 1901. And now we've been beaten by BOTH the yanks and the poms. Unbelievable. Maybe we can make up for it by liberating Cuba one night without warning so we can gloat about the other two slackarses failing to even turn up when freedom's bell was being rung? We're going to have to pull some rabbit out of the hat. This is not the country I was led to believe we were living in. At least the Iraq war alerted me to the problem, so we can start dealing with the moral bankruptcy in our midst. Being bettered by the US and UK. Sheesh. How are we ever going to live that one down?

The 25 year anniversary of the Falklands invasion recently came up. This is actually my earliest political memory. That was 1982 and I was 14 years old. The last war before that was the 1975 invasion of South Vietnam, which I have no recollection of at all (where I would have been 7 years old). I was living in Fiji at the time and there was no television there, but I had access to shortwave radio.

I couldn't believe that someone had attacked Britain and thought they could get away with it. The first thing I didn't understand was why Britain didn't nuke Buenos Aires. What was the point in a nuclear deterrent if you didn't use it? My father told me that no-one would ever talk to Britain again if they did that. To me, Argentina, a dictatorship, was just one big out-group, that needed to be wiped off the face of the earth.

The next thing I didn't understand was why Britain was being forced to fight alone. Why wasn't the whole free world rallying behind Britain? What was the point of NATO if when it came to the crunch, no-one bothered to turn up? Years later an Australian woman told me that that was the way to do it - if two people have a problem, then they should sort it out themselves, rather than Argentina calling in all its friends and Britain calling in all of its friends. To me, this is madness. It means a strong dictator can conquer weak democracies.

Fortunately it all worked out in the end. But it highlighted a need to have better protection of the free world, and as an adjunct, we need to spend some time rolling back the attitude that would have people attacking the free world in the first place when they should be protecting it instead, and attacking dictators.

I stumbled across the following letter, which I wrote to my MP, Ted Mack, shortly after he outrageously voted against Australia's participation in liberating Kuwait from Saddam. The liberation of Kuwait was supported by something like 90% of Australians. It might have been 95%, I can't remember. Australia had the left-wing in power at that time. The Gulf War I had bipartisan support, and thus the only politician who voted against the action was an independent (the only independent in parliament at the time), and he didn't just represent my electorate, I was an enthusiastic supporter of him. According to the letter, after Ted Mack, I preferred the left-wing (Labor) party at the time. I'm pretty sure that was because they were actually doing economic reforms I approved of, and thus I considered them more right-wing than the right-wing, who were flailing about, and hadn't done anything useful when they were last in power.

Also according to the letter, my view at the time was that according to the principles of democracy, we should do whatever the public wants, regardless of how ill-informed they are. I do remember having that view. If that's what the people want, then that's what they should get. I have since changed my view, and realise that operating according to the best available science produces the best result, rather than just blindly following ill-informed people around. But regardless, Ted Mack's election platform was to follow the public around, not tell the ill-informed public to go stick it. And that exactly matched my view at the time. So I was devastated when I saw my representative emerge from parliament having left-wing ratbags cheering him. Anyway, without further ado, here is my letter:


Dear Mr Mack,
Hello again. This is a follow up to the conversation I had with you at 10.30 pm Thursday 31/1/91. Basically I just want to clarify my position on the subject.

Your election platform, and the only reason I voted for you, was "I will represent the people of North Sydney" or words to that effect. This to me is utopia, for it sounds like true democracy to me, and I am all in favour of that. Rather than having a choice of Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee (to quote your words), we can have what the people really want.

I am sure that you agree with this, because it is your words. The question now remains (in my opinion anyway), how can you best fulfill your election promise, and represent the people. The best way in terms of accuracy, is a referendum, obviously too expensive in most situations. Second best would be an independent poll, again too expensive. At this point I can see 3 possible paths to follow.

1) Go around, or ring up, a random sample of people, and find their opinion on the issue at hand. Also use any other knowledge you have of the people you have visited in the last 15 years that you have been walking the streets of North Sydney. Base your vote on this. If you think it is too close to call, then abstain. If you think you have 60% of the people in favour of an issue, then go in that direction. Use your discretion if necessary, as we have already put our trust in you to do so. In my opinion, solution 1 is probably the most practical course.

