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Contained in a letter written to Burges Ball (1794)…
“For can any thing be more absurd, more arrogant, or more pernicious to the peace of Society, than for self created bodies, forming themselves into permanent Censors, and under the shade of Night in a conclave, resolving that acts of Congress which have undergone the most deliberate, and solemn discussion by the Representatives of the people, chosen for the express purpose, and bringing with them from the different parts of the Union the sense of their Constituents, endeavouring as far as the nature of the thing will admit, to form that will into Laws for the government of the whole; I say, under these circumstances, for a self created, permanent body, (for no one denies the right of the people to meet occasionally, to petition for, or to remonstrate against, any Act of the Legislature &ca) to declare that this act is unconstitutional, and that act is pregnant of mischief; and that all who vote contrary to their dogmas are actuated by selfish motives, or under foreign influence; nay in plain terms are traiters to their Country, is such a stretch of arrogant presumption as is not to be reconciled with laudable motives”
Kinda shoots down the whole debunked sheriff idea being promoted by the founding fathers, doesn’t it?
Sometimes one of the exercises one must go through in executive training is a workshop where one puts oneself in another’s shoes. This exercise broadens the perspective of a budding young exec and gives them the rare view not often allowed, of seeing his own problems from his adversaries’ perspective…
Since one is too often, too deep in one’s own crises to think objectively, the formula is to take one’s own fears, correlate them in a fabricated parallel situation, and then role play…. The lesson is that things are often not as simple and clear cut as one naturally assumes, where one sees themselves as good, thereby making all against them, evil…
So, with your indulgence….
May 1st, 2014….
A flash mob of armed farmers stormed the Capitol building in Harrisburg today and took control of the building. The police officers were disarmed and allowed to leave. Hostages are still inside.
May 2nd.
The police of Harrisburg have surround the capitol, but are dwarfed as crowds approaching a million have spontaneously poured in from across Pennsylvania’s countryside in support of the demonstrators inside. The police are taunted and are awaiting reinforcements.
Late afternoon riot police from Philadelphia, with heavy machinery, have arrived. They are expected to storm the building at dawn. The Governor of PA has now officially called this an illegal takeover and has stressed that the supporters give up and go home.
May 3rd. At dawn the Philadelphia police storm the building and with guns blazing, meet fierce resistance. They pull back. The crowds have grown larger as Patriot Groups across the nation have sounded the alarm. Volunteers are pouring in from all over the United States. The Tea Party is now calling for the overthrow of the entire government of PA and the formulation of a new one, more closely aligned to the needs of the country music loving people of rural Pennsylvania….
May 4th. The governor again calls the meeting illegal but the crowds are bigger than the police. It is a stalemate.
May 5th. The federal government has negotiated an agreement between the governor and the demonstrators. The demonstration will be dismissed, and the governor will listen to the needs of the Tea Party and the patriots.
Late afternoon, Sheriff Arapao from Hokey, Dokey Arizona, has called for the elimination of the governor, to be replaced by a constitutional sheriff as head of an interim government.
May 6th. Shots were fired into the crowd by unknown assailants. 100 demonstrators were killed. In the morning the crowd, angered, stormed the capitol to find it empty, doors and files all unlocked, and computer running. No one has seen the governor or his officers.
May 7th. Still no sign of the governor. The head of the Harrisburg Patriot Group declared himself as head of the interim government. and his followers to be the legislative body. In rapid succession they passed several measures…. Taxes were abolished. Slavery of the Negro reinstated. Government welfare abolished. English only could be spoken. No restrictions on buying or selling weaponry of any kind. All questions of legality would be handled by the interim government. And it was also deemed legal to kill any man, woman, or child, for not going to what was considered a “true Christian” church on Sunday morning…
May 8th. Rejoicing erupts spontaneously in the mountains and countryside of PA… South-eastern PA is in shock. Particularly among the dominant Afro-American population, Hispanics, Asians and Muslims. City leaders governing Philadelphia and surrounding counties, say they will respect the interim government’s authority as being that of the state, and try to hold Pennsylvania together… “We are still one state” they say “and will work within the framework provided.”.. There is considerable angst among the blacks however…
May 9th. The US Navy pulls into the Philadelphia Shipyard, where hundreds of mothballed ships lie. The US says it is simply protecting its assets. Civic groups call for the US to send in additional troops to protect Philadelpians. They say they would rather remain in the US than become part of this new Pennsylvania run by Tea Partiers gone amok.
