Amazing. Truly amazing.
What is global hedemony anyway? It’s just another word to mask stupidity when it comes to political thinking. After all the twists and turns of Zizec’s loopy abstractions, it all comes down to that one phrase. Why even bother writing an article at all? You would’ve been more honest to simply state that you think Iran needs nukes to stop U.S. global hegemony. But then if you did that, you wouldn’t have been able to fool all those other people into believing you had an actual thoughtful piece of writing to share.
Maybe that honesty would have been too much for you? Maybe you didn’t even realize the absurdity of you own thesis, hiding it even from yourself? Surely, even you have enough common sense to realize the absurdity of suggesting that nuclear proliferation is a good thing? Especially to a country with such a wonderful record when it comes to respecting human life and dignity?
Or maybe I’m just over thinking this one? Was this meant as irony? It’s not even a good joke.
Posted by tantalus on Aug 11, 2005 at 8:58 AM
Perhaps you should substitute one word here to get a feeling for just how naive this article truly is. Try
Posted by whattheheck on Aug 11, 2005 at 9:39 AM
I find it humorous that many Americans have the mentality that we’re are the only ones who can be trusted to have nukes because somehow we posess the necessary moral fortitude to act responsibly. Some how I find our historical use of unrestricted bombing, over-seas intervention, etc… rendering any argument about our moral supperiority specious. Of course, I wouldn’t expect anything less if the tables were turned and China were the world’s sole super power. Even so, I still can’t completely shake this feeling that we SHOULD be better than that when much evidence indicates that we are not.
Posted by volvillain on Aug 11, 2005 at 11:38 AM
The US is not perfect. But other than ending a particularly nasty war that was forced on us, we have not nuked anyone either. We have no history of suicide bombers.
Muslim crazies cannot be trusted with nukes. This seems to be pretty obvious. An ongoing worry is that they could possibly obtain suitcase nukes (from the old USSR) and use them in a terrorist attack. Does anyone really doubt that these fanatics would, if they could?
This article reads like a 14 year old kid explaining to his father why he should be given the keys to the corvette (but dad, i never even had an accident!!!). Funny, but in an ironic way.
Posted by wolf on Aug 11, 2005 at 1:26 PM
One other thing I forgot to mention is that fear or expediency doesn’t excuse the killing of De Menezes by British police. Many of the facts as stated by the authorities are in dispute and not only by his relatives. One question I had was whether or not it would be possible for anyone wearing a bomb belt to vault a turn style as easily as the deceased has been described doing. How heavy or encumbering is such a suicide device?
Another question I had is what kinds of doors does this open if someone can be more or less sumarily executed without due process merely upon the suspicion of being a terrorist? I know that in many circles the security of the nation state trumps the rights of individuals, but what if YOU were one of those individuals mistakenly slain by those sworn to protect? Would kind of suck being you, wouldn’t it? But what if I told your grieving family that it was a tragic accident, and that we were just doing our jobs? Do you think that they would accept that and move on? I suspect not. But instead what you have seeping into the media is that somehow because he was living in the UK illegally that he some how deserved to be killed. He shouldn’t have run. He shouldn’t have this, he shouldn’t have that. What I think really happened is the same thing that causes a lot of hunting accidents and that is that if people are really expecting to see a white tail deer, they will. They were expecting a terrorist to walk out of that apartment building. They were expecting that they would have no choice but to use deadly force because they could expect no mercy or no quarter themselves. And such is the insidious nature of escalation. We have to be MORE vicious and deadly then the enemy in order to defeat him, but by doing so we only become like our enemy. This is a victory for terrorists as this strikes at the very heart of democracy. If we have to give up all of our rights because someone might have a bomb, if we are executed because we might be a threat, then the very society we claim to be protecting will cease to exist. It will be no better than Stalinist Russia.
Posted by volvillain on Aug 11, 2005 at 1:33 PM
Wolf, Muslim extremists did not appear out of thin air. We created them through direct and indirect means. And like Frankenstein’s monster, they came back seeking to destroy their creator. Ultimately the trend of escalating violence from the Middle East is a consequence of various failures in U.S. policy from the 2nd world war to the present. We did what we had to do for the sake of short term goals. We had to win the Cold War and we needed strategic partnerships. Regardless of whether or not they were democratic. Regardless of their brutality. All we wanted was people who’d stand up to communism and people who would do business with us. Truth, Justice and the American way didn’t even enter the equation.
As for the nuclear suitcase bomb, I think that we are making it easier for them to get their hand on it rather than harder. For example, by engaging in a war in Iraq we are generating massive amounts of sympathy for the Wahhabist cause in the world at large. Sympathy can be exploited as we have seen with many muslim “charities” acting as money laundering schemes for various terrorizt organizations. In essence we have been trying to solve a problem militarily than cannot be solved in that way. It can only be solved by a combination of economic means, undercover work and strategic alliances with other countries’ covert agencies. Invading countries is quite simply put a waste of time, materials and lives.
Posted by volvillain on Aug 11, 2005 at 1:50 PM
If American’s would take the time to consider why it seems reasonable to some people that Iran should have nuclear weapons as a deterant against them, then they would be a whole lot closer to winning their “War on Terror”.
Posted by camanintx on Aug 11, 2005 at 1:50 PM
If the editors are wondering why this magazine is stumbling so badly I would suggest you reflect on the bizzare last sentence of the article. It is the most perfectly asinine closing statement I think I have ever heard by a “professional” writer.
I read your magazine b/c I have been occasionally influenced by it on some topics. But truly, this is beyond absurd. I would normally like to have a good debate on the points of an article. But to do that for an article like this would be like arguing with a child (more like a mini-Chomsky wannabe really, but without the vocab command).
ITT does a great job on some things. Labor relations, race relations, environmental issues, etc. etc. And I hope y’all can stay in business. Unfortunately, this article happens to suck big time.
Posted by MiddleRoad on Aug 11, 2005 at 3:17 PM
The obvious difference between secular-minded, this-world-centered powers and other-world-oriented powers like religious revolutionaries is that those whose emphasis is upon this world are more willing to ponder the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons, both upon their victims, the natural environment, and in retaliation against themselves. If you think that’s an unfair formulation, consider the readiness of suicide bombers motivated by religious zeal to kill themselves and dozens of innocents. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t fully trust reason to prevail even with the more secular-minded bunch, but I find it much more plausible to imagine that people whose focus is upon Heaven or some other post-death realm would consider the use of nukes in this world to be a less scary proposition. Maybe they’d think their pathway to Paradise would be smoothed by unleashing a holocaust against the infidel du jour.
And aside from all that, it just doesn’t make sense to suggest that the proliferation of any kind of weapon makes that weapon less likely to be used in the future. The frequent role of guns in American crime is an example.
Posted by Kuya on Aug 11, 2005 at 6:19 PM
As for American hegemony, I think that will be mitigated better when other powers gain economic and cultural influence, rather than by way of a new incarnation of the nuclear arms race.
Nightmarish.
Posted by Kuya on Aug 11, 2005 at 6:48 PM
I should have reread my previous post. This does seem to make some sense now. This is the paper that publishes articles from a pretty Anti-Semitic pen (and a strong supporter of Jew haters like Farrakhan).
Anybody who wants to see the destruction of Israel, or just wish to see them feel pain, know that the only truly massive threat to them would be the acquistion of nuclear weaponry by fanatical Muslim states (be them Persian/Arab/Sunni or Arab).
With the recent Iranian election of a radically conservative president over Khatami this is the perfect time for rags like this to promote more nuclear weapons in the region and around the globe (or did you pen this out before - just joking! of course you didn’t).
ITT-
Fine, block off my registration from now on. You are the idiots that think more nuclear weapons are a good idea.
Posted by MiddleRoad on Aug 11, 2005 at 8:02 PM
What a lot of people seem not to realize is that the more countries that have nuclear weapons and pose a threat to America, the more domestic tax dollars end up eventually in the pockets of the rich. Here’s how it works…
For the super rich in this country probably the greatest way to transfer dollars from the pockets of ordinary working people to those at the top is via government spending on the military and related industries.
We spend so much on the military in this country, many times more proportionally than any other nation on earth. But the fact that this happens has nothing to do with the actual defense of our country, it has more to do with the redistribution of wealth from the general public to the already wealthy.
Sound crazy? Well read on.
Rather than discourage nuclear proliferation George W. Bush and his cohorts have indirectly encouraged it. Everyone in the world (except for conservatives in America) knew that Sadam did not in any way pose an actual nuclear threat. To everyone else in the world it looked as if Iraq was invaded precisely because it did NOT have nuclear weapons.
To make this point clear, Pakistan, the actually hiding place of none other than Usama Bin Laden, quietly slips under the radar of serious U.S. attention. Surely Pakistan would be the perfect place to take the fight to Bin Laden. But there is a problem, a nuclear problem. Mess with Pakistan and you could end up with a very serious black eye.
Iran and North Korea see this, and despite conservative propaganda, are not just ‘evil’. Their original reasons for desiring nuclear weapons are pretty much the same as ours, to be the big boys on the block, but the current situation is different. They think to themselves a very simple thought. To stop America from trying to invade my country, I now NEED a nuclear arsenal. Fare enough. Horrible, but logical.
So how does this play into the hands of Bush and his supporters? Well it is actually really simple. The more credible threats you create in the world via nuclear proliferation, the more a super inflated military budget will be absolutely guaranteed for the at least the next few decades. Anyone with shares, or a financial interest, in Lockheed Martin, Halliburton, Boeing, and many, many others have an almost unimaginable source of future income to look forward to.
As a beautiful side effect (for the bastard conservatives) all our hard earned tax money, which could actually be used to fund a national health system, a better education for our children, and programs to help the poor, is actually wasted on a fictional defense, to a problem we ourselves have created.
The neo-cons have been trying to find anyway they possibly can to dismantle the majority of FDR’s New Deal. That is how far their resentment goes, that is how much they hate the idea of people being helped by other people. Spending ludicrous amounts on the military and other related industries is just one way to justify spending less on the things that should have money spent on them, like social programs to help the poor and disadvantaged. It also makes some very rich people much, much wealthier into the bargain.
Still sound crazy? Well, we shall see.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 12, 2005 at 3:47 AM
Clarification of Iran’s intentions: Under the headline, “RAFSANJANI SAYS MUSLIMS SHOULD USE NUCLEAR WEAPON AGAINST ISRAEL” the Iran Press Service reported the following comments of former president Rafsanjani in December, 2001:
“If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world”, (Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani speaking to the crowd at traditional Friday prayers in Tehran).
Stalemate indeed. But the population disparity, when calculated along Jewish vs. Muslim lines, makes this a bit different from India and Pakistan or the U.S. and the former U.S.S.R.
Posted by misterk on Aug 12, 2005 at 6:14 AM
Maltida: “For the super rich in this country probably the greatest way to transfer dollars from the pockets of ordinary working people to those at the top is via government spending on the military and related industries.”
Tell that to Sam Walton (difficult since he’s dead, tell his heirs) and Bill Gates. Defense contracting is a business that can be somewhat lucrative, but so other types of businesses can be considerably more so.
If we can prevent Iran from getting nukes, it is a no-brainer that that is in the best interests for the world and especially the Middle East. Crazies with nukes - can’t we all agree it is a bad idea. (Personally i like the idea of global disarment, with the US *slowly* shedding its stockpile.)
Posted by wolf on Aug 12, 2005 at 6:57 AM
I have one small gripe after re-reading the article:
” (Iran is the only large Arab state which not only does not diplomatically recognize Israel, but resolutely denies its right to exist as a state). “
Iran is not ethnically Arab. In fact, Arabs are roughly only 3% of the population in Iran.
to misterk: So the situation with a nuclear armed Iran stalemated with Israel would more resemble our situation with China.
(For more on this, refer to an article by Paul Craig Roberts http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts08112005.html)
I agree with wolf’s statement about moving towards global disarmament. I doubt that this will happen any time soon given the level of distrust that exists between many of the nation-states, however, it is a noble and worthy goal.
Also, I think the point Matilda Gatsby was trying to make about the Military Industrial complex is that unlike the Waltons and Bill Gates, Boeing, BAE, etc… are direct beneficieries of government spending where as Wal-Mart and Microsoft depend more on private sector money. Excepting any tax breaks or loopholes, of course. :)
Posted by volvillain on Aug 12, 2005 at 8:08 AM
It is astounding that neither Slavoj Zizek’s piece, nor any of the subsequent comments, even mention the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).
The exchanges here would be elevated considerably if they were informed by a careful reading of that rather important treaty, and the obligations it places on those who have signed it; as well as by a better understanding of why not only the United States and other nations, but also the NPT’s watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), are deeply troubled by Iran’s pursuit of uranium enrichment and other civilian nuclear activities that can be used to bring a nation close to building a nuclear bomb.
Let’s push Zizek’s logic to what I find to be its rather absurd logical conclusion: If the world would be stable with a nuclear-armed Iran, wouldn’t it be safer if even more nations built nuclear weapons?
I think not.
If Iran builds the bomb, this may sufficiently encourage Saudi Arabia to follow. Which may enrourage Syria to follow. Which may encourage Turkey to follow. And so on.
Do we really want to live in that world?
I think not.
Posted by nuclearchimera on Aug 12, 2005 at 8:29 AM
Iranians are Persian. They are completely different from Arabs. Nice point out Volvillian. This article just keeps on giving!
I could see how Zizek would completely flub up the very important religious, ethnic, and historical differences between the various people of the Middle East.
But again, a statement like this makes it through the editorial process of this paper?! Do you guys post online before going to the press? I really hope you do! With Ivins putting out the most embarrassing recant in recent memory I hope the Progressive press can find a new process to vet material to limit embarrassing errors.
