Don't forget our lovely little spat with Mexico in 1846. We wanted to settle the American-Mexican border at the Rio Grande, but the Mexicans wanted to use the Nueces River. So we parked our men on the 'American' side of the Rio Grande, and let the Mexicans attack. We let the Mexicans come in and try to push us off, and we said, "Oh Hell naw!" and decided we wanted California and Arizona and New Mexico anyway. Just for shits and giggles. And this was after we accepted Texas into the union despite it having been officially Mexican territory. We made a land-grab on Mexico and told them to piss off.

Are you suggesting neocon activity may, in part, be seen in the light of being a more successful Aaron Burr conspiracy?

Burr should've been taken out and shot years before this happened. The man was literally a loose cannon, and shooting Hamilton nailed the coffin shut on his career, and it was only his connections during the War that got him anywhere. Such is the way of things, I suppose.

Anyway, in regards to your question, the only reason Burr didn't get any support was because Spain, at the time, was a very big, very mean target and had several advantages that would've made war with them incredibly stupid. 1) Spain is still a major player on the world stage and controls the vast majority of Latin and South America, 2) Their fleets may not be a match for England or France but are still enough to blockade every major American port, 3) The United States has just acquired a territory that has doubled their size and they don't have the manpower to control, and had at one time belonged to Spain itself.

I can imagine Jefferson shitting himself when he got wind of this. Taking on England with a revolution was one thing, since England never really gave two shits about the colonies and only really backed down once the French got involved. Taking on Spain, which has troops all over the damned place and has the ear of France, who was still pissed after we ditched them at the end of the War, would've been stupid on a grand scale. And forget about England sending anyone to help, they had their own issues, what with Napoleon suddenly having an additional $15 million to play with.

The US was poor during this time, and the army? A joke. Farmers don't make good soldiers and it was a miracle they pulled off the Revolution at all. We saw in 1812 just how prepared the US was for war with any major power, and it was only English goodwill towards us that didn't end with everyone saluting the Union Jack. Though I guess that, since we later saw Andrew Jackson come out of the War of 1812 with enough political clout to get kicked upstairs to the presidency, Aaron Burr would've gotten there instead, being the idiot who kicked the whole damn thing off. Not sure who scares me more, Jackson or Burr.

The US was actually... tolerably well prepared in some terms. The period from the 1790s up through 1812 had been spent on a lot of fort-building, and the forts were at least somewhat effective. Militia units were a bit more organized- still unsuited for confronting British regulars, but still capable of denying large areas to British occupation.

The British ultimately lost the revolution because it just wasn't practical to put enough boots on the ground to control every square mile of the colonies with strong forces, and a weak local garrison could be overrun by militia. Even if their army had been winning every battle instead of just most of them, they'd still more or less lost the war because they couldn't convince any of the colonies to actually surrender and come back to the fold without an armed occupation.

In 1812-14, the situation was more or less the same. It would have been theoretically possible for the British to re-subdue the colonies, but even with no "English goodwill," I don't think the game would have been viewed as worth the candle. The British simply weren't interested in keeping a chunk of land that needed that many armed soldiers to control that much wilderness and that few valuable population centers.

For fuck's sake, you worthless sack of shit, this addresses only the most tangential point of what I said, and I can simply modify it to



to fucking destroy the pathetic semblance of an argument that you could have made, though it wouldn't have actually disputed anything critical about what I said. I mean, if I actually called you on this formally it would no doubt be "hall monitor bullshit", but I am really freakin' tired of you refusing to address what people respond to you with. So why does a tradition of rape, murder, and pillage mean that the US should continue that? Are the lives and well-beings of people subordinate to your desire to continue traditions of abrogating them? PS: This means killing, raping, and mutilating people.

Care to back that up? Or at least put in a dozen caveats.
To me none of the above is congruent with how the revolutionaries themselves described it, nor with how contemporary historians described it.
Or to reiterate my point from an earlier topic where you and I discussed this.
from here
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=147949&hilit=french+militia&start=25

So far H.R.3785 - To repeal section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 - has three co-sponsors:

o Rep. Justin Amash [R, MI-3]

o Rep. John Duncan [R, TN-2]

o Rep. Walter Jones [R, NC-3]

So far 100% support for the bill by site participants.

Um... so let me clarify, is this a repeal of the NDAA section 1021 forever, or just for one year?

I'm a little confused about how this operates, though. The Supreme Court won't get involved unless someone with standing brings a suit that makes it to their attention, correct? But they won't necessarily intervene to prevent the formation, funding, and staffing of an "alternative justice system" that is outside their control. If such a system can be formed and put into operation, such that any person with standing to bring suit could be "disappeared" without judicial review, how can the Court actually address this? While I don't think it's (immediately) likely that the NDAA will be used for this in any significant way, if it does tend in that direction, what actual mechanisms will stop it? Constitutional or not, if it actually evades the means by which the Constitution is enforced, how can it be stopped?

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Every day is victory.
No victory is forever.

I'm pretty sure the courts (not just Supremes, but the lower courts too) can issue a summons- "So-and-so jail, bring us Joe Smith. What, you don't have him? Where'd he go? Did he escape? No, he's at an undisclosed location? Oh, well then tell us where he is, so that he may appear before us..." Lather, rinse, repeat until someone gets arrested for obstruction of justice.

I'm not saying it'll happen, but committed judges and prosecutors could make it happen. I think.

I suppose, though, that the onus is on the courts to go looking for specific individuals, which I don't think they are in the habit of doing on their own initiative. While the government could at any time ignore the Constitution whenever enough powerful interested parties are looking the other way, actually setting up an apparatus that functions to quietly and continuously circumvent the Constitution is a bad step. I suppose such things have already happened to a disturbing extent, an extent that we do not truly know, but to commit another large step in that direction seems like dangerous madness, and only emboldens those who would push for more, if the general atmosphere of apathy or tacit approval can be maintained.

---

Every day is victory.
No victory is forever.

Forever; once its repealed the section would have to be reintroduced in the next year's NDAA or some other bill. NDAAs are passed annually to cover the main defense budget for the fiscal year, and a broad range of other defense related provisions are included, so the date refers to the NDAA of 2012... um... yeah. I suppose someone else could then push for reinstatement.

Most likely this bill will expire when the 112th Congress ends, barring major reassessment by the politicians who passed the original 1021, and there is still the problem of the original Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), Public Law 107-40 [S. J. RES. 23] passed September 18, 2001 by the 107th CONGRESS, that opened up this can of worms in a weaker form.




A journalist named Chris Hedges filed his own lawsuit against NDAA 1022.

A free private citizen could argue to have the law struck down as unconstitutional, which would be a little easier than waiting for someone caught by the law to try and do so. I'm not sure where any alternative justice system would figure in other than the court of popular opinion, which is influential, but non-binding.

Bin Laden and many of his original deputies are dead, so the AUMF 2001, based on the original text to pursue those responsible for 911, might have expired as the Al Queda of 2001 is defunct.

On the other hand, Al Queda still exists even though it really doesn't exist and is more, like the term 'terrorism', an umbrella term. The war on terror could go on indefinitely since its a war against a tactical concept and catchall organizational definition, not specifically defined persons or organizations that can be resolved, at once creating and perpetuating the problem.

Essentially the neocons conveniently defined problems such as terrorism to be end-ended, which in turn facilitated open-ended laws that transgress or could transgress the Constitution. Which kind of validates the Constitution, as anyone could see in that light that neocon policies are irrational from the perspective of maintaining liberty through law and order.