Sheriff Arapao calls on the US not to interfere or intervene and says doing so will be seen as an act of aggression toward the patriots and the US will suffer dire consequences if they do.
The US responds that an Arizona Sheriff has no jurisdiction in Philadelphia.
May 11th. Reports that multiple convoys of armored personal carriers have crossed the Walt Whitman and Ben Franklin bridges and have now entered Philadelphia. Conveys were also reported seen along I 95 in Delaware and heading north upwards through Chester, and also up from Maryland along Route 1….
May 12th… The US reports it is not acquiring Philadelphia, but is merely setting a perimeter to protect its new base in the shipyard. Sheriff Arapao is calling on the complete removal of all troops except for the original ones originally located in the shipyard. The US responds that given the violent antics of the Tea Party in Harrisburg, they simply don’t have the trust factor with this new regime to do so.
May 12th. The ousted governor of PA surfaces and holds a press conference in Washington DC and calls for the reinstatement of his government, calling the coup an illegal use of force and an action condoned by no laws or precedents.
Citizens in Philadelphia hold massive demonstrations along the Ben Franklin Parkway in support of a future US occupation. Tea Partiers are holed up in their militia armories, blockaded and surrounded by US forces. There has been no bloodshed reported.
May 13th. The interim government of Tea Partiers has called on the US to leave. The US now has said it is there to stay…. Sheriff Arapao contends that the US is planning to take over all of Eastern PA. The US says that should be decided by referendum, the people have the right to choose with whom they wish to be governed. Sheriff Arapao says that is unfair because everyone knows that in such a vote, most of urban PA would side with staying in the US and not elect to be under the rowdy independence of a sheriff and his posse….
May 14th. Local Tea Party citizens not affiliated with the interim government descend upon the Mexican community of Hazelton and set fire to houses of Mexicans and burn their cars…
May 15th… African communities across the state of PA, and particularly in Pittsburgh, reported sightings of armed men in white robes and several crosses were burned in Three Rivers Point. There were also reported incidents of bricks thrown through windows of minority businesses.
May 16th. Breaking. The interim government just issued a proclamation on sheepskin that declares that no Afro-Americans, no low income, and no Mexicans will be hither allowed in public schools or public buildings. They use is only for white people.
The US immediately calls on them to change, staying those with colored skin that is darker than white, also have rights as well. Sheriff Arapao says the posse do, what the posse do. That is what freedom is… sometimes.
May 17th. The US puts 40,000 troops along the extended border of PA. Is says it is for field training Sheriff Arapao calls it provocative and sends out a call for patriots everywhere to matriculate into PA to fight the US imperialists.
May 18th. Armed personal waving US flags occupy the West Chester Courthouse this morning . There was no blood shed. All participants appearing to be afro-Americans, were masked, well organized and said wore American flags on their logos.
The interim government called it an act of war, and from a hill top of Arizona, Sheriff Arapao called upon Americans to abandon their diets and all drink milkshakes, to apply pressure by shaming the ineffectiveness of Michelle Obama’s healthy diet plan. The US laughed at that retaliation, but Sheriff Arapao claimed it would be highly effective for it would piss off the real power inside the White House…
Meanwhile the interim Tea Party government said it was in a financial crisis. It had no money to pay anyone, it was unable to maintain any governmental services.
May 19th — Early this morning Delaware County courthouse was stormed by what they said were local separatists but all had the same markings as did those in West Chester. The courthouse was quietly taken over, as well as the water plant and sewer.
In West Chester, members of the wealthy neighborhoods who tended to support the Tea Party’s call of no taxes, demonstrated in front of the occupied West Chester courthouse… They were soon outmatched, and overrun by counter demonstrations of relatively poorer African Americans who quickly took control of the street.
