That's my question, too. It sounds like we want Pakistan to declare war on us! Why? I thought that if we shook the Af/Pak/Iraq dust off our boots and brought all the troops home, the new sherriff in town over there -- China -- would make its displeasure felt with both Pakistan and India for messing with each other.

Well Rachel I'm glad to see borders do matter they matter to people in Arizona also as well as Texas, New Mexico, California and to the rest of us who put up with illegals everyday!!!!!!!!! Don't say the only reason they are here is for work as a laborer in this here UNITED STATES that really offends my intelligence. We have watched our jobs go south and the illegals come north to add already to a job starved market!!!!!!!! I'm not a right wing wacko or anything I watch your show regularly and for the most part I think you do very well stating facts but on the illegal imagration I have to disagree!!!!!!! We like the Pakistanies will find our sovernty dissolving away aliitle at a time untill it is to late and we will be left with the same drastic descision to act on or own behalf as a nation or to let a sub servant people with no oath of patriotage to the UNITED STATES GO ON MAKING AND BREAKING LAWS AT WILL!!!!!!!!!

That's the same sort of pig-headed logic that got us into the Iraq mess and Afghanistan mess, it's their problem and eventually they have to deal with it themselves. Are you going to monger for a US led war against them, are you going to advocate for the impending war with Iran? It is true that they are working with elements of the taliban, however, when the hell won't we realize pre-emptive war is not the answer. There will only be more American body bags, and more morose "Support the troop" stickers as an end result.

No, the US didn't get attacked for staying out of other people's realm, but for the meddling.

Oh, sure. Blame it all on me. ;)

Oh, wow. I mean, wow. Totally gobsmacked. Wow.

hfc - are there references for your "facts" that you can provide, please?

Obama attacked us, and he has stated why he attacked us.

hfc, I have read the 9/11 report, and several UN reports, and many portions of the Congressional Record. If you can point to something more specific, please do so, as I do not believe the documents I have read contain any evidence that President Obama has attacked us.

" If Pakistan can't control its borders and keep its own people from committing crimes and attacks in other countries, then other countries will do it for them. Pakistan is creating a sanctuary for criminals and has no room to complain when the aggrieved take firm action " - by giniajim

So by this logic it's okay for, say, the Chinese or Russians to send troops to police the US for A) not keeping control of it's borders, B) allowing it's own people to commit crimes, and C) launching attacks against other countries. Am I clear on this? What ego it must take to think that we are somehow responsible for every other country in the world, and to think that we're even up to the task of policing the world in the first place! The US is already on a downward spiral as it is, it's not a matter of 'will' we hit rock-bottom, at this point it's a question of 'when'. And when we do, I suggest everyone get ready because the world's blowback is going to be something fierce.

I agree with you. let's stop "helping" and trying to take over other countries.

That may be all true, but what is cheaper, starting a third war? We would need to bring all supplies next to Pakistan somehow anyways.

I feel like the drones are a great idea, and to have minimal troops there and focus more on our technology to fight.

Starting?

(And do yourself a favor, unquellable. Ignore hatey and his false alternatives.)

hope

When was the last time a Latin American or Canadien flew a helicopter into our country and started blowing crap up? When you can tell me that one, then compare the two. I hopeyou can tell the difference. If not pluck head from butt and do the cortex scrub and then reevaluate the situation.

hope,

the following is a definition of the cortex scrub or cleanse procedure

The cognitive rheostat in most humans can function properly even if it has been dysfunctional for a while. It is like a rusty valve, one must start using it and if the rust is not that bad it should start working again, lucky for us humans our brains do not rust as easy as your typical ball valve used in today's chemical water world, so the metaphoric rust should just start falling off in chunks once one starts to exercise their brain valves, and flux capacitors.

