Interesting presentation on C-Span from Thomas Barnett

[0rganism]

I saw this on C-Span a few days back, and found it fascinating -- half revolting, half complete sense, but all quite relevant to what we're facing now.

Realplayer stream

It's a 90-minute presentation given earlier this month, followed by an hour of Barnett taking live (at that time) phone calls from viewers.

Dr. Barnett is a Naval War College strategist, and a predictably hawkish globalist, but what he offers is a substantive, thorough critique of the current state of the military and something of a plan to go forward. It's worth watching just to get a feel for how someone DUers might not agree with in many areas can still offer up some very clear thinking on important subjects. Whether we like it or not, this is a realistic assessment of the "Pax Americana" mentality -- hell, Barnett's ideas are a significant improvement over the dominant paradigm Bush is pushing now.

FWIW ( and it does matter to some of us here ;) ), his blog archives appear to indicate a strong preference for Kerry in the 2004 election.

[DulceDecorum]

1. Barnett is a bastard murderer DINO.

A neo-con who is passing himself off as a human being.
He is responsible for the deaths of THOUSANDS of men, women and children in Iraq and elsewhere.
He seeks nothing other than your death and wants little more than to bathe in human blood and recline upon the Topeth of your slain offspring.

How can you support such a creature?
Better a thousand times Bush.

[0rganism]

2. Maybe so. This is his presentation, not an homage to the man

All I know about him is what I saw on C-Span and on his website. I don't like his policies, but they make more sense as an implementation of PNAC than Rumsfeld's current interpretation. I saw no indications of a desire to bathe in human blood, but I did see a supporter of increased globalisation and 3rd-world interventions.

> How can you support such a creature?

I don't support him. I thought I made that clear.

> Better a thousand times Bush.

Hardly. Bush is the shithead who makes it all come true. Without Bush, Barnett is just another guy with some ideas.

Maybe you can explain to DU why such a murderous neo-con stooge would prefer Clinton and Kerry?

[Sugarbleus]

3. I learned about this guy months ago... was confussed about

his presentation at first....THEN I found PPI (Progressive Policy Institute)...these "liberals"/Dems lean to the DLC ideology...They are similarly aligned with the Neocon PNAC ideals; spead democracy, globalism, profit et al. They'd just "do it differently". YIKES :eyes:

[izzie]

5. I really do not think we should go after war and do not think he did

I may be wrong as I often am as I just saw part of this c-span thing and he may be a Neo-con. They seem to want to start the wars. After they start he seems to have a plan that would work in this day and age. Look what we did after WW2 and that was new to the art of war.

[izzie]

4. I heard a lot of that. Something to look at I would say.

Like it or not, times are not the same as they were. I once wrote a term paper of sort of using the military as a peach group and my teacher talked to me a lot on it and what an odd thought it was. I spent weeks on the GD things plus I lived in this military type life so knew some thing about it. I will tell you that their are some people in the service that like to kill and do it well and others that are sort of there to fix things and keep people from killing. So my paper was set up in this frame. I do not re-call the mark but I do re-call my teacher and I spend hours talking about it and if it could work. This was years and years ago and yet this man is saying a lot of what I was thinking.

[izzie]

6. that is peace not peach, sorry

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