Would you buy your medications from Amtrak?

[native]

I guess we can all find scholars to agree with how we feel if we want to do so. But if anarcho-commies aren't your cup of tea, how about Kennedy's Undersecretary of State, U. Alexis Johnson, speaking before Economic Club of Detroit in 1963?:

What is the attraction that Southeast Asia has exerted for centuries on the great powers flanking it on all sides? Why is it desirable and why is it important? First it provides a lush climate, fertile soil, rich natural resources, a relatively sparse population in most areas, and room to expand. The countries of Southeast Asia produce rich exportable surpluses such as rice rubber, teak, corn, tin, spices, oil, and many others.

Edit: I think Buckley's "scary system" argument still devolves to natural resources, in this case denying your opponent access to them.

Your arguments are specious, dawg, as usual.

Protecting resources, obtaining resources, and denying resources to your enemies are among the many reasons people and nations go to war. This is not a remarkable fact.

Competition for resources is not the only reason for war. This is not remarkable fact.

The concept of "sparse population" as a motivation for war in Vietnam is absurd. Among nations with 10M or more in population, Vietnam is the 11th most densely populated country in the world, ahead of the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and the U.S.

To the extent that Vietnam is "sparsely populated," you can blame your friends the commies, dawg, who intentionally murdered between 721,000 and 3,664,000 innocent civilians between 1945 and 1987 - not including combatant casualties.

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.TAB1.GIF" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[houndawg]

I guess we can all find scholars to agree with how we feel if we want to do so. But if anarcho-commies aren't your cup of tea, how about Kennedy's Undersecretary of State, U. Alexis Johnson, speaking before Economic Club of Detroit in 1963?:

What is the attraction that Southeast Asia has exerted for centuries on the great powers flanking it on all sides? Why is it desirable and why is it important? First it provides a lush climate, fertile soil, rich natural resources, a relatively sparse population in most areas, and room to expand. The countries of Southeast Asia produce rich exportable surpluses such as rice rubber, teak, corn, tin, spices, oil, and many others.

Edit: I think Buckley's "scary system" argument still devolves to natural resources, in this case denying your opponent access to them.

Your arguments are specious, dawg, as usual.

Protecting resources, obtaining resources, and denying resources to your enemies are among the many reasons people and nations go to war. This is not a remarkable fact.

Competition for resources is not the only reason for war. This is not remarkable fact.

The concept of "sparse population" as a motivation for war in Vietnam is absurd. Among nations with 10M or more in population, Vietnam is the 11th most densely populated country in the world, ahead of the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and the U.S.

To the extent that Vietnam is "sparsely populated," you can blame your friends the commies, dawg, who intentionally murdered between 721,000 and 3,664,000 innocent civilians between 1945 and 1987 - not including combatant casualties.

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.TAB1.GIF" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Jesus, if it isn't old "bring-a-knife-to-a-gunfight". Read it again Nate, that is a quote from Kennedy's own Undersecretary of State explaining why the great powers have been interested in SE Asia for centuries.


You see, nate, the problem with the Domino Theory is that the governments own internal justification for the atrocity of Vietnam changed over time from containment of communism to protection of American prestige abroad. You can look it up in the Pentagon Papers. Kind of like how our internal justification of invading Iraq changed several times.

[houndawg]

I guess we can all find scholars to agree with how we feel if we want to do so. But if anarcho-commies aren't your cup of tea, how about Kennedy's Undersecretary of State, U. Alexis Johnson, speaking before Economic Club of Detroit in 1963?:

What is the attraction that Southeast Asia has exerted for centuries on the great powers flanking it on all sides? Why is it desirable and why is it important? First it provides a lush climate, fertile soil, rich natural resources, a relatively sparse population in most areas, and room to expand. The countries of Southeast Asia produce rich exportable surpluses such as rice rubber, teak, corn, tin, spices, oil, and many others.

Edit: I think Buckley's "scary system" argument still devolves to natural resources, in this case denying your opponent access to them.

Your arguments are specious, dawg, as usual.

Protecting resources, obtaining resources, and denying resources to your enemies are among the many reasons people and nations go to war. This is not a remarkable fact.