The brain's rust particles are made up of: sloppy-news, movies, myths, opinions, lies and many other unhealthy particles, and just as one would take a wire brush to a bbq grill, one could perform the cortex cleanse and scrub entire skull concentrating on the frontal lobes and limbic system with warm soapy water, and then flush and rinse many times with cold icy waters. Follow this procedure with some alone time and meditation and most of the undesired external (electrical) stimuli will exhaust themselves. Simply, put the unneeded information does not have reason holding it down so it will disappear with a good brain cleanse and meditation. This method works for both dysfunctional closed and open rheostats. The dysfunctional open rheostats should follow the entire procedure with a diverse news agenda. If one starts to hear echos of logic on multiple stations; there is a good chance that this is usable knowledge and maybe something worth retaining for a little while anyways.

The Afghan war lost me at Tora Bora. The only reason we should have gone into Afghanistan was to capture or kill the top al Qaeda and Taliban leaders. Having failed to do that we should have scarpered immediately.

What do political stripes have anything to do with this debate, do you care to understand that Bush was the one that started military contracts for corrupt corporations such as Blackwater and Halliburton? Your missing the broader point, which is the war needs to end.

You don't surrender to terrorists, as they don't have a country. You need to get it out of your head that war is either win or lose, as the world is not that black and white. It is disingenuous to act as if we need 100k troops to search for small terror cells. War is big business, and that is why we haven't backed down. It is one of two industries that are REALLY booming in this recession, the other being political jobs such as consultants, pollsters and PAC advisors.

If in interesting you mean that Republicans like to start wars and Democrats are weary to finish them, they yes; I will agree to that definition of interesting.

Mannjhn, I can't completely agree with your list, as I am not exactly sure what Persian Gulf War II actually is. Is that the current war in Afghanistan, or the drone attacks in Pakistan? If so, both were started under Bush, and continued and expanded by Obama. So, if you are trying to assign blame for who "started" a particular war, it would seem repubs get the blame for your "Persian Gulf War II".

As for WWII, dems proudly accept WWII on their ledger. Repubs opposed it all along, as nation after nation crumbled under the Nazi bootheel in Europe. Even as Great Britain was struggling for its very survival during the Battle of Britain and the relentless U-boat campaign, repubs felt we just shouldn't get involved. Had the Japanese not attacked Pearl Harbor, it is quite possible that the rest of Europe would have fallen to Hitler, and perhaps Russia as well. At that point, the US would have had to stand alone against both Germany and Japan. It's odd how repubs always rant about Chamberlain and appeasement, but how is that any different than simply refusing to fight until it is too late? The result is the same. Then again, I suppose those actions make sense, considering Bush's grandfather was part of a plan to conduct a military coup to oust FDR that was only foiled when the general they chose to lead the coup, Gen. Butler, not only refused to do so, but actually ratted them out. After all, repubs were making too much money selling materials to the Nazis to want that to end, even if it meant the possible defeat of the US in the future as a result of their actions. That proud tradition is carried on to this very day, with the far right pushing policies that they have to know will destroy this country, but will at least provide them with more money for now.

If you can't figure out what made a declaration of war against a nation (Germany), any different than declaring war against a group, (Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hezzbollah, the Mafia, the Mickey Mouse Club or the Britney Spears Fan Club), then you are not worth wasting my time on.

I'm not going to get into a wasted conversation with you, as you obviously don't have the basic intellectual hardware with which to converse intelligently. You have proved that many times in many places over the past few years, and have demonstrated it just now with your ignorance over who the United States can declare war upon.

Thank you for your clarification, mannjhn. I agree that MOST sane people would never want to start a war, but history is replete with examples of leaders who started wars because they felt their country would benefit. A good example would be Bismark and his deliberate provocations that led to the Franco-Prussian War. Saddam may not have been the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he had a logical reason for starting the Gulf War...Kuwait was weak, rich, and also had good access to the Persian Gulf. He figured that no one would rush to their defense, so he felt it wasn't much of a gamble to invade them. He saw profit in it, both personally and for his country. I myself can't imagine signing a paper to start a war, which is probably a good reason for me never to run for President!

