As the World Turns: is the U.S. "Play It Again Sam?"

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It can be argued the U.S. has been a "bird dog state."

"Locked on" in global conflict for decades with enemies of choice, bad guys who have challenged it, who repress their peoples, and have leaders wearing funny clothes.




A militarized state with vast overseas troop deployments -- whose diplomacy sometimes seems forever habitually locked in "Play It Again Sam."

A country used to pushing others around, used to getting its way.

America, a country with lots of military power, a wonderful capacity to make quirky extremist enemies.

A country which defines the world into good guys and bad guys.

A country which never forgets.

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Perhaps it began with the crusade to destroy Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

Sustained by forty years of Cold War with the Soviet Union.

In sustained confrontation with China from 1949 to 1971. Moderated conflict to 1979,

"At war" with North Korea from 1950 to the present.

"At war" with Iran from 1979 to the present.

"At war" with Castro's Cuba from 1959 to the present.

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Oh, it did not work with Vietnam.

The Vietnamese defeated the U.S.

It seemed to work in Iraq -- at a cost.

Now, will it work in Afghanistan?

Stay tuned.

"As the World Turns," does the U.S.?

As the World Turns: say "bye bye" to being on top?

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Is American world dominance a thing of the past?

Is the Obama Administration's aggressive forward strategy to stabilize and reshape Afghanistan a glamorous, quick flashing cover for an over extension, then a lessening of American power?

Will China match or even win over American power?

Anyone can have an opinion.

Let's hear one.



Geopolitical strategist Parag Khanna suggests that three centers of competing but cooperating power are emerging.

His argument emerges in his volume The Second World: How Emerging Powers Are Redefining Global Competition in the Twenty-first Century, Random House, February, 2009

Read Khanna's provocative views directly in this New York Times article, "Waving Goodbye to Hegemony," March 6, 2008.






Here is how Publisher's Weekly summarizes his thinking:

Khanna, a widely recognized expert on global politics, offers a study of the 21st century's emerging geopolitical marketplace dominated by three first world superpowers, the U.S., Europe and China.

Each competes to lead the new century, pursuing that goal in the third world: select eastern European countries, east and central Asia, the Middle East Latin America, and North Africa.

The U.S. offers military protection and aid.

Europe offers deep reform and economic association.

China offers full-service, condition-free relationships.

Each can be appealing; none has obvious advantages.

The key to Khanna's analysis, however, is his depiction of a second world: countries in transition.

They range in size and population from heavily peopled states like Brazil and Indonesia to smaller ones such as Malaysia.

Khanna interprets the coming years as being shaped by the race to win the second world—and in the case of the U.S., to avoid becoming a second-world country itself.

The final pages of his book warn eloquently of the risks of imperial overstretch combined with declining economic dominance and deteriorating quality of life.

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And here is how The New York Times Book Review puts it:

"No shots will be fired. Instead the three imperial rivals will woo and coerce, relying on distinct styles.

The United States offers military protection, along with the promise of democracy and human rights.

The European Union dangles the prospect of membership in, or affiliation with, the world’s most successful economic club, provided that applicants undertake specific reforms.

China talks trade, investment and infrastructure projects, with no annoying demands for political reform in its would-be client states.

“To a large extent, the future of the second world hinges on how it relates to the three superpowers,” Mr. Khanna writes, “and the future of the superpowers depends on how they manage the second world.”

As the World Turns: China pushes "new great game"

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While the U.S. plays its "great game" to preserve some kind of hegemony, China pushes ahead cementing energy supplies with Turkmenistan.

By inaugurating a pipeline with the central Asian state of Turkmenistan which will transfer natural gas to China without passing through Russian territory.

It is a pioneering stage in China's "New Great Game."

Chinese, Turkmen leaders celebrate
(watch the video)

China wins a race with both Europe and the U.S. -- which sought their own pipelines from Turkmenistan.

The new pipeline does not pass through Russian territory.

It shatters a bit Russian efforts to control energy resources passing from former republics of the Soviet Union.

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Monday, December 14, 2009 8:26 AM

Mark MacKinnon, The Toronto Globe and Mail's Beijing bureau chief, blogs on life and happenings in China and East Asia:

Beijing – A few hours ago, in a place called Samadepe on the rarely visited border between the Central Asian states of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, the global balance of power tilted ever so slightly.

