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Frazzled wrote:

Witzkatz wrote:

I'm ok with that if we can get out of NATO. I don't want any Americans to die to keep Europeans safe in their beds.

The interesting thing is...if european NATO troops wouldn't be in Afghanistan (because US would do this in their own since you want them to be out of the NATO), probably there would have been less threats from Al Qaeda to european nations. So, no need to keep Europeans safe in their beds if they wouldn't be participating in ISAF.

I think Germany and other nations should participate in Afghanistan and not withdraw troops. However, I can't completely agree with your "Brave Americans die only to defend cowardly Europeans!" school of thought. Everybody is doing something in Afghanistan, US definitely does the most, but don't play down efforts and achievements by other countries.

And if we hadn't supported the Mujihadeen to stop the Soviets who were threatening Europe and their allies in Asia, but instead had just gone home thousands upon thousands of Americans would be alive.

Yes. Stop them from taking afghanistan... Shortly before the breakup of the soviet union and the inevitable release of afghanistan.. When you're applying hindsight to something, it's probably best to actually look at it realistically. The soviets would never have managed to fully pacify afghanistan before crumbling under their own weight and in that inevitable event afghanistan would have been cut lose due to it's status as a very unwilling and very empty territory of little strategic value.

But hey, at least we supported terrorist anti imperial extremists with advanced weapons, eh? It's like we were Iran before we learned to hate Iran!

chaos0xomega wrote:And we DO need to maintain military superiority. Some very intelligent people, both retired and active duty military, are predicting that we will be in Mexico pretty soon, hell even the US gov't says that we'll probably going to end up fighting a war on our doorstep (in this case to try to keep the established government from collapsing in a drug-fueled civil war),

I'm getting that feeling as well. The country seems to be tearing itself apart and I can see US "peace keeping" forces heading down south.

and there is the ever present of the Chinese,

The Chinese are a minimal military threat to the US. They have no real power projection capability that would allow them to threaten us meanwhile we have almost nothing but power projection options after spending the last half century doing just that. Not to mention we're their biggest customer. Sure we will butt heads over things but at this point neither side is going to want a shooting war and will most likely do anything they can to avoid one. China is only a real concern to Russia and even then not much of one.

as well as the threat to South Korea posed by the North,

The North is up in the air. So long as Kim Jong Il and his spawn can keep living the high life and the peasants don't make too much of a fuss they will be perfectly happy to sit in their little luxurious bubble and let their country go to hell. The problem is that if things get too bad and the serfs too restless, and Kim or his brood think they might get deposed they might take one last swing at the South. The problem is that the peninsula is small and it will get ugly fast if a war breaks out there.

and let us not forget the theological nutjobs that are running Iran...

I doubt it. Iran has a lot to hate on right now in their own backyard. Iraq, Israel, etc. They are busy trying to build themselves into a regional superpower and I can't see them pushing things so far as to trigger an all out war against the US. They'll flip us off every chance they get but not a full on war.

Frazzled wrote:
"Miss me yet?"
George Bush, enjoying life in Margaritaland.

:looks in wallet:

Not one bit.

Frazzled wrote:Thats a crock. Afghanistan was not allowing us permission to go after Al Qaeda. The US should respond in kind to this breach of the treaty.

What you say may well be true, however it does not contradict or refute the points I made.

I would also remind you that the UK supported with blood and treasure the invasion of Afghanistan.

Our reward was massive US import tariffs on UK made steel.

Quit dumping?

So Turkish, Canadian, Mexican and Thai steel was fine but UK steel was dumped?

Kilkrazy wrote:So Turkish, Canadian, Mexican and Thai steel was fine but UK steel was dumped?

Turks make steel? Canadians make steel? (real question, I was shocked when you said Brits make steel). I thought only steel came from India and China.

Pro Tip-you want to have fun? Take your credit guys, who come from a very cold northern country, to a steel plant tour.
In suits
In July
Have them stand over a furnace and a 20 foot by 60 plate of red hot steel as its being thinned and rolled.

Priceless.

Frazzled, Britain has had a steel industry for several hundred years. Steel was being made here when you lot were still throwing tomahawks at each other.

