Iraq Invasion - America's Shame... 10 years on

[TimG]

China and Russia are currently trying to strengthen their ties.

So?

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/03/23/will-china-and-russias-new-strategic-partnership-work/

There’s a long history of this kind of ambitious rhetoric coming from the two countries, and it usually doesn’t amount to much. The Soviet Union and Mao’s China famously couldn’t make things work. And more recent history is littered with initiatives, like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which were supposed to herald a new era of Sino-Russian cooperation but in fact have made little difference to world affairs.

...

Read down past today’s headlines on Xi’s visit and you’ll find most news sources including some caveats about the recent public display of affection. For example, many point out that Russia’s leaders are nervous about the country’s energy-rich but underpopulated Far East, considering it sits above a crowded and energy-hungry China. But beyond strategic concerns, there’s a more basic question of national pride at work.

[TimG]

Canadian oil IS foreign to the USA. It's another country. Sure the agreements may make it easier for the transfer of the oil, but it is foreign by definition.

It does not come by sea. That is a huge difference.

[TimG]

Provide link about the food imports

http://grist.org/sustainable-food/2011-03-23-can-the-united-states-feed-china/

As all these trends converge, China’s food supply is tightening. In November 2010, the food price index was up a politically dangerous 12 percent over a year earlier. Now after 15 years of near self-sufficiency in grain, it seems likely that China soon will turn to the world market for massive grain imports, as it already has done for 80 percent of its soybeans.

[bush_cheney2004]

...I think the Iraq invasion pissed off the Russians and Chinese to the point where they decided that they will somehow show their displeasure for that action in their own time and way.

Oh sure, just the way that Canada, and France, and Germany, and Russia did by begging for access to post invasion contracts.

[Guest Derek L]

It does not come by sea. That is a huge difference.

Exactly:

http://youtu.be/-JP-ytvCRuk

2-3 weeks no more Chinese navy or commercial shipping…………

[WWWTT]

So?

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/03/23/will-china-and-russias-new-strategic-partnership-work/

Then China was not even a G20 country.

Now China is #2 and in a few years will be #1!

Whole different ball game now.

WWWTT

[WWWTT]

http://grist.org/sustainable-food/2011-03-23-can-the-united-states-feed-china/

This link means very little because it is about grains that are not considered a staple in Chinese diet.

You have a link about rice???

WWWTT

[TimG]

Now China is #2 and in a few years will be #1!

So? Germany is number one in Europe. It is important but does not control the place. The same will be true of China.

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Also the GDP is usually measured by purchasing power parity which is not an accurate measure of the influence a country has in the world because PPP inflates the value of goods and services produced in low cost countries. Nominal GDP is a better measure of world influence and it will take a lot longer for China to exceed the US and Europe on that front. Even then, China will eventually be larger than the US but it is unlikely it will ever exceed 20% of the world economy.

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This link means very little because it is about grains that are not considered a staple in Chinese diet.

Rice is included in the 'grain' category. So is corn. Edited March 26, 2013 by TimG

[waldo]

Exactly:

2-3 weeks no more Chinese navy or commercial shipping…………

more... war porn!!! Way to reach... way to extend outside your comfort zone!

[Guest Derek L]

more... war porn!!! Way to reach... way to extend outside your comfort zone!

Sure, why not? Would you have preferred a solely written response confirming Tim’s point that China’s “mighty naval fleet” and commercial shipping is vulnerable and could be nixed by COMSUBPAC in a mater of weeks?

[bush_cheney2004]

Let's do this right......for Iraq !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2YMTggTTRs

[Hudson Jones]

Playing terrible rock music in the background does not increase manhood points considering they are sitting in a room pressing buttons.

[bush_cheney2004]

No worries Mr. Saddam.....these are just Canadian Geese flying in formation :

[bush_cheney2004]

Playing terrible rock music in the background does not increase manhood points considering they are sitting in a room pressing buttons.

