revprez

To place the detainees outside of the jurisdiction of US Courts. The Supreme Court decided last year that it did have jurisdiction (by virtue of statute) over terrorists held at Guantanamo and strongly suggested (by virtue [or lack thereof] of precedent) that it could also hold jurisdiction over detainees held overseas anywhere if they are held indefinitely [1]. A detainee on American soil is in the jurisdictional territory of functioning US Courts [2]. Put simply, if you don't expect dangerous enemy combatants in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world to be mirandized before delivery into the courts, then its probably not a good idea to let the courts get a hold of them. It is America-bashing. The Courts went above and beyond case law, statute and arguably the Constitution in finding jurisdiction over enemy combatants captured overseas and held there. Detainees aren't charged with a crime and tried, but then again the information they give can't be used in civilian trial--they weren't read their Miranda rights and the information was acquired without counsel. And that's the sole issue in Rasul v. Bush, whether civilian courts have jurisdiction over detainees. If you can try them without losing on procedural grounds, I think an argument can be made that civilian American courts should handle most such detainees after we've expended them fully as intelligence assets. For one, not a large number of these are going to be escape artists--even the high profile ones; American corrections can handle their cases. Two, we could try them Southern District of New York, New York State and New York City, as well as the DC District and Washington DC proper; cases that would leave them in pretty nasty lockups for years. Three, there's something to be said about the political benefit of having lots of terrorists with pending court cases than none at all. Rev Prez

Right backatchya I'm saying there's little evidence that there is systematic abuse of detainees at Guantanamo. Whether or not I care what happens to these people is an entirely different issue. Rev Prez

It's as sturdy as Spain's or Bolivia's, but I don't see you complaining about that. And when did the US start showing "real interest" in the spread of republican forms of government? Rev Prez

Israel doesn't need to, Israel does so in the calculated best interests of all involved. The United States has a vital strategic interest in what happens in the Middle East. Exactly what is there to gain from surrendering the will to act in that interest to an international body that is decidedly anti-American? Rev Prez

Why not? We support a democratic Turkey. Rev Prez

Friedman pens a "we need more troops" column at least once a month. We are talking about a guy who admits he knows nothing about warplanning and then attempts to pass off as astute observation his view that we need two more divisions--all in the same paragraph. Do you even know why you feel that to be the case? I mean, do you even know how to calculate the amount of force needed to accomplish a given set of tasks? There are three ways of looking at this problem. One is the RAND way, which is to forget everything you know about force allocation and do a simple analysis of a very select group of occupations in one dimension. Two is the DOD way, which is where commanders from the battalion level up devise their missions according to guidance from above and then stipulate what they perceive to be their manpower and equipment needs. Three is the responsible third party observer way (also an error check of means two), which is to stipulate a very concrete but broad set of objectives and determine the amount of force and mix of capability needed to achieve it. Means two and three are difficult to assess for outsiders, so I won't challenge you on that. But understand that your view, in the end, requires you to believe one or two absurd things. One, thousands of warplanners in the states, in theater and amongst our Coalition partners collectively and simultaneously screwed up basic maths that a sparse set of third party, non-specialist observers--including Tom Friedman--were able to figure out. Two, they did the math right, but were subsequently overruled and silenced to a man by the political leadership. If you believe the former at all, then we've got a problem. If you believe the latter, then maybe you can explain why out of thousands of people attached to simply planning and preparing for Iraqi Freedom we only have one outgoing Army Chief of Staff and enough anonymous complaints to barely fill up a single article in The Atlantic coming forward? And why haven't we heard a single concrete example of how additional troops would improve even force protection, let alone mission capability? Its an empty one, almost as empty as somebody ranting about whether we have enough air wings in Afghanistan. The answer is we probably have the right amount of force in their for the Army we presently have. General Abizaid knows what he has to achieve and what he needs to achieve it. He knows this because the dozens of warplanners at his disposal have pretty objective metrics to determine force requirements for given tasks. They know this because the US airland forces have vast, successful institutional and operational experience and doctrine in small wars. That is to say just about everything that can be militarily done concerning Iraq's security problem at any given time is met with all force available at that time. Like I said before, we could have a long, very rich discussion about empirical basis for USCENTCOM's order of battle, but that probably deserves its own thread. Friedman might be more respectable if he restricted his analysis to elements of the Iraq war that are readily if not easily quantifiable; he's horrible with numbers. Rev Prez

It should be clear to anyone reading this thread that neither you nor Dak have shit to substantiate anything you've presented here. Why don't you run over to Relativity and start defending preferred frame crankery? You certainly have the intellectual honesty and rigor for it. Rev Prez

My God, you have no idea what you're talking about. Okay, we're done. Rev Prez

Like I said, any fool can look up fallacies on Nizkor, just as any three year old can use words they don't understand in meaningless ways. Write the proofs. Rev Prez