It's not as big business here as it used to be (Britain used to be the worlds No.1 producer of Iron and Steel) - it's all about financial services now.... Which is bad for my hometown. Not many stockbrokers THERE.

Middlesbrough- The Ironsiders!

We friggin INVENTED steel!

Ugh, Chinese steel. Screw that. Give me French steel. Subsidized all to hell and back so they toss in the trace metals like it's going out of style.

Sheffield steel had and still has a quality to it. The techniques we used to make mass produced higher quality steel was sold by short sighted officials to the Chinese a few years ago.

Typical really, lost a long term advantage so that some quick money came in for the treasury to squander.

Even now the UK makes large volume high quality steel and is known for it, hence the protectionism. UK steel competed with the US market in ways that cheap Indian and then Chinese steel did not. It still is better quality than US high grade steel, so an incentive was needed for certain industries to buy from home.

As mentioned above this was Blairs fault not Bushs, Blair was happy to see us pay the price so long as he got what was valuable to his own personal ends. Other leaders defended their own trade better.

Albatross wrote:Frazzled, Britain has had a steel industry for several hundred years. Steel was being made here when you lot were still throwing tomahawks at each other.

It's not as big business here as it used to be (Britain used to be the worlds No.1 producer of Iron and Steel) - it's all about financial services now.... Which is bad for my hometown. Not many stockbrokers THERE.

So what? We had a massive steel industry as well that made yours look like blacksmiths, but its mostly gone now. As noted, you want steel you mostly go to India and China. No one else can compete against their dumping and low labor rates.

If I may venture my opinions?
Who cares if Hillary Clinton runs her mouth off? I can appreciate that we have certain commitments to the US in terms of military aid and suchlike, but it seems to me that we're still doing our bit. If she wants to whine a bit to justify her position in the US government, then good for her. After all, even though we are allies with the United States that doesn't mean we shouldn't put our own needs as a country first.

Maybe we should just annex the UK... they could give us some culture, we could give them some influence, together we would be legend...wait for it...ary.

That'd be ironic, given the nature of the USA's creation.

chaos0xomega wrote:Maybe we should just annex the UK... they could give us some culture, we could give them some influence, together we would be legend...wait for it...ary.

I have often considered this as a theoretical option. There would be a number of difficulties, one of which would be the allocation of statehood to the different parts of the UK.

Should the entire UK come in as a single state, which would instantly become the most populous and richest in the Union? Or should it be split into two, three or even four states -- England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland?

In the second case, how would the Senatorial votes play out? Would Scotland always vote the opposite way to England, out of historical resentment?

England has always been the most conservative of these regions, but all of British politics is left wing compared to mainstream US, so perhaps the four new States would form a leftish voting block, consistently electing Democractic candidates, or even form a new party. The massive number of votes accruing from the UK would transform the electoral landscape.

Well, England alone, let alone the UK, would massively disrupt the make-up of Congress, for sure, and could easily tip the balance in the Senate. When it comes to the Presidential College (Is that what it is called?) votes, I reckon we could pretty much guarantee a lurch to the left for American politics.

More importantly though, is whether we'd have a combined football team, or whether we would continue to play as England, Scotland, Wales, N. Ireland and USA...

Membership of the United States can be by negotiation. Such as happened with Texas.

An absorbtion of the UK would likely also include an absorbtion of Ireland.

There is enough voice in Northern Ireland to demand seperate state identity. England, Wales and Scotland would be serperate states because they are seperate states.

The USA doesnt have subdivided sports teams so those would go.

Could this happen, unlikely but possible, and almost certainly out of economic necessity rather than force. We are buring respources at such a heavy rate that if the EU fails to make its mark in ther global resources stakes individual states might find other alliances.

I think Ireland joining the USA is far more likely.

Wales isn't a separate state. It has been a principality and dependency of England since the late 13th century.

That said, there is a different cultural and linguistic identity, so "statehood" would be entirely appropriate within the United States as long as the Welsh wanted it. I mean, it's moving that way anyway with the Cardiff Assembly.

Wales would become about the 35th largest state in terms of GDP and population.