Flanked by the leaders of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, Chinese President Hu Jintao today turned a symbolic wheel as oil started flowing into a new 1,833-kilometre pipeline that snakes east from Turkmenistan and across Central Asia to Xinjiang in the far west of China, where it will connect with China’s own pipeline network.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has insisted that Russia is not bothered by the opening of the pipeline, but that’s difficult to believe. Mr. Putin’s nine years in power (the first eight as president) have been spent trying to reestablish Russia as a global force. Key to that effort has been its role as one of the world’s biggest producers of natural gas, a position that was strengthened by its effective monopoly over the pipelines coming out of the former Soviet states of Central Asia.

That monopoly has now been broken. The Turkmenistan-Xinjiang pipeline is the first that will transport gas from Turkmenistan, the world’s fourth-largest producer, to market without going through Russian territory. When it reaches full capacity in another three years, it will pump up to 40 billion cubic metres annually, feeding China’s rapidly-growing and energy-starved economy, meeting half of the country’s current demand.

In building the new pipeline, China can also claim victory in a race with both the United States and Europe. Both have sought for years to establish a route to bring Turkmen gas west without going through Russia, efforts that were repeatedly thwarted by interference from Moscow as well as Iran, which blocked efforts to build a pipeline underneath the Caspian Sea.

Quick In; quick out: a search for U.S. hegemony

The Great Game Mural tells the story of the
perennial search for hegemony

"Back Baby, Back in Time"

Gen. Roberts' forces watch Afghan retreat

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It is reassuring that President Obama chooses to follow at least in part the advice of Lord Frederick Roberts, who commanded Britain's successful 1880's Afghan campaign.

Quick in and quick out was the Roberts strategy.

No "nation building," no direct rule. Negotiate and rule indirectly was the path forward.

Yet so far, despite Obama's emphasis on early withdrawal, we see an ultra-muscular "forward strategy."

The new policy includes both a troop increase and an escalation of goals.

It seems increasingly clear that the U.S. becomes a more vigorous player in a new version of the classic Central Asian form of politics known as The Great Game.

The aim: to build American hegemony in Afghanistan -- as a precondition for troop withdrawal.

Stabilization under American leadership of the broader region, including Pakistan with its nuclear weapons, appears to be the objective.

A remaking of Pakistani politics in a more pro-American direction is part of the goal.

The new strategy has both offensive and defensive aspects -- to dominate in the reconstruction of Afghanistan as well as to weaken, destroy al-Qaeda.

In many ways the Obama approach is far more aggressive than that of former President George Bush.

Stepped up drone attacks in Pakistan, stepped up pressure on Pakistan to join forces with the U.S. against the Taliban -- all are hallmarks of a renewed "forward strategy."

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The strategy of "quick in, quick out" worked well for Gen. Roberts in those days "way back in time."

But the world was much simpler then.

Roberts withdrew in part because William Gladstone succeeded the aggressively imperialist Benjamin Disraeli as Britain's prime minister.

Roberts seemed adept at adapting to the anti-imperialist Gladstone.

Lord Roberts' memoirs on the internet give a most graphic description of the battle against Afghan resistance.




The Brits firmly controlled what is today an independent Pakistan only partly allied with the Americans.

Today's Pakistan is sometimes a sanctuary for the Taliban and al Qaeda -- and itself vulnerable to militant attack -- especially if American pressure destabilizes it.

It is hard to be optimistic.

Still let us hope that what worked in the past will work once again.

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Much will depend on how Obama interprets the "advice" of Lord Roberts.

To what extent will he restrict the areas of occupation and nation building during the surge?

To what extent will the U.S. rely on more mobile attacks not requiring long term occupation?

These critical questions have so far been left, at least publicly, unanswered.

The way they are addressed will heavily impact the feasibility of a rapid exit.

"The devil is in the details."

For the moment the Obama strategy is agressive and far reaching -- showing an extraordinary willingness to up the ante, to take the risks.

Sir Frederick Roberts, 1832-1914

On his 82nd birthday

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In Afghanistan it's time for the "God of War" to create his own fresh harmonies.

Once combatants are fully joined, blood must be shed to establish either a clear victory or a new balance of forces.

There is no substitute for killing.

How to follow Lord Roberts' advice
WITHOUT following in Soviet footsteps?

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Back in September it became apparent President Obama would "need" to escalate in Afghanistan.

I decided to dedicate the next few months to research and writing on that Central Asian land -- including the options available to the President.

I pledged to myself to cease "reporting and writing" -- once the President announced his new strategy.