I didn't make the video, and the music wasn't playing during battle stations at periscope depth. Besides, based on the music threads, Canadians just love American head banging war rock.

[Guest Derek L]

Let's do this right......for Iraq !

Indeed, I would expect once the first Chinese MFU is turned into reef (Their "new" carrier perhaps) the rest of the fleet would make like the Argies..........

[waldo]

Sure, why not? Would you have preferred a solely written response confirming Tim’s point that China’s “mighty naval fleet” and commercial shipping is vulnerable and could be nixed by COMSUBPAC in a mater of weeks?

hey now, you throw up a 46 minute vid... let me think, let me think!

is it like... real porn? Do you get... hot? Do you feel you're stepping out on the wifey? Hey, maybe that's it... you sly dog, you!

[Guest Derek L]

hey now, you throw up a 46 minute vid... let me think, let me think!

is it like... real porn? Do you get... hot? Do you feel you're stepping out on the wifey? Hey, maybe that's it... you sly dog, you!

Come now Waldo, we all here know there is no such thing as Tantric porn...........Who has the time?

[waldo]

Come now Waldo, we all here know there is no such thing as Tantric porn...........Who has the time?

we're here for you bro! I understand your war porn compulsion has the same effect on the brain as drug or alcohol addiction.

but really, I hear ya... what could be more fitting in an Iraq Anniversary thread, hey?

[Guest Derek L]

we're here for you bro! I understand your war porn compulsion has the same effect on the brain as drug or alcohol addiction.

but really, I hear ya... what could be more fitting in an Iraq Anniversary thread, hey?

Hey now, what's with the negative waves directed at ones person?

Seems you've been going on quite the tear in several threads there internet tough guy

Edited March 26, 2013 by Derek L

[waldo]

internet tough guy??? Perhaps you should actually review your own posts, hey? Oh wait... war porn is a tough guy measure, right?

et tu brute! Even staunch Conservative Peggy Noonan!

Can the Republican Party Recover From Iraq? - The war almost killed the GOP. Whether it can come back is an open question.

Here is what the war did to the GOP:

- It ruined the party's hard-earned reputation for foreign-affairs probity.

- It muddied up the meaning of conservatism and bloodied up its reputation.

- It ended the Republican political ascendance that had begun in 1980.

- It undermined respect for Republican economic stewardship.

- It quashed debate within the Republican Party.

- It killed what remained of the Washington Republican establishment.

All this of course is apart from the central tragedy, which is the human one—the lost lives, the wounded, the families that will now not be formed, or that have been left smaller, and damaged.

Iraq and Afghanistan have ended badly for the Republicans, and the party won't really right itself until it has candidates for national office who can present a new definition of what a realistic and well-grounded Republican foreign policy is, means and seeks to do. That will take debate. The party is now stuck more or less in domestic issues. As for foreign policy, they oppose Obama. In the future more will be needed.

[Hudson Jones]

I didn't make the video, and the music wasn't playing during battle stations at periscope depth. Besides, based on the music threads, Canadians just love American head banging war rock.

You picked a video with terrible rock music playing in the background and a bunch of guys sitting in a room pressing buttons as part of your series of war porn you keep sharing with people like it's somehow manly and people should be impressed by it.

[waldo]

ya, ya... lot's of Iraq war apologists snickering over prominent liberals coming forward in recent days to apologize for their early support - except the snickering is clearly misdirected as the Iraq war fiasco is directly responsible for liberalism’s current political and cultural ascendance in the U.S.:

The Obama Era, Brought to You by the Iraq War

But the Democratic majority that we do have is a majority that the Iraq war created: its energy and strategies, its leadership and policy goals, and even its cultural advantages were forged in the backlash against George W. Bush’s Middle East policies.

All those now-apologetic liberals who supported the war in 2003 are a big part of this story, because without their hawkishness there would have been no antiwar rebellion on the left — no Michael Moore and Howard Dean, no Daily Kos and all its “netroots” imitators.

