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July 2, 2008 at 3:56 pm #629121
JoBParticipantKen,
NewResident has a point that we acquired many of our bases… and certainly most of those she mentioned as the result of war.
Although we negotiated agreements for them, those bases were easily negotiated in the aftermath of war when those countries needed massive assistance just to feed their people… and American assistance rebuilding infrastructure… or when they wee vulnerable and needed American protection.
The Marshall plan has been very good to us.. and we were lucky to be one of the few developed countries that didn’t have to rebuild and thus could afford those agreements…
However… the credit from those agreements is beginning to run out and the right of America to hold those bases is being challenged all over the world.
Although it can be argued that there is a fine line between provocation and self interest.. we have seldom instigated war without even the pretext of provocation.. as we did in Iraq.
Or met this kind of resistance to negotiating bases in another countries.
I am quite sure we have coerced other nations into making agreements… but the outright blackmail of the current administration may be unprecedented.
And the unwillingness to give benefit for the rights we wish to assume is certainly unprecedented in my lifetime. This is no negotiation…
i think NewResident that this is the biggest sticking point for many of us.
Regardless of how or why we got there… besides leaving a very bad taste in our mouths… blackmailing a nation into making agreements by withholding their assets doesn’t bode well for long term American interests.
Would you willingly grant military bases to the world’s bully?
Unfortunately, that is what we seem to have become.
This is a long way from our image from the Marshall plan as the world’s rebuilders and protectors.
July 2, 2008 at 5:14 pm #629122
TrickParticipantFreezing $50+ billion in frozen Iraq assets as a negotiating chip is not a good way to start a relationship. Also the bidding of oil contracts to various US Oil companies isn’t really a way to promote democracy, or the estimated 600,000- 1,000,000 Iraqi deaths from the war, IMO.
Let’s see how we’d react if the tables were turned.
July 2, 2008 at 5:26 pm #629123
JoBParticipantken,
i just realized i didn’t cut personal communication off early enough in my post… and it may seem as tho you and i are in disagreement.. we aren’t.
July 18, 2008 at 8:56 pm #629124
AnonymousInactivehttp://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/07/15/are_facts_obsolete
I thought this fit appropriately here. Do facts matter to you?
July 18, 2008 at 9:26 pm #629125
rs261Memberahh same ole arguments, and hardly “facts”…unless you consider facts partial truths.
“Perhaps a defining moment in showing Senator Obama’s priorities was his declaring, in answer to a question from Charles Gibson, that he was for raising the capital gains tax rate. When Gibson reminded him of the well-documented fact that lower tax rates on capital gains had produced more actual revenue collected from that tax than the higher tax rates had, Obama was unmoved. “
While true that lower capital gains taxes raise revenue in the SHORT TERM (1-2 years) they are proven to lower revenue in the LONG TERM.
see http://www.cbpp.org/policy-points4-18-08.htm
“Obama is for higher minimum wage rates. Does anyone care what actually happens in countries with higher minimum wage rates? Of course not. “
wikipedia says…
According to a paper by Fuller and Geide-Stevenson, 45.6% of American economists in the year 2000 agree that a minimum wage increases unemployment among unskilled and young workers, while 27.9% agree with this statement but with provisos.[15] As a policy question in 2006, the minimum wage has to some extent split the economics profession with just under half believing it should be eliminated and a slightly smaller percentage believing it should be increased, leaving rather few in the middle.
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