The dangers of isolationism. What would happen if the U.S. is no longer the world #1 power.

Is there a substantive point in there somewhere? The world needs a strong America. The stability we provide is good for business, which is something the Trumpers seem to have forgotten.

 

It sounds like I was right the first time. You are simply disagreeing with my contention that we are a declining power except if we are, to blame Reagan. There isn't much room to argue with this: "you claimed we are not a super power - I claim we are THE worlds superpower. " OK I stated why in my original post on this thread, so you simply said, na uh.

 

As far as Afghanistan goes, we went in to get Bin Ladin. We didn't get him there and we didn't even get Mullah Omar, who eventually died of natural causes. As to your contention that it wasn't a military defeat or even a military mission, we spent 20 years fighting the Taliban who came to power within a week of our departure, which tells you something about the success of our military mission.

The rest of the world recovered from World War II long ago. Everything we have now and everything that we still think gives us superpower status are legacies from a generation or two previously. We can't do any of the things we could do 40 years ago. That seems like decline to me.

 

I was hoping you would understand my attempt to get you to think it through yourself instead of basing your opinions on something you were told by someone who’s job it is to brainwash young men.

Since you aren’t willing to question what you were told decades ago I’ll make it very simple for you.


China would cease to exist if sea lanes were shut down. They would have no energy and their entire economy that is based on TRADE would be instantly destroyed.

Your notion that China wants sea lanes closed has no basis in logic or fact. It would destroy their country. Fast.

Oh, and if you post ANYTHING on a public forum it’s up for discussion. YOU chose to bring up boot camp. YOU chose to validate your opinion with boot camp instruction. I directly addressed that comment. I suggest not posting things in an open forum if you don’t want them open to comment or criticism.

But thanks for trying to tell me what parts of your posts to address. It’s cute.

 

Definitely not like a golf club. NATO still lets you play if you don't pay, but that doesn't mean "NEVER PAY" or "MAKE UP YOUR OWN PRICE".
The avatar is just a Trump endorsed politician because world needs to know what a white racist supremacist he is

 

Read the first paragraph of my post, then read your post and thank you for proving my point...lol

 

Certainly it does! If you don't want to bury "our family members" because of war then certainly you would support funding and giving assitance to Ukraine, because it keeps our troops at home.

Keeping our troops safe at home and in non-combat support roles, as well as avoiding a protracted war that could very well turn global SERVES our own interests. Many "pros" and NO cons.

My question had nothing to do with "U.S. protecting OUR boarders" it was about supporting Ukraine protecting Theirs.

Which is/was a NON-Sequitur.

President Biden is doing all he can to protect OUR boarders inspite of tRaitor tRump's command that the tRumpublican house does nothing to help him and try to stifle his efforts every chance they get.

But we have a mutual defense treaty with them.

Still, avoiding direct involvement in Ukraine or any nation wit technical and financial support IS in the best interest of U.S.

Limited? By who? Traitor tRump?

Yeah, like why would a former president stand in the way of supporting an ally. No one can answer that, not even the tRumpublican house.
And for the record, I am not like a lot of people who think Ukraine has already lost this war and we should pull the plug. The Afghans defeated the Soviets after a long war of attrition and I think the Ukrainians may be able to do the same. However, I think they need to show us that they can.


Right, don't lose the war and we'll help you not lose the war.

No blame tRumpublicans for not fully helping them.

It will take what it takes, like all wars, until it is won. Putin is on the ropes, his people are against him, all we need to do is help Ukraine help themselves.

And Zelensky as all Ukrainians want ALL of their country back.

WoW, giving credit where credit is due, how unlike you.

He's not saber rattling, if he loses this war it could cost him his life..

No one ever expected we would be repaid, the dividend in helping Ukraine defeat Russia has been the revelation that Russia is a paper tiger. AND, the lives of OUR troops that won't be lost.

Apparently you're not listening or reading what the President has to say.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing...ident-biden-on-continued-support-for-ukraine/

That's not true, we had a deal and the House tRumpublicans walked away because tRaitor tRump said so.

Those EO's rescinded inhumane policies of tRaitor tRump.
I

That's just right wing boilerplate.

That to is bullshit, President Biden did everything but declare war on Russia to keep Putin from invading Ukraine. Your memory is right wing selective.

 

Your point stands, but isn't worth the time it took to write if the world gets embroiled in a global war.

 

No you were wrong the first time and still are. I pointed out that AbsaByGodLutely we are RIGHT NOW economically the most prosperous and sound nation on earth. Our military is stronger than the next 10 nations militarizes COMBINED. And I'll add that our dollar IS the worlds reserve currency which gives us an economic advantage no other nation holds. All of which is independent of the damage Reagan and Bush II did to our nation.

You, claiming we are not a super-power is bullshit.
Because:
We are THE worlds superpower. As Russia has demonstrated.

All I can say is when you're so biassed and wrong, as you are, "na uh" is the correct answer. I should have kept my argument to that and saved myslef a lot of time.

