Not something that progresses humanity or society in a sense.

Nothing a Marine Corps division can’t clean out, Bookworm. Is it worst than Fallujah? hah. I say this half jokingly because I am making fun of the people who say that “there are limits to military solutions”. There are no limits, there is only the lack of will. People aren’t willing to do it, they are willing to tolerate it.

When there is a problem, Bookworm, whether of terrorism or crime or whatever, and people aren’t willing to pay the costs and do what is necessary to end the problem, the problem will persist. This is regardless of where you are at in this fallen world of ours.

This is true for Iraq and it is true for Richmond. The only difference is one of scale. Which means, Iraq is so high on the scale, that the US military has problems keeping law and order. Where if you send them to Richmond, it would be silenced of crime. Try sending the police in Richmond to deal with Iraq, and that’s basically what the Iraqis are doing with their police. It is unrealistic to expect police to maintain law and order when the military has problems doing so. you must purge the city first, then get the police in after folks have learned not to fight.

Most of the time, Bookworm, regular citizens are willing to pay the costs and have the will to do what is necessary. If you asked a regular joe in Richmond if he would like to see less to no crime, wouldn’t he say yes? But the problem always is not the citizens, Book, it is the leaders and politicians. Because the citizens suffer from problems predominantly, citizens have the most willpower and desire to solve problems. Politicians and leaders, believe that they are safe, and can stall and pevaricate or procrastinate. In extreme situations, this strengthens criminal elements, because if the politicians won’t offer protection, citizens will go looking somewhere else (mob or gangs) for protection.

The fake liberals can’t even comprehend how to deal with crime. No longer they are clueless in Iraq.

I make no guarantees Book, but if Bush did these three or 5 things, his popularity would be above 66% in my view.

Sent the military in to New Orleans, and used the military to remove from power the Governor and Mayor. Relocate all federal reconstruction and benefit to the military, remove it from FEMA jurisdiction.

Sent the military in to relieve the humanitarian crisis on the border, and to give shoot on sight orders if any identified criminals are located crossing the border one way or the other.

Sent the military in to black slums to reconstruct and rebuild, in response to criticisms that America needs help, not Iraq. Propaganda message is that what the Marine Corps learned in Fallujah and Baghdad, benefits Americans right now, right here.

People really don’t care about how you do things, Book, people only care that you do it. Cause they are looking out for their interests. The same lessons you learned in Iraq concerning how to fight the insurgency, applies double to internal crime.

By the by, Bush would have needed to repeal certain laws after 9/11, which means that Bush needed to be what he was criticized for, which is taking too much Executive Power. And Executive Power is executed through the military, by repealing laws on the military concerning where the military may be used inside the United States, the President accrues amazing efficacy and power to deal with internal and external problems.

But, if you don’t want to be popular, if you prefer traditional in a way or you respect the Supreme Court, just follow Bush’s steps in this version of reality.

Historically, the military has been salvation for blacks. Either in WWII because of how it helped convince America that Civil Rights was justified, or after the Civil War in which federal troops protected blacks from Democrat reprisals in the South or at the voting booths.

What is true for Iraq, is true for anyone and anything. It becomes a synergy. If you can demonstrate progress using the military to alleviate poverty and crime, then you are in a better situation to say “have faith in me, being in Iraq is the right thing to do”. Humans don’t have infinite patience, you got to demonstrate some “material benefits”, not just some kind illusionary progress. Nobody cares about progress unless their own pockets are being filled or they somehow benefit, that is just human nature, you can’t change it.

Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are good examples of why we can’t deal with Al Sadr. If you can’t provide for your OWN people, then there will come charlatans and ambitious power brokers to fill in the gap. We can’t deal with Al Sadr because Bush doesn’t believe that dealing with folks like Jesse Jackson is about taking his power away from. Taking Al Sadr’s and Jackson’s power away, means providing for the security and spiritual needs of the black community. It takes a large propaganda operation, with good funding, as well as armed propaganda teams that go into black neighborhoods and alleviate problems directly (military units). It isn’t about bribes. People need material and spiritual benefits. People need hope, they need to believe, not just social welfare checks. Jesse Jackson has a belief system that his followers believe in. Propaganda is there to counter this, along with material benefit teams.

I believe that you can win the loyalty of humans by showing them that they have material benefits, if they ally with us. More material benefits than they would get if they allied with anyone else. “Not dying” is a material benefit, by the way.

It all comes back to this. Some people believe that there are limits to the military solving problems, I don’t believe in that. I believe that limitations to how problems are solved, is inherent in a particular human being. I believe a person who is open minded and knows how to solve all kinds of problems, can use any kind of power to do so. Whether military or political or police or etc.

The role of the government and of leaders is to decrease chaos, crime being chaotic. By decreasing chaos and controlling it, you bring balance to the lives of innocents, of those who simply want to go through life working for their lively hoods. But the people who are able to decrease chaos the most, also are those who BRING the most chaos, who DON’T obey traditions or laws or limitations. That is the paradox. To uphold law, sometimes you must bend or even break it. There are many paradoxes in the human condition, Total War being one of them.

If one group is being arrested at twice the rate in SF as they are elsewhere, the first question ought not to be are they being discriminated against, that’s off the point. The first question ought to be: are they in fact committing twice the crimes in SF as they are in the elsewhere? Or, are they only half as bright about it, so therefore they get caught twice as often.

SF, an odd and strange sort of place to begin with, seems to have answered both these latter questions affirmatively. It is a place to which people travel to commit crimes; and indeed they are idiots about it, standing on street-corners inviting even the most dimwitted plainclothes cop to pop them.

But Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, of course, won’t see it that way. It’ll become another weapon in the campaign to keep the two of them personally wealthy.

I don’t much like most cops, and I don’t much like their world-view, but it seems to me they have advanced sufficient justification in this matter.

It is amazing how history not only repeats itself but continues along the same left track.. incessantly.

When I was politically active in the 60’s there was a campaign from the left (maybe you in those days) to hogtie the police with “citizen review boards.” These boards were made up of those citizens (or non-citizens) who had been “oppressed” by the police and were designed to blunt proper enforcement and lobby for a national federal police force, far removed from the local, average citizenry..

We had bumper stickers which read “Support Your Local Police.”

Policing is best accomplished by local folks who know their citizens as they do their neighbor. Or am I living back in the 60’s?

ExP(Jack)