I do believe that there is still a vast difference between declaring war on a nation and declaring war on some subnational group. Is it appropriate, or even wise, to declare war on a terrorist group, a criminal organization, or even a corporation? I'm not saying you don't defend yourself, or even mobilize some elements of the military to combat them if they are proven to be a threat, but to declare war is tanamount to declaring that this entity poses an existential threat to the country, which I don't believe islamic terrorists are. Just think how much better off we would be if we had responded to Al Qaeda with special forces, rather than the entire US military. Instead of spending trillions of dollars, losing thousands of US soldiers and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi, Afghan and Pakistani civilians, we could have spent far less, lost many fewer lives, and probably done a more effective job of eliminating the terrorist cells. Instead, we have used a bazooka to kill a gnat, with the result that not only have we not killed the gnat, but created many more in the process. Declaring war on anything smaller than another nation is counterproductive, as I think we have demonstrated over the last 9 years.

In my opinion, we are far too ready to declare war on anyone and everyone that we see as a problem, regardless of the real threat. Arguably, gangs and drug cartels are far more of a threat than Al Qaeda will ever be, as many more Americans are immediately affected by their operations. Several years ago, someone did a statistical analysis of how likely anyone was to be a victim of a terrorist attack. The answer was that you were far more likely to be struck by lightning than to fall victim to a terrorist attack. Somehow, that doesn't seem to justify a declaration of war and the dedication of the full power of the US military to defeat them. Like I said, I think this was always something more suited to special ops than the full military. On the other hand, gangs have moved into most major American cities, and much of the inner city violence we see is gang-related. Even our prisons are now dominated by gangs, yet I don't see anyone on either side of the aisle proposing that we declare war on the Crips and Bloods, demanding we send a carrier strike force and Marine Amphibious Unit to invade East L.A. or the Bronx. Why? Because it is recognized that a military response would be totally ineffective, (not to mention illegal).

War is meant to be a last resort, an extreme form of diplomacy when all the non-violent forms of diplomacy have been exhausted. By definition, we could never have had real diplomatic options when dealing with extremist groups, but declaring war on them and then failing to wipe them out with the full power of the US military and trillions of dollars of resources has done nothing but embolden these groups and swelled their membership rolls.

Just as a guess, I'd say my odds of becoming a victim of Hitler at this point in time are pretty slim, until some skinhead mad scientist finds some of his remains and clones him! Seriously, though, I'd say the death count from Hitler is far greater than for 6 years of lightning strikes (1939-1945). And though 9-11 brought 3000 casualties at one time, it still represented a little less than 1/100,000th of the US population, and when compared to the approximately 15-20,000 deaths on US highways each year, is even less significant.

I beg to disagree that gang warfare doesn't target innocent Americans. The violence is sustained by money from criminal enterprises, much like the rest of organized crime. In every big city in this country, we see areas that we are told to stay out of because of high crime, much of it gang related. To me, that feels like innocents are targeted. The gangs are too disorganized to declare war on the US, and could probably be badly degraded if special ops teams were assigned to hunt them down. On the other hand, some Tea Partiers have implied they are declaring war on the US, with talk of "taking people out" and using their Second Amendment remedies, or saying that the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants.

I may be naive, but I believe that most people in the world, no matter where they are, want pretty much the same things: they want a roof over their heads, food to eat, they want their family to be safe, and they want their kids to grow up healthy and happy and safe. The problem comes when someone feels that to make those things happen, they have to take from someone else. Sure, there are psychopaths that want to kill and maim just for the thrill of it, but they aren't the cause of most of the world's ills. And of course, religious extremism in some ways is also psychopathic, as the extremists see non-believers as something less than human, and so feel no compunction against killing them.

As for the lightning defense, I wasn't trying to say that just because something is unlikely, we shouldn't consider it as a real threat. I was simply saying, (perhaps poorly), that the likelihood of a threat materializing and the damage it could do must be balanced with the cost of mounting a defense. As an example, it is certain that an asteroid will hit the Earth at some point in the future, and depending on its size, may either just kill a few million people near the impact point, or may obliterate most forms of life on Earth. While this would be a massive disaster when it happens, it is also something very infrequent, occurring once every few thousand years at most. So, we decide that it isn't worth spending trillions of dollars to defend against the threat. With Al Qaeda, it would be prohibitively expensive, and perhaps impossible, to render ourselves completely safe from any attack they might mount. If anything, it could be argued that they have already scored some major victories by goading us into wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, costing trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives. Our defense was a complete overreaction to 9-11.

