cowboy diplomacy

ok, let’s get a few things straight up front. cowboys are gay. i saw the movie brokeback mountain, i know all about it. secondly, cowboys are dumbasses. just look at dubya, the cowboy from texas who thinks he can be president. so, the new issue of time magazine is all about how cowboy diplomacy is dead, how it is a massive failure. uh, hello? the whole point of being a cowboy in the international arena is that you hate diplomacy, you are antisocial, and you just want to get on with the business of starting wars and killing people. this is all pretty fucking obvious stuff. of course in the 2000 presidential campaign bush said he wanted a “humble foreign policy” where we would not tell other countries what to do, yet as president he set out to do the exact opposite of the foreign policy he had campaigned on. liar? no, a liar is someone who actually knows that what they are saying is not true. bush is way too retarded to be a liar, in what he said in the 2000 campaign. he was just a complete dumbass. so really, why do we even call it “cowboy diplomacy”? why not just call it “brain-dead foreign policy”? ron suskind has a new book out, the one percent doctrine, about how dick cheney and other neocons have a doctrine to treat something that only has maybe a 1% chance as if it is completely certain. and now peter hoekstra, the chairman of the house intelligence committee, is writing an angry letter to bush about being left out of the loop on secret illegal intelligence operations, and only hearing about them because of whistleblowers who leaked to the media. it is wonderful to see that government functions so smoothly under republican one-party rule... peter hoekstra and george w. bush are getting along so well together. i am kidding of course; it is plain to see that the republican party is abandoning bush in order to try to hold onto control of congress. nobody should be fooled by these half-hearted attempts by republicans to distance themselves from bush: they were staunch supporters of him for so long, they have lost all credibility, and certainly do not deserve the public’s trust. they have shamelessly abandoned all principles they once claimed to uphold, such as balanced budgets, smaller government, keeping the government out of people’s private lives, accountability for presidents who abuse their powers, etc. it is not surprising that they have a double standard for presidents depending upon party affiliation, but what is surprising is the depths of their hypocrisy and how far they are willing to go out on a limb to defend the indefensible actions of the bush administration. and now they are pandering to the very vilest segments of public opinion, on issues where the public is hopelessly misinformed, like flag burning and gay marriage, trying to amend the constitution to reduce people’s rights, rather then increase them like almost all of the previous amendments. once they tried a constitutional amendment that reduced people’s rights, and it was called prohibition... this led to a great deal of organized crime, and was a massive failure. but that was an aberration; normally, constitutional amendments increase the rights and privileges of the average citizen. the only people who would want to ban flag burning and gay marriage are those who want the government to micromanage the lives of private citizens. yes, you and i do not go around burning flags and getting gay married, but what is next on the list of things to ban? first they ban those things, and then what is next, for these social crusaders? what if they ban premarital sex? or abortions? or contraception? or the use of swear words in public? what if they ban alcohol, tobacco, and even caffeine? what if they make rap music illegal? or video games? see, we have to defend people’s rights to engage in activities we might think are evil, as long as they do not harm anybody else. the public has no right to punish individuals for victimless crimes such as this. people have a fundamental right to pursue a wide variety of diverse lifestyles, some of them riskier than others. and as for the nations of the world, each nation has the right to govern itself and not be interfered with, as long as it does not do anything that severely threatens other nations and avoids massive human rights violations. sometimes, wars end up happening, despite all the well-meaning people around the world who try to speak out against it, and the main thing to do then is, stop people from killing each other and end the wars, because it is just plain dumb for there to be this organized mass murder and to have ignorant syncophants cheering it on, in a jingoistic fervor of self-righteousness while watching on the sidelines of a fight to the death. yes, i am a pacifist, but i am also a revolutionary. i believe that if there is an evil dictator, the people need to rise up in a revolution against their own leader. the business of running a nation is not just the business of a few leaders, but of every citizen, and when things are going wrong, it is the duty of every citizen of a nation to fix it. if a nation is being led the wrong way, the people must find a way to rise up against the leaders. look at sudan, for instance. the terrorist-supporting islamic fundamentalist regime in sudan once hosted osama bin laden, for several years, and let him build terrorist training camps in sudan. they oppressed people from ethnic groups different from the sudanese