Posted by MiddleRoad on Aug 12, 2005 at 8:31 AM
Speaking of the NPT, it’s nice to know that Israel never signed, yet Iran did. What’s up with that? Oh, I know, how it works. Anyone says one word about Israel in a way they don’t like and outcome the anti-semite accusations. Okay, I’m ready for my punishment. Come and get me Mr. Dershowitz.
Thanks for the Kudos MiddleRoad!
My dream is to one day be a bad ass copy editor, but now a days it seems like proof reading and research of facts take a back seat when one is too busy pushing an agenda rather than facts!
Posted by volvillain on Aug 12, 2005 at 8:57 AM
Saddam, of course, had no interest in toppling the Iranian government—he just wanted the Iranian oil fields. Actually overcoming and attempting to control a country full of Shiites would be his worst nightmare. Later on, he finally figured out that Kuwait was an easier target: he really didn’t expect the western powers to take action. Yet another grievous mistake of his.
A previous poster insinuates that the Iranian regime is like a cancer. This is a good analogy; unfortunately, when we could have taken care of the cancer at an early stage, the physician in charge (Mr. Carter) was afraid to deal with it. Its malignancy continues to be a severe problem.
It is quite rational that the Iranians can, through a 3rd party, deliver nuclear strikes on the U.S. without great fear of military repercussion. They’ve stated that they want to do something such as this, and I have no reason to doubt them. Simply believing that they won’t do it does not make it so.
One method of dealing with Iran might be to actively enlist the support of the Russians, whom we have tried hard to antagonize the past decade or so. Enlisting their support would likely mean we’d get serious about helping them with their Chechen problem, though, which is probably why it hasn’t happened yet.
The War on Terror, unlike the despicable War on Drugs, actually does have an enemy. The U.S. really has been attacked multiple times by Middle Eastern terrorists, who still assert that they intend to attack again. Surely one cannot think that they’re simply going to fade away becuase we would like that?
Posted by HenryB on Aug 12, 2005 at 8:59 AM
Matilda-
You said:
“Rather than discourage nuclear proliferation George W. Bush and his cohorts have indirectly encouraged it. Everyone in the world (except for conservatives in America) knew that Sadam did not in any way pose an actual nuclear threat. To everyone else in the world it looked as if Iraq was invaded precisely because it did NOT have nuclear weapons.”
I am not certain how closely you followed the goings on prior to the invasion of Iraq, but here are a few examples of the “Bush Cohorts”
who were convinced that Iraq had come close to aquiring nukes: Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Kofi Anon, the British, German AND French security agencies, as well as Isreal’s Massad. And, oh yeah, the Congress of the United States. The UN Security Council passed 17 resolutions calling for Saddam to give up the pursuit of his weapons of mass destruction. By that, they didn’t mean tanks and planes. Boy those slimey Bush cohorts, huh? Oh? We didn’t find any WMD? Next time you can’t find your wallet or car keys, just tell yourself that they really never existed.
Iraq was invaded because the best time to stop a madman from getting nukes is BEFORE he gets them. A philosophy lost on Clinton who sold nuclear technology and material to the North Koreans because they promised to be good boys.
Iran should be hit hard if they continue to persue nukes before they get them. After they obtain nukes, an obvious position to point out, (except to conservatives in America)...its too late to stop them…BECAUSE THEY NOW HAVE NUKES.
See how it works?
Bad guys get nukes, they become untouchable.
Why must we wait til they actually get them? We have to make a decision in this world: Are we going to let bad guys get nukes? I thought you guys on the Left were AGAINST nuclear proliferation. Hell, I know I am.
Everyday I thank GOD Bush beat Kerry.
Posted by IsThisThingOn? on Aug 12, 2005 at 9:36 AM
Henry B,
Unfortunately we have tackled the problem of terrorism as if it is in and of itself the sickness. The reality is that terrorism is merely a symptom of a set of other problems. Of course our conduct of this war on terror has only excacerbated the conditions which spawn suicidal religious zealots, so we have even more global instability to look frward to. Just the kind of world I’d like my daughter to grow up in. Thanks to the clowns on both sides of the aisle that mask their agendas with anemic platitudes and empty talk of freedom, democracy and liberty. Hey, any fool can open his mouth and espouse a set of ideals, but few ever put them into practice. If we were serious about eliminating terror, then by default we’d have to be serious about justice and ethics and humanity, but those things have just become screen words used to keep the citizenry of the US from barking to loudly and upsetting the imperialist ambitions of our government. Democrats included!
Posted by volvillain on Aug 12, 2005 at 9:37 AM
Ms. Gatsby -
“Everyone in the world (except for conservatives in America) knew that Sadam did not in any way pose an actual nuclear threat.”
“Everyone in the world” is a lot of people. Can you be a little more specific and name three of them?
In 1998, the House of Representatives passed the Iraq Liberation Act 360-38. The Senate passed the Act by unanimous consent. President Clinton signed the Act into law. Regime change in Iraq has been a matter of USA law since 1998.
Iraq’s refusal to cooperate with the UN weapons inspectors was one principal reason for the Act. Many Democratic politicians, including Clinton, Gore, Daschle, Pelosi, Reid, Kennedy, Levin, and Rockefeller (not to mention a few Republicans) were quoted, at the time and subsequently, that Saddam had WMD and nuclear programs, and that he was a threat to the world and to the United States. Even Hans Blix and Mohammed El-Baradei, in their final reports to the UN before hostilities began in Iraq in March 2003, referred to the ongoing presence of “illegal” weapons in Iraq.
Both Congressional chambers passed the Iraq War Resolution in 2003 with big majorities.
AFTER hostilities began, there commenced serious questions about the existence of WMD in Iraq. Kevin Drum, then writing as calpundit, explored the Internet and asked for input about WMD. In Drum’s extensive research, exactly two knowledgeable people questioned the presence of WMD in Iraq BEFORE the start of hostilities: Vladimir Putin and Scott Ritter. Probably not coincidentally, Putin and Ritter were both indirect recipients and profiteers of Saddam’s bribery in the Oil for Food scandal.
Not a single US politician nor any of the Western intelligence agencies stated before March 2003 that Saddam had no WMD.
Since you think that “every one in the world” knew that there was no threat, would you please identify any credible quotes that you have predating March 2003 in support of your position? I would be ever so grateful.
In the absence of supporting documentation, would you kindly refrain from talking nonsense?
Posted by scorp on Aug 12, 2005 at 9:52 AM
Perhaps instead of imprisoning Eric Rudolph, we should seek to understand the root causes of killing abortion doctors? The reality is that killing abortion doctors is merely a symptom of a set of other problems (and really, when you think about it, it is really more noble - at least they target the “offending” people, rather than just random civilians). If we were serious about eliminating abortion doctor killers, then by default we
Posted by wolf on Aug 12, 2005 at 9:57 AM
Volvillian—
I understand your angst, but you said:
“If we were serious about eliminating terror, then by default we
Posted by IsThisThingOn? on Aug 12, 2005 at 9:59 AM
Scorp—
Have you wondered where the Left and the press would be on this Iraqi war thing if Clinton did the invading instead of Bush? Not a word was spoken when Bubba went into Bosnia…WITHOUT a vote from Congress or permission from the UN. But Viola! He was a “GREAT president”, and Bush is likened to Hitler and the very terrorists he fights. Both World Wars One, & Two and Vietnam were all started by Democratic presidents. A Democrat president dropped not one but two atomic bombs on the Japanese. Maybe we should just let the Dems start all the wars, and we could demonize THEM for being war-mongers.
Things that make you go “hmmmm”
Posted by IsThisThingOn? on Aug 12, 2005 at 10:51 AM
IsThisThingOn- I see the point you are making. I suppose that I could have been more specific in my original post, but I was operating under the possibly misguided notion of trying to be brief and not offer up too rambling a monologue. To be blunt, what I was trying to convey is that when we talk about justice as Americans there is a more definable range than say what Justice might mean for someone from a different culture. At the risk of being pilloried, I’d say that the majority of Americans deplore murder. However, as you rightly point out there are many instances that someone would call murder and another would call justice. That can be applied to Death Penalty cases, abortion bombings, etc… Now, my own background on this is that I believe that killing innocent people is a bad thing, whether it is suicide bombers, police, soldiers, etc… Now where my conflict with America is that “unintentional” killing is part of the norm. Like, the need to break a few eggs to make an omellette, which is fine if you’re living comfortably in Massachussetts, but not so well if you happened to be a resident of Fallujah or Jenin. In essence, I perhaps naively believe that the ends doesn’t justify the means, that there are alternatives to direct military intervention. For example, the difficulties in Northern Ireland didn’t subside because of “Shock and Awe” but by agreeing to meet and try to work out the differences between the involved parties. I know it doesn’t have the same dramatic effect of a daisy cutter or bunker buster, but hey, life isn’t perfect.
The other thing I want to mention since you brought up Bubba Clinton is that I am not a blind devotee of some party, be it Republican or Democrat, green or libertarian. There are politicians that I think are fools and then there are some that I respect, regardless of what party affiliation they claim. By and large US policy hasn’t differed much more than a few degrees regardless of whether there was a mule or an elephant at the helm. It’s all about the Benjamins.
Posted by volvillain on Aug 12, 2005 at 12:33 PM
How many times did Clinton change his story about the reason he went to war? Do we know the real reason for Bush yet? Will we ever?
Posted by tantalus on Aug 12, 2005 at 12:40 PM
Bush administration officials, who estimated that Iran was only five years away from such a weapon.
Has bush admin. been right on anything?
any nation that gets the nuke bomb, U.S.A. will leave them alone. That is why it is so important to get the bomb when you live in that neighborhood.
Iran knows that we can’t attack them. We can’t start another war because iraq is kicking are ass.
america freaked out when india,and pakistan got the bomb. Iran and north korea are next to get the bomb and there is nothing the U.S. can do about it, but bitch and promise sanctions.
bush is nothing like hitler, hitler was a great public speaker.
clinton went to war with bosnia, but 10% were american troops the rest were nato troops that’s 90% non american troops. It did not cost 1.3 billion dollars a week and I don’t remember any U.S. troops dead. Clinton was nominated for the noble peace prize for his efforts.
Vietnam,U.S. gave money, guns, supplies, and training to south vietnam. The reason to fight the north vietnam people who were commies. When the south built their army up enough to fight the north commies we the U.S. would stand down and come home.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Posted by brian2 on Aug 12, 2005 at 12:55 PM
Thinking we’d be better off with the fanatical terrorists who run Iran being armed with nuclear weapons is not an example of clear thinking. If there must be a hegemon, we should be it.
Posted by chopper on Aug 12, 2005 at 5:29 PM
IsThisThingOn, Saddam is not a mad man, sorry, we are actually the aggressors, and you can thank God all you like, he doesn’t exist.
Am I the only person in America with the guts to admit that ordinary Iraqis were better off under Saddam than they are now? Cold-blooded murderer that he was he doesn’t have half the blood on his hands that we do. A hundred thousand dead and civil war on the horizon, what thanks does Iraq really owe our ‘brave’ boys. Maybe in a decade or two ordinary Iraqi people will benefit from the removal of Saddam, or maybe another Saddam will take control, a fundamentalist Muslim Saddam, one who will really help the terrorists.
We are the real bad guys in this situation. For goodness sake act like real men, stand up and take responsibility for this atrocity. To hear conservatives squeal and squirm and justify the killing of so many thousands of people like used car salesmen, it makes me sick. All in the name of freedom, what a repulsive joke.
To all you knuckle headed, conscienceless conservatives out there, read my first post again and allow yourself to ask the obvious question. Who benefits from this situation, who definitely benefits no matter how it turns out? You guys just cannot see the wood for the trees can you?
Lastly, just because you managed to fool a lot of otherwise well meaning people into believing your lies doesn’t mean you can smear them with your shit now. WAKE UP!
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 13, 2005 at 3:41 AM
Another thing, democrats did not start world war two, I was always under the impression that was Germany and Japan.
And yes, any democrat who acts like a conservative is as bad as a conservative.
The democrats in our country are actually a center right political party, in opposition to an extremist far right political party. Real liberals often support the democrats because the alternative is the murderous republicans. Unfortunately the democrats are often half in bed with the ultra right wing in this country, so what can ordinary people do?
Republicans have the moral values of fascists, just without the balls. Any democrat who drops an atomic bomb is actually a wannabe conservative.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 13, 2005 at 4:19 AM
Chopper- Are you really prepared to pay what it actually costs to be a hegemon? Usually when someone makes the statement that they want US imperialism, they are the last people who want to do anything to support it, other than running their mouths. I guess it is far easier spending other peoples money, killing other peoples kids, etc… Talking tough and being tough are two different things and if you want to put your money where your mouth is, enlist, volunteer, whatever.
Another point is that if we wan’t to prevent nuclear proliferation, we need to stop threatening to invade other countries to initiate regime change. If our leaders didn’t routinely threaten Iran as often as they do, there might be more room for a negotiated settlement.
Also, do you really believe that every Muslim, in every country is a fanatic poised to strike at the US? That Iran would really risk even an indirect nuclear strike against us? As it is they are in our cross hairs with minimal provocation. So what do you think our knee jerk reaction would be if a nuke was used against us by a terrorist group. Whether or not the attack was affiliated with Iran, Iran would get nuked. It’s just that simple. So really, wouldn’t it really be in Iran’s best interest to not give terrorists nukes? But to hedge their bets they might want a few of their own to deter an invasion.
