I’m sorry (not really) but the spectre of a sad sack of militarism like Dick Cheney lecturing China for appearing too militaristic is just laughable. This is akin to Britney Spears telling someone that they’re not doing such a great job parenting.
Vice President Dick Cheney said Friday that China’s recent anti-satellite weapons test and a rapid military buildup were "not consistent" with its stated aim of a peaceful rise as a global power.
In a speech during a visit to Australia, Cheney praised China for playing an "especially important" role in six-nation negotiations that recently resulted in a deal with North Korea to eventually end its nuclear weapons programs.
"Other actions by the Chinese government send a different message," Cheney told the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue.
Yes, it’s a good thing Cheney is speaking from the moral authority of leadership that chose a voluntary war using trumped up evidence and denies that the execution of that policy has been an absolute mess. I guess Cheney’s already practicing for his post-vice presidency as a used car salesman.
Then again, that’s really unfair to used car salesmen. They have souls and consciences.
Ollie - you forget the extra super doubleplus irony that Cheney is tut-tutting their anti-satellite weapons test while being among the staunchest supporters (second only to Rummy) from this administration for the American “Star Wars” missile defense chimera.
“Then again, that’s really unfair to used car salesmen. They have souls and consciences.”
Consciences? Have you ever bought a car from a used car dealer? That’s why you can make the comparison. The cliche is that they don’t have a conscience.
I think you’re confused.
When I saw the headlines I thought it was a joke. Is cheney going to lecture them on torturing their citizens, too?
They shifted resources from expanding their economy to military spending a few years ago, I believe in response to Bush deciding to withdraw from the ABM treaty. Ditto Russia.
So, was Cheney right or wrong re the Chinese? Everybody knows the ‘compassionate’ left hates all Republicans.
Maybe a good Democratic position then is like Rheinhard’s: Hey, we have it, why shouldn’t the Chinese (or the North Koreans, or Assad). Don’t progressives think we are all the same?
Gosh, Dugger, the Chinese ramp up their militarism in response to US militarism. Cause and effect. Bush cause, negative effect on American and world security. As usual.
It isn’t a case of should they have it, it’s a question of whether what Bush wanted was worth the response.
Sigh. I’m sure it’s not worth dignifying this with a response, but I’ll give it a go.
Why can’t Conservatives understand the basic principle that our building of massive new weapons systems will make other nations nervous? And that this nervousness, coupled with the poorly considered Bush rhetoric about “axis of evil”, “diplomacy equals weakness” etc, will cause any rational actor to decide that it is in their best interest to try to match us? Not even out of a sense of agression “If we get orbiting mind control lasers we’ll rule the world! Muahahahaha!”, but out of a sense of “If we don’t try to attain some level of military parity, our national interest will not be served.”
We look at Iran having a nuclear power program, which every expert who has looked at has said would take at least 5 years to have enough material to even make 1 atomic bomb, and we scream to the rafters that this is a big enough threat to us that we should attack the country (or, in the view of some more “sensible” conservatives, just assassinate their leaders and scientists, which would of course lead to no political or military consequences worth mentioning.)
But in the next breath we expect that our own space-based weapons plans, disregard of the ABM treaty, and military budget bigger than most of the rest of humanity’s put together, should not raise even an eyebrow in the capitals of nations our Preznit has explicitly stated we plan to be hostile toward?
It’s this sense of American exceptionalism (”good for me but not for thee”) and the expectation that it is only rational that every other nation on Earth should buy into it, that progressives should find ludicrous.
Dugger thinks liberals are responsible for Dick Cheney’s credibility. In fact, Dick Cheney is responsible for his own sorry credibility. All Dugger’s nonsensical bleatings proceed from this first moral and analytical error.
Why would you even stir up the fucking Chinese?
Oh, and if you want to build this bullshit defence system, use your own fucking land, you’ve got like five times as much as we have.
Do you think it is some sort of sick global Bingo that they have going? See how many countries we can get to hat us in the shortest time possible?
Gahh.
Why would we even stir up the Chinese????
