Industry and defense


[Follow Ups] [Post Followup] [Dodge Power Wagon Forum]


Posted by David Sherman on Wednesday, April 01, 2009 at 13:55:46 :

In Reply to: Re: OT: If you need any vise-grip pliers get em now! posted by Paul (in NY) on Wednesday, April 01, 2009 at 10:26:01 :

Whenever I read any of the history of WWI or WWII, one thing that's always present behind every story is the control of strategic resources. Strategic resources are both minerals and the industrial capacity to make them into war materiel. A good case can be made that WWII was the word's first "war for oil", in both Europe and the Pacific, since both Germany and Japan were desperate to get hold of some and had been embargoed in their early attempts. The newer history books tend to focus on military strategy, weapons systems, and political machinations, but while the war was on, everything was about production and transportation.

There is absolutely no way the US could fight a war like WWII any more. We simply don't have domestic production capacity for any necessary war materiel except food. The fact is there's no one country, not even China, capable of waging a world war and that comes close to being self-sufficient. China has been spending some of its huge cash reserves buying up a lot of resources (mines and timber) in Africa in recent years, which is probably a very smart move, but even they would be cut off in case of war.

It may be a good thing that a war like WWI or WWII is impractical now. The world really doesn't need to have every city on an entire continent pulverized again. On the other hand, if cut off from foreign mines, foreign loans, and foreign factories, the US would be quite defenseless. We might be able to get off one round of nukes as a way to tell the world "F-- you" as we go down, but down we would go.

Even if you start with the simplest military necessities -- steel, lead, aluminum, and petroleum -- we basically have none. We have taconite, but virtually no blast furnaces. Most of our lead mines are long closed, and even if we reopened mines like the Bunker Hill, we have no smelters whatsoever. Hard to run a war without bullets and car batteries. We have a couple aluminum smelters limping along, but no domestic ore. And we all know we don't have nearly enough domestic oil to meet our needs in peacetime, much less during a war.

And yes, I agree with you about the government fearing its citizens as well. Actually, it seems like our government officials see themselves as citizens of the supranational world more than as employees of the United States. When you have a president flat-out telling a car company to merge with a foreign company, and a treasury secretary agreeing with the Chinese that the World Bank should create a new global currency to replace the US dollar, and when every administration, Democrat or Republican has signed international treaties that restrict US sovereignty, it's pretty clear that at best, they're all globalists.

As for the guns, I think it's interesting that despite the recession and falling prices of most products, a Yugo SKS that was $99 two years ago is now $250 if you can find one, and 7.62x39 ammo that everybody had for $200 or less per 1000 rounds two years ago is now unavailable almost everywhere and the few dealers that still have some are asking upwards of $500 for it. People tell the pollsters all kinds of things, mostly what they think is the right answer (like when your mom used to ask you if you ate all your peas and if you brushed your teeth), but when people vote with their hard-earned dollars, especially during hard times, I tend to think they're telling the truth. Right now what people are saying is that they want to be armed. I wouldn't want to venture a guess as to why, but it's probably not because they trust the government to take good care of them.



Follow Ups:



Post a Followup

Name:
E-Mail:
Subject:
Message:
Optional Link
URL:
Title:
Optional Image Link
URL:


This board is powered by the Mr. Fong Device from Cyberarmy.com