May 20th Demonstrators took over the city building in Montgomery PA today. Tea partiers with the help of the PA national guard surrounded the building and set fire to it, after boarding the doors to prevent escape. 48 pro US demonstrators died.
Sheriff Arapao blamed the deaths on the US, saying they were creating the demonstrations and thus forced these 48 to die. The US countered saying most Afro Americans are very concerned that the official potion of the Pennsylvania government is to have them enslaved, and has already banned them from public schools and public buildings, and in this case who were basically doing what was done by the Tea Party originally at the capitol building in Harrisburg.
Sheriff Arapao called the US a liar and called upon all Americans to punish the US by not eating broccoli this time… (Take that Michelle)….
Meanwhile the neighboring states of New York, Ohio, and New Jersey have been working on a deal with the Tea Partiers and the US government. It would involve PA’s borders remaining intact, but give autonomy over each region to that regions’ inhabitants, based on their choices in that election. It would give US control over Philadelphia.
The Tea Party says no deal on elections or future government will be made until the US is completely removed from their territory. The US replies that they will stay until the Tea Party can show they are responsible citizens, willing to let others have rights too.
May 21– The Tea Party with the help of their patriot Vietnam vets flying confiscated national guard helicopters, attacked the strongholds in eastern PA taking over all. 8 people died in the gun battles, several innocent bystanders hit by stray fire. The total dead is over 50. The separatists loyal to the US, quickly retake the buildings after the air power has left.
May 22 — Sheriff Arapao and the interim government call upon the US to move its troops back from the border. The US replies it has, but Sheriff Arapao says his patriots tell him it is not so….
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And that is where Ukraine as seen by Russia is today… It is ironic and sad that due to normal human nature, simply because we Americans been told that Putin is “bad” by people (Sarah Palin) who we don’t really know well, or don’t know if we can trust even at all (Fox News) , how quickly it taints us to jump to that very conclusion, with no supporting facts… Anyone who states an cautionary opinion otherwise, quickly gets pooh-poo’d by the tiny little minds here in the US..
But when roles are reversed, Putin’s own account seems very plausible. As we go forward, we must ask ourselves why the US today in our real world is now playing the role of Sheriff Arapao in the pretend one above… Is it because there are many moles of Sheriff Arapao replicated and buried within our real government, today? People who perhaps, don’t really care about being right or wrong, … but just want a war they’ve been planning in such detail all these years… to finally happen?
Did you ever notice how a fight starts on a elementary school playground? A stare down, and obviously neither wants to do it. but neither wants to hear the taunts of “chicken” either… It starts with one bystander… “Fight, fight, fight, fight,” and gets picked up by his accomplice, “fight, fight, fight, fight,”,,, and then his toady joins in… “fight, fight, fight, fight,” and then innocent bystanders flocking to the sudden outburst, who really have nothing to win or lose but just want some relief from their boredom, find themselves captured and joining in… “fight, fight, fight, fight,,,”…
Maybe they will fight; maybe they won’t… but usually when they don’t…. it is only because an adult stepped into the fight zone and took control…..
The real problem today, is those yelling “fight, fight, fight, fight” inside our nation’s beltway…. They will always be there too. Whether to push Kennedy into the Bay of Pigs, or the US and NATO into a war with Russia.
For them, it is all the same.
This state bill was to keep guns out of the hands of mentally ill. It achieved a roadblock when the idea was broached that mentally ill people would not seek help if it meant the loss of their guns…
The bill was voted down on this fallacy.
If someone is mentally ill and has guns, there are four possibilities… Four….
Mentally ill with guns and bullets // Mentally ill without guns and bullets.
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Mentally healthy with guns and bullets // Mentally healthy without guns and bullets
Of those four possibilities stretching across the plateau of human existence, only one is dangerous to fellow human beings…
A mentally ill person who has guns and bullets….