But you can't. Neither you or atm have bothered to provide any supporting literature, your self-described love for reason is laughable, and now you're asking me to disprove the positive yet unsubstantiated claim that "patriotism is like religion." Here's an exercise for you, go through the thread and formally describe any logical fallacies. Any fool can link to Nizkor. Let's see you actually apply the calculus. Rev Prez

We know the President's position as it pertains to a select class of cases that includes Bosnia and Kosovo--in short, we know he believes the US should take a supporting role in peace operations where vital strategic interests aren't at stake. He's followed through on that worldview; deployments outside of threat areas have remained stable or declined since he's been in office--a reversal of the trend under Clinton. Part of the reason is that eight and a half months after he took office we were remobilizing most of the force to deploy to the Near East. Its interesting in that it is the single biggest reason why we aren't expecting a larger international commitment to not only Iraq, but Afghanistan. Not only do the Europeans (and for that matter, the ASEAN nations) spend the bare minimum on defense, but they lack capability in the key area of strategic lift. They simply can't deploy all that much force. France aspired to achieve a 50,000 troop deployment capacity by this year, and Britain committed a fourth of its entire force to Iraq and Afghanistan operations in 2003. None of these countries has the means to field warfighters in much greater numbers than they're doing now (we're talking maybe a division a piece) for longer than two years. We've come a long way from 1991, and if you want to blame someone for our manpower problems you might as well look at Les Aspin and Bill Clinton. They're the brilliant thinkers who decided that the Bush-Powell Base Force was too stingy and went all the way to 40 percent. Add to that the Army had its lowest rate of new procurement in the 1990s since the end of the Vietnam War, and you've essentially understood why Rumsfeld told that soldier "you go to war with the army you have." China has different strategic objectives from the United States--the key difference being that they only need to project power over a two or three hundred miles of water to achieve their aims. Then why did you bring it up? Rev Prez

Because you haven't shown that they do. Let's play the "make your case" game. That's where you actually present evidence or shut up. Rev Prez

Nope, you were right the first time. It's the US you're talking about. We're on the forefront of spending for AIDS relief in Africa, we are the backbone of the Bosnia mission, we're globe's first responders in the event natural disaster and let's face it--the US State department has its fingers on nearly every interstate dispute erupting around the world. The UN is nothing more than its member states and office space, and the most mobile, richest, and powerful member is the United States. Why not? The UN isn't on the forefront of most of those things. NGOs and member states are. The question is whether the UN is useful in its key mission, which is organizing NGOs and states to do some supposedly good work. Rev Prez

No, there isn't. In fact, the only contribution present operations have had on personnel trends is they've attracted general attention to a slew of problems the US Army has faced since almost immediately after the AVF came into existence. Particularly, we're dealing with a trendline that began in the early 1990s and interestingly enough the Army's not in terribly dissimilar shape than it was seven years ago. 1. The enlistment age population is declining. 2. All services have to compete with 3. Guard and Reserve deployments have increased over thirty times between 1991 and 2000 thanks to the total force policy. What Iraq has done is significantly increase the pace of active force deployment overseas, although that's not reported in the news simply because the sexy "what about my job" issues don't apply and consequently we don't see a threat to US Army active force end strength. Or the feelings of American journalists. Aside from Rock the Vote, what real grassroots anti-draft movement is there? Put in context, racial profiling was a more important national issue. You can chalk this one up to a number of (failed) Democratic attempts to set the agenda on security matters. Except he didn't. I challenge anyone to produce a single piece of evidence that the President campaigned on isolationism, or that the GOP that overwhelming passed the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998 and overwhelmingly supported Operation Desert Fox that same year suddenly went limp when it came to getting behind a muscular foreign policy two years later. Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and France, all have budgets in the trillion dollar range and defense expenditures that figure about around a tenth or more of US outlays in 2004 (minus the supplementals). What's really interesting is that we only outspend these governments by about $800 billion. It's also worth noting that we have no evidence that he's accurately reflected what any of those presumably field grade commanders--all anonymous--said, or if he has whether their views reflect those of their peers. On the other hand, we have tons and tons of on the record testimony from battalion to division level as well as countless retired officers who all agree a draft is no solution to any personnel problem. Rev Prez

That's funny. Someone told me that if unelected nobodies actually bothered to convince us that they're morally superior than some random elected official, we'd live in a much better world. Rev Prez

And how do any of these support your assertion that the Third Reich used patriotism as it would religion? Rev Prez