At first favoring withdrawal, I gradually concluded some kind of limited surge followed by some kind of rapid withdrawal was necessary -- but that chances of success in combining these two ingredients were marginal.

I support what the President seeks to do -- but am pessimistic about the prospects for success.

(For a quick, incomplete, no doubt carefully spun account of how President Obama reached his decision, try The New York Times, December 5, 2009.)

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Back in September I decided to do once again what I had done in the days of yore -- back in 1978 when China's Deng Xiaoping planned to enlist American support to invade Vietnam.

For three months I did my best to penetrate Chinese thinking to profile the coming escalation of a border war.

Then retreated to the sidelines after exhaustion and breakdown in Beijing.

To watch and report from a distance the 29 day February, 1979 war in which up to 40,000 Chinese and Vietnamese died.

Deng Xiaoping: invasion was in his mind

It was an avocation I began in the mid 1950's when studying Sidney Bradshaw Fay's "Origin of the World War" (1928).

That famous groundbreaking diplomatic history which punctured holes in the wartime propaganda that the cause of World War I was as simple as German militarism.

I have long been fascinated by a common theme of diplomats, politicians, and journalists making often blind decisions from inadequate or misinterpreted information.

War is very often deliberate and calculated, but often grows in a sea of "fog" -- where terrain, armies, intentions, consequences are deeply obscured.

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It is now time to "Exit Stage Left" -- from the tiny moving platform of my blog.

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One other thing: as war unfolds, media becomes even more a player and a tool of politicians and vested interests.

If judge you must, wait for the verdict of historians such as Sidney Bradshaw Fay...

Be patient.




Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria Hungary and his wife Countess Sophie shortly before their assassination in Sarajevo, Bosnia, June 28, 1914.

The killings sparked World War I.

Not to worry.

Americans have been fighting small wars which did not become world wars for two hundred years.

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"Back Baby, Back in Time," this time
by the "Punch Brothers"

Standing on the corner with a nickel or a dime
There use to be a rail car to take you down the line
Too much beer and whiskey to ever be employed

And when I got to Nashville, it was too much soldiers joy
Wasted on the wayside, wasted on the way
If I don’t go tomorrow, you know I’m gone today

Back babe, back in time
I wanna go back when you were mine
Back babe, back in time
I wanna go back when you were mine

Black highway all night ride
Watching the times fall away to the side
Clear channel way down low
Is comin’ in loud and my mind let go

Peaches in the summertime, apples in the fall
If I can’t have you all the time, I won’t have none at all
Oh, I wish I was in Frisco in a brand new pair of shoes
I’m sittin’ here in Nashville with Norman’s Nashville blues
So come all you good time rounders listenin’ to my sound
And then drink a round to Nashville for they tear it down

Hard weather, drivin’ slow
Buggies and the hats in town for the show
Oh darlin, the songs they played
All I got left of lovin’ me

Back babe, back in time
I wanna go back when you were mine
Back babe, back in time
I wanna go back when you were mine

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Need a Job: Why Not Try Afghanistan?
Obama's Battle Plan: Step Carefully Amidst Craters
When The Crater Meets Afghanistan
Obama's War: to Lift the Fog or Tap the Passions
The way Ahead: Does Obama Need a Bit of Clint Eastwood
We Are All Soldiers: Honoring the Miracle of Survival
Obama's Sophie's Choice: a Blind Media
"Tipping Point:" guns or doctors? China watches
What Will We See When the "Fog of War" Clears?
Obama's New Policy: Senator Kerry's Speech
Obama's Great Grim Gamble: He Holds a Weak Hand
A Digital View of Afghanistan: Obama and a Hybrid Strategy
Rudyard Kipling Warns President Obama
Will Obama Follow Lord Roberts Advice: Get in Fast, Withdraw
Pick off an Occupying Army: Updating an Old Story
Following Alexander the Great to Afghanistan
Should Prez Obama Take Advice From a Russian
Left, Right, Join In: Ring the Bell on "Obama's War"
US in Afghanistan: Bearing Gifts to Other Nations
America, China: Circling the Afghan Carcass
"The Kiterunner" as a Guide to Afghanistan

Need an exciting job: why not try Afghanistan?

Let's face it.

Good jobs are hard to find stateside.

If the money won't come to you, why not seek it out -- in Afghanistan?

Just keep close your helmet and your body armor.

There are a growing number of jobs for Americans and others in military and civilian Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT).

(Not to be confused with PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is something some combat people bring home with them from Afghanistan).

