Thanks for the reply

Submitted by Kepha Hor (United States), Aug 30, 2011 at 17:35

1. I seriously doubt that the identity of the Libyan rebels was known to anyone in Washington. And, if you didn't notice, I always thought the Libyan intervention a huge and irrational mistake.

2. Yes, China's economy may surpass the USA's in 5 years--but it has to be distributed over three times the population. It will have to meet a revolution of rising expectations--apparently already there, since there is a lot of labor unrest in the country. And, it looks like it's also taking our American route of printing funny money. Still, it did learn some home lessons from the days when most people's vitamins (vegetables and the occasional scrap of meat or fish) was purchased on the black market, which in turn was fed by stealing the produce of communized agriculture.

3. The record of US support for jihad--well, it began when Carter belatedly recognized that Brezhnev wasn't going to give the US respite when Brezhnev saw that the US was calling it quits in the Cold War.

4. You won't get any argument from me that Nixon was cynical, Kissinger was one of the most over-rated men in Washington before Hillary Clinton came along, and that ultimately, the USA got no strategic advantage from its opening to Communist China.

5. The part of the former Socialist world with which I am most familiar also had WONDERFUL free medical care, praised by every major newspaper from Los Angeles to West Berlin (at least back in the 1970's)--and it featured care for the average person administered by someone who could barely read and write, administer a shot of fructose, and, if you were really lucky, he'd get a bunch of people together to chant political slogans while The Chairman's thaumaturgic red book lay on your afflicted part (although a Christian, I am similarly sceptical of Pentecostal claims).

6. Yes, Turkey is a barbaric country, and I need no lessons in the horrors of the 1890's, World War I, and things that followed.

7. Being, at present, a minion of one of America's socialist organs (the public school system), I assure you you didn't have free education anywhere. I doubt that the people who taught you math, science, and Leninist theory in the old Poland made do with no salary, and the money to pay them--even if in ration tickets-- had to come from somewhere.

My main point is that you impute to America an influence over the global jihad which it simply doesn't have. Taking the Sherki Turkestan crowd, for example, I doubt the US Government has three employees who can read Tarim Basin Turki ("Uyghur" is badly educate guess imposed by the Great Father of the Peoples).

As for China, I know it too well to be grateful for its purchasing our debt--and you won't get any argument fromm me that our American elites have been horribly irresponsible over the past 3/4 of a century. We Americans should've noticed a lot sooner that we had reached Aristotle's point where polity becomes "democracy"--the have-not majority recognizes that it has the political power to vote the minority's money into its collective pockets.

And, re America and Greece, you get no argument from me on the comparison. We're reaching the point where no government is able to play Santa Claus. Even I can recognize the wrong balance between production and consumption.

You guessed right that I am not descended from Polish nobility. I am, however, related to small farmers who handled marginal land on the periphery of a great Old World emperor, as well as to a long line of petty bourgeoisie and wanderers as well. However, the lives of High-level Cadre and their children in places I've seen is perhaps as close as I've ever seen to a class that can live off the sweat of serfs.

And, again, as for the global jihad, may it soon meet its Jan Sobieski.

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