Now that we have isolated the problem… Let us look at it more closely….. we again divide by the four possibilities…
Mentally ill will get help and use his arsenal // Mentally ill will get help and not use his arsenal
==========================================================================================================
Mentally ill will not get help and use his arsenal // Mentally ill will not get help and not use his arsenal.
Of those four possibilities we now have two that are dangerous to innocent human beings.
Mentally ill who will get help and still use his arsenal, and Mentally ill who do not get help and will still use their arsenal….
Therefore across the panel of humanity, all races, all genders, all classes, every non-accidental shooting death is caused by the hand of a mentally ill person owning a firearm, whether under treatment or not…
Most of the more famous murderers in history have had treatment for their psychosis. Most of those being treated still had access to their firearms, and for what ever reason, choose to use them….
As of this point in history,… as far as I can find on today’s search engines,… there has never been a gun-caused mass murder by someone who had no access to guns…
Again, people in psychiatric care have blown other people away; people without guns, have never done so…..
Only one conclusion from this logical exercise can be gleaned….
If you voted to allow the continence of mentally-ill people owning guns, no matter what flimsy reason you used to assuage your guilt, you cast a vote for an upcoming future mass-murder.
If you voted to disallow the continence of mentally-ill people from owning guns, you took the only step in the right direction that would do anything to stop its re-occurrence…..
People in treatment still kill when they have guns. Without guns, one rids oneself of the problem….
The bottom line: to allow a crazy person to have a full blown arsenal, is madness. To think that allowing him to have a full blown arsenal will make him more likely to seek treatment, is not thinking straight….
There is only one solution; redo HB 88….
In passing I acknowledge that this is an emotional issue for those on both sides. When we use emotions to think, none of us think straight. If ever the time should arise where we as a society make that choice to think straight, then keeping guns out of the hands of mentally ill goes a long way to preventing mass murderers from happening: …. Logically speaking of course.
One of the nice things about this past-time is that one sees trends flow across one’s desk….
Right now, look at what is happening.
- Gigantic Power Plant Being Rammed Through Newark.
- Gigantic Scheme to Funnel Billions of Educational Dollars to Private Firms Through Common Core.
- Gigantic Scheme to Cut Government Spending Despite It’s Known Benefit to the Economy
- Gigantic Scheme to Funnel Money Out of Social Security Into Privately Managed Accounts.
- Gigantic Scheme to Funnel Your Money from Medicare Into Private High Cost Health Care.
- Gigantic Scheme to Prevent the Breakup of Gigantic Medical Conglomerates by Obamacare.
Common thread? There is too much money, and it can now do gigantic things….
Like putting out a gas fire, the first thing is to shut off the gas… Control the money.
We first broke monopolies . When they grew back, we instilled Income tax. When that was rescinded, it eventually created the Great Depression so afterwards, we then put them back in. While in place we had outstanding economic growth from 1930- 2001. That has never happened in any economy before income taxes were invented.
We rescinded taxes again, and got 2008… We puttered until 2013, when taxes were added to the top half of the top one percent. Just that has driven growth alone. More would be better.
It is obvious that raising taxes on the top one percent forces reinvestment back into the economy of this country that does not happen by their altruistic, philanthropic tendencies alone….
If none of these entities had so much money to burn, smaller amounts of money would now be burning in each of these cases attacking the very foundations of American economic stability and health….
Taxes are good. More taxes are better than less taxes… Taxes don’t take money; they allow for better choices to reinvest that money, and all become richer in the process, not just those already rich beyond all means of being able to spend it……
So again, tell me why Newark should have to breath uranium residue just so they can get richer?
So please continue to fight these little battles. Just realize where the reinforcements are coming from, that every fiscal year they are spawned anew, and acknowledge they’ve been beaten before, and can be again. Particularly when the odds are 99 to 1 in OUR favor…..
80 percent of the cost of treating victims of gun violence in 2010 was borne in part by taxpayers, according to an analysis of hospital and insurance data.
Hospitals in the U.S. spent $630 million in 2010 treating the victims of gun violence, two dollars for every man woman and child in America. The Medicaid costs of gun violence alone that year amounted to approximately $327 million. Private insurers, and hospitals eating the cost of the uninsured, made up the remaining $403 million.