Posted by volvillain on Aug 13, 2005 at 5:17 AM
How on earth can you invoke MAD with a nation like Israel? They are too small, they don’t have submarine based missiles, they don’t have something like SAC 24 hour coverage, they just don’t have the retaliatory capability that the US and USSR did during the Cold War. MAD doesn’t work here.
4-8 nukes would destroy the entire nation (so even if they were able to lob a few at Iran post launch it wouldn’t do a whole lot of good).
You didn’t even mention Osirak and what the Israelis would have to inevitably do if Iran begins production of UR235 or plutonium big time. What do you think the consequences of such an action would be?
Iran is one of the few states to have admitted to engaging in state sponsored terrorism. Hey, give the Lockerbie bombers and Hezbollah funders the bomb (their proliferation of plastique explosives, shaped charges, and remote detonation just aren’t enough)! Brilliant!
What a sick mind, uniformed mind. But it does prove, as long as you are “Progressive”, that you can get published!
Posted by MiddleRoad on Aug 13, 2005 at 9:24 AM
Slavoj Zizek makes a lot of valid points regarding Iran’s attempt to be included into the nuclear armed states. Clearly, Pakistan and India will be tempted to use their own nuclear weapons if border conflicts rage out of control and the issue of Kashmir escalates further.
Besides, once Bush announced his policy of preemptive strikes against countries that may or could be threats down the road, it makes perfectly good sense that other nations, whether we like them or not, can justifiably use the same rationale to attack their perceived opponents as well.
A convincing argument can be made that anyone today can get hold of nuclear and/or biological weapons on the black market quite easily. Russia’s impoverished nuclear scientists and physicists, many of whom were tossed out of work after the end of the Cold War, can and have sold their nuclear knowledge expertise to other countries. It is also a well-established fact that Pakistan’s rogue scientist, A.Q. Kahn, provided nuclear secrets to both Iran and North Korea.
Israel, though not officially included in the exclusive club of nations in possessing nuclear weapons, nonetheless has those weapons in spite of the fact they have not declared them openly. Fat chance that if Iran ever attacked Israel for any reason, even with conventional weapons, that Israel wouldn’t retaliate aggressively by using their nuclear capabilities to repel any attack by Iran.
I am also convinced that G. W. Bush will launch air strikes against Iran with or without Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s support. Why do I believe this? Because before 9/11 Bush’s approval ratings were already heading south, hovering somewhere around 50%. They shot up to over 90% during the Afghanistan bombing and the ousting of the Taliban and remained in the stratosphere even longer than his father’s 85% during the height of the Gulf War. Bush puts his own vainglory ahead of anything else, including the welfare and interests of America. His thirst to be admired and revered completely overwhelm all other considerations.
Germany’s foreign intelligence chief August Hanning said recently that terrorism is radiating from Iraq and further attacks are expected around the Middle East. Hanning stated, “We fear developments in Iraq are radiating outwards.” This comment flies in the face of Bush and his military commanders’ claims that, like moths drawn to a flame, the U.S. is defeating terrorism in Iraq so that we don’t have to confront them elsewhere.
Once the USA Patriot Act with its renewed executive powers is rammed through the gutless, lapdog Republican-controlled U.S. Congress later this year, we will hear a heightened rhetoric and more saber rattling to bomb Iran. The biggest question that has yet to be answered is whether or not Bush will try to invade and occupy Iran with ground troops. It is unlikely with an already stretched-thin all-volunteer U.S. military that that is feasible.
The only recourse will be for Bush to use his executive edicts to reinstate the Selective Service draft, even if it’s only temporary, to accomplish one of the linchpins in toppling another Middle East Islamic government and replace it with a Bush-mandated puppet regime as he has done in Iraq. And would Bush use nuclear weapons? I believe he would, but only if he had the same certitude that God Himself appointed him to smite the enemy as his “moral values” acolytes have asserted.
In that case, if Bush times it right, it will solidify his power in Congress in 2006 once the solid phalanx of evangelical extremists are convinced that this event would bring about their much-craved-for Armageddon and End of Days biblical prophecy.
Posted by Richard2 on Aug 13, 2005 at 3:03 PM
Lefty, yup, all that and more I agree with you. But, I had to pare down my rant since I pushed beyond my allocated word count re ITT limits. Oh, how wordy I can be. Ha, ha.
Posted by Richard2 on Aug 13, 2005 at 3:29 PM
Matilda Gatsby writes “...The democrats in our country are actually a center right political party, in opposition to an extremist far right political party….”
After I stopped laughing at this, I began to wonder if ‘Matilda’ was heavy into peyote. The Democratic Party, at least since the early 1980’s, is basically a totalitarian party along the lines of Stalin (but w/o the death camps for its enemies [yet]). It worships communism and UTTERLY HATES individual liberty. Its rhetoric to the contrary reminds me of countries with the word ‘Democratic’ in their titles: virtually all are dictatorships. To describe the Democratic Party as “center right” is utterly ridiculous.
And now back to our main topic, Iranians with nuclear weapons. Iran under the current wacko Muslim regime IS TO BE TRUSTED: it says that it wants to kill us, and it WILL attempt to do so. These are fanatics: they are not like the Russians of the 1950’s, who would say such but only mean to bluff. If there is no regime change in Iran, then for our own preservation, SOMETHING MUST BE DONE. These are like folks down the street stating that they’re going to drop by to kill you one of these days…if you ignore them, you’re likely to end up prematurely dead.
Posted by HenryB on Aug 13, 2005 at 10:15 PM
Glad I made you laugh HenryB. You are just a stupid guy, but hey, it won’t be the last time someone on the far right will be called stupid, so take heart.
There is no real left wing in this country, and of course people who think Bill O’Reilly is fair and balanced are going to consider the democrats to be on the political left. Anywhere else in the world the democrats would be considered a center right party and the republicans would be considered neo-fascists.
But it is totally wrong to compare the American conservatives to the Nazis, I mean the Nazis were invading countries without a legitimate reason and threatening others… wait a minute.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 14, 2005 at 3:45 AM
Also, HenryB, I am sorry to hear you are so afraid of Iran, it must be quite tiring to have to live in constant fear, and how dare our government only spend $400 Billion on defense a year. You sound to me like a bit of a coward, shaking in your boots over such a small country. Stand up straight and find some backbone, only cowards strike first out of fear.
Or does the thought of thousands of people being blown to bits in the Persian Gulf kind of turn you on?
The only reason our ultra right wing government doesn’t want other countries to have nukes is because then it cannot invade them whenever it feels like it. If any other nation ever nuked one of our cities it would be immediately flattened by an overwhelming counter strike, and they definitely know this.
As for individual terrorists, well at some point we are just going to have to arrest them all (impossible) or else make peace using genuine diplomacy, like the British did with the IRA. The British spent thirty years trying to smash that organization, but looked what happened when they finally stopped trying to flatten the IRA and started addressing some of their genuine concerns. Peace eventually broke out. Today we have a different situation with the Islamic Fundamentalists, but not so different that we can’t at least look at the things we are doing that causes them to take arms against us.
There are very few real madmen in this world, and most of those can’t even dress themselves, let alone build an atomic bomb.
We are all a lot safer than the conservatives in this country want us to feel, because how else are we going to let them spend so much on the military. Gee it must be great to have no conscience, to be totally unclouded by right and wrong, and for the murder of tens of thousands of people to be okay as long as it makes you ‘feel’ better.
The ends do not always justify the means. Get over it, and GROW UP!
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 14, 2005 at 4:16 AM
Hey Matilda, It’s nice to see someone else out there that believes that security and peace can be achieved sans armed intervention.
The Democratic party is totalitarian, in the sense that a minority center-right cabal controls the money and sets the course. I believe most democrats are more left leaning, but not of the Stalinist vein. Hate to disappoint HenryB and his Bill O’reily talking points, but most grassroot Dems want decent wages, universal health care, envoirnmental protection. They don’t want death camps or pogroms. Unless they’re the quasi-fascist Senator Libermann, that is. How he can even be called liberal, I just don’t know….
Posted by volvillain on Aug 14, 2005 at 5:55 AM
volvillaian, you should have read my post more closely. Nowhere did I accuse all Muslims of being fanatical terrorists. What I said was that the rulers of Iran WHERE fanatical terrorists. They’ve given ample evidence of this. You are assuming they will behave rationally. They won’t. I didn’t even say we should be a hegemon, I merely said if there has to be one we should be it. As for your personal attack (the usual all purpose tiresome charge made by those on the left) I did try to enlist in the Service many years algo. I was rejected for medical reasons (bad knees).
Posted by chopper on Aug 14, 2005 at 7:30 AM
bush is a joke.everyone who voted for him are getting what they deserve.
Posted by brian2 on Aug 14, 2005 at 7:30 AM
Volvillain,
Agreed! Terrorism is brought about by other problems. I suppose we can say the same about any variety of crime.
Poverty, ignorance, superstition, hunger, greed, prejudice, retaliation
Posted by whattheheck on Aug 14, 2005 at 9:45 AM
Chopper- You’re right, you didn’t say that all muslims were terrorists. my mistake, but I would continue to challenge your assessment that they are fanatical terrorists unable to act rationally. Certainly they adhere to a strict form of Islam and have a strong anti-west bias, but their recent conduct certainly doesn’t strike me as being irrational. Quite the contrary if indeed Ahmed Chalabi was their means of getting us embroiled in Iraq. I’d say if that was their gambit, that that would be quite Machiavellian of them, but not crazy. Crazy would be us, taking the bait, hook line and sinker.
Sorry that you took the charge of not enlisting as a personal attack. I happen to know MANY people who espouse a pro-imperial agenda that are in good helath that say they can’t enlist because they have a career, family, etc… Like our men in uniform don’t have any of those things. But let’s get back to my original question… Do you really know what that will cost us to be a hegemon? Are you prepared to make some other kind of sacrifice to get us there?
Posted by volvillain on Aug 14, 2005 at 1:45 PM
Volvillain, I’m not saying we should necessarily be a hegemon, at least not in the sense that we should attempt to dominate every other nation on earth & take action against them every time they do something we don’t like. And I stand by my statement that the mullahs running Iran are fanatics. Certainly they are cunning & would be smart enough to avoid a direct nuclear attack against us (but they may directly attack Israel). They are known supporters of terrorism and I find it entirely crediable that they would help a terrorist organization detonate a bomb in the United States and then disavow responsibility. Many problems can be solved sans armed intervention, but not all of them. The attacks against us on 9/11 demanded a military response, for instance, or we would just have invited more of them.
Posted by chopper on Aug 14, 2005 at 4:48 PM
HenryB,
If you think the Democrat Party in the US is Communist, you need to get out and about more my friend. This kind of rave, complete with capital letters, just serves to prove to people from other democracies that there is something skewed about US right whingers. You are so out of touch with the real world, that means the 95% of the world that doesn’t actually live in the US that it would be laughable if it wasn’t so scary. Wake up and smell the coffee.
The US doesn’t have a social democratic party of the kind notable in the UK and Australia and New Zealand. What it has it seems to everyone else, is two versions of the same party. Now unless you want to argue that Australia and the UK and New Zealand are stalinist regimes, carting the battling little business people off to the Gulags, you will need to take an aspirin and have a good lie down otherwise you are in danger of being carted you off to the funny farm. You guys scare me sometimes, especially when I remember you have nukes. You and the people like you are simply right wing nutters - no more, no less.
Posted by Jane Doe on Aug 14, 2005 at 7:30 PM
So, chopper, the attacks on us on 9/11 demanded a military response did they? And what will happen if Saudi Arabia decides to attack us again? I suppose we’ll invade Norway shall we, or perhaps France? That would make about as much sense as invading Iraq.
Also, what do you think will be the long-term results of our unprovoked invasion of Iraq?
If you kill three thousand New Yorkers then a reasonably large number of people will perhaps know someone who knows someone who was lost.
If you kill a hundred thousand Iraqis then every single person in the country will have lost loved ones, or else know someone who died.
What do you think the survivors will end up feeling, especially the orphans? Will they love America, or will grow up despising America? I think its fair to say that a percentage of them will consider taking up arms against us eventually, in one way or another. Wouldn’t you? If America were invaded by another country, say China, and your family were shot or blown to bits, or otherwise killed in the chaos? You’d be hell bent on revenge, wouldn’t you? Sure, some people would eventually forgive and forget, but many would not. Violence really does beget violence.
Iraqis are people too, and they do not recognize us as their superiors in anyway. They are Human Beings the same as us, proud, defiant and intelligent. Some of them will undoubtedly try to take revenge on America, and terror groups like Al Qaeda will be around to help them do it. Bush has made the future of our country generally less safe, not more, while setting in motion events that have claimed the lives of more innocent people than Saddam or Bin Laden were able to kill combined.
Bush and the neo-cons are guilty of murder and should be held accountable in a court of law. Unfortunately they are the law. There was no justification for the invasion of Iraq, not 9/11, not supposed weapons of mass destruction, not ‘regime change’, nothing. Iraq was not a threat to us, and in no shape or form was the killing of its citizens justified. To think anything else is to indulge the morality of fascism.
Meanwhile Bin Laden goes free. You need a bad guy after all, otherwise it would not be so easy for Bush to justify his laughable ‘War on Terror’.
More like a war on truth.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 15, 2005 at 3:32 AM
Amen Matilda! Rock on with that last post.
Chopper- I don’t agree with your conclusions about Iran because if they so much as blink the wrong way, they’ll get nuked. The reality is that if Saudis attack us again, Iran gets socked. If Pakistanis attack us, Iran will get socked for it. Whether they’re connected to any future attacks or not, if America gets whacked, Iran will pay the price. That’s why Hizbollah in Lebanon has been relatively quiet for a few years. Actually, it looks as though Hizbollah is starting to go the way of Seinn Feinn with fielding elected officials, stepping down the violence, etc… Note to all you hawks out there: Lebanon’s progress didn’t come because of “shock and awe,” or “boots on the ground.” Their progress has been one of dialogue. Has it been perfect? No. Are there still political killings? Yes, but much less then 10 years ago. That’s what happens when you bring everyone to the table, terrorists included, because one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Ethan Allen is one of my heros, but to the Brits, he would have been a terrorist, had the word been in vogue back then.