2) Seeing as you cannot afford to do a poll of your electorate alone, you can rely on Australian statistics, and *assume at your discretion* that the people of North Sydney think roughly the same as the people of the rest of Australia. You can use your discretion here, knowing that people of North Sydney are far more pro-Liberal than pro-Labor, so lean more towards Liberal viewpoints (as a totally irrelevant piece of information, I am more pro-Labor than pro-Liberal in *federal*). In my opinion, option 2 is the second best option, which perhaps you could use in conjunction with option 1.

3) Have a look at the mail you receive. Tally the number of pro's and anti's and whichever one has the most votes, assume that this is an accurate representation of the people of North Sydney's opinions, and vote accordingly. In my opinion, this is a *terrible terrible* way to govern. The sort of people who write letters to MP's are a *very very* small minority of the electorate. They are generally the radical element of society, as most people are more laid back than to write letters to MP's. I am one of these "radical ratbags", which is why I am writing this letter.

Let me demonstrate how inaccurate this option 3 is:
Recently a prominent politician told me that he had received 600 anti-war letters, and only 10 pro-war letters. If we make our vote based on this information, we would see that the ratio of anti-war to pro-war is a massive 60:1. That is to say that less than 2% of the people of this man's electorate were in favour of an offensive role for our frigates in the gulf. I would bet my life savings, that at least 4% of this electorate were in favour of the offensive role, ie *double* what this politician thinks.

Oh, by the way Ted, did I ever mention that I *hate* the french because they carry out terrorist activities in friendly countries? I hate them so much that I think we should declare war on them.

As a second example, this same politician has received exactly 1 letter saying that we should declare war on france, and exactly 0 saying we should not declare war on france. Ratio of pro-war to anti-war is 1:0, ie pro-war's are infinitely greater in number than anti-war's. But I have a nasty suspicion that this aforementioned politician is not going to represent this massive anti-france feeling, but instead going to take a much more moderate stance, based on what? Hopefully, very hopefully, on options 1) or 2).

As you can tell from the previous rubbish, I am most definitely a radical ratbag. *No* vote in parliament should ever be taken on the basis that I happened to say something. Instead it should be taken on what the moderate people of this country/electorate think. I believe the question posed recently in parliament was something along the lines of "Do you think the Australian frigates in the gulf should join the United Nations forces in an offensive role". I know that if you vote "no" to this, you will be voting against the wishes of the Australian people. I *think* if you say "no" to this, you will not be representing the majority of people in the North Sydney electorate.

I don't know what you're going to do on the basis of this letter, my guess is you'll chuck it in the bin accompanied with words such as "Who does this little dickhead think he is". You are right, I am nobody. 1/100000 th of your electorate, and my views are basically totally irrelevant (0 is not very far from 1/100000). But nevermind, at least I'm in with a slim chance with you. I know for sure that Liberal and Labor don't even bother to pretend to represent the people.


Allawah!

Paul.


P.S. I will read with interest your article when it comes, and even though it will undoubtedly be more informed than mine, I consider it to carry the same weight as mine, ie 1/100000. I *personally* consider myself to be more intelligent than most, but I do not think I should have any more voting power than anyone else, because as Kerr Avon said, "Everyone thinks that the way they think is the correct way to think".

Here are some extremely interesting numbers. In October 2001, the strength of the Northern Alliance and Taliban was estimated at 11,000 and 45,000 respectively. As we all know, as soon as US air power was added to that equation, the smaller force totally and utterly decimated the larger force in 2 months flat. It may have been won even sooner if the Northern Alliance had actually tried advancing earlier, and if the US had bombed the frontlines earlier. But we'll never know for sure.

And now the Afghan National Army has reached 46,177. Using the same ratio, even if the Taliban had 45/11*46k = 188,000 soldiers, they would be flattened in 2 months, just with US air power added, ie totally ignoring the 27k US troops and 24k NATO troops that are present in Afghanistan.

