Cannibals

I'm never happier than when I see liberals deteriorate into factions fighting each other like dogs over a bone.

In one case, I would guess the bone of contention is power. Obama already signed the order to close the terrorist incarceration facility at Guantanamo Bay. He wants about $85 million to make this happen. The Democrat majority in congress isn't giving it to him.

Oh, Happy Day....

I suspect this is because the Dems in congress have heard about the Tea Parties and they want to prove -- somehow -- that they aren't entirely under Obama's thumb, no matter how personally charming and popular he is.

The Dems themselves say they won't fund the shutdown until the administration has a viable plan about where to send these guys -- many of whom are really uncivilized and desperate criminals who plotted and schemed to blow up the USA in one way or another.

Other prisoners are merely wannabe terrorists, apparently from China, who also wanted to blow up the USA but never found a really good opportunity to do so. These guys are characterized as "innocent" for some reason. And despite their "innocence," if they're returned to China, China will probably execute them for not following the Party Line closely enough or something and, God forbid, their deaths will be all our fault. The alternative is to set them free in the US.

Gee, what's the better option? Maybe it depends upon how much you love the USA and your own skin.

The really nasty guys at Guantanomo, including the guy who claims to have planned the 9/11 attacks, are supposed to go into US prisons, apparently for trial. Yeah, right. The only thing is, nobody wants them, except for one minimum security facility in Montana somewhere. (The place was built at considerable expense, but Montana doesn't have enough criminals to go around.)

Why not give the prisoners jobs in the White House? Or as Capitol pages? If the Dems are so concerned about the "rights" of demonstrably vicious and pathological criminals, they can take care of them. Maybe Nancy Pelosi can put up a couple of them at her place. Whaddaya think? Maybe farm out a couple to ACLU headquarters, answering phones and such. I bet they'd raise a lot of money: "Pay up or your family are hostages." It might get them a whole bunch of new recruits and donors.

Anyway, the Dems themselves are sobering up from their election campaign hysteria and are beginning to figure it out. They don't want these prisoners living next door and marrying their daughters anymore than anyone else does. Except Montana.

Something else on TV today -- don't know what; I was half asleep, waiting for the coffee to brew -- reminded me of something related.

You know during the Cold War, much internal criticism claimed that US foreign policy was propping up totalitarian states and petty dictators just because they weren't communists. It's true. We supported some really evil psychopaths in South America, Africa, and elsewhere because they promised to join the "Free World" rather than beg for rubles from the USSR. Castro was one who went with the Soviets. Bet he's sorry now.

Anyway, the argument against this policy stated that the US shouldn't be friends with any nation that didn't agree to support at least minimal "civil rights" for its own citizens. This concept has been more or less in place since the USSR went under. Hence, a generation or two of boycotts and refusals to grant diplomatic recognition and things like that. Our relationship with China seems to have slipped through the cracks, though, somehow.

OK. According to the new regime, that doesn't work anymore. The idea now is that we all have to try to just get along. So Hugo Chavez terrorizes the mayor of one his nation's major cities, spits on the US flag, and actively tries to publicly humiliate our president. And this guy is a "keeper" to the Obama crew and the people who voted for him.

Same for Grand Sultan Abracadabrajab in Iran. Let's see if we can talk him out of developing an atom bomb. I'm sure he'll listen to reason.

Always nice to start the day with a good laugh.

Anyway, so now we're back to supporting totalitarians and petty dictators, only this time there's no Cold War, no USSR for them to play with. So what's the reasoning behind this?

True, the USA almost always undermines other countries' cultures with things like blue jeans, rock-n-roll, and cowboy movies. This is one reason France usually hates us. So anyway, the idea is, establish friendly trade relations with a hostile nation, overwhelm them with automatic can openers, Tom Petty CDs, and Clint Eastwood movies, and they'll see the light of western (and American) culture. And they'll love us.

On the other hand, this cultural thing is one reason the Saudis and the muslim world, like France, usually hate us.

And this is also where I disagree with Libertarians about foreign policy. They say free trade and no political proselytzing will aid the US in winning friends and influencing people. But it was trading freely with these butthead nations that turned them against us.

Like, no westerner (US, European, etc.) can gain entry to Saudi Arabia.... They have like buffer zones or DMZs where western tourists are allowed, but only there. Like a cultural quarantine. They want the trade, yeah, but they don't want the culture. Western culture would mean infecting their populations with democratic ideas, decentralized politics, secularization. They don't want that at all. Osama bn Ladn made that absolutely clear.

No amount of butt-kissing on the part of our president or secretary of state is going to change that.

So, it's a lose-lose situation. Guess we don't have any really viable alternative to guide US foreign policy except self-preservation -- trying to protect our own rights and values. And that's tough enough with Democrats in the White House as well as the majority in congress.

Anyway, integrity always seems to work best in human relations at any level. Personally, I don't hang out with people I can't respect. I don't want to. I'm always afraid I'll say something rational without prefacing it with "in my humble opinion" and offend them. I would guess Hillary Clinton has had a similar problem in many of her recent travels.

So, let's just be the USA -- recklessly free, ruthlessly capitalist, noisy, vulgar, jeans-wearing, cowboy-movie-watching, a tad xenophobic, and jealous of our independence. What's to lose?