Oh and another thing… Why do people still talk as though 9/11 occured in a vacuum? 9/11 was a consequence of our various foreign policy sins, including getting Bin Laden his start in Afghanistan against the Russians. Can you say “blow back?” I knew you could!
Posted by volvillain on Aug 15, 2005 at 9:11 AM
It’s nice to see that someone out there is cognizant of the term “blow back”. I just am shocked that people like “Isthisthingon” still blindly bow to the altar of the anti-Christ Bush. He is so opposite of Chrisitanity, it is deeply saddening to realize that most Americans bowing before him have no clue what Jesus even said. If they did, he’d be out on his ass.
To go into Iran will only consolidate the bond between the Iraqi Shiites and the Shiite government in Iran. We will only castrate and isolate ourselves further with an invasion. Of course, Bush has already signed off on that as of October, 2004. So I’ve just been watching the buildup since then. Now the rhetoric will get really heavy, just like pre-war Iraq and Saddam.
The ridiculous thing is that the weapons inspections by the UN and the International Nuclear Agency (not the exact name, but I can’t remember it now) WERE working in Iraq. We found exactly what Blix and other told us we’d find—nothing. Now the Iranians are saying that they will offer complete transparency and allow 100% monitoring so they can have nuclear power for their country, but do you read that in the press? No, they make it look shady and threatening.
I know Iran is not our friend and we do have to watch them closely, but who the hell are we to say they can’t have nuclear power even if we are allowed onsite permanently to monitor? The American government and press are going to hide that piece of information from the public so Halliburton can continue to profiteer and Chevron can keep oil prices artificially high.
Posted by Susie Q on Aug 15, 2005 at 9:43 AM
Susie Q—
What exactly are you refering to when you say you see people like “ISThisThingOn? who “still blindly bow to the altar of the anti-Christ Bush”. I believe that we need to be vigilant about terrorists and the Left and others who want to destroy America. That is a thought of mine long before Bush was elected. Bush is no conservative as far as I am concerned. And he certainly is not Christ like. His only claim to my vote is that he is not an America-hater like the Democrats. Now Pat Buchanan! THERE is a real American. Ain’t bowing down to Bush at all. Nor to Jesus either, as I am not religious in the least. Christ was a sacrificial Lamb in order to be a martyr to the ancient Christian cause. If the Democrats want to be sacrificed like Christ to their cause of a New World Order, thats fine. The world is better off without em’.
But me? I would rather defend my self and my family. It is elementary survival my passivistic friend.
Posted by IsThisThingOn? on Aug 15, 2005 at 12:06 PM
“And what will happen if Saudi Arabia decides to attack us again?”
Is this really fair? If 20 Canadians attacked the US, would that constitute Canada attacking us (and just for fun, whose side would you be on?)?
“If you kill a hundred thousand Iraqis then every single person in the country will have lost loved ones, or else know someone who died.”
True. Saddam and sanctions killed upwards of a million, so it is safe to say that virtually everyone in Iraq has suffered tremedously over the last decade or so. . .
One might wonder if the terrorists who are killing indiscrimately over there are weakening their base, given such arguments.
“What do you think the survivors will end up feeling, especially the orphans?”
Those who remember Saddam may feel relieved that he is gone. It probably depends on whether Iraq is reconstituted as a viable country or not.
“Will they love America, or will grow up despising America?”
A mixture. Do Americans love or hate Hillary Clinton? George Bush? Opinions can be quite diverse.
“I think its fair to say that a percentage of them will consider taking up arms against us eventually, in one way or another. Wouldn
Posted by wolf on Aug 15, 2005 at 12:13 PM
I gotta take umbrage with “IsThisThingOn” saying that the Left wants to destroy America, seeing as I would consider myself leaning left-wards most of the time. I don’t want to destroy America. I don’t support terrorism. Now my beef with Bush AND Kerry is that their both bought and paid for by the monied interests. I’m not in favor of a government that lights its own fires and then tells the public that it is the only entity capable of fighting the fire while dousing that same said fire with gas even as they’re assuring us it is water they’re using. I don’t buy it. It reeks of profiteering. That’s why I’m not a proponent of unrestricted capitalism. Unrestricted capitalism gave rise to the robber barons of the late 19th century and I don’t think we need a reprise. Overall, I’m very suspicious of people who use labels because there are many Dems that I largely disagree with and many Republicans that I do agree with. I’ll gladly admit that I respect Pat Buchannan for sticking to his principals and not bowing to Bush. I agree with him that we should be more isolationist and focus on building up America, not tearing down Iraq. See, this is what makes people like Bush a divider. They use hyperbole and rhetoric to turn us against one another while at the same time justifying their rabid agendas. The last president we had that made me feel as bad as Bush does was LBJ. Manufacturing the Tonkin Gulf incident, escalating Vietnam, using taxpayers money on specious public projects which where really nothing than massive pork. Sound familiar? Well, it should because this Democrat gave Halliburton, Kellog, Brown and Root and company a big leg up with all OUR money. And for what? What did we get for all the money and blood spent in Vietnam? Nada. Zip. Zilch. We were told that we had to stop the red menace or other countries would fall. (Dominoe theory, hah!) So, when we finally pulled out, what happened? Well, since we aren;t writing this in Russian, I’d say that the threat was GREATLY exagerrated. Sound familiar? Oh, but I must have automatically liked him because he was a DEMOCRAT and labels matter, right? No my friend, actions are what count, not words…
Posted by volvillain on Aug 15, 2005 at 12:54 PM
Wolf, whatever.
Volvillain, thanks for the encouragement.
Isthisthingon, the left that do exist in this country do not hate America, or any other country for that matter, they simply dislike you, the average conservative.
Conservativism is a hateful little philosophy and is, as far as I can tell, anti-Christian, anti-human, anti-equality and anti-progress. America is a beautiful place, but at the end of the day is just a piece of land. Genuine liberals believe that people are basically good, and that when treated fairly they tend to act fairly. We even believe conservatives were born good, but just like the Taliban or the Nazis to a greater or lesser degree a kind of anti-human sentiment creeps into their lives. Some conservatives are entrenched, others can perhaps be saved, others still without thinking about it too much consider themselves conservatives even though when asked about each individual issue tend to come down on the side of liberals.
So no, we do no hate the piece of land that is America, and we have a lot of time for most of our fellow citizens. It is the conservatives in this country who constantly project their own hate and fear on to liberals. It is the conservatives who basically distrust other human beings. It is the conservatives who believe the ends justify the means and if people get hurt along the way then that is the way it has to be. They will talk about how their heart goes out for the dead in Iraq, but they would do it all again without a second thought. All that matters to conservatives is themselves and their immediate social group. The rest of America, and the rest of the world, can literally go to hell.
You are very much deluded if you think Liberals hate America, we just don’t consider innocent American lives to be any more important than innocent Iraqi lives, and that is what drives you mad isn’t it, that we refuse to play the game of neo-fascism.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 15, 2005 at 1:34 PM
Matilda—
Here is why I believe the Dems hate America. I will quote YOU:
1) “America is a beautiful place, but at the end of the day is just a piece of land.”
2) “you think Liberals hate America, we just don
Posted by IsThisThingOn? on Aug 15, 2005 at 2:22 PM
IsThisThingOn- Ouch! That hits a nerve! Now, I don’t want to seem like I’m getting too red around the gills, but the thrust of your argument, that dems are not always the nice, inclusive, touchy feely guys and gals they portray themselves as has some basis in truth.
Nobody is immune to acting like an inconsiderate jerk. Take our buddy Dubya, for example. Why not just diffuse the situation with Mrs. Sheehan and talk to her? Show some real courage and compassion, invite her in for tea, etc…
Anyway, I think people who talk about hating all liberals or all conservatives need to settle down a bit. Yeah, I’m passionate about my political views, but I draw the line at hate. I don’t like Dubya, and I certainly find myself angry with him a lot, but I don’t hate him. Hate is just so wasteful. I mean, will your hate of Dems blind you to anything good they might bring to the table? Will Matilda’s hate of conservatives blind her as well? All I know is that there is so much polarizing language on tv, on the radio, etc… that it seems like we’re forgetting that there are people on the receiving end of our spite. That’s why I try and be respectful of the person, even if I think their position on an issue is wrong. I don’t agree that the reprehensible conduct of the Dems towards the Boy Scouts casts all “progressives” in a bad light. To be honest, I don’t think the upper echelons of the Dem party are all that progressive anyway and many are spoiled blue bloods, just as the Bush version of conservatism, I don’t think is all that conservative. I mean, can you imagine Eisenhower signing the patriot act into law? I don’t think so…
Posted by volvillain on Aug 15, 2005 at 4:10 PM
Crying boy scouts or thousands of dead Iraq children, I know which one I think is the actual crime. Jesus Christ listen to yourself.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 15, 2005 at 4:18 PM
Hey Matilda, I agree that there is HUGE difference between crying children and dead children. Maybe isthisthingon doesn’t know what’s going on over there. Well, a picture is worth a thousand words or so. Just be careful, because this site is graphic and I cried my eyes out. Seriously. All I could think of was imagining how I’d feel if my daughter died and how I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone. Even Ann Coulter.
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/
Posted by volvillain on Aug 15, 2005 at 4:27 PM
Volvillain, I think conservatism in one guise or other is responsible for all human conflict and most human suffering. People who call themselves conservative are to a greater or lesser degree supporting a philosophical system that is in my opinion based on a complete misinterpretation of actual human nature. I do not hate people who call themselves conservatives or align themselves with that worldview, but I am damn angry when they follow through on those beliefs to the point of cold blooded murder.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 15, 2005 at 4:37 PM
Volvillian, I looked at the sight you posted, and it occurred to me that how does all this carnage make a second 9/11 less likely?
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 15, 2005 at 4:46 PM
By the way, my ‘Jesus Christ listen to yourself’ comment was directed at IsMyBrainOn.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 15, 2005 at 4:49 PM
Matilda, if 9/11 didn’t warrent a military response, then what does? It was an act of war that killed 3,000 people. You immediately jumped to the conclusion that because I posted that that I also think we should have invaded Iraq. For the record, I was not in favor of the Iraq war, I actually thought it was a distraction from fighting terrorism. I do think we were justified in invading Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda’s base, and destroying it. If we hadn’t done that I think there is good reason to believe there would have been further devastating attacks on US soil. I also question your figures on the amount of Iraqi deaths you say we’ve caused, and there is no evidence that all Iraqi’s are united against us in support of Al-Qaeda. Most of the terrorists (insurgents, if you insist on being politically correct) fighting us are Sunni’s or foreign fighters coming in.
In a historical sense your thinking is off-base, we killed hundred’s of thousands of (actually, probably millions) of German and Japanese civilians during WWII and we weren’t plagued with German or Japanese suicide bombers after the end of the war.
BTW, what is your definition of conservatism? Why do you think it is causing all conflict and suffering? Lenin wasn’t conservative, Stalin wasn’t conservative, Hitler wasn’t conservative, Pol Pot wasn’t conservative, Mao Tse-Tung wasn’t conservative, collectively they were responsible for over 100 million deaths in the 20th century. Your statement makes no sense.
Posted by chopper on Aug 15, 2005 at 6:53 PM
Matilda-I think I see what you’re getting at, but I’d like to clarify, if I may. Are you describing the authoritarian mindset when you mention conservative? Or a scarcity mentality, like there can only be so many winners in the world and I better damn well make sure I’m one of them, no matter what?
Oh and believe me, there was never any doubt in my mind that what we have done and are doing in Iraq will have grave consequences. It’s human nature really. I just have a hard time understanding how any one could think otherwise. Any one care to explain their perspective?
Posted by volvillain on Aug 15, 2005 at 7:09 PM
Volvillian, what is this fixation on Saudi attacking us? I realize most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi’s but there is no real evidence that the government of Saudi Arabia had a hand in the planning. There are many things about the Saudis I don’t like, but I don’t think they were directly responsible for 9/11.
The argument about “blow back” is way overdone. Your definition is so huge that almost anything could be listed as “blow back”. I think a fairly good argument could be made that we should have stayed out of WWI, and that the allies and the central powers would have come to a negotiated peace if we had done so. Political conditions in Germany would have been very different and Adolf Hitler probably would never have become Chancellor of Germany. Does that mean we should have stayed out of WWII and allowed Nazi Germany to dominate Europe? After all, this was merely us reaping the consequences of our “sin” of intervening in WWI. We had also cut off Japan’s oil supply six months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, so maybe that attack was also just “payback” for that foreign policy sin, and we should have sent Imperial Japan apologies for provoking them.
Posted by chopper on Aug 15, 2005 at 7:21 PM
Chopper- Criminal fringe groups cannot really declare a war. It was stupid of us to elevate their act of mass murder to that status. That only served to give Al Qaeda more credibility in the muslim world. Instead we should have done snatch and grabs of top members like what the Israeli’s did with Eichman. Not collective punishment, which essentially the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are. Also, if we’re serious about lasting peace, we have to get serious with Israel. We have to stop giving them carte blanche when it comes to the peace process. Here’s a good read for ya on that topic.
http://www.counterpunch.org/christison08152005.html
Posted by volvillain on Aug 15, 2005 at 7:33 PM
Volvillian, I would say a conservative (and I’m not entirely satistifed with the word, it has been overused and abused, just as the word liberal has) is someone who believes that human nature doesn’t change much, traditions are there for a reason, (although we shouldn’t become slaves to tradition) and the government can’t solve all problems, and may make them worse by attempting to do so. Also, life is inherently unsafe, none of us really knows as much as we think we do, and some people aren’t going to like you (or will actively hate you) no matter what you do.