The average cost of a hospital visit for a gun violence victim is $14,000 more than that of the average hospital stay.
But is the hospital cost the only cost to society? It appears no. Gun violence cost the US $174 billion in 2010. The societal cost per firearm assault injury (includes workloss, medical/mental health care, emergency transportation, police/criminal justice activities, insurance claims processing, employer costs and decreased quality of life) … was $5.1 million for each fatality and $433,000 for each hospital-admitted patient. You as a consumer pay this cost in everything you buy; it is added in. Put in perspective that amounts to $522 dollars for every single man, every single woman, and every single child in America.
How can we save ourselves this money? How can we stop the majority of gun violence? Very simple. Register every gun to an single owner so if a gun is used to kill, someone gets held responsible. Very simple. Registering hurts no one; your car, your house, even your vaccinations are registered for example.
Isn’t it horrible we are having a big battle over something as tiny as registering a fire arm which over a decade has cost every man, woman, and child $5,220 dollars? Over “registering?” We’ve lost our senses.
Americans are paying dearly for the “privilege” to keep a gun that is non-traceable. By registering all firearms and thereby being able to keep guns out of those who would use them in criminal actions, great savings can be saved for all the millions of the American people.
We did, we almost won this with the first wave of the attack; we did far better than we expected; we suffered no causalities. Time to launch again for 2014. The truth, and money, both lie flatly on the side of registering all firearms…
Goal should be: if you are not an upstanding citizen? No Gun. Period.
Let us start here. A good leader takes his people where they want to go. A good leader does not force his people to go where they definitely don’t want to go… That is ruling. Not leading.
A good leader convinces his people why they must do something. He makes sure he puts in how it will benefit them. If it doesn’t benefit them, he is ruling. Not leading.
A good leader creates good out of evil. There is a moral equivalency to leadership. It can be defined shallowly at times. Such as calling Hitler good leader based on his strategy of conquering France. But time makes such affirmations short lived. I don’t think anyone looking over the rubble left of Germany in 1945 at that moment considered Hitler a good leader after viewing his legacy.
A good leader does not follow the rules… He decides when and where the rules apply. Some would apply the name “great leader” to one who never wavered. Well, such a leader would have ruined the life of a little boy whose grandmother sent along a knife to cut the cake, not knowing that knives in school were grounds for expulsion. A lot of misdirected people in leadership positions in that particular school district, made bad decisions based on their mistaken view of what makes a good leader. A good leader does not always follow the rules.
A good leader decides when and where the rules apply.
In Syria we have controversy. We have one argument stating that Syria must be punished. We have the other that says War must be reserved only for something Huge. That “Huge” is of course undefined and fits in with “we know it when we see it.”
As the executive of the world’s largest force, militarily, economically, and morally, our president pretty much get to decide.
Here is what a great leader would do. He would find a way to unite the two sides into one… He would find a way to punish Assad of Syria in a way that would scare any other despot thinking of using chemical weapons, and do it without going to war.
That would be great leadership.
So what would scare Assad the most? It’s hard to tell, but my guess is that his biggest fear as a man, is if his palace is overrun by Syrians, who basically tear him apart, and do his wife and children, then systematically erase any acknowledgement that he or his dad ever existed… That whole reign of terror becomes ridiculed, laughed at, for the rest of History. i would guess that is how you could get to Assad.
So, we, (not just the US but the rest of the world) have to make that threat real.. We don’t have to carry it out necessarily, but we have to make it real. How can that happen?
I think first, is that we make crossing the border out of Syria a real good move for Syrians… Send the signal, that if you leave Syria, the world community will settle you somewhere, give you a job, and a chance to begin a life of freedom and prosperity. ideally what we are doing is a Cold War. Over time we are saying: “See how great the Rest of the world lives? Oh, you poor Syrians… Escape and come join us”. Where could we relocate them? Iran could step up, Jordan,, and Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States,
This is how your hurt Assad… Turn his own people against him… No ruler can rule a group of people who don’t want to be ruled. He can use brutality to a certain extent, but the numbers are completely on the side of the population wanting him gone. With our intelligence capacity, he will never be safe… Every bodyguard is a potential killer..