Let's remember there are exciting jobs available out there in Afghanistan -- as the U.S. seeks to mediate, administer and protect local development.

Employees at UK/US/Danish PRT
in Lashkargar

Men and women of an adventurous nature have ahead of them exciting and challenging cultural and professional experiences which will enrich them for the rest of their lives.

And the money isn't bad.

The State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) are currently advertising for new recruits for temporary positions at $70,000 to $155,000 a year.

Check this USAID page for more detail on Provincial Reconstruction Teams.

USAID employees assist Afghan agriculture

Canadian PRT forces in Kandahar

American PRT police officer in Gardez

American PRT women officers in Jalalabad

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There are issues:

Are the PRT's under U.S. military protection and leadership economic development tools militarized and Americanized and -- thus made more vulnerable to Taliban attack?

Can new forms of PRT more independent of the military be developed without being vulnerable to Taliban attack?

Are these PRT's compromising the role of non-government organizations (NGO's) as neutral humanitarian organizations protected from military attack?

Not to worry.

Everywhere is controversy.

When times are tough, go where the jobs are.

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Obama's battle plan: step carefully amidst craters

Rolling the dancing dice:
only the strong will stay on the floor

Now let us brighten up the thought
with some "constants" from Chinese culture





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And now let us return to Obama --
knowing full well, "this, too, shall pass"

Scarlett Tide

Well I recall his parting words
Must I accept his fate
Or take myself far from this place
I thought I heard a black bell toll
A little bird did sing
Man has no choice
When he wants every thing

We'll rise above the scarlet tide
That trickles down through the mountain
And separates the widow from the bride

Man goes beyond his own decision
Gets caught up in the mechanism
Of swindlers who act like kings

And brokers who break everything
The dark of night was swiftly fading
Close to the dawn of day
Why would I want him just to lose him again

We'll rise above the scarlet tide
That trickles down through the mountain
And separates the widow from the bride




"When the Crater Meets Afghanistan"
Obama's War: to Lift the Fog or Tap the Passions
The way Ahead: Does Obama Need a Bit of Clint Eastwood

We Are All Soldiers: Honoring the Miracle of Survival
Obama's Sophie's Choice: a Blind Media
"Tipping Point:" guns or doctors? China watches
What Will We See When the "Fog of War" Clears?
Obama's New Policy: Senator Kerry's Speech
Obama's Great Grim Gamble: He Holds a Weak Hand
A Digital View of Afghanistan: Obama and a Hybrid Strategy
Rudyard Kipling Warns President Obama
Will Obama Follow Lord Roberts Advice: Get in Fast, Withdraw
Pick off an Occupying Army: Updating an Old Story
Following Alexander the Great to Afghanistan
Should Prez Obama Take Advice From a Russian
Left, Right, Join In: Ring the Bell on "Obama's War"
US in Afghanistan: Bearing Gifts to Other Nations
America and China: Circling the Afghan Carcass with a Bamboo Curtain Dead
"The Kiterunner" as a Guide to Afghanistan

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"Obama's war:" to lift the fog - or tap the passions?

I've looked at life from both sides now,
From win and lose, and still somehow
It's life's illusions i recall.
I really don't know life at all.

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"Both Sides Now."

Yes, 1970, oh were there clouds back then...

Does anyone remember Vietnam? How deep a shadow it cast over our world.

Today a similar but far less painful kind of cloud, a "fog of war," hangs over the entire country.

President Obama has chosen to increase U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan. To finish out this war.

Will that help lift the fog?

Or simply blanket Aghanistan in a new generation of rhetoric?

Will the President's cool and distant style help mobilize Americans for more war, more sacrifice of lives and money?

What kind of rhetoric will he summon up?

What combination of "high minded internationalism" and basic "take down our enemies" nationalism?

Will he need to tap America's more fundamentalist, vengeful streak in order to gather widespread popular support?

Will he need to learn a bit from from the fundamentalist, tough justice, apocalyptic strains of Clint Eastwood?

If he does not, will Americans still support him?

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Each generation must face the reality of war's "fog."

To move forward into the shadows of the entrappment in war's Crater -- or to skirt the edges, to climb free and upward into the light.

We may be reaching a "tipping point" where overextended military occupations drain the country's resources and diminish the nation's power, safety, and standard of living.

With true love there must be no illusions...

Now the President has made his Sophie's Choice:

The hard decisions on Afghanistan which will shape who lives, who dies....

Time to pay the price.