In my opinion, we are far too ready to declare war on anyone and everyone that we see as a problem, regardless of the real threat.

Uff, I'd like to link what you've said here back to what you said about the right and the lead-up to WWII. You were of course right on all points on how the right was very much opposed to the US entering WWII and that without Pearl Harbor that might never have happened. But I think it's also very much the case that the right learned exactly the wrong lessons from the war. Germany and Japan were defeated by a broad alliance built on practical concerns and included one major dictator, and out of that alliance came the United Nations. But for the right, the war 'taught' them that the US should be the world's policeman and that it walks, or should walk, it's beat alone.

FDR worked very hard to find ways around the resistance in this country to the war. There was of course the Lend Lease program, that provided some rickety old destroyers to the Brits. They desperately needed anything that could float and carry depth charges to try and fend off the U-boat attacks at that time. They also had numerous contracts with US companies for war materiel. Of course, at the same time, people like Bush's grandpa and Averill Harriman were busy selling stuff to the Nazis.

I'm not sure if the lesson the right learned from the war was that the US should be the world's policeman....it seems that we became the de facto policeman in the power vacuum created by the virtual collapse of the British Empire, which had been bankrupted by two world wars. With the rise of Communist Russia and China, and the fall of the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe, the US and most of its WWII allies saw the danger of a new threat, and only the US had the money, resources and military power to oppose it. The rest of the allies were broke, battered, and too busy picking up the pieces of their shattered nations to be of much help in opposing what was going on.

It seems the doctrine of pre-emptive war was popularized by Israel, and the neocons here adopted it with gusto, as they saw it as a way to reward their supporters in the military-industrial complex with big contracts stretching into the future as far as the eye could see. With Roves "permanent republican majority", there was no reason for them to expect the gravy train to ever end. Unfortunately, they underestimated the difficulty of dealing with the Iraq War that they thought would be a quick, inexpensive walkover, and completely ignored the damage their pals on Wall Street were doing to the economy.

I've always enjoyed history, and the more I have read over the years, the more I see that there is nothing really new, because even though technology, governments and locations change, basic human nature does not, and it is that which creates history. We are repeating history now, as the American empire crumbles under its own weight. In turn, it will probably be supplanted by a new Chinese empire. The rancor and strife we see in our country now are a consequence of generations of people who have never known the US as anything but the world's most powerful, affluent nation. As we begin to see our affluence decline, internal conflict is inevitable. I don't know what our country will look like 20 or 50 years from now, but I do believe that anyone alive at that time will look back in yearning for the good old days that they think existed in earlier days. Reagan called upon that for his "Morning in America" campaign 30 years ago, and many in the far right seem to be doing the same, promising a return to the America of an indefinable past, a country that never really existed outside the movies and music and books of those days. To a certain extent, the left does the same, promising a new, resurgent America that may well be impossible to create. History tells us that we are travelling a path that has been trod many times before over the past 6 millenia.

As long as the future we want to build is based on dominating the world as we have since the end of WWII, I agree that this is not a future we want to work towards. On the other hand, if we look at the nations who consistently rank near the top on happiness, health, education and longevity, you'll see that none of them are military powerhouses. None of them has had any pretensions to be the world's policeman. Yet, they're happy, and in most rankings, they are well above the US. Most importantly, the people in those countries really do have a different attitude toward life than we do. Here, greed is king, and it seems to have trumped the idea of helping your neighbor and your community. Frankly, I think the Founding Fathers would be appalled at the situation. Until we realize that corporations are not individuals, that government belongs to the people, and not the corporation with the most money and lobbyists, we cannot change the direction of this country. While I feel that the right made much of this possible, especially from Reagan onwards, the left deserves some blame for not fighting hard enough, (or really at all) against it, and we as citizens also deserve some blame, for being too lazy and greedy to do anything but vote those people and their enablers into office year after year. Uncortunately, I don't see any party, major or minor, that seems poised to change anything to reverse the situation.

it seems that we became the de facto policeman in the power vacuum

There is something to that. From the end of the war until Vietnam, both ends of the political spectrum were OK on the idea of the US being the world's policeman. But as the left has moved away from that idea, the right has kept a firm hold of it and often doing so on the grounds of the WWII experience, such as one excuse for invading Iraq being that of not appeasing dictators. And while I think you're right about the neocon's debt to Israel on the concept of preemptive war, that is still a legacy of the war insofar as Israel is an outcome of the war.

