Friday, November 6, 2015

Damned if you do Damned if you don't

Damned if you do. Damned if you don't. That is my answer to Eric's latest post.
"People die whether the USA gets engaged or not. Of course when a million people die because the USA failed to act, none of the near pacifists seem to mind. Thankfully the USA usually only gets involved when some "evil" exists that is harming or killing people, AND there is a national interest in the region.
 
From what I remember, the Syria civil war started long after Iraq and before ISIS came on the scene. The USA pretty much stayed out of the fight and hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions have been displaced. Now do we bear the guilt of not helping out more earlier?
 
With great wealth and power comes great responsibility!!!
 
Just curious...
  • Should the USA let Putin take back Ukraine and maybe all the BLOC countries?
  • Should we let China take over the South China Sea uncontested?
  • Should we have let Germany have Europe in the 1940s?" G2A

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Should we go to war with Russia over the Crimea?

--Hiram

Anonymous said...

Should America have gone to war with Nazi Germany over the Sudetenland?

==Hiram

John said...

Neal left this interesting comment. And my reply was not deemed acceptable...

"Try to remember that we are the 10,000 generation of predator rather than prey. The prey did not continue, the predator survived.

Ask the question, how can you eat 3 meals today when there are literally millions dying of hunger?

We have the lordly indifference of the lion on the savanna, with not one thought of the dying agony of the gazelle.

And just by the mere fact of being the laziest couch potato of the western world, we are still among the top predators in the world today.

If sharing and starving with the great masses who did not grab and push were our lot, we would be long gone. No, we pushed our way to the front, grabbed the largest piece, abandoned those who could not help us, and so we survived.

And we have so advanced as predator that we have servant predators that act for us in our interests. They assume the risks and we can assume an even greater air of remove.

Perhaps it is the advent of leisure from the now-contracted hunt that has allowed us to turn a small portion of attention to the short lives and ugly demise of the prey. Perhaps not so much that we do not eat heartily, though.

But hey, nature will have it's laugh on the peak predator.

Climate change, the spoor of the peak predator. We ignore it now, because it first affects those pinned by poverty, geography, borders.. But it will overthrow us as surely as it did T.Rex, unleashing the new mouse-creature that will creep through the new world. You can bet that mouse-creature will prosper by not giving a damn about the mouse-like-creatures.

How's that for pessimism ?" Neal

John said...

So us predators are out in droves this weekend looking to kill 100,000+ deer. Based on Neal's comment I am wondering if we should give up hunting and just start feeding them. What would be the result after a few years?

The irony is that us high level predators are not allowed to hunt wolves again... So apparently it is okay if wolves are free to savage defenseless prey as we look the other way...

I think it is interesting how folks like Neal can sleep at night as defenseless citizen's are subjected to torture and murder while the pacifists in the USA would happily stand by and WATCH.

John said...

Hiram,
Remember the 2 questions:
- Are atrocities being committed?
- Could it have an adverse impact on the USA? (ie security, economy, etc)

Anonymous said...

Are atrocities being committed?

Yes.

Could it have an adverse impact on the USA? (ie security, economy, etc)?

Yes.

Now does anyone have answers to my questions?

--Hiram

John said...

I think the answers were no & no. Since we did not.

Now if global terrorists are being trained there, they are beheading aid workers, ally countries are attacked/threatened and the source of the world's economic life blood (ie oil) is threatened. That is a different story.

The reality is the USA thrives because of free global trade. We have a huge national interest in global stability.

Anonymous said...

You don't think atrocities are being committed? And you don't think instability in the middle east has an adverse effect on the USA?

Here are two questions that mostly go unasked.

What were Osama Bin Laden's goals in mounting the 9-11 attacks?

To what extent have those goals been achieved?

--Hiram

Unknown said...

all of your questions imply that we need the best qualified person as president to make these decisions. My current answer to these questions is I trust Obama, who is smarter than me, has much more information, has the advice of generals and the state department, spends much more time thinking things through etc. I didn't trust Bush and in that case I took to the streets several times with other anti war protestors.

Of all the current candidates for predsident I think Hillary is the most qualified to be commander and chief and the person in whose decisions I would have the most trust.

I didn't fully understand the story/ allegory of peak predetor. The meaning I took away is we need to evolve to a higher level of interacting in the world. Being a strong environmentalist I agreed with the ending pt that the end result of our peak predator interactions is a climate crisis.

John said...

Laurie,
Regarding my story, I think of the ruthless dictators as the wolves that the USA can eliminate to save some of the prey. Unfortunately "the prey" seems to be inundated with "wolves in sheep's clothing"... Every time one wolf is eliminated, another jumps up to take their place.

Obama has let the ISIS / Syria situations get way out of control. Not sure I see either Obama or Hillary as capable on the world stage. Unfortunately the GOP candidates do not impress me either.

Hiram, You were asking about Crimea and Sudetenland.

Anonymous said...

You were asking about Crimea and Sudetenland.

thanks.

--Hiram

John said...

Update regarding this "predator"... It is a good thing I don't have to rely on hunting to eat. Lincoln county is a bucks only zone this year and my aim was apparently worse than ever...

I did see a coyote that almost made a good target for my frustrations. That may have saved a bunch of rabbits and pheasants an untimely death.

Well, there is always next weekend !!!

Anonymous said...

John, you're taking Neal's comment too literally.

It has precious little to do with hunting.

Joel

John said...

Oh come now... Neal's comment was so out there that it deserves to be analyzed.

"The prey did not continue, the predator survived. Ask the question, how can you eat 3 meals today when there are literally millions dying of hunger? We have the lordly indifference of the lion on the savanna, with not one thought of the dying agony of the gazelle." Neal

The reality is that predators and prey need each other in most cases to survive and to stay healthy / fed. The implication that the prey did not survive is unrealistic, especially since he comments that millions of them are dying of hunger.

Now as for the Lion, it only kills to eat and protect it's pride / area. Other than this it is pretty in different to what else is happening on the plain.

Us human predators are much more complicated. We can watch people starve or take action to help them eat. We can watch brutal dictators kill and torture people or we can take action to protect them. It would be much simpler if we were lions.

"And just by the mere fact of being the laziest couch potato of the western world, we are still among the top predators in the world today. If sharing and starving with the great masses who did not grab and push were our lot, we would be long gone. No, we pushed our way to the front, grabbed the largest piece, abandoned those who could not help us, and so we survived." Neal

I assume he is criticizing America here, even though the American people spend a fortune all around the world in an attempt to promote health, nutrition, security, free trade, low energy costs, etc.

John said...

Wiki US Military Bases

I often wonder what conspiracy theory Neal and folks like him have regarding our huge global military. I assume it is that it is all just there to justify the huge military industry / spending.

Nothing to do with maintaining peace, saving lives, allowing free trade that helps the poor around the world, etc....