As for the authoritarian mindset, that is at least as prevalent on the left as it is on the right, plus many people on the left in trying to create a heaven on earth instead create hells on earth (ie: see The French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, Mao Tse-Tung’s China, the list goes on).
Posted by chopper on Aug 15, 2005 at 7:41 PM
Volvillian, I don’t see how snatch and grabs in Afghanistan would have worked. I really don’t think we had any other options there. Iraq is a different story, but now that we are there we can’t just pull out and leave it in chaos.
Posted by chopper on Aug 15, 2005 at 7:44 PM
Saudi fixation? I don’t believe I’ve mentioned them, so I don’t see how you’re connecting me to any comments or allegations that their government was responsible. I don’t believe that the Saudi Arabian government had a hand in 9/11. They didn’t have anything to gain from it. In fact, we’re old buddies with the house of Saud. Go way back. I’d sooner believe the French had a hand in 9/11 then the Saudi government. (Now their citizens, well, different story…)
My definition of blow back is huge and vague? I think that the connection is pretty firm. Did we help provide material support to Al Qaeda during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, support that included teaching infiltration, clandestine operations, sabotage, guerrilla tactics etc..? I think you know that we did. It appears as though they were good students too, judging by their handywork.
Actually, the best thing that could have happened the end of WWI was if the US forced a fair settlement between the Allies and the Central Powers. We had the leverage with England and France being exhausted. Unforunately, the US congress made sure that we retreated into the shell of isolationism a bit prematurely and pretty much let England and France have thier way with Germany, Austria and the Ottoman Empire, thus, setting the stage for the sequel. God, Americans love sequels! See, you mention our witholding of oil from Japan as a catalyst, but you’re not doing the full disclosure thing. WHY did we decide to withold oil and scrap metal shipments from Japan? Because we’re mean people? No. It was China! We’d gotten fed up with Japan’s little adventure in China and Manchuria and thought that we might reign them in a little bit. (In hindsight, what do you think we’ll do to Venezuela if they decide to withold oil from us? hmmmm…) But that tactic backfired, (obviously) because, tada, Pearl Harbor. So, that was a nice little straw man that you built to torch in an effort to invalidate my argument, but did it work? Did anyone reading actually think that I held those opinions that you inferred were mine before consigning them to the flames? Before you attribute opinions to me, you might want to ASK what they are first! (You presume that I am anti-war through and through, but I undestand that sometimes one must fight, I just don’t think we’ve had to fight the fights we’ve fought for the past 30 or so years.)
Posted by volvillain on Aug 15, 2005 at 8:11 PM
Chopper- Here is where things get tricky. I don’t believe that government can solve every problem. In fact, the government that governs least, governs best in many ways. I think that there has to be a happy medium between government protection and free enterprise. Instead hat we have is pork fest every year at the legislature and Dubya there ladling out gravy. If you had a choice between spending taxpayer dollars on overseas missions vs. domestic security, what would you pick? Well, we’ve picked overseas adventures, adventures that are REALLY expensive in terms of human life, energy and money. Adventures that are LIKELY to create more chaos, death and destruction. If we pul out now things might get worse, or they might not. However, I think we lost the opportunity to effect a favorable outcome a long time ago, so why not get out? A lot of people didn;t want to exit Vietnam, because they thought a Red avalanche would follow. It didn’t. We were operating on the assumption that our communist enemies were united in their cause. They weren’t. Turns out that the Vietnamese were also afraid of Chinese interference. China was suspicious of the USSR. They weren’t one big happy family ready to pounce. Same thing in the middle east. All these Islamic countries have pretty complicated tribal and ethnic tensions. If we leave, they aren’t likely to follow us accross the ocean. Besides, that’s what the navy is for, right?
P.S. Senator Joe Lieberman and Ms. Feinsteinn are proof enough that authoritarians are amongst the left.
Posted by volvillain on Aug 15, 2005 at 8:26 PM
PPS: Well, the snatch and grab didn’t have a chance once our administration started blathering about Afghanistan and Al qaeda and blah, blah, blah. The element of surprise is essential and if we had real people in charge, people who weren’t spending all their waking moments trying to mint political capital, then we might have had a chance. I guess I don’t understand why doing things quietly is such a bad thing.
Posted by volvillain on Aug 15, 2005 at 8:29 PM
Volvillian, both you and Matilda mentioned the Saudis, perhaps Matilda made the more explicit accusation and you may have just mentioned them in passing (it’s getting late & I’m about ready to go to bed soon, I’ll re-read the posts tomorrow). I’m also well aware of why we cut off oil and scrap metal to the Japanese (in fact I think we were right to do so), but it did precipitate their decision to attack us. A war with Japan was probably inevitable at some point anyway. We were also allied with the Soviet Union during WWII, in spite of that the cold war ensued afterwords. More to your immediate point, we supplied weapons and training to insurgents fighting the Soviet Occupation, we didn’t supply Al Qaeda directly (I don’t think Al Qaeda even existed at the time). Bin Laden happened to be one of the insurgents who benefitted. Allies falling out among themselves after the end of a war is a very old story, Rome and Carthage were originally allies.
My point in all of this is that it is impossible to see all the ramifications of your actions, sometimes you have to go ahead and act anyway. I still believe we were right at the time to assist the insurgents fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, just as we were right to ally with the Soviet Union during WWII in spite of the inevitable Cold War that followed.
Posted by chopper on Aug 15, 2005 at 8:49 PM
All I meant by bringing up the Saudis is that if fifteen of the eighteen 9/11 hijackers had been North Korean than you had better believe we’d be in North Korea now.
Saudi Arabia was treated like a revered friend after 9/11 when fifteen of their citizens had just killed three thousand of ours. For heavens sake THINK about that. Doesn’t that seem weird to anyone, I mean really very inconsistent?
And what did Iraq have to do with 9/11, nothing. In fact I think I’ll repeat that, nothing, not one single thing. In fact Saddam was despised by the radical islamacists because under him Iraq was a secular state, not a Muslim one. Bin laden himself vowed to kill Saddam, on video. I guess we Americans saved him the trouble, and made it much easier for fundamentalist Muslims to take control of Iraq in the future. America doesn’t really care if Iraq becomes a Muslim state, after all Saudi Arabia isn’t a shining star of freedom and democracy and yet there is no problem there as long as they keep playing the game.
What I am about to say next may sound totally incredible, and I know that.
Both Bin Laden and Bush wanted very much to get rid of Saddam, and that is what has happened. America and Saudi Arabia seem to be better friends than ever post 9/11, and Usama Bin Laden, we cannot forget, is Saudi Arabian.
(Does this even begin to look fishy to anyone other than me?)
Usama Bin Laden’s main problem with America is that it has military bases in Saudi Arabia.
Invading Iraq has opened up the possibility of permanent American air bases being stationed there instead of Saudi Arabia. Once again Bin Laden may be on course to get the very thing he has been fighting for. Bush was looking for an excuse to invade Iraq, and Bin Laden gave him one. Bin Laden benefits, the Saudis benefit and America benefits. And hey, what are three thousand lives to a government that would happily sacrifice a hundred thousand?
And, finally, if the Bush administration’s rhetoric about freedom and democracy actually meant anything then Saudi Arabia would have been one of the best places to start. Sure the Saudis have made small token steps towards a democratic system, but this, it seems to me, is being done so as not to embarrass the Americans.
American neo-cons and the Saudi royal family are friends, that means they rub each others back, they look out for each other, they help each other.
Right now a little voice in most of your heads is going ‘they wouldn’t, that’s impossible’. But it could be our very lack of imagination that is causing us to not be able to see our nose in front of our face, and be blind to one of the greatest crimes in history.
I deeply hope that I am wrong, but anyone with eyes can see that something here just doesn’t add up. Something could be going on behind the scenes here, the shear audacity of which guarantees it could never be taken seriously.
Imagine it a different way, let’s take a totally fictional example. What if the Mafia in this country were to infiltrate the White House, say it took them thirty years but they managed to do it? The president was a real live crook. How would we know, how would we really know if people who were willing to do and say ANYTHING found their way into office?
Okay, get on with it, I can see the conservatives in the audience getting warmed as I speak, ready to take everything I say literally, and show off their brain washed allegiances into the bargain.
I don’t know what all of this means exactly, but I do know that the official version of this story is a pile of crap.
So, ‘Bring it on”.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 16, 2005 at 3:37 AM
Matilda-
Your straw man choice between “Crying Boy Scouts” and “10,000 dead Iraqis” is a feint or “head fake” that is taught in most basic debate classes. Neither of the two are related, but you stretch a point to try to make them related in order to show the foolishness of the opponent that you are debating. The problem is, it must be done in such a way that is not so transparently nonesense in order to work. You didn’t even try to make a case. I illustrated my loathing for the Left with a trivial story. It was a watershed moment which showed me how the Left is anathema to American values. How is that trivial story related to the deaths of 10,000 Iraqi’s? You fail to illustrate the reader. It is an artifice that is used with begining debaters who don’t know any better. Now,...if you can succesffully tie in the two, let me see how you make them a choice bweween the two, you might be given a grade above a “D” in debate class. Otherwise, your “either-or” effort is weak and amaturish.
Your moral equivilance is showing. Which is fine, if you can rise above your seething impotent rage to explain your logic. Oh wait, you’re a Lefty. You don’t HAVE any.
Posted by IsThisThingOn? on Aug 16, 2005 at 4:24 AM
I could debate you under the table, but I don’t have to. My watershed moment was the invasion of Iraq. That’s the moment I became sure the conservatives in this country were criminals. What planet are you on, I could win a ‘debate’ with you in my sleep.
Also, real debates only happen productively between equals, and by defending Bush you have already displayed your caliber. I am happy to share my numerous opinions, but I would no more sit here and argue the toss with you on your distorted, brainwashed terms than I would indulge the fantasies of a mental patient.
Call it liberal hypocrisy if you like, I prefer to call it reality.
I am sure that somewhere deep down in you there is a real human being, but conservatism is an evil doctrine and all those who follow it to some degree or other have turned off their brains and their hearts. Petty back and forth with conservatives can only serve to distract from the important truths of any situation.
The real issues here are not open for debate, not really. All people matter, the ends do not justify the means, people are basically good not bad and the world is basically a safe place to live not an unsafe one. I find conservative values so completely distorted that I cannot honestly debate anything with you. We would have to agree on our terms first and that will never happen, believe me. So feel free to listen and possibly learn, but debate with you, a conservative, I would no more do that than debate with a Nazi about the pros and cons of the Holocaust.
Iraq was an act of mass murder. All those who supported and voted for Bush in his second term are in effect accessories to murder. Still want to debate? Wash the blood off your hands first, you, and all your compatriots disgust me.
I do feel rage about what has happened and is happening in my name, and I do feel powerless to stop it, impotent you could say. But all political ground swells start with certain amount of indignation, and a deep sense of rebellion towards the gross injustices of the age. I could write volumes explaining myself to conservatives for whom the basic truths of this world will forever prove elusive. Or I could just get on with expressing my views in ways that most regular people will relate to by virtue of their already humanistic disposition. Most people care about other people, and hate to have done to others what they would not like to have done to themselves. Get it? No, I didn’t think so.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 16, 2005 at 5:34 AM
Holy Smoke!
Did I make a direct hit or what? My “evil” soul is so happy I made you spit blood.
Lost your composure dear. When you want to play with the big boys, lemme know. Otherwise, practice your invectives on a doll or something you have laying around your bedroom that doesn’t fight back. You could probably out debate that. ...or maybe not.
Posted by IsThisThingOn? on Aug 16, 2005 at 7:07 AM
Poll Date Approve Disapprove Spread
RCP Average 7/29 - 8/15 43.8% 51.4% -7.6%
bush sucks
Posted by brian2 on Aug 16, 2005 at 7:09 AM
Matilda - Re: 7:43 post
At the most profound level, you have touched on the basic difference between Liberals and Conservatives:
” ... people are basically good not bad and the world is basically a safe place to live not an unsafe one ... “
This thought is pervasive in Liberal/ left-wing philosophy, from the latest Democratic Party platform to the Communist Manifesto to the Constitution of the Soviet Union. It is also utter nonsense.
The Soviet Constitution reads as if it were written by Pollyanna or the DNC, but millions of Soviet citizens died during collectivization (five million in the Ukraine alone) and the Great Purges BEFORE WWII started. Not to mention the thirty million who died in China, and the one-third of the Cambodian population that died, all in pursuit of your “people are basically good” crap. A total of 100 million innocents died in pursuit of the communist dream/nightmare, and now poor Russia is suffering from a small (and declining) population.
We Conservatives know that people are capable of great evil, and that the rule of law (rather than the wish for good feelings) is the basis for a successful society. The United States is the most successful large nation in the history of the world, and the Soviet Union was the least successful. The Constitution of the United States is based on the knowledge of a long history of tyranny and oppression in the world. The Bible itself recognizes the capacity for evil, and the need for laws to control that evil.
The hatred and “disgust” you have displayed toward Conservatives would be acted out if you had the political power to do so, and people like me would be purged. But in their infinite wisdom, the founding fathers gave us, not only the rule of law, but the Second Amendment. So you are free to say anything you want, no matter how silly, but don’t try to act out your pathetic ideology. It won’t work in a free nation such as mine.