And as for your point in your just-previous post about 'greed is king', the one glimmer of hope I see is in the Citizens United ruling. The reason lies in the fact that I find it similar to the Dred Scott decision in that both are extreme examples of judicial overreach: both cases were actually fairly narrow in scope but were used by SCOTUS as a platform for very broad rulings going far beyond the original cases and doing so in order to overturn long-established legislative precedents. The Scott case was decided in 1857 and slavery was gone by 1865. Yes, there was a devastating civil war that I wouldn't like to see repeated; but the point is that Scott was intended to bolster the institution of slavery but opposition to the ruling was so intense that it ended up helping the eventual demise of slavery. I suspect that if the effects of Citizens United become as obscene as I expect, it could end up having a similar effect on corporate money in politics to what Dred Scott had upon slavery.

Uffdaguy.......hello, how are you?.........in one of your posts you said "Then again, I suppose those actions make sense, considering Bush's grandfather was part of a plan to conduct a military coup to oust FDR that was only foiled when the general they chose to lead the coup, Gen. Butler, not only refused to do so, but actually ratted them out"............ now, i'm familiar with the "Business Plot" and our good and brave boy Smedley Butler and his testimony to congress and the incredible involvement of the American Legion and all that and I'm even familiar with Prescott Bush's employment with the Thyssen Family businesses but I'm unaware of grampa Bush's involvement with the business plot against FDR................i mean i've never heard that before and i wondered where you ran across that connection and if it wasn't a slip of the keyboard..........where i could find out more about that.

Here are a couple resources:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtml

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20070725_bushs_fascist_pedigree/

thanks..........although i'm certainly no fan of the bush family, i think i'll wait for an actual conclusion, maybe by that court in europe, if your premise is based on mike thomsen (who i think is reading between lines that do not exist) and those rather inconclusive archive documents which appear, even to the people accessing them, to be at best convoluted and so far, rather exonerative of grampa bush as opposed to a condemnation.........in any event the whole thing seems to be more about what the thyssen group owed or didn't own (which was apparently massive) and what they did with it.......not really about one of 7 directors (bush) of a single bank in which by the way the famous nazi, charles lindbergh was an investor (an inside joke from me to you)............i will take issue with your "rickety old destroyers" though.........lend lease was a 50 billion (1940s dollars) program to a dozen countries..........i think you were being a bit disingenuous to characterize it as almost inconsequential and were being mildly condescending to your "fans" in the process........i don't think history would regard lend lease as a way around the isolationists as well.........it infuriated them just as much as it did adolf but there was nothing they could do about it..........it was much more an exercise in overwhelming presidential power and a sabre rattle unlike anything hitler had ever heard.........it scared him as it was intended to because it told him and his thugs that the united states was coming..........soon..........as to doing business with the nazis........the Trading with the Enemy Act pretty much put a halt to that when we actually went to war with germany.........before then, it wasn't actually a crime......just an opportunity.......even thyssen got tossed into the slammer by hitler after 1939 as you know.................so as not to appear like i am trying to pistol whip you, i would like to let you know that agree with those more philosophical parts of your posts almost in their entirety.............i am tired now and need to take a nap.

Thanks for the response, G.S. . Lend Lease was a good deal for both sides, as the US got some great long-term leases on bases, and the UK got some desperately-needed destroyers. I will stick to the description of them as "rickety", though, as they were leftovers from a large class that was built during WWI, and were definitely not up to the standards of WWII-era destroyers. Like I said, as long as they could drop depth charges, they could be useful, but if the convoy they were protecting had been attacked by a surface raider, they would have gone down pretty quickly.

