PULL OUT NOW!
Sat April 17th, 2004 14:30 MSTI received the following by email. The provenance is unknown. Enjoy:
It’s time to reevaluate our involvement.
Every day there are news reports about lack of public safety.
Every night on the TV are photos of death and destruction. Why are we still there?
We occupied this land, which we had to take by force, but it causes us nothing but trouble.
Why are we still there?
Their government is unstable, and there is no leadership or will to change the current system.
Why are we still there?
Many of their people are crude and uncivilized. Why are we still there?
There are more than 100 religious sects, which we don’t understand. Why are we still there?
We can’t even secure the borders. Why are we still there?
They are billions of dollars in debt and it will cost billions more to rebuild, which we can’t afford. Why are we still there?
It is becoming very clear!
We must abandon California.
Uh Uh Uh!
Texas first.
Texas is a fine place. I go there every year while seeking tornadoes.
alifornia would be a great state if a lot of its inhabitants left.
We don’t call California, the RPC (Republic of People of California) for no reason. Bloating in government spending, high tax, cosmic justice running rampage through out the state, excessive regulation, socialistic spending by confiscating money from everyone but the “poor” to implement humanity vision with no constrain in cost. Do you guys take Asian refugees again? We are very good workers and have proven to contribute effectively lately, regardless of barriers and obstacles being set-up in education in the name of affirmative action and diversity.
Lan,
You are always welcome (in spite of this :-).
BTW… a Korean friend of my daughter has a Hispanic last name (her parents chose this) so she could take advantage of Affirmative Action! It worked.
It sure would be nice if we could arrange a population exchange. Give us your Lans, and we’ll send you our MeCHA members, our Marxist professors, and all the people who fled California and are doing their best to enact laws to make us just like California.
Errr…Gary…
In general I agree, but there have to be a few exceptions.
I fled California for Arizona (30 years ago). I have friends who are good Arizonans who did also.
Of course, we all grew up in Kansas, which isn’t known for its Californika silliness.
California? Try Connecticut, or worse, the pest colony north of me, Massachusetts. The northeast has all the ailments attributed to California and none of the virtues. We just hide it here better. All our loonies are on the campuses, not roaming free.
Mr. Moore:
Well, I said “give us your Lans,” meaning people like Lan are certainly welcome. I Myself fled from the PRC a couple months after Davis took office. I am not a “pull up the drawbridge” type.
However, I know some people who left the PRC, then try to pass big tax increases, “living wage” laws, government-run health insurance, light rail systems, …
All I’m asking is that we set up an Ellis Island somewhere in the Colorado River and ship the appropriate ones back to Berkeley.
Gary, please call me John.
… look at our excuse for a governor. The light rail think is outrageous. I spent an hour one evening with a City of Phoenix urban planner who explained the whole rationale to me. It was a very consistent and plausible theory, except that in the real world, it doesn’t work!
I like your Ellis Island idea.
John
That’s pretty good.
OK, John. I was raised that you called someone “Mr.” or “Mrs.” until he says otherwise.
Well, the current Governor hasn’t been recalled or impeached yet. That’s pretty good by recent standards.
Oh, the light rail nuts make Me want to howl. They keep trying to pass their nutty proposal, trying to find an election that will have the right voter demographics to let them squeak by. After which, of course, there will not be any further elections to reverse that decision. Kind of like Communists.
The “coalition” to back the darned thing includes people like the government employees union (I wonder why…?) and a local hobby train club! These dweebs aren’t satisfied with HO scale; no, they want to make us buy them a 5′ gauge toy train set.
The more I think about them, I just.
Arooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
John, this comment is a response to your last comment over on Roger’s blog. Rather than respond there I’m posting here, as per your suggestion.
As regards the issue of the serious nature of this war and the mindset of our enemies I am convinced that we will not fight this war with sufficient ruthlessness and resolve until we suffer at least one WMD attack. I belive that such an attack is coming and that the nuclear threshold will be crossed fairly soon. Life as we know it will change drastically in this country, and the war will ultimately be fought between Western civilization and Islam.
I had hoped after we went into Iraq last year we might be able to forstall a WMD attack, but after watching the Donks and quisling media’s despicable and treasonous behavior over the course of the last year I just don’t see the country marshalling the political will necessary to fight this enemy with the vigor and thoroughness required to root out and defeat him. Hell, a sizable portion of the electorate thinks it’s our fault and a larger subset simply grossly underestimates the danger of this new type of enemy.
I hope I’m wrong about such a scenario, but I see the enemy as both ruthless and very highly motivated whereas we are hamstrung by both a PC mentality and a fatal disunity. The question I have is how will the left in this country react after we’re hit? Will they come to their senses or will they scream it’s all Bush’s fault? Will we have a civil war or homegrown acts of terrorism? I see such a grossly distorted interpretation of reality amongst the blame-America-first-moral-equivalent left that I wouldn’t be surprised if it comes to that. Once again I must add that I live in the Bay Area and work in San Fransisco a lot, so this colors my perception.
Tell me if you think I’m off base here.
Paul:
You asked John and not me, although I have been taking your position on this site and others, with the same result that you see. Those of us who recognize this conflict as a struggle against Isalmofascism (and John Moore is one) are waving a red flag, and The Left in this country and elsewhere is unable, not unwilling, unable to recognize it.
And yes, I believe it will be something horrific which silences them. I have thought for a while that the modern Left is an entirely new phenomena,
something beyond the comfortable pacifism and appeasement mentality of the 1930’s. The weightlessness of their views originates in a kind of moral vacuum, and virtually anything can flow in there.