And that, more or less, is what we should do… It is what a great leader does… He solves problems in ways where the evil get punished and the good win out.
Going to war, rewards those doing evil, and hurts the good….
It is time our President, become the great leader. Not by digging down and reinforcing the costly methods promoted in the past.. But to devise and implement new methods which because of their success, will be utilized far into the future….
August 6th… Classified Document: ” Bin Laden Determined To Attack US!”
We did nothing….
So you tell me, is reacting to the identical same type of threat, good judgment?
Photo Courtesy of The Atlantic
My guess is yes. Remember how the election of 2000 forgot all about the national debt headed towards zero. It forgot all about the greatest economic boom in America’s history. It forgot about the prosperity that every quintile of the American Public experience growth from one year to the next. It forgot about the peace that was in the Balkans. It forgot about the curtailing of Welfare. The election in 2000 was decided on morality. More people in those good times were interested in “morality” than what was good for the economic future of this country. Because of “morality” (translated as sexual immorality) even smart people could not bring themselves to vote for more of the same, and instead switched to something completely different. It was close. Florida proved it, but had that immoral incident never been brought to light, … things would have been so much different today. it affected that many voters, enough to throw an election in the middle of the biggest boom times ever, to the minority party.
That is a valuable lesson. Now for a known Obama supporter and guide, to have severe misgivings over this use of secrecy and reading all data on all citizens, and keeping them for future reference, (one can only think for sinister reasons), is very telling. This is a gut mover; one like having the president dally with an intern which sets a lot of people off. Both are impossible to justify. The simple fact that all this information is for sale to prospective employers, competitors for the next promotion, or spouses wishing to exit a relationship, has grave consequences to a lot of American’s private lives. And it is not that they did something bad. It is that accusations (unfounded) can be made on piecemeal information (as was done by Issa in the IRS hearings) and the citizen of the United States cannot defend his actions. In fact, he never knows of what he was accused. He gets turned down for this, or for that, and it is all from a mistake…
The Obama Administration is in grave danger of losing his place in history. His legacy will be shadowed by his upholding of this secret spying. He has only one out, and it must take place now; surprise everyone, and his legacy will be saved, as well as create a democratic administration which will not undo, as was promised by Romney, everything the current president has put in place.
Here is what he has to do.
1) Fire and replace the current director with someone Constitutionals trust.
2) Declare all NSA actions will now be open. FOIA will apply to the NSA.
3) Remove all objections to lawsuits in court, which seek clarification over whether the Constitution was violated or not.
4) Since the NSA is in charge of domestic spying, (the CIA does International), the NSA rules need to change to that of the FBI. Though not perfect, secrecy is still kept, but the super-secrecy is stopped.
5) Warrants will be required for all searches. That is the minimum of what the Constitution requires.
6) Encourage all internet providers not to cooperate unless they have a court order requiring them to do so for each person. Outlaw blanket searches. Outlaw phishing.
7) Admit the NSA went overboard, and take the responsibility for it. Say it was a mistake, which you plan and hope it will be fixed long before you hand over the White House keys to your successor.
Mark my words. If a very moderate Republican (Christie) ran and said he would “shut down the NSA”, he would get my vote as of now. This is serious and you had better listen to those outside of Washington, before you listen to those within. if you are skeptical, I don’t blame you. But I have to tell you, we survived Bush; we can survive a moderate Republican who is far more clear headed and able to stand up to nut case conservatives, which was Bush’s biggest personal fault; he caved. You need to understand that all that damage by Bush, affects my children far less than having them be slandered for something they know nothing of, or did not do because it is attached to their name. Our privacy is of utmost importance to us. Just like America sent a signal that sex in the White House would not be tolerated, you are in the same boat now. Clinton won the impeachment battle. It cost Gore the next election.