Part of the difficulty of integrating the UK into the USA would be to disentangle aspects of government spending such as the amount of public jobs in Wales, like the DVLA, if the UK regions were brought in as separate states.

I don't see Eire joining the USA at the moment, they seem to get more out of the EU. I also don't see Northern Ireland integrating with Eire, either within the EU or as a US state.

Of course there is also a huge issue of whether the existing USA population would want to incorporate the British Isles.

Any views on that from Dakka's US members?

You seem like a decent lot, the more the merrier.

Gorskar.da.Lost wrote:That'd be ironic, given the nature of the USA's creation.

Yes, it certainly would. Unfortunately it would be lost on many, as the British do not understand irony.

Indeed.

So based on one reply, which I think we can agree is unanimous, the US would not be worried about that fact that, overnight, the British would come to comprise 20% of the population.

Kilkrazy wrote:Any views on that from Dakka's US members?

Let me preface this by saying that I really do like the UK in general, as well as Ireland.

That said, while I find the thought interesting, my biggest concern would actually not be how well the new states from the British Isles would get along with the rest of the states in the continental US, but rather how well the new island states would get along with each other. The fact that so much animosity remains even to this day is concerning, and the thought, which unfortunately doesn't sound that far-fetched, of a situation like the state of Scotland always voting against the state of England, or something similar with England and Ireland, is very discouraging. While we certainly have disagreements in the US, but they tend not to be quite so state vs. state, and I would even go as far as to say our disagreements tend to be less bitter.

England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Ireland are all in extremely close proximity to each other, yet they still seem to have a lot of difficulty coming to agreements and generally getting along, while in the US, states tend to get on quite well with their neighbors. So I guess my feeling on the matter is, while I love all you guys, I think it'd be better if you had some of your own differences worked out a little bit better before we opened the can of worms that would involve any part of the UK or Ireland becoming a US state.

According to the media illegal immigrants are already 50% of the population so I'm not worried.

Besides, even the most conservative British politician would be disavowed from the Democratic party for being too radical so the political implications would be about zero.

Ha! You're right about that!

Hordini wrote:

Gorskar.da.Lost wrote:That'd be ironic, given the nature of the USA's creation.

Yes, it certainly would. Unfortunately it would be lost on many, as the British do not understand irony.

WTF?

Really? Really really? Really really really

Mr Mystery wrote:

Hordini wrote:

Gorskar.da.Lost wrote:That'd be ironic, given the nature of the USA's creation.

Yes, it certainly would. Unfortunately it would be lost on many, as the British do not understand irony.

WTF?

Really? Really really? Really really really

Interesting...

Mr Mystery wrote:

Hordini wrote:

Gorskar.da.Lost wrote:That'd be ironic, given the nature of the USA's creation.

Yes, it certainly would. Unfortunately it would be lost on many, as the British do not understand irony.

WTF?

Really? Really really? Really really really

Looks like you fell for the trap there.
Either that, or I fell for the trap you placed in response to the trap, thus making me the trapped one.

Gorskar.da.Lost wrote:

Mr Mystery wrote:

Hordini wrote:

Gorskar.da.Lost wrote:That'd be ironic, given the nature of the USA's creation.

Yes, it certainly would. Unfortunately it would be lost on many, as the British do not understand irony.

WTF?

Really? Really really? Really really really

Looks like you fell for the trap there.
Either that, or I fell for the trap you placed in response to the trap, thus making me the trapped one.

More and more interesting...

I for one would welcome our brethren across the pond into our union. The big question though, aside from how the UK should be divided, is what to do with the crown? Would we have to integrate the crown into the overall system somehow? Or would we accept the UK in as a Kingdom that maintains its state level politics as it currently maintains its national level? Then theoretically the question becomes "Does the Crown answer to the President?"

As for the political situation, it could only be for the best. The US system of two powerhouse parties is running this country into the ground. Bringing in new ones from overseas would serve to shake up the current foundation in Washington in a good way, giving the majority of the population that identifies itself as "Independent" a fighting chance to find better candidates to vote for that stand a realistic chance at winning an election.