But they will simply not fight, anywhere, for The West or any other “conviction”. The malleability of their views is an evolved function to allow them to avoid any dispute where there is real danger. Political battles are one thing, because there is a clear social reward for The Left in the spoils , but REAL battlefields? Never.
They cannot be counted upon, and I said earlier that they will be silenced, but not enlisted in any measure in the war down the road. They are irrelevant. This war will really commence elsewhere, I believe, in a European country with a more serious Muslim presence that we have. Local issues outside the strategies of Al Qaeda will probably manifest themselves there first. I don’t think we are immune, I think the temporary cost to the enemy of something major here is a consideration to them.
Al Qaeda has dropped its strategic calculation that the United States is going to run away as we did during the Clinton years; they must realize that asymetrical conflict is practical only as long as the target nation isn’t furious, madly, viciously furious and powerful enough to eliminate the client states upon whom they still depend. A WMD attack here, although not out of the question, would infuriate this country.
I have mentioned elsewhere that I have three sons involved in this conflict, and raise the fact again only as it contributes to my awareness that the Vietnam War Syndrome only exists on The Left. Our military is very nearly as ruthless as any military can be. All the indignities heaped on the military by The Left haven’t made a difference in how they would prosecute this war given half a chance. And that time will come.
Dear God no! Imagine millions of California emigrants streaming into Phoenix. . .
Oh, that’s right, I forgot.
Paul and Rhod - no time to answer now but thatnks for posting (I’m behind in work).
Ryan: see http://www.tinyvital.com/BlogArchives/000265.html
Rhod seized on a good point regarding the war with ‘Islamofascism,’ and he might just be right when arguing that the next real war might well come in Europe. All of you doubtless know about Germany’s famous Turkish “Gastarbeiter,” and that perhaps million of Germans fear a potential problem with the rise of Islam within their own borders. The news media would like to have the public believe that all is ‘normal’ inside Germany, that any real problems there are the province of German racists’–but I feel that I saw differently while there two weeks ago. Not once did I see Germans and Turks intermingling, laughing together, or even acknowledging each others’ presence. The antipathy was palpable.
Before embarking for Germany, I pored through the book, “Fatherland: The Search for the Real Germany,” and noted that the book’s immigration-favoring author spent considerable time pondering what he felt just might be a coming battle between the Germans and their Turkish ‘guests.’ The Germans remain ‘cowed’ because of their ages-old reputation for ‘racism,’ and the Holocaust, though I’d be willing to bet that millions of them would be willing to take drastic action to see a reduction of Islamic influence in their country–whether the rest of the world likes it, or not. Frankly, I sensed that the relationship between the Germans and Turks was volatile, at best.
Just an opinion. Could be completely wrong.
Rhod and Robert:
It seems planned attacks in Europe have already been thwarted, so they are obviously a target, and the fact that they have large Muslim populations that are not integrated into the general population is another factor that bodes for a European attack. The best thing that could happen for us is an opening salvo in Europe that helps galvanize this country to better protect ourselves and prosecute the war, as well as inspiring Europe to do some of the heavy lifting.
On the other hand the US is the big Kahuna, the target that the Jihadists most desire to hit, and they obviously would like to see Bush defeated. Whether or not an attack here would help or hurt Bush, and whether or not AQ correctly assesses the effect of such an attack are questions ripe for speculation. Also the type of attack or attacks may be a factor. A string of car bombs set off every week or so would have a different psychological effect on the population than a single large WMD attack.
My biggest fear is that they are patient, cunning, and resourceful enough to set off simultaneous or near simultaneous WMD attacks in multiple American cities causing mass panic and a total breakdown in civic order.
In any case something will happen for which there is no precedent.
Robert and Paul:
I’ve read that Germany’s guest worker program has been a disaster, for all the reasons you cited. Why most of them are Turks is odd, although Holland has a large body of Moluccans, maybe because of the old colonial arrangement.
Both Rotterdam and Amsterdam have near-majority immigrant populations, and in twenty years, the current population trends will leave Holland with a narrow majority of Muslims. Twenty years. Holland is the worst case, and we may get to see Sharia law in place in Europe very soon.
I might be wrong about the U.S. being a secondary target because that assumes some sort of rational strategy among the various groups we are fighting. There are over a hundred recognized terrorist groups, all Muslim, and most of them are probably religious gangsters with local resentments and goals. Most of them could probably assemble IED’s and detonate them here.
I am speculating that only Al Qaeda or a similar group would have the capability to detonate something more insidious here, at least for the time being. It seems likely too that even Iran and Syria want some sort of controlled resistance to Western intervention in their region, and do not want to provoke us in the extreme.
Anyway, one thing seems to be true about Europe. Nationalism isn’t dead. The slippage in national identity among Europeans is a consequence of two fairly recent wars and a revival of romanticism among the European elites. The EU, in my mind, has all the features of a modern version of feudalism. It will wind up the same way. It’s preposterous that Europeans envision a unified future when a malignant, rapidly growing form of separatism, radical Islamism, is staring them in the face. As all these contradictory pressures assert themselves, it could be a real mess, and worth watching.
This wouldn’t be the first time that European stupidity and blindness set the neighborhood on fire. They have a history of it.
Well, this conversation has taken a very enlightening turn for me. However, with so much attention to the Muslim jihad, I don’t want to forget the communist contribution to our situation. North Korea remains quite a threat, NK being merely a puppet of Red China (in my opinion, anyway). Meaning, either directly against the U.S. or as a supplier of WMD to the jihad.
I will differentiate myself by signing my last initial with my name.
about pull-out:
interesting article