Competition for resources is not the only reason for war. This is not remarkable fact.

The concept of "sparse population" as a motivation for war in Vietnam is absurd. Among nations with 10M or more in population, Vietnam is the 11th most densely populated country in the world, ahead of the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and the U.S.

To the extent that Vietnam is "sparsely populated," you can blame your friends the commies, dawg, who intentionally murdered between 721,000 and 3,664,000 innocent civilians between 1945 and 1987 - not including combatant casualties.

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.TAB1.GIF" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Nice numbers, nate. Somewhere in between them is the number of innocent civilians killed by Uncle Sam with more bombs than were dropped in all of WW2, and chemicals like Agent Orange.

All wars are fought for money, nate.

[native]

Amtrak? No.

Post Office? Maybe. Kinda. USPS does a dang good job with first class mail and Priority Mail, and I would be happy to receive my meds - if I did meds - through the mail.

[CID1990]

Chomsky makes a compelling argument. I'm glad you were finally able to dig something up. You found one person who shares your opinion. It is not suprising at all that it would be Chomsky.

A self proclaimed anarchist-socialist as well as probably the most quoted opponent of US foreign policy since the 1960s. Of course Vietnam was about oil!

But--- I asked you to post one source of legitimate scholarship and you did.

I'll side with William F. Buckley when it comes to the debate with Chomsky. Buckley was a conservative and argued that intervention in Vietnam was due to the reasons I mentioned before. Chomsky is a socialist who argued that the Truman Doctrine was completely about an imperialistic land grab and had nothing to do with halting the spread of what was a very scary system at the time. The Buckley-Chomsky debate from 1969 is actually a very good read. Both men are very persuasive.However, Chomsky hardly represents widely accepted opinions on Vietnam or any other facet of US foreign policy, for that matter.

I guess opinions are all shaped by who you identify with.

As for diplomats- I am not a diplomat. I am a US vice consul, which means I represent the interests of US citizens who travel and work in the host country. Surely you know the difference between a consular officer and a political counselor?

I have no doubt that "Chomsky hardly represents widely accepted opinions on Vietnam or any other facet of US foreign policy, for that matter" to you and your crowd. But his opinion was, rather, became, widely accepted. I saw it every day, and it wasn't the opinion of just bongo playing long-hairs in San Francisco, especially after the Pentagon Papers revealed the government to be lying through their teeth about, well, everything.

As for diplomats - No I don't know the difference between a consular official and a political counselor, I'm a peasant on a farm in a isolated rural area. Also a Buckley fan.

Thank you for explaining and I suspect I'd be real smart not to travel in your sphere of influence.

Ok, I will accept that Chomsky's take on US foreign policy is widely accepted with "you and your crowd".

Political, Economic and Public Diplomacy officers are your traditional diplomats. Consular officers, until relatively recently, were separate entities. Only recently have consular officers been lumped in with the rest of the foreign service officers as a career track. I chose that track because my skill set matched most closely with it. CONS officers do represent the US with the populations of the host countries, but it is not actually in our job descriptions. We do not interface with foreign officals except to request fair treatment for US citizens who may find themselves locked up abroad, etc.

I doubt you would need my assistance if you came to Vietnam because you would fit right into the workers' paradise. (And the US citizens that I do assist are generally seeing a hell of a lot more space aliens than you are, trust me.)

[Chizzang]

Ok, I will accept that Chomsky's take on US foreign policy is widely accepted with "you and your crowd".

Chomsky has global appeal...
During the Bush Jr. era he was considered by some to be the only honest perspective on American foreign policy objectives in the Middle East - a huge percentage of his observations were of course correct

He's not well liked among those in the Federal Govt. (obviously) and is dismissed by most Patriotic Imperialists

[CID1990]

Ok, I will accept that Chomsky's take on US foreign policy is widely accepted with "you and your crowd".

Chomsky has global appeal...
During the Bush Jr. era he was considered by some to be the only honest perspective on American foreign policy objectives in the Middle East - a huge percentage of his observations were of course correct

He's not well liked among those in the Federal Govt. (obviously) and is dismissed by most Patriotic Imperialists

I actually like Chomsky and I enjoy his debating style. The Buckley-Chomsky debates I mentioned before are classic. I just happen to disagree with the way he arrives at his theory of US foreign relations.