Posted by scorp on Aug 16, 2005 at 7:36 AM
Matilda -
By the way, you said (several days ago) that “Everyone in the world (except for conservatives in America) knew that Sadam did not in any way pose an actual nuclear threat.”
I challenged that, and requested a single verifiable quote from a Western politician or a Western intelligence agency dated before March 2003 to the effect that Saddam did not have WMD.
No luck? I thought not.
Posted by scorp on Aug 16, 2005 at 7:46 AM
Scorp-
You hit several nails right on the head. The whole essence of the Left winger “thought” process, is that if we were just to hold hands and sing something written by Sting, all the bad guys would put down their world domination plans and come over to our side. What Matilda and other lefties don’t seem to realize, to make this point more focused, is that the radical Muslims who are in the process of bombing the crap out of anyone that disagrees with their wierd version of praising God, that they have a plan of world domination by their religion, one way or the other. Its called the “Caliphate”. Lefties THINK it is all caused by George Bush or some other fancifull neo-con conspiracy,...but thats because this terrorist activity is sort of a “tabla rasa” or Rorshach test to project their hatreds for those people who value America and what she stands for, onto. What is actually happening is that the mullahs want to do to the world what Hitler and Stalin wanted to do. But, just like the lefties of the 30’s and 40’s, they don’t see this and somehow twist their little brains into intellectual knots and want to support their evil work, just as they are doing now with their support and justification of the terrorists. The terrorists attck US, we fight back and somehow, just like bullies in the school yard who get angry with you for hitting them back, the Islamacist fanatics get angry at the idea that we can fight them back. So when they get angry at us for fighting back, the Lefties all scream in unison: “Hey! Look at what we are doing to THEM!! We deserve this slaughter!”
Matilda: Do you know how many different groups of unfairley treated, oppressed people we have in this world? Hundreds! How many of them are bombing innocents at random? With few exceptions, just the Muslims. By your self-rightious thinking, the blacks and the hispanics ought to be taking up bombing people too! Don’t forget the Turks and the Greeks! Sudanese? I could go on all day. What a “people are essentially good” philosophy you have! Why don’t we just all bomb each other out of existance? Everyone is justified if you examine their plight deep enough, right? Everyone has screwed over someone else in this world, right? I’m Irish. My people were discriminated against when first coming to America. I should go bomb people too! Come on everybody! Lets all go kill people that have oppressed us sometime, somewhere in history! Lets all be Left wing nut bars! everything is justified! Justice! Justice! Death to everyone that doesn’t think like me! We lefties have 100 million or so souls socked away…lets get the rest of them! God Bless the Left! wheeeeeee!
Posted by IsThisThingOn? on Aug 16, 2005 at 8:07 AM
Why isn’t the US the hero of the Muslim world? Our motto should be “remember the tsunami!” (and what the US military did to help).
Do you have to be a soldier to be in favor of this (or any) war? Do you have to be a surgeon to be in favor of surgery?
Scorp - nice post.
Posted by wolf on Aug 16, 2005 at 10:57 AM
Lefty, why don’t you try engaging in actual debate instead of throwing out mindless insults? Even though IsThisThingOn and Matilda both (IMHO) go over the top sometimes at least they mostly stick to the issues.
Posted by chopper on Aug 16, 2005 at 10:58 AM
Lefty—
“An arguement that is filled with name calling above, belies a weak arguement underneath”
-August Winslow
Posted by IsThisThingOn? on Aug 16, 2005 at 11:33 AM
Actually, as I have stated numerous times here already, I believe that Muslim terrorists are a symptom of decades of flawed US foreign policy, including a blanket endorsement of Israeli hard line Zionism. So, how are the hardcore Zionists, Christian Millenialists and Fundamentalist Muslims different from one another? They want what they want because GOD told them so. (Guess I didn’t get the memo!) In my opinion, they are all dangerous because they can’t be reasoned with. Fortunately, they represent a REALLY small minority of their “host” populations. Of course that has never stopped any one from exagerrating a threat to make political hay before.
The thrust of my argument is that agression of this nature cannot be countered by armed occupation and agression. I’d have thought that years of watching Israel cracking down time and again only to have the more murders would present a strong enough message that bombing and assasination campaigns do not make peace. It comes down to making a solution in which both parties benefit. Would you agree to live under the conditions that Israel is mandating with their wall if you were Palestinian? I doubt it.
Another thing is that if America respected the rule of law 1/2 as much as they profess, then we wouldn’t have invaded Iraq unilaterally. (I mean, with our “coalition” partners.) We also wouldn’t have attempted to overthrow the elected government of Venezuela. We’d also support the ruling by the world court that the security fence Israel has put up is illegal. There are tons of things we wouldn’t have done if we were actually intersted in fairness.
Something else I find interesting is IsThisThingOn?‘s statement that liberals are pissed about slaughtering terrorists. I’m not pissed about that. I’m pissed about the loss of human life that is so euphemistically characterized as “colaterall damage.” I can see it now… “Oops! Oh well, I guess its a good thing Arabs have such large families. At least they ALL didn’t die when we sprayed their house with machine gun fire by mistake…” How many errors in that kind of judgement would you accept if you were Joe Iraqi? This “Spray and pray” mode doesn’t reinforce our image as the good guys. Sorry. But I don’t blame the troops for trying to stay alive. I blame the people who put them there in the first place.
Posted by volvillain on Aug 16, 2005 at 12:54 PM
” ... I believe that Muslim terrorists are a symptom of decades of flawed US foreign policy ... So, how are the hardcore Zionists, Christian Millenialists and Fundamentalist Muslims different from one another?”
I know one way that they are different. Mohammed founded the Muslim religion before his death in 632 CE. From the start, Islam was spread by terror and war. Within one hundred years after Mohammed’s death, Islam had spread east to India and west to Spain. Islam has always been spread by terror and stopped from spreading by opposing religious forces.
So your statement that “Muslim terrorists are a symptom of decades of flawed US foreign policy” is fatuous and ignorant; terror and warfare are typical of Muslim geopolitics during its expansionist phases. Muslims were practicing hideous forms of terrorism before America was discovered or the USA was founded.
And while al-Qa’eda was forming and developing, the USA was protecting Croat and Kosovo Muslims from Christian Serbs, was providing emergency relief to Somalia, and was supporting Afghani Muslims against the Soviet Empire.
You Liberals may be Elite, but you are not very bright. Your flawed ideology leads you into error.
Posted by scorp on Aug 16, 2005 at 2:01 PM
Scorp- That’s very kind of you to stoop to personal attacks. Did I say something to offend you earlier? Anyway, that was quite a moving piece about how Islam has always been spread by terror and agression and America always champions of the poor and down trodden regardless of race, religion or creed. I know, if it wasn’t for us treasonous liberals, America could get on with the noble endeavour of civilizing the rest of the world.
Of course your screed did ignore some of the finer points of christian history. Take the biography of this guy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torquemada
Quite the sweetheart.
Or maybe the Crusades are maybe more your speed?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_(1099)
I find the following excerpt to be quite enlightening:Once the Crusaders had breached the outer walls and entered the city almost every inhabitant of Jerusalem was killed over the course of that afternoon, evening and next morning. Muslims, Jews, and even any remaining Christians were all massacred with indiscriminate violence. Many Muslims sought shelter in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, where, according to one famous account in Gesta, “...the slaughter was so great that our men waded in blood up to their ankles…” According to Raymond of Aguilers “men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins.”
Characterizing my statement as “fatuous and ignorant” doesn’t make it so. Selectively sampling all the bad things Islam has done while only acknowledging the good we have done is not truth. Just a sad mockery of it. Furthermore, I don’t subscribe to a particular ideology. Ideologies are for people who aren’t clever enough to have their own opinions.
Posted by volvillain on Aug 16, 2005 at 4:09 PM
vv -
How many religions do you know that make a ritual and sacrament of human sacrifice and head-hunting? The Thuggees, Jivaro, Incas, Aztecs, a few other mostly isolated groups - and Muslims. Anybody else?
How many religions do you know that make a ritual and sacrament of murdering their own believers? Only Muslims.
I have some knowledge of the Crusades. You are aware, I hope, that the al-Aqsa Mosque you referred to was built on the site of the ancient Jewish Temple of Solomon, and that the construction of al-Aqsa was therefore a gratuitous insult to Jews and Christians and all people, like the destruction of the Bamayan Buddhas were an insult to Buddhists and all people. The Crusades were a savage piece of work, but no more savage than similar efforts of the era, and hardly the fault of the USA, your original point. Stay on topic.
“Selectively sampling all the bad things Islam has done while only acknowledging the good we have done is not truth.”
I defy you to find a single instance of my ever having done such a thing. I spent five years in Saudi Arabia, and I have a good appreciation of Muslims and Islamic culture. The subject is Muslim terrorists. Stay on topic.
I am well aware of the shortcomings of various peoples, including my own. But Muslims were preaching and practicing terrorism long before America existed. “I believe that Muslim terrorists are a symptom of decades of flawed US foreign policy”, is therefore an absurd idea, and an idea that is repeated ad nauseum by Liberal ideologists. Stay on topic.
So if you “don’t subscribe to a particular ideology” and you believe that “Ideologies are for people who aren
Posted by scorp on Aug 16, 2005 at 7:37 PM
Volvillian, why should we be supporting the World Court’s ruling against Israel? The United States is a soveriegn nation, we aren’t bound by World Court rulings as we would be by an act of Congress or a Supreme Court ruling, and I see no particular reason why we should blindly follow what has proven to be in many cases an anti-US body anyway. As for the Israeli wall, it has proven effective in reducing terrorist attacks, concessions and negotiations with the Palestinians has not. Israel has a right to defend itself, even though the European left is always upset that she does.
Posted by chopper on Aug 17, 2005 at 12:58 AM
Scorp, how many people say they are Christians, but then kill tens of thousands of people for no reason? Let me think…
That would be Adolph Hitler and George W. Bush. Both claimed to be Christians, and both now have invaded countries that were not threatening them, killing thousands of people in the process.
In fact lets compare a few more statistics. George W. Bush will go to his grave having instigated the killing of more innocent civilians than Usama Bin Laden, the Columbine shooters, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy or the IRA during 35 years of terrorist activity. What a ‘good’ Christian Bush is, God must be very pleased indeed.
IsThisThingOn, what makes you think that because I consider Bush to be a piece of shit that I somehow think killing by terrorist groups is okay? You must need your head examining. I assumed it went without saying, but I can be against Bush and Bin Laden at the same time. It is only your lot who seem unable to think outside of supposed polarized opposites. Of course what this sort of thinking is really suppose to do is to discourage dissent. Well good luck.
There are a percentage of Americans who will always think for themselves, it’s the very essence of what it is to be American, and your type will never crush them. America was built by liberals, people who wanted to leave behind the conservatism and dogma of the old world. Looking around me I have to think they may have failed. I like to think that freedom of thought will always win out, but my God it’s being given a run for it’s money by the powers of darkness in this country, by those who would literally set us back three hundred years in the name of a ‘good’ book they themselves do not truly believe in. Bush says the jury is out on Evolution, and a lot of people who know nothing about it shout amen! What an idiot, what a damn fool. Are you proud of him, really?
Bush says he is a Christian, but like a lot of right wing ‘Christians’ I very rarely hear him quote the New Testament. More often they quote the Old Testament, the cruel, unforgiving book of the law that Christ himself actually contradicted with his teachings. ‘An eye for an eye’ is replaced by ‘turn the other cheek’ for instance. Christ said ‘do unto others as you would have done unto yourself’, the very opposite of conservative thinking. George W. Bush being a Christian makes as much sense as Adolph Hitler being a Christian. It’s an outright lie, a delusion at best.
Nobody, in any religious tradition, thinks it is a sin to defend yourself, but it is a sin to attack and kill others out of greed, fear or anger. My point being that Bush contradicts his own professed faith, and tramples on the beliefs of others into the bargain. This is not a strong man, this is a coward. Nelson Mandela was a strong man, who after 27 years of imprisonment led his country to peaceful reconstruction, not vengeful blood letting. Or there was Mahatma Gandhi, who using peaceful means removed the British from India. These men are and were strong, truly strong. They were real men, not pathetic facsimiles of a leader going through the motions, bullying everyone around them so as to appear in control.
In occupied France during the Second World War, if the French resistance killed one of their soldiers, the Nazis would pick out ten civilians at random and shot them in revenge. That is all Bush has done in Iraq. Not quick witted enough to catch the actual criminals he has simply lashed out at random, killing a disproportionate number of Arabs in revenge. This is how the right wing mentality works, be it in occupied France sixty years ago, or occupied Iraq today. To ordinary people it makes no sense. To wannabe fascists it represents the illusory iron fist of the strict father, das fuhrer.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 17, 2005 at 1:42 AM
Finally I have to say that I aim so much criticism at George W. Bush and his cabal, because I am an American, and as an American I have a duty to keep my own house in order. I have no say in Iraq or Afghanistan, or Pakistan or Britain. But here I am in my own country, and part of being a responsible citizen is keeping a check on what we as a nation are doing at home and in the world. If I disagree with what I see, it is not only my right but also my duty to say so. I do not hate America, quite the contrary, I love it and our world more than you will ever be able to know, blinded as you are by hate and fear and greed. Conservatism truly is your religion, and you belong on the margins, despised by all real human beings. Why bother trying to argue with me, why don’t you just go out and kill someone? Or is the great shrub doing your killing for you at the moment, getting you hot with the drop of each bomb, the killing of each Iraq child.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 17, 2005 at 1:43 AM
vv -
You are off topic again.