 

You had no point, Willard. You want me to thank myself?

 

It's funny how we tend to look to Rome to gauge the state of our decline, but I think we might be flattering ourselves a bit when we do that. I think there are other analogies that would give us a more accurate depiction of where we find ourselves in comparison to other empires and nation-states.

Back in 2005 when things were going sideways in Iraq, Victor Davis Hanson published A War Like No Other, which made a striking comparison between us and Periclean Athens when its aggressive and expansionist foreign policy got it embroiled in the disastrous Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) that ended in Sparta's conquest of Athens.

Personally, I think we can find better analogies in the decline of the French and British Empires, where both wound up overextending themselves and then sank into decline. I'm particularly struck by the similarities between us and France right before the outbreak of the revolution in that country where the expenses associated with the Seven Years War, the American Revolution and its unsustainable domestic spending drove the Ancien régime into bankruptcy. If I recall correctly, when Louis XVI convened the Estates-General in 1789 for the first time in 175 years, the entire French budget was consumed by the interest payments on its debt and was forced to borrow all of its operating expenditures. Last year, the interest payments on the national debt exceeded $1 trillion/year for the first time while federal revenues were somewhere in the neighborhood of $4.4 trillion, so we are rapidly approaching the point where 25% of the federal government's annual income will be spent paying just the interest on its debt - but Washington doesn’t have a spending problem!

There's also another equally disturbing analogy we might be looking at, and that is with Russia when it began its long slow slide down the socialist-communist shithole that resulted in the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Here is an observation made by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in the mid-1970s after he was expelled from the USSR:

It is with a strange feeling that those of us from the Soviet Union look upon the West of today. It is thought we were neither neighbors on the same planet nor contemporaries. And yet we contemplate the West from what will be your future, or we look back seventy years to see our past suddenly repeating itself today. And what we see is always the same as it was then: adults deferring to the opinions of children, the younger generation carried away by shallow, worthless ideas; professors scared of being unfashionable; journalists refusing to take responsibility for the words they squander so easily; universal sympathy for revolutionary extremists; people with serious objections unable or unwilling to voice them; the majority passively obsessed with a feeling of doom; feeble governments; societies whose defensive reactions have become paralyzed; spiritual confusion leading to political upheaval. What will happen as a result of all this lies ahead of us. But the time is near, and from bitter memory we can easily predict what these events will be...
--Warning to the West, pp.129-130

It's all bad, but we might have a slim hope of saving the Republic if we begin changing course now. Unfortunately, that's unlikely to happen.

 

You make a convincing argument, and any interaction we have with Russia must be on the basis of strength and solid positions during negotiations. This is what the whole basis of MAD (mutual assured destruction) has been based on ever since the introduction of nuclear weapons in the world.

I was reflecting on what Ukraine, itself, is worth to the United Statdes, and truthfully it isn't much. It is up there at the top of the Black Sea with no way out to international shipping except through the Bosporus Straits where NATO could interdict it at any time. We've never had much commerce with Ukraine, or needed to.

Russia has very significant vulnerabilities, including the fact that it has limited sea lanes. The main rail line it has across the thousands of miles is very vulnerable, all the way from Moscow to Vladivostok. NATO could interdict shipping out of St. Petersburg through the Gulf of Finland, and the only other major port the Russians have is Murmansk, which can be interdicted by NATO in the Barents Sea.

But here we are, with two political factions that really hate each other, unable even to approve a budget for what remains of this fiscal year. I would feel a lot better about this whole thing if, for the time being, we could concentrate on what's really vital for what we need in the United States. In principle, I see that Ukraine is important in a stand against Russia, but practically I don't see that Ukraine is of any real use to us in the U. S. at all. Maybe I overestimate the importance of BILLIONS of dollars.

 

That is absolutely false. I know you don't like to hear about Reagan but "40 years ago" was when Reagan's voodoo economics of deregulation and trickledown was setting the stage for the demise of U.S. as the worlds manufacturer and with it the dominance you think we no longer have. ALL EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY! We are, by every measure THE strongest nation on earth.

We are much stronger than we were 40 years ago, President Biden has ensured our future growth with his infrastructure bill that is bringing BACK manufacturing to U.S. Including the most sophisticated chip manufacturing possible. In ten years, if we can survive the assault by tRaitor tRump and his wealthy supporters, we will be far advanced of all other nations.

It' only seem like decline to you because that is what you've been conditioned to look for.

 

Biden is protecting boarders or borders? Immigrants do pay $145B in documented rent payments (probably more that isn’t documented) so yes they are boarders that are being protected instead of prosecuted for their crimes.

But no, Biden is not doing all he can to protect our borders.

 

Those immigrant boarders also pay a lot of taxes that goes unrecognized by the right.

Really? What more would you have him do, LEGALLY? Especially when the tRumpublican House won't even pass their own bi-partisan immigration bill because tRaitor tRump told them not to help President Biden with immigration by passing it.

