- Joined
- Jun 8, 2006
- Messages
- 2,925
I agree it's not an easy answer all around, and I wish to hell I had an answer that could actually be implemented. All I can say is that if you make a mess, you clean it up. If, in fact, we can be "blamed" for the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and especially in light of the chaos that regime has unleashed on the world since then, then we need to clean it up ASAP. "How?" is the question. Maybe, as Cadet Candidate pointed out, all we have to do is support the population that wants to get rid of these religious nutcases anyway. Maybe it's a full-blown invasion. It's probably somewhere in the middle.
Were it up to me, I would choose the former (internal overthrow), unless there was a direct and impending threat, in which case I'd eliminate the immediate threat using whatever force is necessary. The disadvantage of that, of course, is that such a strike may short-circuit the internal overthrow process. If you ask me, that may be the reason we haven't struck Iran in the present; we're hoping the people will do the business themselves in time.
And I'm a 40 year-old engineer. We're even.
There is absolutely NOTHING harmful about conservation. Hell, I am currently seriously eyeing the purchase of a hybrid myself because I am facing the possibility of a 90-mile one-way commute. I'd like to install solar panels on my home. Conservation is a WONDERFUL thing!
However, conservation cannot be utilized to grow an economy because the rate of growth will always outstrip the rate of conservation. I love the old adage that if every car in America were suddenly a hybrid, we'd save X amount of millions of barrels of oil a day. Yeah, and if pigs had wings, Congress would qualify as an airport.
I am not against conservation. I AM, however, against the beliefs that a) if we don't all return to walking uphill both ways to school, living in mud huts, and eating tofu, that we're all going to die, and that b) if we somehow go and get our own sources of energy, we're going to destroy the planet. HOGWASH!
The same people who decry the current price of oil are the same dolts who demand that we not burn coal, not drill for more oil, and not use nuclear. In other words, the hell with supply, let's just cut demand. Well, that DOESN'T WORK, because the only way that we can cut demand enough to meet current energy sources is to return to the rediculous existence I described in the previous paragraph, or else to starve the rest of the world. Additionally, even if our beloved country is sufused with the dolts I'm describing, China and India AREN'T. Those two nations have BILLIONS of people who want to heat their homes, drive to work, surf the internet, and enjoy all the pleasures of modern technology. Even if the United States up and DISAPPEARED tomorrow, those two nations would outpace anything we've done in just a few years.
The same people who demand that we turn our thermostats down, drive smaller cars, eat organic, burn ethanol, do with less, take mass transit, use compact flourescent light bulbs, and all the rest, are the ones with private fleets of aircraft (John Travolta), who fly learjets and ride in SUV's to pick up environmental awards (Al Gore), own palatial mansions that required clear-cutting ACRES of forest (John Edwards), refuse to allow windfarms to be installed because they'll ruin the view from their estates (Ted Kennedy), and hold massive concerts where TONS of electricity is used (wasted) on lighting (insert dimwitted artist here), etc., etc. Hippycrits, all of them!
If we want to become energy independent in the long term, and reduce the cost of energy in the short term, then we need to develop our own sources of energy, conserve where PRUDENT (not where a bunch of socialist hypocrites demand we do so), build up our nuclear power plant capacity to the max, and stablize the Middle East. None are easy, quick, or cheap, but that's the way it is.
Which is all a lie.
There have been past ice ages. They ended and new ones began. That means that in between those ice ages, the earth warmed. The environMENTALists want to convince people like you it's because people like me drive SUV's. Well, there WEREN'T any SUV's around all those times before, so that's not it.
Mars is warming, too. Are the martians not watching their carbon footprints?
The scientific models that are causing all this hysteria are being proven wrong again and again. This past April was the coldest in 100+ years. I cannot remember a May where it was COLD, but here we have one. Just because a bunch of bureaucrats decide that the polar bear is endangered based on a photograph in Al Gore's stupid "documentary" that has been PROVEN to have been falsified, doesn't mean it's the case.
Except that to develop the alternative sources we'd like to go to will a) still be more costly than oil for the foreseable future, b) take more time than developing existing sources of energy, and c) require the same people that demand the alternatives GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY OF THEIR DEVELOPMENT! Go ask Teddy Kennedy to allow windmills off coast of his compound, or to allow a nuclear power plant to be built down his street, and see what he says!
You also have to remember that some of these vaunted alternatives are actually NET ENRGY USERS. Windmills do not generate more energy in their lifetimes than it took to manufacture and maintain them. Same with solar panels. Ethanol takes more energy to produce and ship than it generates when burned. Etc., etc.
Does this mean we should quit? HELL NO! I would LOVE to see Medicair, Medicaid, and Social Security stripped of their rediculous (and unconstitutional) budgets, and have all that loot either used to pay off the debt or else rolled into an alternative energy Manhattan Project. The reason I want that, however, is not to save the planet, but to make the Middle East irrelevent in the world. Cleaning up the air is an added bonus.
You should never be afraid of stating what you believe. Either you are right, inwhich case you may convince someone else, or you are wrong, in which case you may learn something. Just remember that having opinions have consequences.
Nope. You can't. Hell, it took us how many years just to write the Constitution? Oh, and then we had that little disagreement that ran between 1861 and 1865....
But I do think that morally, it's not wrong to try to get the locals to see that it's the best method of governance ever invented. Some will see it more readily than others. Should it be forced? No. If the Iranians vote to live under a theocracy, then by all means enjoy it, but don't expect me to sit by while you export terrorism under the guise of your religion afterwards.
Winston Churchill once said that, "Democracy is the worst form of government ever invented, except for all the others."