I disagree with his position on Vietnam because his thesis represents what I think is an over-simplification of that particular conflict, as well as of conflict in general. Simplifying is tempting, and certainly has great appeal. But there were loads of people who were much closer to the times than us, who had also experienced WWII directly, for whom the idea of the spread of communism was much more frightening then than it is now in hindsight. Not everybody was motivated by greed and the idea that we might squeeze a buck out of Vietnam. Certainly not a former haberdasher from Missouri.

Chomsky's theory on our recent policy towards the MIddle East is accurate if you consider our postition there to be about oil. I do believe that the underlying problems in the MIddle East revolve around that. Why else would we be concerned about stability there? I think that our individual motives may vary (for instance, I do not consider our support of Israel to be about oil.... I consider it to be even less legitimate).

Since Chomsky claims that ALL military conflicts are about securing resources, then maybe he hit on something there. Even a broken clock is correct twice a day.

[houndawg]

Chomsky has global appeal...
During the Bush Jr. era he was considered by some to be the only honest perspective on American foreign policy objectives in the Middle East - a huge percentage of his observations were of course correct

He's not well liked among those in the Federal Govt. (obviously) and is dismissed by most Patriotic Imperialists

I actually like Chomsky and I enjoy his debating style. The Buckley-Chomsky debates I mentioned before are classic. I just happen to disagree with the way he arrives at his theory of US foreign relations.

I disagree with his position on Vietnam because his thesis represents what I think is an over-simplification of that particular conflict, as well as of conflict in general. Simplifying is tempting, and certainly has great appeal. But there were loads of people who were much closer to the times than us, who had also experienced WWII directly, for whom the idea of the spread of communism was much more frightening then than it is now in hindsight. Not everybody was motivated by greed and the idea that we might squeeze a buck out of Vietnam. Certainly not a former haberdasher from Missouri.

Chomsky's theory on our recent policy towards the MIddle East is accurate if you consider our postition there to be about oil. I do believe that the underlying problems in the MIddle East revolve around that. Why else would we be concerned about stability there? I think that our individual motives may vary (for instance, I do not consider our support of Israel to be about oil.... I consider it to be even less legitimate).

Since Chomsky claims that ALL military conflicts are about securing resources, then maybe he hit on something there. Even a broken clock is correct twice a day.

Used to love Firing Line but I missed the Buckley-Chomsky debates. I think liberals secretly wished Buckley were a liberal.

I don't think the Domino Theory is completely without credence, (but it's a great position for getting Native going all Donald Duck-on-meth) - your point about the WW2 generation and communism is an accurate description of the feelings of my parents and their crowd. I think that is why Vietnam was not a hard sell early on, and that the game was lost when that generation began to have doubts about the official story. I know it made me think the end of days was nigh when my own redneck daddy finally came to the conclusion that Richard Nixon was not a great American.

[native]

Your arguments are specious, dawg, as usual.

Protecting resources, obtaining resources, and denying resources to your enemies are among the many reasons people and nations go to war. This is not a remarkable fact.

Competition for resources is not the only reason for war. This is not remarkable fact.

The concept of "sparse population" as a motivation for war in Vietnam is absurd. Among nations with 10M or more in population, Vietnam is the 11th most densely populated country in the world, ahead of the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and the U.S.

To the extent that Vietnam is "sparsely populated," you can blame your friends the commies, dawg, who intentionally murdered between 721,000 and 3,664,000 innocent civilians between 1945 and 1987 - not including combatant casualties.

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.TAB1.GIF" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Jesus, if it isn't old "bring-a-knife-to-a-gunfight". Read it again Nate, that is a quote from Kennedy's own Undersecretary of State explaining why the great powers have been interested in SE Asia for centuries.


You see, nate, the problem with the Domino Theory is that the governments own internal justification for the atrocity of Vietnam changed over time from containment of communism to protection of American prestige abroad. You can look it up in the Pentagon Papers. Kind of like how our internal justification of invading Iraq changed several times.

Ask the families of the millions of dead civilians in Cambodia and Laos if they think the Domino Theory was valid.

