zbert's Blog

Remember this?

by Patrick J. Buchanan - December 22, 1997

Those who warned that the U.S. troop commitment to Bosnia risked an open-ended entanglement in the Balkans were right. Bill Clinton has now confirmed that U.S. troops will remain indefinitely. No plan, no strategy, no timetable exists for their withdrawal.

What are the conditions the president has set before the United States can leave? Bosnia’s joint institutions must be “self-sustaining.” A civilian police force must be in place, large enough and sufficiently trained to keep order in the country. And Bosnia’s media should be “free of hate and venom.” This is a formula for permanent entrapment.

Bosnia is a fictitious country to which its Serb and Croat minorities give minimal allegiance. No civilian police force is going to quell an uprising by either to break free of Sarajevo when NATO departs. And since Clinton seems to think Rush Limbaugh, Ollie North and Gordon Liddy pour forth “hate and venom” on the airwaves, exactly what kind of Bosnian FCC does he have in mind?

Nations everywhere are breaking down into ethnic elements. No vital interest of ours is involved in the utopian task of trying to create a multiethnic state on a blood-soaked peninsula where every Muslim, Serb and Croat can personally recall ethnic atrocities. In our lifetime, British India broke up; Pakistan and Bangladesh divorced; Cyprus was divided. In this decade, Czechoslovakia split in two; the Soviet Union broke into 15 nations; Slovenes, Croats and Muslims broke away from a Serb-dominated Yugoslavia. Why is it intolerable that Croats and Serbs should break free of Bosnia? And why commit U.S. troops to stave off the inevitable?

The White House argues that if we leave, the Europeans will leave, bloodshed will begin anew, and Iran may well fill the Bosnian vacuum. But that begs the question: If a united Bosnia is not a vital interest of Europe, why is it a vital interest of a United States that is on the other side of the ocean and has never cared a fig whose flag flew over Sarajevo? Why cannot the president tell our NATO allies that if they do not remain in Bosnia, we do not remain in Europe?

That American intervention has succeeded, as the president insists, is undeniable. The bloodshed is ended, the armies are largely demobilized, and roads and bridges have been repaired. But the permanent policing of the Balkans is not the business of the U.S. Army; it is the business of the rich and malingering nations of Europe.

Here we come to the heart of the matter. Half a century ago, when the United States first sent troops back to Europe, Americans were assured by such as Dean Acheson and Dwight Eisenhower that they would be there at most a decade. They stayed 40 years, until the Red Army, which they had been sent to contain, went home.

More than any nation, America won the Cold War. But the NATO allies, though they number 300 million of the richest people on Earth, refuse to shoulder responsibility for their own defense. Not only are Americans to be the policeman of the Balkans, we have been told that we must pay the lion’s share of the cost for the defense of Europe’s eastern frontiers, while protecting Europe’s oil in the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, the Europeans slash their defense budgets, to create a single currency and help them capture America’s markets around the world.

With the expansion of NATO to include Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic today — Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Slovakia tomorrow — America will have given war guarantees to every region of Europe from the Atlantic to the Russian border, and from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. Any war that breaks out anywhere on the continent in the 21st century will automatically involve the United States. Is this wise?

Yet, to suggest that this might be imperial overstretch is to be mocked as an isolationist by pundits who spent the 1970s bedeviling Richard Nixon on Vietnam and the 1980s bedeviling Ronald Reagan for trying to expel communism from Central America.

America is ceasing to be a republic; she is becoming an empire. We have undertaken the role of the old German empire in defending the ramparts of Europe, the Austrian empire in policing the Balkans, the Ottoman empire in pacifying the Middle East, the British empire in securing the Gulf, and the Japanese empire in containing China and defending Korea. Yet, as U.S. commitments grow, Americans appear less and less willing to fight abroad, and U.S. defense budgets recede to pre-Pearl Harbor levels.

America is inviting the same fate that has befallen every other 20th century empire that has refused to recognize the limits of its power.

Quote of the Day:

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
-- H.L. Mencken

Fact of the Day:

U.S. policy is at war with itself in Afghanistan. The Afghan army is destroying poppy fields in the service of America's "war on drugs." Meanwhile, the American army is fighting the Taliban to protect the Afghan government, and Afghan farmers are paying the Taliban to protect their poppy fields from the Afghan army. Thus, the harder we fight the "war on drugs" in Afghanistan the harder it becomes to win the war against the Taliban. Source: Newsweek, April 7, 2008

Blind, arrogant obedience to the militaristic leadership has led to the situation we are now in.