“Scorp, how many people say they are Christians, but then kill tens of thousands of people for no reason? Let me think
Posted by scorp on Aug 17, 2005 at 3:17 AM
Scorp- I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t respond as though Matilda and I are the same person. She has her own statements. I have mine. Further more, the “off topic” comments would be right at home if you were the stern headmaster and I the cowed and frightened pupil. Fortunately, that is not so.
US policy has consistently undermined populist movements not only in the mid-east, but South Asia and South America as well, largely because of concerns that such movements had been infiltrated by the communists. Our support for undemocratic regimes has unfortunately tended to push people of those nations to greater and greater extremes and my concern is that the longer we pursue such schemes, the more extreme will be the response. Human beings like the idea of self-determinism and many people in other countries believe that our support of certain opressive governments interferes with that desire. Look what we did to the Pan-Arabism movements of the 50s and 60s. They were largely secular and very nationalistic, but they were people that you could more easily negotiate with. Negotiating with a mullah is probably as easy as neogtiating with a hardcore evangelist. There is very little room for manuever. We helped the trend towards extremism. We are continuing that fine tradition in Iraq. Do you honestly believe that the Iraq campaign is achieving stability or security for either it’s residents or ours? I ultimately believe that Iran and their version of Shia will ultimately be the beneficieries of our enterprise in Iraq. I think Al Qaeda will benefit some as well because we’ve demonstrated our willingness to invade Muslim countries as he has long advertised to other Muslims.
Chopper- I don’t think the creation of Palestinian ghettos really qualifies as self-defense any more than the Nazis use of ghettos during the early phases of the Holocaust did. Can you reference for me an instance of anti-us sentiment in the world court? I thought they ruled correctly that mining Nicaraguan waters was illegal. Or was that action permissible as an act of self-defense? (I have a hard time imagining the Nicaraguan navy as being all that menacing.)
Basically one of the things I have a hard time with is the idea that we should relentlessly pursue US interest with blatant disregard for the sovereignity of other countries. Self defense is a fine justification, but a bit over used. The same goes for “National interest.” What if I used threats and intimidation to get a better price at the gas pump or at the grocery store, how would I be viewed by society at large? “Hey, it was in my own interests to pay the the least amount possible, consequences be damned.” I don’t think that’d make for a very compelling defense in criminal court. How does it look if we use similar standards to justify our actions on the world stage? Do you really think the world court hates us for our values? Because we love freedom and they don’t? What if the freedom we’re talking about is the freedom to exploit any weakness that we can find? Is that just or humane? (cont.)
Posted by volvillain on Aug 17, 2005 at 8:14 AM
I’m not advocating caving in to extremists. I’m advocating that we act a little more neighborly towards other countries. That doesn’t mean giving stuff away or sitting around a campfire singing songs pretending that we’re great buds. That’s one of the problems I have with how the foreign policy debate is framed. It presents a false dichotomy of only two courses of action. Getting “tough” or being “soft.” Of course tough means bombing or shooting the f**k out of anything that even remotely resembles anything threatening where as being “soft” is throwing open the gates to our country and buying every Haji, Muhammed and Achmed wearing a bomb belt a one way ticket here. I love America. I don’t want those guys here, but I don’t believe that “fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here” is an accurate representation of our choices. There are alternatives to fighting, but that takes a different kind of courage. The kind of courage to really listen to what people have to say. Sure, you’ll hear a lot of bullshit along the way, but that takes a kind of strength long since lacking in our choices of presedential hopefuls. I agree with Matilda that Nelson Mandela didn’t celebrate his ascension to power by cutting a bloody swath through South Africa’s white population, a la Zimbabwe. That is a harder path, resisting the call to vengence and righting wrongs with even more assasinations, executions or torture. (As if spilling that blood will somehow miraculously right all previous wrongs.) But the benefit is that South Africa isn’t wracked by sectarian violence. Compared with the rampant instability and violence in other African countries, South Africa is a utopia by comparison. Is it still perfect? Probably not.
And I certainly won’t give scorp the satisfaction of moving to another country because I’m obviously “unhappy” here. That’s a funny notion, that by participating in a debate about foreign policy I must somehow be unhappy with America. I know what I’m about to say will stun many of you, but I LOVE AMERICA. I love the fact that I can disagree with scorp and not be hauled beofre some secret court. That’s why I complain, because I don’t want that to change. I don’t want any more Patriot Acts. I don’t want there to be nuclear suitcase bombs here. I don;t think scorp want that either. I just disagree with how best to defend our country. Sometimes, defending it doesn’t mean you shoot someone. Sometimes it does. Furthermore I’ll go on the record stating my fervent support for the bill of rights, in its entirety. I’m not like some liberals or conservatives that prune out the parts they don’t like, like the separation of curch and state and the right to bear arms. I want to have the right to own as many guns as I want. I want to be able to go to what ever church I want. I want scorp to have the right to attempt to belittle and indimidate as many liberals as he likes. Conversely, I want to poke as many holes as I can in his logic. I expect nothing less in return.
Which brings me to one last question: Scorp, for the sake of argument let’s suppose that you are completely right about Islam’s connection to terrorism. What should the US do about it? What would you do about it?
Posted by volvillain on Aug 17, 2005 at 8:15 AM
Should we be surprised,in light of our current foreign policy,that Iran is attempting to build a nuclear weapon?That is,of course,if we are to believe this administration or that Iran isn’t simply bluffing.Assuming the intelligence is true,why in light of our current invasion of Iraq,would they do this?Precisely because we invaded Iraq to seize their resources.Iran is realizing,like other countries,that the only way to curtail the Bush administration’s opportunistic invasions is to develop a nuclear deterrent.
I also see that we have the standard anti-liberal(translation:anyone who disagrees with Bush)being spewed on this thread.According to the right,all liberals are a bunch of peaceniks singing kumbaya and wearing sandals.Pathetic.It may surprise the right to know that there are many left-wingers who are veterans or actively involved in public service out of a sense of patriotism.Despite their wishes,the right can’t trademark patriotism.
Something else the right needs to think about:suppose it’s Europe and Russia that decides to pre-emptively invade and occupy Iran this time,what with our hands being full with Iraq.I wonder how many Republicans will support Iranian invasion then?
Incidentally,has anyone gone to the little green football site?Unbelievable.Never have I read more vacuous and trite discourse—like a bunch of adolescents.Then again,that’s right-wing political discourse for you.
Posted by wwoods on Aug 17, 2005 at 9:17 AM
I checked out “little green footballs” and most of what was there could accurately be described as “bumper sticker” mantality. No real discussions, mostly re-cycled internet jokes. Quips about how Muslims blow up other Muslims and how stupid that is. I mean, it IS stupid, but no more stupid than Christians killing Christians (i.e. Northern Ireland, Eric Rudolph, Tim McVeigh)
Posted by volvillain on Aug 17, 2005 at 11:01 AM
Scorp, you are not the sharpest tool in the box are you. Or perhaps your misreading of my posts is deliberate.
No one gets a free pass, but this is now, and we are here.
I think I’ll repeat that for the slow ones, no one gets a free pass, but we do not live in Japan for instance and it is not 1941. I could just as easily have compared Bush’s actions in Iraq to Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack but the German comparison is a better fit due to the reasons Hitler used to justify the invasion of Poland to his own people. He told them it was a pre-emptive act of self-defense, because Poland was in the hands of the Jews and they were preparing to attack Germany. Of course the story was completely false but how else do you think Nazis got the majority of Germans to support the invasion. Sound familiar Scorp?
Also, America has been involved in many ambiguous or down right illegal wars since the Second World War. None of which have been true wars of self-defense. The Second World War was a true war of self-defense, a reaction to an aggressor and an act of genuine liberation. The first Gulf War was also justified. Yes, Kennedy has blood on his hands also, but it
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 17, 2005 at 3:41 PM
In fact, Scorp, I was just thinking, what the hell does the phrase ‘free pass’ mean anyway? That makes it sound like we are the teachers and the world is full of good and bad children some of whom have to be ‘disciplined’. Very weird.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 17, 2005 at 4:13 PM
Matilda, Hitler did not claim to be Christian, in fact the Nazis were almost as anti-Christian as they were anti-Jewish, they just didn’t have the ability to move against Christianity in the same way the moved against the Jews. Also you state that Bush “instigated the killing of more civilians than Usama Bin Laden, the Columbine shooters, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, or the IRA”. It is interesting how you frame that statement, our military actually takes pains to minimize civilian deaths more than probably any other military in history. It is also interesting that you didn’t through Franklin D Roosevelt in the mix, because our military killed at least several hundred thousand “innocent civilians” in WWII, of course then we didn’t take such pains to minimize civilian casualties and in fact sometimes deliberately inflicted them.
You have a generalized animus against conservatives without really defining what you mean, you seem to believe that if any doesn’t think like you that they are incapable of thinking for themselves. Also, trying to enlist the founding fathers on your side is more than a bit of a stretch, I don’t think many of them would recognize what passes for liberalism today as a viable political philosophy. I pointed out in an earlier post how the truly great mass murderers of the 20th century weren’t conservative at all (Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, Pol Pot, Lenin, the list goes on), so your statement that conservatism is the cause of all evil is demonstrably false.
Posted by chopper on Aug 17, 2005 at 4:42 PM
Interesting Volvillian, I checked out the Daily Kos and had much the same reaction to it that you had to little green footballs.
Posted by chopper on Aug 17, 2005 at 4:45 PM
Did you write (Iran is the only large Arab state which not only does not diplomatically recognize Israel, but resolutely denies its right to exist as a state)?
I do agree prety much with your logic in this article but am a bit confused to know that Iran is an “Arab state”! Pehapse you mean Arab state because it is run by an Islamic ideology which is rooted and originated in a land we call Saudi Arabia today!
Some clarification will indeed add to my understanding of the country that I was born and grew up in.
Posted by gcharbak on Aug 17, 2005 at 5:14 PM
Actually Matilda, by your interperation of Scorps logic it would make more sense for us to invade China than China to invade us. China is a dictatorship without freedom, we are a democracy with still a large amount (but diminishing) freedom.
Posted by chopper on Aug 17, 2005 at 7:08 PM
Lefty, what is “corporatism”? How is it the same as facism”? (A much overused word by the left). What evidence, if any, do you have for your accusations? Hitler’s economic program was actually similar to the New Deal. Do you consider FDR to have been a facist?
Posted by chopper on Aug 17, 2005 at 7:58 PM
Chopper-This may come as a great suprise to you, but I agree that the Daily Kos is pretty much the mirror image of little green footballs. Heavy on quips, lite on content. (Oh, all this HEAVY thinking is just bummin’ me out man!)
Posted by volvillain on Aug 17, 2005 at 8:06 PM
Matilda, in one of your posts you state (more or less accurately) that the Nazis would kill 10 civilians for every German soldier killed by the resistance in occupied France (the accomplishments and depth of the French Resistance in WWII have been way overblown, but that is for another day) & then you say that is what George Bush has done in Iraq. Do you have ANY evidence for this? That US troops are executing 10 civilians chosen at random for every American casualty? Your analogy seems absurd. If you can back up your charges I’d like to see the evidence. I’m not holding my breath.
Posted by chopper on Aug 17, 2005 at 8:12 PM
Matilda-I think Scorp is into B&D or something, because in one post he kept mentioning “stay on topic” half a dozen times, trying to “discipline” me. As if he has any say on the format of this debate!
Anyway, do you think he and Jeff Gannon are related. :p
Posted by volvillain on Aug 17, 2005 at 8:14 PM
Volvillian, do you mean that the building of the wall is creating Palestinian ghettos? What exactly is the Israeli government supposed to do? The wall works. Concessions didn’t. It is not at all comparable to what the Nazis did. The left and most of Europe gets upset with everything Israel does, even when they target known terrorists. Dead Israelis don’t seem to bother them at all.
I also take issue with your “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” statement. I don’t believe Ethan Allen deliberatly targeted women and children. Perhaps I’m wrong about this, I haven’t studied his campaigns in detail.
Posted by chopper on Aug 17, 2005 at 8:21 PM
Chopper-Whether or not some one is a terrorist or a freedom fighter is in eye of the beholder, really. I don’t believe that Ethan Allen ever deliberately targeted women and children. Regardless, the British would have hanged him as a traitor just the same. I think has was a patriot. Some people think Bin Laden is a patriot. I don’t. Who’s opinion is right?
I don’t know what your background is on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, but the matter isn’t as black and white as it is being portrayed. It’s easy to say “Israelis good, Palestinians bad,” but that is simply not true. (But it sure does fit really well on a bumper sticker, if you know what I mean!)
A very good detail of the history of this conflict is available here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli-Palestinian_Conflict
I like wikipedia a lot because for the most part the articles are high on content and “lite” on rhetoric.
Another related article is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism
Every time an Israeli settler mows down a Palestinian or a Palestinian blows up an Israeli, the peace process suffers. Again, I might be shocking a lot of people tonight, but I’d like to point out this other article that I think is spot on about how Clinton botched the peace negotiations. I find it most compelling. Enjoy!
http://www.counterpunch.org/christison08152005.html
(The “concessions” you mention are discussed in detail, and again, I think the author is correct in that they were essentially worthless offers.)
Posted by volvillain on Aug 17, 2005 at 8:48 PM
P.S. Yes, I meant that Israel’s gerrymandering wall is creating Palestinian Ghettos. I still believe that there are alternatives to creating “Bantustans” for the Palestinians. (Why on earth Sharon thinks he can make this work where the white regime in South Africa failed is beyond me.) The US needs to act as an honest broker that considers solutions that would be equitable for BOTH peoples. Of course that would take a lot of courage because of the strong influence hard right Israelis have in Washingon. The gravy train should stop!(In a perfect world all of Palestine would be a single secular entity with equal rights for Palestinians and Israelis alike.)
