theseeman

thanks for the awesome methapor last night

Good point. But Chomsky's willing to believe without reservation anything governments antagonistic towards the US say, and regard anything the US says as highly suspect. I, on the other hand, find the US government a lot more credible than people who obviously have beefs and contentions with the government, like terror suspects and communists.

The way Chomsky sees the world, it's like he and I live on different planets.

No, not at all. You're making equivalencies between the victims of the Khmer Rouge and terrorist suspects. Worse yet, you're making equivalencies between me and Noam Chomsky.

duuude! unfinished business! we need fuckin secretaries or somethin!

so anyway, if you still need a proofreader, i am up for it. furthermore, i've decided on a "fee"! i'm launching my own website soon; a place where i can publish my poetry, accompanied by/accompanying visual art in future posts if all goes to plan.

to promote the site i'll be bombarding poetry forums and the like with a link, which is something you can assist me in!

It's the alleyway in between the block of buildings with Barley's in it and the block with Blue Moon Bakery, right across from the Hot Dog King. I don't know the name of it.

You can't beat my rent, of course my roomates ar a little parental.

Get well soon.

God, I love wedding receptions! Especially when I'm not the one getting married. Which, now that I think of it, is always. At least, I don't think I've ever been married.

The force is strong with that one.

"Good relations with the wookies I have."
that line cracked me up for some reason.

I got that Sidious perhaps learned the power to manipulate the force to create life, from his unnamed master, Darth Plagueis, and therefore perhaps created Anakin. It's all open to interpretation.

I agree entirely re Ho Chi Minh (and I've heard it said that much the same applies to Castro; that the main reason he went for Soviet allies was American pique at his refusal to carry on business as usual, i.e. to be an American satellite, and consequent American sanctions.). The root of it, so far as I can see, is that American policy in the 40s and 50s was tacitly colonial (as opposed to the explicit colonialism of the British and French) with quite a lot of chauvinism involved. That chauvinism is surely the underlying emotion in the American decision to go in after the French failure.

Public opinion certainly played a major part in the American withdrawal. However it's not entirely clear to me that the US was winning militarily; I read a report of a Pentagon study on infantry operations in VN (written about 1978, IIRC) that said that while American soldiers won probably 80% of the engagements, they only initiated 10% of them. That's an appalling number. That means that the enemy dictated pretty much when and where the fighting took place. Now firepower is all well and good, but if your enemy is dictating when and where you fight, you're probably going to lose the war.

That brings me to the next reaction I had to the USCav piece: that it assumes, from word one, that most American ground operations will be as occupying forces.
(Bearing in mind that in Vietnam, American forces had local allies all the way through. Unreliable, self-serving and sometimes out-and-out treacherous, but local allies none the less.)
How can the US reverse that 10% number in its future occupations, without local allies? It'll have to increase its reliance on machines, and it'll have to increase the training of its soldiers, in technology and in languages and cultures, because they will need to be able to talk to the locals of wherever they're occupying.
Result: Expensive military, man for man.
- Consequence A: Smaller military, at least in numbers. Cheap low-tech opponents become more and more of a problem, because cheap means a big advantage in numbers. (Vietnam again; American failure there is at least partly due to refusal to provide enough men on the ground, and consequent reliance on firepower, which meant lots of collateral damage, producing domestic loss of faith in the war and a lasting stain on America's image in the world.)
- Consequence B: Every casualty is enormously expensive and hard to replace. That hardens public opinion against military action, especially as the military shrinks and fewer people have serving relatives.

Back to Tet and politics: Tet was a bodyblow to American public opinion re VN, and maybe the key moment in the whole sorry business; certainly the point when ordinary Americans started seriously to ask questions about it. The primary lesson of Tet, so far as I am concerned, is that war is a continuation of politics by other means. This is a serious problem to the American military and the American hawks generally; they have lost sight of the reason they're doing this, because all the firepower in the world won't protect you politically in a world where your prosperity relies on imports (America with 4% of the world's population consumes 25% of the world's resources, or thereabouts). I can't see any serious way forward (i.e. one that's not going to make matters worse) until that understanding comes back to American foreign policy.

Lucky!
I can't go to the midnight showing because I have to work at 6 Thursday, but I get off at noon so I can catch it shortly after. I can't wait.

I hope I didn't offend you with my Chappelle comment. I'm sure he'll be just as funny when he returns, but there is such genius in mania.

Thank you very much, that's a fascinating article. I have several disagreements with its analysis, naturally

The 4th gen warfare concept sounds pretty interesting, and I can definitely see how it could be applied to non-combat areas. In fact, I'm not sure that's not already happening, whether intentionally or otherwise. Rove & co. are definitely working to divide Dems with issues like same-sex marriage, which I guess is what the author is referring to when he talks about attacking the culture. And they really did a masterful job during the last election of taking Kerry's biggest strength, his military record, and turning it against him with the Swift Boat vets smear. I think we could turn the tables on them, though, if we play the same game. There are definite fault lines between the libertarian Repubs, social conservatives, and neocons, and we need to be exploiting those fault lines, much more so than we are now. Good stuff, as always.

So what do you do for a living? Just curious as to what you'll be using the steel-toed boots for, and who you'll be kicking with them. And what's the TFP web site about?

Commented on your post in Attack_Macaque's journal, the Al-Qaeda training manual. Fascinating stuff. I was interested by its comment about Afghan Communism; evidently it's pretty old.

Interesting links, as always. The 14 points of fascism, is kind of creepy, especially since Bush & co. have all 14 pretty much covered. The one about the Zapatistas was awesome - I didn't know they were trying to segue into soccer...