Charlie Rose

Tacitus  04/15/2011 11:13 AM Report

His comments with regard to Israel should have been expanded upon. I really wish he elaborated on his reasoning for why there again should be a full scale war between the Arabs and Israelis.

-Tacitus

http://judtscafe.blogspot.com/

winter  04/12/2011 04:48 PM Report

Ghadaffis giving the rest of Africa "bags of money", not to support Ghadaffi, but is that different than that he's investing in and helping the sub Saharan Africa? You do have to explain where the money goes before you get to suggest its dirty. I'm not saying he's Bill Gates but I do believe he has some philanthropic sense and isn't completely the anti- christ.

robdverity  04/12/2011 04:40 PM Report

Even in this abbreviated interview, the only logical conclusion is to get-the-hell-out NOW. We wont tho because corruption is not the sole province of Karzai. We taught him undoubtedly more than his own innate capabilities re venality and corruption. In fact the reason we play-along is that contractors a la Xe (aka Blackwater) et al are so entrenched and 'bought-in' that the war will continue as long as their siphon to the treasury is effective. Karzai be damned - an aside to be ignored.

Charlie abruptly cut this short. Too revealing of the utter stupidity of our involvement.

winter  04/12/2011 04:26 PM Report

Noone ever talks about the Trillion dollar lithium find in Afghanistan, not even in passing. As a matter of fact the

natural resources access line of questioning seldomn gets explored, it doesn't even get reported except in vague terms. Wouldn't it be interesting to know what companies have their eyes on those deposits and if its been brought up to Afghanistan in some negotiations. It was found so somebodies on the trail.

REMant  04/12/2011 10:52 AM Report

I agree with his assessment of Afghanistan. We are confronted there with a situation like that in Vietnam in 1964, while acting paradoxically like when we invaded Cambodia six years later to buy more time for the Vietnamese. I expected any move toward Pakistan would be destabilizing, and as with Ho Chi Minh Trail we have been trying to use largely clandestine methods to avoid that. They were, however, largely ineffective then, and the Pakistanis are increasingly unhappy about that kind of thing now.

I feel more and more the Libyan conflict is just about the money. Frankly, I doubt the easterners really care about the west as long as the oil is theirs, and they only want Qaddafi removed to make sure of that, altho no doubt some are after revenge. The situation seems to me reminiscent of the Kurds. I think the news coverage there, as with Egypt, is one-sided and generally inept, in particular for not delving into the French, British and emirate politics involved. BTW, I can understand Qaddafi approaching the AU, but what did he offer Greece?

I can't see new, popularly-elected govts the region, regardless of what they think of the Palestinians, themselves, believing anything less than that the US thinks more of the Jews than of them, which cannot help American aims.

John Stuart Mill in 1859 wrote in short essay I was unaware of, not being a great fan, called "A Few Words on Non-Intervention" some apt thoughts: "To go to war for an idea, if the war is aggressive, not defensive, is as criminal as to go to war for territory or revenue; for it is as little justifiable to force our ideas on other people, as to compel them to submit to our will in any other respect..." Citing instances when it was done, he, nevertheless, concludes, "When the contest is only with native rulers, and with such native strength as those rulers can enlist in their defence, the answer I should give to the question of the legitimacy of intervention is, as a general rule, No. The reason is, that there can seldom be anything approaching to assurance that intervention, even if successful, would be for the good of the people themselves. The only test possessing any real value, of a people's having become fit for popular institutions, is that they, or a sufficient portion of them to prevail in the contest, are willing to brave labour and danger for their liberation. I know all that may be said, I know it may be urged that the virtues of freemen cannot be learnt in the school of slavery, and that if a people are not fit for freedom, to have any chance of becoming so they must first be free. And this would be conclusive, if the intervention recommended would really give them freedom. But the evil is, that if they have not sufficient love of liberty to be able to wrest it from merely domestic oppressors, the liberty which is bestowed on them by other hands than their own, will have nothing real, nothing permanent. No people ever was and remained free, but because it was determined to be so."