government leaders, people who did not speak arabic (in darfur), and people who were not muslim (in southern sudan). so the oppressed people rose up in revolution against their oppressors. or in a democratic nation like the united states, we rise up every election year and vote. in either case, the people have to find a way to make their voices heard so they have more influence over how their country is governed. right now in iraq, they are having a problem because they can’t figure out whether it is better to choose their leaders in democratic elections or to fight in armed conflict against that country’s government. it is understandable that after many years of living under saddam hussein’s dictatorship, they would be confused about these matters and not really understand democracy or have enough faith in it to not take up armed resistance. there is also the matter of the various ethnic and religious divisions such as shia and sunni, arab and kurd, that divide the iraqi people, and cause those in the minorities, especially sunni arabs, to distrust a government of shia and kurds. each of these communities, to protect itself against threats from the other ethnic and religious communities, has found it necessary to establish private militias for self-defense purposes, but unfortunately, these militias all too often end up fighting on the offense instead of just defense, and committing atrocities. it is interesting to note that the u.s. constitution protects the rights of americans to own firearms and set up private militias, just like in iraq. except, of course, the militias and their members would have to be law-abiding citizens here. so, in a way, iraq is like a utopia for the national rifle association; it is the gun owner’s paradise. in a country where everyone has a gun, theoretically, there would be no crime, at least according to how the nra envisions it. of course, iraq seems to disprove that quite dramatically, but at least the nra are optimists. still, i think it is rather ridiculous that we keep trying to impose texas cowboy-style solutions on the middle eastern muslim nation of iraq. why do we always inflate external threats out of proportion? why did many of us think there were weapons of mass destruction? i think, since we americans are an optimistic people, we should not be afraid of anyone. there are no threats to our national security. nobody could possibly hope to defeat us. i think that is the proper attitude, rather than a paranoid, security-obsessed attitude. if you assume we are invincible, then we do not need to obsess so much about defending our nation, or worry about bad things that might happen. of course, i do not mean totally invincible, but i mean that nobody could hope to beat us in a sustained military conflict, or anything that involved weapons of mass destruction, since we have more of those than anyone. the doctrine of mutual assured destruction is the basis for this assumption of security. and to any terrorists or rogue nations who might want to attack us, we can simply warn them: you cannot possibly hope to ever defeat us, and we will wreak bloody revenge if you attack, so since you wish to preserve yourselves, it would be illogical for you to attack. to back this up, of course, we need more allies. a more peaceful, less security-obsessed nation that respects the rule of law and human rights would do a better job at making and maintaining fragile alliances worldwide. and alliances are really the key to everything. if we focused on behaving ourselves so we could get along with everyone else, we would form a united front against the terrorists, and they would have no chance of winning. unfortunately, the war in iraq and cowboy diplomacy have deeply divided the international community into the united states and its close allies versus everyone else. that is the real objective of the terrorists: to divide the international community and thereby prevent united worldwide efforts to defeat them. the only way to defeat them is through global cooperation, alliances, and peace. that will deny them safe havens and allow the united international community to work together rather than have nations fight amongst themselves while the terrorists continue to wreak havoc. so really, cowboy diplomacy and the whole doctrine of pre-emptive war and unilateral foreign policy is completely idiotic, especially for a global war against terrorism. in fact, it is the worst possible way to fight terrorism that exists, because it has to be a global fight that is united, and pursuing a unilateral course that divides the international community is a surefire way to undermine any potential international cooperation. it is about time people realized this, and abandoned all of their anachronistic xenophobic notions of nationalism and unilateralism. it is simply pathetic that we have learned nothing from the vietnam war and continue to repeat the same mistakes again and again, endlessly. at least our form of government allows us a peaceful means to democratically change our nation’s leadership. that keeps things from going too far off track... usually. then again, adolf hitler came to power through democratic elections, too. and so did the president of iran, mahmoud ahmadenijad. so, we should just keep things in perspective, and not get too crazy about things like national security... because our nation is merely just part of the world, and without the world, there is no nation.