Time to lift the "fog of war."
And rewrite the lyrics:

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"I've looked at life from both sides now,
From win and lose, and still somehow
It's life's illusions I have lost
I know there is a price to pay"

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Bows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere, i've looked at clouds that way.
But now they only block the sun, they rain and snow on everyone.
So many things i would have done but clouds got in my way...

I've looked at clouds from both sides now,
From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud illusions i recall.
I really don't know clouds at all...

Moons and junes and ferris wheels, the dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real; i've looked at love that way.
But now it's just another show. you leave 'em laughing when you go
And if you care, don't let them know, don't give yourself away...

I've looked at life from both sides now,
From win and lose, and still somehow
It's life's illusions i recall.
I really don't know life at all.

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The way ahead: does Obama need a bit of Clint?

"The Outlaw Josey Wales:"
Revenge and Judgement Day

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Strange bedfellows: feminist abolitionist
fundamentalist Julia Ward Howe pushes forward
in one of America's first great human rights
campaigns. Meet Clint's early prototype,
abolitionist sword wielder John Brown.


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"The Preacher...
and Hell followed with him"

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As we move forward into a new stage of Afghanistan, we can see that Obama seeks to tone down the Clint Eastwood rhetoric, so famously used by President George Bush.

Still the Eastwood strain, deeply rooted in American history and religious culture, is an important part of mobilizing for war when much blood and treasure is at stake.

It is difficult to mobilize for sacrifice without demonizing your enemy.

This may be a challenge for the cool, cerebral Obama -- if substantial casualties continue.

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So when making war, it's nice to have a bit of Christian fundamentalism on one's side.

Tired of those Islamic folks having a monopoly on apocalyptic visions, symbolism and zealous religious calls to arms?

Let's see what WE have.


The strict moral codes of the Old Testament combined with the apocalyptic visions of persecution, prophecy, judgement, death and resurrection.

All found in symbolic form within the New Testament Book of Revelations.

Click here for the Chapter Six account of the Lamb opening the first six of the Seven Seals.

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A book trickling down to the American frontier, the Indian fighter, the Bible toting preacher.

Trickling up to America's concept of itself as bearer of the sword of justice -- with its armies overthrowing tyrannies, enforcing upon the world God's work.

Howe: turn of the century

Listen to the tune and read the lyrics of Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic."

The lyrics were rewritten to go with the original tune of "John Brown's Body."

Julia Ward Howe, that glorious heroine of American military theological nationalism.

From this feminist New England Unitarian, a biographer of Margaret Fuller, came the Bible rich verses justifying blood on the battlefield.

Justifying the use of military power to free the slaves, as abolitionists steeped in fundamentalism pushed forward one of the first American "human rights campaigns."

A song designed to mobilize and encourage Union soldiers in their righteous combat against a slaveholding Confederacy. To do "God's work" on the battlefield.

A world of spiritual and military warfare where good and evil reign supreme.

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That's where Clint - with his terrible swift sword of avenging justice - comes in.

Clint, perhaps a modern day version of the martyred, fervently Christian fundamentalist John Brown.

John Brown, the lifelong failure who in crazed fury chopped up his victims with swords during a vicious revenge massacre in Kansas while fighting for slavery's abolition.

His 1859 hanging after seizing the Harper's Ferry Armory in Virginia coupled the immortality of a martyr to the infamy of a butcher.

The Clint of his day.



Julia, John Brown, and Clint -- strange bedfellows, but bedfellows just the same.

Yesterday's feminist becomes today's fundamentalist.

Fundamentalism with veangeful justice around individual grievances -- or fundamentalism with violent fervour around grandiose social causes?

They are not all the same, but they tend to sleep in the same bed.

Howe: circa 1861

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When dealing with scenes of the Christian Apocalypse, it is always nice to have Wikipedia to fall back upon.

And a bit of Clint Eastwood, the master himself.

Some of you may enjoy this ecclesiastical portrayal below of the End Times.

Careful, you may have to shoot a pale horse.

When you see that pale horse coming,

that's death itself: open fire with
.45 cal. cap and ball horse killers!
But wait, what if it's a white horse?
That could be evil, the anti-Christ --
or it could be Christ himself.
Careful you don't shoot
the wrong horse.

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Check your Wikipedia to see just
how hard it is to tell.


"The Outlaw Josey Wales:"
a time for righteous revenge

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Behold, below, a pale horse of death bears a rider, "the stranger," seeking revenge in "High Plains Drifter:"