According to the Taliban themselves, they have 12,000 fighters. That leaves them at 1/15 the strength they need in order to get to the stage where they can potentially last 2 months before being flattened. It is totally incredible that people all over the world can look at these figures and actually believe, REALLY BELIEVE, that the Taliban is something other than a big joke and that this is a serious war that is being fought, and actually wonder who will win. Meanwhile the US has skilfully managed its resources so that it has a mere 27k forces in the country. Compare that to 38k in South Korea where no-one is even pretending to fight (although a state of war technically still exists), and 69k in Germany, 47k in Japan where not only is there no war, there isn't even an enemy.

Welcome to the end of history, folks.

As anyone with a brain knows, which admittedly isn't very many people, the pro-liberation Iraqi blogs provided the free marketplace of ideas where we could find out what the hell was going on in Iraq. The Anglophones descended on them and started the process of scientific enquiry, while the rest of the world yodelled. While the contents of the blogs themselves was invaluable, the real meat was in the comments sections, as the protagonists fought it out, and the pro-freedom people helped each other to fill in the gaps in each other's knowledge, as well as finding out what it was we all had in common, and indeed, what the very definition of "freedom" was. I can't remember who came up with the first plausible definition, but I do remember what the definition was - "ability to change/influence the rules". Some Iraqis had interpreted it as "ability to break the rules" and chaos was ensuing in Iraq. Much later I finally cracked the real definition - "not subjugated".

Anyway, one blog in particular, Road of a Nation, gave us access to the first anti-liberation Iraqi who was willing to actually discuss her point of view with us. It was also the first blog to actually ask questions of the liberators. And it was all truly fascinating. Then the blog disappeared! For 2 years I tried to occasionally contact Sarmad to find out what was happening. And finally, just a few weeks ago, I got a response. Someone had set up a ".com" for his blog, which had expired. And he'd forgotten the password. I went through everything with him and we got everything back. But the invaluable comments were missing. There was a problem with haloscan. But that has now been restored. So now, in its full glory, is Road of a Nation. Unfortunately Sarmad is in circumstances where it is probably not a good idea for him to post at the moment, but I'm not going to elaborate. I'm going to be going back through the comments trying to highlight some of the crucial information that aided me in understanding what the hell the Iraqis, and for that matter, Australians, were thinking.

And here is another case of a disappearing blog and blogger returning from the grave. Ali Fidhal was originally on ITM, then moved to "A Free Iraqi" and then moved to "Liberal Iraqi". And he has the most poignant summary of his position of all the Iraqi bloggers - "I was not living before the 9th of April and now I am, so let me speak!". Ali is the Iraqi blogger who most matched my personal position. In actual fact, I didn't know of any difference at all between him and me. This was the friend who shared my values that I have long sought. Unfortunately he's stopped posting, but I've established contact with him privately and this will enable me to find out exactly where our worldviews differ, if anywhere. This is also guy who told me about the Mu'tazilah. Which was actually the last bit of the jigsaw puzzle - who would find this?

These activities, plus others, are keeping me occupied at the moment, and it is getting rather tiresome arguing the toss with the left-wing in the comments here about how to use a dictionary (believe it or not). It would be nice if we could have someone from the right-wing to counter these lame arguments themselves to free me from this task. Until then, they may just go unanswered for now, as I've finally got access to rational, moral people to discuss ideas with, and they must take priority.

We've got 1.5 years of Bush left, and millions of people to liberate. And millions of people in the free world to protect as well. And insufficient feedback (specifically - how many days will the liberation of Iran take) to find out if 1.5 years is enough time to do what needs to be done, ie a global blitzkrieg. The world is a fascinating place. Could a more heart-stopping computer simulation have been created? I'd like to see someone try. 1.5 years to crack the evolutionary psychology before the military option is snatched away by the Democrats. Where are Charles, thinker and ableiter when you need them?

BTW, I will make a series of posts referring to specific stuff in Sarmad's blogs/comments, as I find them and find time.