Interesting...

[Madmack]

Long Island Republican Congressman Peter King...

"We may have to restructure the alliance, form a new alliance which the French will not be a part of," said King. "We cannot allow a second-rate country to have a veto power or obstructionist power over American foreign policy."

"France is posturing itself as a moral guardian, when they would have lost World War I, and they set a world record in World War II for the quickest surrender by a world power."

King said he has had "all these French people calling me up and attacking me" since making similar comments in a BBC radio interview late Monday night, in which he said the French could go to Iraq "to instruct the Iraqis in how to surrender."

King said he is not worried about offending French sensibilities because "they are yesterday's people."

The congressman's family is so upset about France's Iraq position that his wife and daughter recently canceled a planned vacation to Paris, King said.

[masterofNone]

ugly americans


I've stopped capitalizing the word america until this mess is cleaned up.

[amanda]

mon, you've been capitalizing on it before now?

I'm sorry, I know I keep harping on this book (http://www.zefrank.com/bulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1052) but I'm in the middle of it now- and on the verge of renouncing my citizenship.

I will not hold allegence to a country that does this.

[masterofNone]

MARCUS: And what is Rome, Maximus?
MAXIMUS: I have seen much of the rest of the world. It is brutal and cruel and dark. Rome is the light.
MARCUS: Yet you have never been there. You have not seen what it has become. I am dying, Maximus. When a man sees his end he wants to know that there has been some purpose to his life. How will the world speak my name in years to come? Will I be known as the philosopher, the warrior, the tyrant. Or will I be the Emperor who gave Rome back her true self? There was once a dream that was Rome, you could only whisper it. [With a snap of his finger.] Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish. It was so fragile and I fear that it will not survive the winter.

I've been thinking about this dialogue about Rome from "Gladiator" since this administartion took office.

[amanda]

had this as my sig for a day or two. The story is attributed to St. Augustine.

Alexander the Great: "How dare you molest the sea?"
Captured Pirate: "How dare you molest the whole world? Because I do it with a little ship only, I am called a thief; you, doing it with a great navy, are called an Emperor."

I'm not sure I want that distinction of an empire any longer.

[Madmack]

Robert Kaplan on the US superpower status in an 1999 interview...

It means nothing more or less than it meant for the British empire at the end of the nineteenth century when there was no challenge on the horizon for the British navy. If you got up at a conference and said the navy will not be the most powerful force in the world in twenty years, you might be laughed at because you would have no proof of your argument, it would all be purely subjective. So that is what it means. It means that at this moment as we speak there is no other nation or region in the world that has information age military capabilities. But precisely because of we are so powerful, we are resented. And if history teaches anything, it is that power is fleeing, there will always be challengers.

So increasingly we have non-state adversaries who want to kill us, terrorist groups for instance, who are not part of any bureaucratic mechanism of the state. They don't own territory, they do not have an address. So, for instance, when the U.S. government, as it did about a year ago, announced that it had destroyed the infrastructure of Osama Bin Laden terrorist network, some of the hardware and infrastructure, what did that mean? It meant that they had destroyed a bunch of blow-up tents in the dessert of Afghanistan that you and I could put back together in about two hours. So increasingly these people don't have an infrastructure that is destroyable. They only way to get them, is to kill them. So I think the more unconventional the threat, the more assassinations will come back.

[zenbabe]

heh, I bought plastic sheeting and stocked up on water last night...