The Difference between Democrats and Republicans
Written by Gary Halpin, with Illustrations by Chris Carter

This monumental work is designed to answer the most important question in the world: is it smarter to be a Democrat or a Republican? No matter how much we read, watch TV, study, and debate we never hear the question asked directly. We are more likely to be shamed into an association with a political party than to come to such an affiliation intellectually.

Now there's a book that guides you so you can decide and finally know where you fit it. Exhaustively researched and meticulously put together, this amazing book reveals all the startling contrasts between the two parties. And the best part, it's a very short read!

Great gag gift idea for your lawyer, accountant, politically astute friends or those family members that annoy the heck out of you on the holidays. Written in a matter-of-fact style, even a politician will 'get it.' Heck, even your Dog can read this book because it's so... how do we say it in a politically correct manner... it's so blank.

Published: 26 Mar 08 15:47 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/10716/

Sweden’s Board of Agriculture has issued an extensive set of new guidelines regulating how pet owners treat their dogs and cats.

Among other things, the 15 pages of new guidelines set specifications for how often dogs and cats receive food and exercise, the size and design of their living quarters, as well as the quality of the air Swedish pets breathe.

The rules have been in development since 2005 and are designed to ensure that dogs and cats “have the opportunity to feel good and behave in a natural manner.”

“We had rules for the care and handling of livestock, as well as for small caged animals, but nothing for dogs and cats,” said Cheryl Jones Fur, a zoologist with the Boards division for pets.

She explained that the rules came about to fill a gap in existing regulations, rather than because of any specific spike in cases of animal abuse.

“If anything we were a bit behind in developing the rules,” she said.

The guidelines mandate, for example, that dogs and cats should be checked on at least twice a day and “should have their need for social contact satisfied.”

Pets kept indoors should be within view of a window allowing sunlight, and dogs kept outdoors should have access to both sunny and shaded areas, as well as protection against wind and rain.

Levels of ammonia and carbon dioxide in the air must also be kept below 10 parts per million and 3000 parts per million, respectively.

In addition to regulating individual pet owners, the rules also extend to “doggie daycares” which are required to ensure that dogs which can’t get along with one another can be separated in order to “avoid conflicts.”

Officials hope the new set of rules will make it easier for animal inspection authorities who investigate cases of animal cruelty.

“Previously, inspectors had no regulatory support to which they could refer. It’s hard to convince owners to change their behavior without having something that specifies what is acceptable and what isn’t,” said Jones Fur.

Most often, those convicted of crimes against animals result in fines, though Jones Fur said it’s not unheard of for people to receive prison time as well.

Sweden already has some of the world’s toughest animal welfare laws, and Jones Fur believes the new guidelines will ensure that life as a dog in Sweden is good.

“Most animals have it pretty good here,” she said.

White House Says It Destroyed Hard Drives

Older White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the White House told a federal court yesterday, and some, but not necessarily all, of the data on those hard drives was moved to new ones.

The White House revealed the information about how it handles its computers in an effort to convince a federal magistrate that it would be fruitless to undertake a plan proposed by the court to recover millions of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005.

It would be costly and time-consuming for the White House to institute an e-mail retrieval program that entails pulling data off each individual workstation, the White House said in a sworn declaration filed with U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola.

If this was the Clinton White House, you would screaming for his resignation, wouldn't you?

DISGUSTED Andrew Cowper refused to have knee surgery after docs said there could be a dead RAT in the operating theatre.

Andrew, 19, walked out after a consultant apologised for the stench of rotting rodent and assured him staff were trying to find the corpse.

Disgrace ... hospital

The teenager, who had waited 11 months for the knee op, said: “He said the smell didn’t represent a health risk but I was appalled.

“I asked him, ‘If you were me would you have the operation?’

“He looked at me and said ‘no’, so I decided there and then I wasn’t going to go ahead.

“If there was one dead rat there could have been others rotting nearby.”

The dead rat was found later in the roof of another part of the hospital, away from the operating theatres.

Andrew, of Welwyn Garden City, Herts, had damaged a cruciate knee ligament playing footie.

He turned up for surgery at the town’s Queen Elizabeth II hospital on Monday and waited several hours before he was told about the rodent.

A spokesman said the hospital would re-schedule Andrew’s surgery.

j.troup@the-sun.co.uk

This is Government supplied medical care.

He had to wait 11 months for a knee surgery.

There was a dead rat in the hospital.

It had been dead a while because they could smell it rotting.

They would have gone through with the surgery even though the room was not clean.

Nobody thought to look for the dead animal?

He waited several hours which means they probably did other surgeries in that same unclean room.

And you want the US Government to do the same here?