Dawg, I agree with you that wars are fought for resources (among other reasons) and that administrations struggle to craft intelligible messages about what they are doing and why. But this is not remarkable.

[native]

Your arguments are specious, dawg, as usual.

Protecting resources, obtaining resources, and denying resources to your enemies are among the many reasons people and nations go to war. This is not a remarkable fact.

Competition for resources is not the only reason for war. This is not remarkable fact.

The concept of "sparse population" as a motivation for war in Vietnam is absurd. Among nations with 10M or more in population, Vietnam is the 11th most densely populated country in the world, ahead of the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and the U.S.

To the extent that Vietnam is "sparsely populated," you can blame your friends the commies, dawg, who intentionally murdered between 721,000 and 3,664,000 innocent civilians between 1945 and 1987 - not including combatant casualties.

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.TAB1.GIF" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Nice numbers, nate. Somewhere in between them is the number of innocent civilians killed by Uncle Sam with more bombs than were dropped in all of WW2, and chemicals like Agent Orange.

All wars are fought for money, nate.

Still a big number, but Uncle Sam's bombs killed fewer than 10% of the numbers of innocent civilians that Ho Chi Minh killed. We are talking about non-combatant civilian deaths.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[houndawg]

Nice numbers, nate. Somewhere in between them is the number of innocent civilians killed by Uncle Sam with more bombs than were dropped in all of WW2, and chemicals like Agent Orange.

All wars are fought for money, nate.

Still a bit number, but Uncle Sam's bombs killed fewer than 10% of the numbers of innocent civilians that Ho Chi Minh killed. We are talking about non-combatant civilian deaths.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Maybe if you use the assumption that all South Vietnamese were Viet Cong.....

[native]

Still a big number, but Uncle Sam's bombs killed fewer than 10% of the numbers of innocent civilians that Ho Chi Minh killed. We are talking about non-combatant civilian deaths.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Maybe if you use the assumption that all South Vietnamese were Viet Cong.....

Good point. My figures were for North Vietnamese civilians.

Lots of big numbers. Sickening to think about it. Of the 391,000 South Vietnamese non-combatant civilians killed through 1975, do you think the portion killed by American bombs was greater than the portion killed by the Viet Cong?

Still wouldn't hold a candle to the 650,000 South Vietnamese civilian prisoners, boat people and chain gang laborers killed by the commies from 1975 through 1984 as they consolidated power, when they were in control and there was no fog of war.

[Chizzang]

Chomsky has global appeal...
During the Bush Jr. era he was considered by some to be the only honest perspective on American foreign policy objectives in the Middle East - a huge percentage of his observations were of course correct

He's not well liked among those in the Federal Govt. (obviously) and is dismissed by most Patriotic Imperialists

I actually like Chomsky and I enjoy his debating style. The Buckley-Chomsky debates I mentioned before are classic. I just happen to disagree with the way he arrives at his theory of US foreign relations.

I disagree with his position on Vietnam because his thesis represents what I think is an over-simplification of that particular conflict, as well as of conflict in general. Simplifying is tempting, and certainly has great appeal. But there were loads of people who were much closer to the times than us, who had also experienced WWII directly, for whom the idea of the spread of communism was much more frightening then than it is now in hindsight. Not everybody was motivated by greed and the idea that we might squeeze a buck out of Vietnam. Certainly not a former haberdasher from Missouri.

Chomsky's theory on our recent policy towards the MIddle East is accurate if you consider our postition there to be about oil. I do believe that the underlying problems in the MIddle East revolve around that. Why else would we be concerned about stability there? I think that our individual motives may vary (for instance, I do not consider our support of Israel to be about oil.... I consider it to be even less legitimate).

Since Chomsky claims that ALL military conflicts are about securing resources, then maybe he hit on something there. Even a broken clock is correct twice a day.

He's been known to bee extremely accurate in regards to US Foreign Policy in Central & South America as well...

[JMU DJ]

To answer the original question. Yes. Yes I would buy a medication made by the government, chances are we've all already taken a medication that was initially developed in a NIH funded laboratory.

[Grizalltheway]

So, was it the federal government or the private sector that produced Vioxx? Inquiring minds want to know.