Hitler was generally pretty dismissive in his attitude toward America. Unlike the British, which he regarded with both admiration and hate, he never seemed to think too much of America, either positively or negatively. Unlike the Japanese, who realized that taking on America was a very risky proposition, Hitler focussed on the continental powers he wanted to tangle with, especially Russia. As a former infantryman, he seemed to display very little understanding of the role of a navy and what it could do. He was very supportive of U-boat operations, probably because of their success in WWII, but he completely missed out on building aircraft carriers. Because America was across the ocean, he dismissed them as being a threat he could deal with at his leisure after he finished off Russia and the Brits. Had things gone better for him in that regard, especially in Russia, he may have been correct in waiting, but after he became bogged down on two fronts, it provided the time for America to tool up its production capacity and become a threat he was unprepared to deal with.

President Obama also mentioned it well in his Rolling Stone Interview: We have to be prepared for getting out IN ADVANCE of getting out, because there WILL be consequences to that too!

(like nuclear war across central and south asia, and if you think that will not effect American life, you have homework to do)

The collateral damage, which is milspeak for "Ooops, sorry I accidentally killed you and destroyed your home", is precisely what is making the global war on terror an absolutely unwinnable proposition. For every terrorist we kill in this manner, we create a dozen more who want to get revenge for killing family and friends who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when a terrorist takes a Hellfire missile up the wazoo. We as Americans like to say we behave better than anyone else in the world, but the fact is that we are hypocrites. In Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Germany, Vietnam, Japan, and just about any other conflict in the past 100 years, we have killed civilians, sometimes as collateral damage that we say we tried to prevent, as in the drone attacks, and sometimes just out of a bloodyminded determination to hit targets no matter what the cost, such as in the firebombing of German and Japanese cities in WWII. Yet, how do we look at the Blitz in London in WWII? There is a determination that somehow the Germans were far worse than us, even though we did the same thing on a far more massive scale.

well virginia vet - we shot down flight 93 to get 2 terrorists. does that answer ur pitt question? oh wait, u probably believe that cover story " lets roll". never mind...

walter cronkite? ...............how bout thousands and thousands of anti-war demonstrators, the VVAW, the SDS, the Chicago 7 individually or as a group, your uncle charlie, the lady down the street, me, etc............walter cronkite wasn't like the "news" of today, who are in actuality, commentators and shills........he just reported what he saw........that may have given you the impression he was stating his opinion.

The whole claim to start the drone war was that we will be able to kill OBL and his #2. All we got were 'unknown' terrorists (read innocent civilians). Now, we want to use helicopter gunship to attack Pakistan's check post killing their soldiers. All this in the name of bringing OBL to justice. Had we not invaded Afghanistan we could have easily caught OBL using special ops. He was not hiding then. It is time to stop all this nonsense and bring the troops back. Who will bring Obama to justice for expanding the war which will undoubtedly kill a lot more innocent people than Osama ever did? Who will bring Bush to justice?

Don -

As a service to the community, why don't you look it up and provide the reference? I'd like to understand this.

We are not at war with Pakistan, nor in Pakistan. Though the Pakistan government recentlly blocked our supplies to Afghanistan at the pass because of recent manned helicopter strikes by NATO. These unwelcome incursions into Pakistan air space were heretofore rare. Richard Holbrooke does not think it will lead to war with Pakistan, nor "change our fundamental relation with the Pakistan Government." But some in Pakistan government have said relations with Pakistan is at a "snapping point." That still doesn not necessarily mean war with Pakistan. They did not specify what they meant by "snapping point." "CIA army" above refers to the people using unmanned drones. We have only so far, sent a lot of drone strikes, and some of helicopter strikes. What Petraeus is threatening to do is start a ground war in Pakistan, against militants. That is totally different. We have been striking militants who were using Pakistan as a base to attack us in Afghanistan and retreat back to safety. We were attacking Pakistan Taliban, Al Qaeda and Haqqani with unmanned drones. Pakistanis were not only letting us bring our supplies through their country to Afghanistan, before now, they also helped secure those supply lines by attacking militants, and some of their soldiers died doing so.

I call them unmanned drone attacks. Ground WAR is when OUR soldiers get in harms way. That is the significant difference. I would have been the last to call them hospitality missions, even though they are militant extremists, they are human beings.