The Republicans have something on you here; you are guilty; this is scary stuff. Any dodging, or keeping the status quo, hurts your legacy every day it exists in its current form. You know what you have to do, and the sooner it gets done, the sooner all talk among our citizens goes back towards getting rid of Republicans completely, so we finally can fix the economy.
It would be one more thing.. you got right.
Please read Steve’s reports on Delaware’s offshoot of Homeland Security here, here and here….
We are getting our money’s worth with this bunch, that’s for sure… I wonder when they’ll let civilians drive it? I think the monster mile would be a good test track for civilians to get the opportunity….
Can you imagine seeing this thing pass you on the Delaware Memorial Bridge and at the apex it goes sailing off into the sky? What will they think of spending our money on next…
(I want one btw. )
An old American was reprocessing his old studies of Brezhnev-Soviet-Military thinking and brought back interesting points of discussion that directly relate to Syria.
The old Soviets had a classification for different types of wars:
“Many of these—such as the categorization of wars in ideological terms (including wars between imperialism and socialism, civil wars between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, wars between bourgeois states, national liberation wars)—now appear quaint and irrelevant for understanding today’s (and perhaps even yesterday’s) world.”
There was one other: wars between the people and a regime of extreme reaction
“What they understood about these conflicts between a dictatorial regime and its opponents was that they were not conflicts between two parties, but among three”
“In wars between the people and a regime of extreme reaction…both communists and non-communists united to fight the dictatorship, with each group hoping later to establish its preferred form of government (dictatorship of the proletariat or republican democracy).
In these conflicts, once the dictator was overthrown, the Soviets knew they eventually had the upper hand because their supported group had outside support, whereas the moderates would be (abandoned by the United States who had been propping up the dictator) forced to fend for themselves. With all factors being equal, the extra force could make a minority within the initial revolt, grab power after all was done.
Back then, it was America supporting the regimes of extreme reaction; the Soviets were seen the revolutionaries. Today it is Russia and Iran, who support these dictatorial regimes, and moderates and a few islamists who are those engaged in making change.
The lesson taught was that once Assad falls, without America’s strong continued support of the moderates, the otherwise strong support of Saudi’s Sunnis behind the Islamists will tip the balance to their favor. For as in the past, when moderates took on an American supported regime of extreme reaction, and the communists joined in the fight, it became viewed as part of the bipolar tug of war between the Communists and Capitalistic USA. Therefore even though the moderates usually far outnumbered the splinter cells of Communists, because the ending conflict was deemed a Soviet victory over the US, the communists had tremendous clout and enough support to take over power.
This certainly makes Syria clear. In their battle against Assad, the Islamists supported by the Radical Sunni movements are few in number compared to the moderates who want a democratic republic after Assad leaves.
If Assad gets pushed out, the Islamists because of their unlimited funding and support can push themselves into power quickly, meanwhile the moderates sit around and try to figure out their next step. In that vacuum the organized faction always wins. The US then as now, could prevent this from happening by throwing its weight behind the moderates after the dictator is removed by being a counterbalancing force.
Our success in Western Europe after the Second World War by doing just that, never translated itself afterwards over to East Asia, Africa, or Central America. Instead of immediately inserting ourselves as a civilian presence when moderates and radicals toppled a regime, we sat on our hands, and only later would then send military hardware in our feeble attempt to contain the outbreak our own inaction created.
The lesson for the US is that we really need to not focus so much first on the war itself and then immediately extricate ourselves after the conflict when we are needed most, but we actually we need to use our debacle in Iraq as a self-taught lesson to create a civilian team we can move in at a moment’s notice with all the backing and assistance exhibited by the Marshall Plan, to quickly mend broken services, return to normalcy, and stifle the unrest that allows civil wars to fester and continue among both factions of winners long after the regime of extreme reaction is overthrown.
We need to focus on reacting immediately with ways to get a nation quickly back on its own feet as soon as the Dictator is disposed.
Our opponents of 40 years ago figured this out. If we can learn this, that may be the most valuable legacy the Brezhnev era can ever pass on to us.
kavips 