 

Since it wasn't actually an argument, I agree.

 

Sure. That’s why places like Chicago and NYC etc. are sending buses down to the border to snatch up boarders before red border states can suck up all the tax benefits from them.

Oh, wait, that’s not what’s happening, is it? LOL

Doesn’t have anything to do with right or left.

LEGALLY? Just enforcement of current law would discourage the vast majority of current crossings. Why pass more laws when we aren’t enforcing current laws against illegal border crossings?

 

I used Rome as an example because Rome is kind our go-to comparison. Obviously VDH or many other classical or Western historians might come up with a more accurate comparison (The Venetian Republic for example). If I were to use the British Empire example, I might say it's 1955; we're a weakened and exhausted empire but don't know it yet ( UK got it's comeuppance the very next year).

As far as saving the Republic, I think it's too late for that. If there were forces that would allow us to save it, we could make those policy changes, but all the incentives are in the other direction, which is why entropy is the natural state, not just in nature, but in human civilizations as well.

 

No, it was an argument, it's just seldom worth the time it takes to reply to your posts because you're programed to respond only one way.

 

OK you're simply doing a partisan press conference, KJP style. Dropping buzzwords like Reagan, voodoo economics, and deregulation (you even threw in the infrastructure bill!) don't actually make your case.

 

It should be, they are hard working and in many cases skilled workers. China is running out of labor, they only WISH they had that problem. In Fact many Chinese are migrating through our Southern boarder now.

IF that's true why are you blaming President Biden.

Are you now accusing the Border Patrol of not doing their jobs?

We are, only now we're being humane about it. I grew up in Ag. so I know that this has been a problem all of my 73 years. We've never actually addressed the problem in a realistic way. It used to be just swept under the rug because our big Ag., hospitality, construction and food service businesses wanted to take advantage of this labor pool. Now that tRaitor tRump has decided it's an issue that he can take advantage of we want it stopped.

The truth is we should be welcoming these people that are coming here to help us.

 

No, not with you I'm sure. Any reasonable person can look back at what's been going on and see that "isolationism" isn't what made America the GREAT nation it IS today.

The only risk of decline we face is following tRaitor tRumps quest for dictatorship and the tRumpublican support for him.

Otherwise, right by god now, we've never been better poised to excel and succeed than we are right now.

 

If the U.S. isn't, who will be?

 

Please re-read that paragraph, and think on it. You just said China is short of labor and wishes they had more but that labor is migrating here. If there is so much opportunity at home, why are they coming here? Why is China sending us skilled labor when they are short? You do realize the struggling economy is one major Chinese are leaving China, right?

Yes, Chinese immigration to the US is increasing as well as Russian.

China won’t allow immigration. It would dilute the blood of the children of the dragon.

This may come as a surprise, but Biden is currently the head of the Executive branch of our government that is tasked with protecting our borders and enforcing our laws. If Andrew Yang was president or Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump, and the same laws were not being enforced, I would say they aren’t protecting the border but protecting illegal boarders instead.

SMH.

You can search PF top to bottom and see if you can find me doing so and quote me using the PF quote function. Good luck with that. Not interested in strawman arguments. Sorry.

Some of us “we” have opposed illegal immigration no matter who is president. “We” are all for LEGAL immigration. “We” believe in rule of law. “We” believe people who wish to lawfully immigrate should be rewarded over those who intentionally commit crime to be here.

Yes, yes. As I said, NYC and Chicago etc. should be sending buses to the border to snatch up the boarders that are breaking the law just to come help us. I guess those folks in NYC and Chicago are just dumb or something. SMH

We should be promoting LEGAL immigration where the immigrants are vetted to ensure they are qualified to be here. What’s going on today is not in the interest of national security.

 

Please don't tell me what to do, nothing I hate worse than being given inane orders by someone that doesn't have any authority over me.

Like so many refugees at our boarder they come here for freedom and opportunity.

China's dictators have made a lot of decisions that are coming back to haunt them.

Yet they are coming.

I understand that where the buck stops. I also understand that the tRumpublican House has been tasked by tRaitor tRump to make sure they are as uncooperative as they can be, including not even bringing to a vote a bill that was worked out in a bi-partisan committed and had many items in it right of the republican wish list.

You don't have to respond.

It's not a strawman to point out that with tRumpublican resistance leaving President Biden to do all he can do within the law; then criticism of what's going on at the boarder must mean you feel the Boarder Patrol isn't doing their job.

Yes you are.

I think its a hot issue that tRumpublicans think can help win him another, undeserved, term.

No, no. As I said, we need to look at immigration differently. And realize that we have a valuable asset showing up at our border begging for work. All we need to do is find a way to accommodate them and make them tax payers.

Like I said, if you don't want to respond, no one is going to stop you.

On that we are in agreement. What needs to be done is figure out a way to make the illegals ... legal. And turn them into a solution instead of a problem.