This rebellion divided the Democrats, but it also energized them. During the long Reagan era, American liberalism was an ossified establishment pitted against a successful right-wing insurgency. But the anti-Iraq war insurgency created something new in modern politics — a kind of “movement liberalism” that thought of itself in the same scrappy, ideologically driven terms as the conservative movement, and that was determined to imitate conservatism’s tactics, institutions and success.

Had the Iraq invasion turned out differently, this movement and the Democratic establishment might have spent a decade locked in conflict. But when the W.M.D. didn’t turn up and the occupation turned into a fiasco, the two wings of the party made peace: the establishment embraced the grass roots’ anti-Bush fervor, and the insurgents helped transform liberalism’s infrastructure and organizing and communication.

But Obama didn’t just benefit from the zeal that entered the Democratic Party through the antiwar movement; he also benefited from the domestic policy vacuum left by Bush’s Iraq-ruined second term. The Bush White House’s “compassionate conservatism” was the last major Republican attempt to claim the political center — to balance traditional conservative goals on taxes and entitlement reform with more bipartisan appeals on education, health care, immigration and poverty. And as long as the Republican Party was successfully hovering near the middle, the Democrats had to hover there as well.

But once Bush’s foreign policy credibility collapsed, his domestic political capital collapsed as well: moderates stopped working with him, conservatives rebelled, and the White House’s planned second-term agenda — Social Security reform, tax and health care reform, immigration overhaul — never happened.

This collapse, and the Republican Party’s failure to recover from it, enabled the Democrats to not only seize the center but push it leftward, and advance far bolder proposals than either Al Gore or John Kerry had dared to offer. The Iraq war didn’t just make Obama possible — it made Obamacare possible as well.
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In a similar way, even though Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney weren’t culture warriors or evangelical Christians, in the popular imagination their legacy of incompetence has become a reason to reject social conservatism as well. Just as the post-Vietnam Democrats came to be regarded as incompetent, wimpy and dangerously radical all at once, since 2004 the Bush administration’s blunders — the missing W.M.D., the botched occupation — have been woven into a larger story about Youth and Science and Reason and Diversity triumphing over Old White Male Faith-Based Cluelessness.

Of all the Iraq war’s consequences for our politics, it’s this narrative that may be the war’s most lasting legacy, and the most difficult for conservatives to overcome.

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[DogOnPorch]

ya, ya... lot's of Iraq war apologists snickering over prominent liberals coming forward in recent days to apologize for their early support - except the snickering is clearly misdirected as the Iraq war fiasco is directly responsible for liberalism’s current political and cultural ascendance in the U.S.:

The Obama Era, Brought to You by the Iraq War

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Could well be. There's nothing wrong with a good dose of liberalism in society. We're also very lucky to live in a time that has had a long period of relative peace. What wars there are affect our North American societies very little. That wasn't achieved by liberal thinking, however. I notice there's still a SAC run by the good ol' US of A...or AFGSC if you prefer the long-winded modern acronym. 24/7/365...Canada's only real defense. Oh...well...not to forget...the USN, too. Snicker....

[Michael Hardner]

The image trolling and general nastiness on this thread isn't helping the discussion.

[WWWTT]

So? Germany is number one in Europe. It is important but does not control the place. The same will be true of China.

.

Also the GDP is usually measured by purchasing power parity which is not an accurate measure of the influence a country has in the world because PPP inflates the value of goods and services produced in low cost countries. Nominal GDP is a better measure of world influence and it will take a lot longer for China to exceed the US and Europe on that front. Even then, China will eventually be larger than the US but it is unlikely it will ever exceed 20% of the world economy.

.Rice is included in the 'grain' category. So is corn.

In this context Germany = Strawman

And no rice is NOT included in your link.Soybean,corn and wheat only.

I believe that this is intentionally done to make China appear to be in a more vulnerable position than it actually is.

Keep in mind that the last recession hit(2008-2009) hit the US the hardest (Iraq)

WWWTT