Given a selective newsfeed, an active imagination and a poor sense of geography. A comprehensive look at the evidence reveals no meaningful parallel. They won't get slaughtered; ARVN, the international coalition and a US Army of one third draftees still managed to rake in a 5:1 kill ratio over better trained and equipped VC insurgents; it spikes up to 20:1 when you ignore in ARVN casualties. On the other hand, you're exactly right. In the little empirical literature on counter-insurgency that exists, successful campaigns are characterized by highly trained and capable forces with small footprints tasked primarily to train, lead and eventually support native forces. I'm not sure why. The volunteers don't want draftees around. Those not in service clearly don't want to be there. Seems like everybody's happy except for those suffering from second thoughts about their service late in the game and liberals. Rev Prez

That would be providing evidence that supports your very novel belief that the 3rd Reich intended and did use patriotism as it would religion. Rev Prez

Then play with yourself. Sure it does. You argue that patriotism and religion are uniquely similar in that they propagate lies. Unless you have an absurdly nuanced view on the ethics of lyings, then that remarks tells us a lot about how you feel about religious and patriotic types. Unfortunately, yes. If I'm picking snippets, its to home in the few substantive points you actually spell out (and/or spell correctly). Rev Prez

No you haven't, although its clear now you refuse to do so. I can base that entirely on your performance in this thread; that suffices for me. No, it wouldn't. I id nvalidated your points long before I pointed out your beef with religious types. Then you have no idea how organizations work. KFC put up a spirited, positive defense that its product was Atkins friendly. I don't think there's any evidence that KFC's marketing and legal disbelieved the hype. So in your view the quiet, least doctrinaire of the believers are more serious than the traditionalists? Uh, what? I have. I think you mean to say that you don't like strong religious belief and people who aspire to a strict life of faith, and I think you see patriotism and religion as typically bad things. And as dumb as those ideas are, I think you actually believe you can defend them. I'm still waiting for you to do so. I suggest you press the quote button on your post, go to the relevant piece, and then actually give a damn about posting something readable. What the hell are you talking about? In which case we're done. If you're not interested in the facts, we can move on. It's your new favorite word. Lots of crank "thought experiments" on these boards. Why should I consider yours? Rev Prez

Religious types and patriots (who you likely view as nationalist neanderthals), remember? You don't like either. After all, they propagate and/or perpetuate lies. Not unless you have an absurdly nuanced view on the ethics of lying. Which simply restates the point you made about about religious types who cite Scripture that doesn't exist. Rev Prez

Specifically you trust one Central California federal judge's opinion over my armchair lawyering and DOJ. And to what extent? Over a definition of "expert advice or assistance" that was tightened the following December. It is not a red herring to point out your appeal to authority and your refusal to stand on the substance. No, its not. You need to walk us through how you go from prohibiting "unwarranted search and seizure" to prohibiting "search and seizure without the judicial instrumental known as a 'warrant.' " Otherwise, you might as well toss aside probable cause while your at it. It's really that simple. Rev Prez

Which has nothing to do with your unqualified allegation that patriotism and religion propagate lies. That you don't believe religion and patriotism to be necessarily oppressive isn't the issue or surprising; I doubt the most ardent anti-religionist here believes that Mormons are on the verge of taking over. The word you're looking for is hypocrite, and it doesn't surprise me that hypocrisy is the worst sin you see in others. Vague to be point of being meaningless; I'm sure you wouldn't consider your interpretation of Scripture to be dishonest and self-serving. This is just restating the point implied above. Same here. Like atheists? I'm not religious. I'm sure you won't. I'm still trying to figure out why your addressing any the other remarks I've made. After all, your argument supporting the OP is laughable. I didn't ask or expect you to admit it. Rev Prez

Except you didn't at first. Seriously, why do you expect me to believe that your careless display of hostility towards religious types earlier is mitigated by the tortured qualifications you're applying now? I'm curious, what religious people don't take their faith to far by your standard? I'm quite sure KFC intends to reinforce the belief of its core consumer base that their product is tasty and healthy, or will you now argue that assuring the faithful is an aim antithetical to bolstering a product's market share? 1. I don't believe you genuinely distinguish between so-called "extremists" and other religious/patriotic types. In fact, I suspect whatever delineation between believers and "extreme" believers you hold is the line between those who take their faith seriously and those who run ritual out of habit. 2. You didn't address my point about stage actors and comics lying as much if not more so than clergymen or patriots. Really? So you argue that stage actors and comics never tell or reenact stories that are blatantly false in order to perpetuate a message that maybe either true or untrue? Your point is obvious. Stupid, but obvious. You might want to rephrase the above. It reads like a random word generator penned it. Reference was made to value, and you argue that religion and patriotism appeal to value (ethics) in ways nothing else does. Bullshit. You should see the looks on the faces of those parents and students. I'm sure it does, but remember your goal is to show that "patriotism is like religion" and show the parallel to be meaningful. You've utterly failed. A little late in the game to argue against the OP, don't you think? I think you should worry more about owning up to what you've posted. Rev Prez