Iran is five years away from a bomb so lets forget about it…..
Oh no other’s don’t like us… didn’t know it was a High School popularity contest…thought it was about national interests and what’s best for our citizens but guess dealing with other is about being voted homecoming queen….
Guess we should just put our heads in the sand and forget the lessons of history…go about drink our lattes all day long….
Rheinhard
We already have the
‘massive new weapons systems’. The Chicoms (early 50s lingo for you) are trying to build the same.
And are you really desirous and should the world be desirous of China having military parity with us???
China is on record as the worst (and longest lasting)dictatorship in the history of mankind, worse than Stalin and Hitler. I’m thinking their not having a huge technologically-equal military is a good thing. And I’m perfectly comfortable wih our ‘democracy’ being the only super power. I guess progressives would either like to tear us down and/or help the other sides catch up.
Reason
Guess you should STFU.
should the world be desirous of China having military parity with us???
Maybe not, but a preventative war to keep it from happening would only serve to make war a certainty instead of a possibility.
Progressives have no interest in helping China. But we are quite interested in preventing the bloodthirsty, panicky Duggers of the world from harming U.S. interests throough provocation.
But of course, Dugger’s been fighting strawmen so long, he either doesn’t understand the left (or even the center) except through the caricatures his dittohead masters draw for him. That’s why he lapses so quicky into bizarre assumptions about “the left” sympathizing with the Chinese government, or some such fantasy.
The Chinese government are communists, aren’t they? That’s “left wing”, isn’t it? So what’s the difference? Eh? Eh? Eh? Eh? Eh? Eh? Eh? Eh? Eh? Eh? Eh? Eh?
I’m not aware nor does it say Cheney was advocating a war. He was just suggetsing its not a good thing for a bad guy transitioning from maybe not being a bad guy not having super high tech weapons.
He was just suggetsing its not a good thing for a bad guy transitioning from maybe not being a bad guy not having super high tech weapons.
My head hurts.
Anyway, some of us were suggesting that the United States once had the moral and political standing to speak out about militarism in other countries.
Now? Not as much.
I would say if opposing the military advances of what has been an extremely murderous dictatorship is not regarded as moral then the problem is with the regarders - not the opposers. Opposing the Chinese weapon build-up, however modestly, is moral IMO.
Dude, opposing ANY country’s weapons build-up is moral. And I think the quakers here will back me up on that.
Yes, even our own. Deal with it.
Just in greater depth so Dugger can’t simplify it to make it easier to oppose: Duros is saying that no-one, particularly the nation with the most destructive arsenal in history, has any inherent right to tell any other country that they can’t have whatever weapons they like.
nimmer
“inherent right.’
I don’t disagree with that.
Still right to oppose the Chinese and they still have the bloodiest dictatorship in history. Still wrong to equate the Chinese dictatorship with us.
What Dugger ignores is that the Chinese build up is in response to Bush’s adventures in militarism.
Defending the Chinese, midder? What was their excuse for murdering 20M. Did Bush make them do that? Should we have ignored that tiny little morsel of history. Or would you want a fully armed, technologically capable military in the hands of a dictatorship that murdered that many - so you could get the hated Bush?
Apparently noting the Chinese recent militarism is a direct response to Bush withdrawing from treaties and trying to develop new weapons and Bush military adventurism and such is akin cheering for the deaths of 20 million people in Dugger’s fevered brain.
I would say that a dictatorship (same ruling elite structure) that is the greatest murderer in the history of mankind doesn’t get a pass because of the passage of a decade or so.
Various consecutive American governments within the same national system up to and beyond Andrew Jackson have been responsible for millions of people dying as well, you know.
No, I don’t know, Nimmer. Is this also the result of a Lancet ’study’? And congratulations on actually being civil.
“Norwegian scientist published fake findings in Lancet”
Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution calls the (Lancet)raw number “preposterously high.”
General George Casey, the U.S. commander in Iraq, says that the highest figure he has seen of civilian deaths is 50,000.
The onetime British Medical journal Lancet, now a mouthpiece of the ultra-bourgeois left