Please defend the Carter Doctrine

[wuushew]

In the December edition of The Progressive Michael Klare makes the point that President Bush’s global war on terrorism/thuggery is merely a continuation of the military policy started by Jimmy Carter in 1980. If Carter who as a Christian and a Democrat and was unable to steer a more just and non-interventionist course in foreign policy how can we as the “opposition” party claim to offer any better solutions?

Perhaps we can forgive him for living in the tense end stage of the Cold War where our inaction would have lead to Soviet domination of oil producing nations. That does not excuse Bush 41, Clinton or Bush 43 from taking actions that placed American military might in various oil areas of the globe.

Why should blood be shed for a single drop of oil anywhere? The purpose of a military is to defend a country’s geographical borders and safe guard the lives of the civilian population. It does not exist to support the economic hegemony of the world’s most lavish and wasteful society. Considering that we have the tools in the form of socialism and science to ween ourselves of our oil thirst the fact that we accept young volunteers to die for our so called American way of life seems sick.

The status quo asks few sacrifices and we should not be surprised that politicians in both parties take the politically expedient route. The only difference in the course of events is that Bush 43 overtly overthrows governments instead of using the CIA which past Presidents both Democratic and Republican have done.

[Ardee]

1. Wrong about an essential point

The purpose of a military in a capitalist society is to protect your corporate interests abroad...read money. The purpose of our military in Iraq, for example, is to end run Hussein's desire to trade oil for Euros instead of the standard, Dollars. This may very well have caused the artificially inflated American dollar to devalue....cant have that now can we?

[bryant69]

2. Ah so all we need to do is change our economic system

That's good news. That's easy to do, and there are so many real world tested economic systems that have done better.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[offcenter]

4. Blogwhore

[bryant69]

12. You have a problem with that?

[charlie]

5. It's funny

How every time someone criticizes an application of capitalism, someone pops up to rebut it as a deluded call to junk capitalism in toto. It's like a magical invocation or something.

[bryant69]

11. That statement implied that Capitalism lead directly to wars

And that as long as we were a Capitalist nation we would have wars.

I'm strongly in favor of a regulated capitalism, and strongly opposed to using our military might for short-term economic gain (assuming that's what Iraq was all about. Personally I believe it was about a criminally incompenetn messianic plan to restructure the middle east through blowing up bits of it, but to each their own.

Bryant

[Ardee]

15. what else are the purposes for wars

economic gain of course.....

[wuushew]

6. We could keep capitalism as long as we tax the rich

With so much wealth concentrated at the top we could simply tap into that money once peak oil occurs anyway. It is possible to grow our own domestic energy sources but market forces dictate that it is more efficient to kill an Arab than make the necessary domestic sacrifices.

[Djinn]

10. it's not like we even have capitalism anyway

a capaitalist system would not include tariffs and other industry protections (while the US is the first to tell everyone ELSE to free up trade they protect US sugar, beef etc etc) and wouldn't remove various taxes as a way to induce companies to operate in a certain area.

What we have is corporate feudalism.

[Ardee]

9. sarcasm covers so much doesnt it?

So we should stay with a system that has devoured the lives of millions world wide, keeps millions more in poverty and degradation so that you and I can keep our extravagant lifestyles. Thanks for making things so very simple.

[bryant69]

13. What I'm saying is there's nothing better

Everything that has been tried so far has been a lot worse. I don't know if someone's going to come up with something down the road, but so far I haven't seen it.

[Ardee]

14. Of course there is a better way

Otherwise you and I would not be here searching for it!

Oh and thanks Charlie, for post # 5

[illflem]

3. Plus with UN sanctions

Iraq couldn't put out as much oil as possible to keep the price down

[kentuck]

7. The foundation of Carter's foreign policy was "human rights".....

which was swept under the rug with Reagan.

[wuushew]

8. How did maintaining a large military presence in the Persian Gulf help?

most of the world's humanitarian problems are in Africa not oil rich regions. The only possible explanations are (1)we lie (2)We act only where our economic interests are concerned. (3) Some combination of 1 and 2.