Posted by volvillain on Aug 17, 2005 at 8:59 PM
Mathilda -
“Or perhaps your misreading of my posts is deliberate.”
Ah, a direct response. I am glad to hear it. It sometimes seems that, when I try to hold a conversation with you, and you can’t find a reasonable reply, you then ride off in all directions: obfuscation by overload.
Six days ago you made the following statement that I found quite remarkable:
Posted by scorp on Aug 17, 2005 at 10:30 PM
Wow, so many posts. So much ideology, I almost get high off it.
Iran’s mullahs having control of nukes is one scary proposition to me. I lived in Pakistan at the time when it and India were testing warheads in 1998. Pakistan is not nearly as controlled by religious wackos (nor even secular wackos) as most people believe, but knowing that I was living in perhaps the 2nd most likely target of a nuclear strike in the world at the time was truly frightening. I figured New Delhi was 1st most likely. After all, they have at least 5 times the conventional military might of Pakistan.
As for Iraq and WMDs, I continue to see the current war as tactically foolish given the previous actions in Afghanistan, as well as unilateral and almost entirely unsupported with respect to the UN SecCon, most of the nations on the planet, and most of the citizens whose governments supported the Coalition of the Willing. It could have had a justification, perhaps, if WMDs had been found, but alas…
What’s mystifying to me is the lack of regret. Why is it not shameful to have begun a pre-emptive war that turned out to have been without justification. Whether GWB suspected there were no WMDs or, maybe he sincerely thought there were. But there weren’t. Where’s the recoiling in horror at such an action. Why aren’t more people filled with sadness that it has played out the way it has. That’s the saddest commentary of all, whether the President is a liar or truly believed he was on the right path.
In March 2003, as I sat watching embedded reporters telling the stories of the invasion, I feared that the US would alienate much of the world with its actions, but I hoped, in a gesture of straw-grasping wishfulness as a person with a strong attachment to America, that WMDs would actually be found. How’s that for a desperate f’n emotion!?! When they weren’t found and the administration admitted that they were unlikely to exist after all, I found myself hating the fact that my fears had been well-grounded after all. Sometimes it sucks to be right.
I suppose I could work longer on this post, to sharpen up my ideological rhetoric and lucidity of prose. But in the end, we’re in two wars at the same time, danger is everywhere in the lands where US troops are assigned, and my country appears entrenched and facing the very possible humiliation of failing at its goals and failing at upholding its dearly held ideas, while at the same time being responsible for more than 30 times the innocent death-toll as compared to 9/11.
Fuckin’ dismal!
Posted by Kuya on Aug 18, 2005 at 12:46 AM
Volvillian- Agreed, Ethan Allen very could have been hanged as a traitor if the Revolutionary war had turned out differently, but that doesn’t make him a terrorist. Terrorism doesn’t relate to the cause one is fighting for but the tactics one uses, ie. specifically targeting non-combatants. That’s not the same as what is now called “collateral damage” (which happens in every war). Some of the tactics the “Islamists” or “radical Islamists” or “facist Islamists” (I don’t want to accuse all Muslims of supporting such people) such as suicide bombings (especially when the suicide bombers are youths or women brainwashed or forced into carrying out such operations) are truly disgusting. It is difficult to have any sympathy at all for a people who employ such tactics. Likewise, the tactics of the IRA were terroristic. Even though I’m Catholic and am well aware of the historical injustices perpetrated by the English upon Ireland I have little sympathy for the IRA, at least in its modern form. I believe it was Mitilda who pointed out that the British pursued negotiations with the IRA, which is true, but at the same time they continued to hunt down and imprison IRA killers.
Also, I don’t have any simplistic view such as “Israelis-good, Palestinians-bad”, but if one side’s objective remains the complete destruction of the other side how are you supposed to negotiate?
BTW, I’ve read some articles in Counterpunch before, & I’ll read the one you reference, but any magazine run by a neo-Stalinist such as Alexander Cockburn I tend to take with more than a little grain of salt.
Posted by chopper on Aug 18, 2005 at 1:17 AM
IsThisThingOn, I haven’t got a clue what you are rambling on about, so I have to conclude you are crazy.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 18, 2005 at 3:29 AM
Chopper, you make me laugh, you didn’t get what I was talking about at all, but never mind. The china thing was a metaphor, as were my comments about the French resistance, designed to illustrate certain attitudes.
Also, innocent people being killed in a necessary war is not the same as people being killed in a war that didn’t need to happen. So FDR is not a criminal, but George W. Bush definitely is.
Are you listening yet?
I agree with you that invoking the founding fathers is a bit of a stretch, because I wasn’t there, but I would be willing to bet they didn’t have anything as extreme as the neoconservatives in mind when they wrote the constitution. The spirit of the constitution is fairness and justice, qualities that are in no way embodied by modern conservatives. But this is really a side issue on which we will have to agree to disagree. The founding fathers after all were not divinities (as they sometimes seem to be invoked) but just a group of men trying to do their best for everyone, given the situation they found themselves in. We should be doing the same. Besides, I wasn’t talking so much about the founding fathers as the ordinary men and women who came here to make a new life.
As for my thoughts on the true nature of the right wing mentality, conservatism as a philosophy emerges in many different contexts through out history. Stalin for instance acted as if he had the same moral code as Hitler, and indeed he did. Conservatism is watered down fascism, the reward and punishment moral framework of both is the same. The fact that Stalin was supposed to be representing a system where the moral values were completely in opposition to fascism did not stop him in the end from acting like a fascist. Conservatives often feel comfortable in a system were there is one rule for them and another for everyone else, and Stalin embodied this.
Many people who say they are conservative actually agree with the traditional liberal position when asked about individual issues. Some professed liberals act like conservatives, Tony Blair being a moderate example. The common denominator is conservative values, and often the fact that someone calls themselves a conservative, or a communist, or anything in between, is not the whole story.
I am actually encouraged by the fact that you say this doesn’t make sense to you, rather than just tying to trash what I am saying. It almost sounds like you’re curious.
I could write volumes about this subject but for now I am tired and going to bed.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 18, 2005 at 3:30 AM
One last thing
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 18, 2005 at 3:31 AM
Am I going too fast for you Scorp? The truth is on my side so I’m not so bothered about spelling things out for someone whose conscience does not simply tell him the obvious.
Bush railroaded the international community into half agreeing to this war, reluctantly. Even in Britain, our number one ally, they were not really sure. You’ll never hear this in the American press but most of the world considers this an illegal war, one that went ahead without real UN backing.
Who are you that I should have to dance to your tune anyway? You find the evidence to contradict me, that’s how it works. As I have said earlier I am not going to have a real debate with a supporter of murder and terror. It is up to you to defend yourself.
I don’t care what Mossad, or the CIA or MI5 were hinting at, they got it wrong, and in my opinion this failure of intelligence is one of two things; either complete incompetence, or else a set up, motivated by a political agenda. They, and you, should be defending themselves, not the other way around.
Hans Blix and his team got it right, and do you remember how ridiculed he was in the mainstream press here, truly pathetic. In fact I think I will say that again, HANS BLIX WAS RIGHT! Are you listening Roger Ramjet? Funny how some of us had the wisdom to trust him over our ‘beloved’ leader.
So, we go off in all directions do we, does little Scorp want to cry? I will talk about any damn thing I choose. You don’t set the agenda here. I am simply expressing my opinions. You can agree or disagree but you had better be sure that although I am addressing you by name, this is not a dialogue. Real debate happens between equals, moral as well as intellectual equals. Now you can take what I say and try and use it as an example of what all liberals are like, but it will only really be an example of what I am like.
Are you getting the message, con boy?
Anyway back to the carnage. In my opinion you cannot commit yourself to killing tens of thousands of people in an invasion unless you have absolutely irrefutable evidence. Oh, and I did a quick search, which I present here in order to taunt you rather than because I have to.
This is from politicalaffairs.net:
“beside Australia no other country’s intelligence service made claims about Iraq similar to those of the US and UK. And of course, Australia had few if any sources beyond what they were told by America and Britain.”
Hmmm, could it be that a conservative is once again talking complete crap? No, surely not. I guess the world looks very different when you stray from the cozy confines of Fox News. The French intelligence services were convinced that Saddam had biological and chemical weapons, but only because America had sold them to Iraq twenty years earlier, they had no actual current intelligence. Jacques Chirac, being a bit wiser than Bush and Blair, decided it was nowhere near good enough and opposed the war. I guess that means HE was right to.
Of the large number of tiny nations that actually supported the war most had some sort of aid or trade deal to maintain with America. No sooner can you say ‘duress’ than you have yourself a ‘coalition’.
This whole thing would be a comedy if it hadn’t been for the death and destruction that followed.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 18, 2005 at 3:32 AM
One more thing, if Saddam had possessed chemical and biological weapons, that would still not have been a legitimate reason to go to war. As I pointed out in an earlier post (one which all the conservatives readers very conveniently ignored), Saddam was despised by the fundamentalist Muslims in the surrounding region, and he would no more help them than cut off his own face. The supposed Saddam connection to Al Qaeda is so ridiculous as to beg belief that it would even be suggested.
But, Saddam didn’t EVEN have those weapons, which makes the case for George W. Bush being a murderer an extremely strong one indeed. As for the hidden weapons theory, why would Saddam not use his weapons when he had the chance, fighting for his very survival during the invasion? Logic stings, doesn’t it?
I cannot remember who said it but another Bush supporter earlier compared the rationale for the invasion of Iraq to there being a family down the street who were out to kill you. Do you just sit by, or do you do something about it before they have a chance?
Well, to follow through on that metaphor, what has happened is that we have gone and slaughtered the people down the road, searched their house and found no weapons at all. The local police show up and say, that’s okay, you thought there was a threat, so we’re not going to arrest you for murder, good day.
Can you see why a lot of people in this country are as mad as hell about this? It doesn’t matter if we liked the people in the house or not, you just can’t go around murdering people simply because it makes you ‘feel’ better, simply because you might ‘suspect’ they are out to get you. By doing so America has in effect put itself above the law.
But just think about it, the neoconservative rationale for going war would put most paranoid lunatics to shame.
Spilling a drink is a ‘mistake’. Killing tens of thousands of people for no logical reason is murder.
Are we waking up and smelling that coffee yet?
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 18, 2005 at 3:33 AM
Volvillain, I agree with you about Scorp!
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 18, 2005 at 3:34 AM
Scorp,
The Clinton administration did believe that Hussein may have had WMD’s,but The Bush administration,in 2001,stated that he didn’t and negated him as threat.In 2003,The Bush administration said that he did have them.
So,were they terribly mistaken,were they lying to us,or was the Bush so terribly negligent that Iraq was able to get WMD’s under our noses in the middle of our war on terrorism?
Also,I don’t remember hearing republicans mention once during the Clinton administration that Saddam was such a threat that invasion of Iraq was necessary.
Liberals may be wimps,at least to conservatives,however,republicans play tough guy only when they can’t be hit back.You call that type of person a bully or even a toady.You wnat a country with an oppressive dictator and wmd’s?Try North Korea.Not a word has been said about restoring democracy there,at least not by republicans.
If you also remember,prior to the farce,I mean war,in Iraq,the Bush administration held its intel cards very close to its chest and right-wing media was VERY quick to call any questioning of Bush treason.Sort of makes it difficult to express dissent or question motives.
Posted by wwoods on Aug 18, 2005 at 6:06 AM
Reading Scorp and IsThisThingOn’s responses make me laugh. How easy it is to call everyone who disagrees with this Administration a “liberal”. We know that we’ve been lied to via the DSM’s and the Plame affair. It will be fun to see all the filth come out in the laundry as time goes on.
How wrong you are ITTO, to believe I am a pacifist. I am not. I would have gladly gone myself into Afghanistan with our troops to catch and quarter Osama bin Laden. But at 47, that’s not too likely. I own several guns and love to shoot non-living things. Nothing’s better at a hockey game than a great fight. But I believe there are “just” wars and “unjust” wars. Iraq is a baseless war of aggression and corporate greed—plain and simple. It is “unjust”. Therefore, I don’t support it. Ultimately, our troops and thousands of innocent civilians will have died to establish a Islamic theocracy which walks hand in hand with Iran. Let’s face the truth here.
Unlike the hypocritical Americans with the yellow ribbons on their SUV’s, I do actually support our troops. I support them by insisting they only be sent into wars for real reasons and that they be properly trained and outfitted when they go.
In fact, I am so patriotic that I find it an offense of greatest magnitude that the Conservatives in this country would rather be faithful to an evil, anti-democratic and lying band of leaders and a party rather than stand up and fight back. That’s what real patriots do.
Remember, the Nazi’s supported their troops, too.
Posted by Susie Q on Aug 18, 2005 at 6:24 AM
Kuya -
Are you related to Barbara Boxer? Ms. Boxer is widely regarded as the dimmest bulb in a big collection of dim bulbs, the United States Senate. Ms. Boxer insisted that the only reason that the Coalition invaded Iraq was the WMD. This in spite of the Iraq War Resolution, approved by the US Senate, listing many reasons for the invasion (partial list):
” ... supporting and harboring terrorist organizations ... violating resolution of the United Nations Security Council by continuing to engage in brutal repression of its civilian population ... refusing to release, repatriate, or account for non-Iraqi citizens wrongfully detained by Iraq ... failing to return property wrongfully seized by Iraq from Kuwait ... the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its continuing hostility toward, and willingness to attack, the United States, including by attempting in 1993 to assassinate former President Bush and by firing on many thousands of occasions on United States and Coalition Armed Forces engaged in enforcing the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council ... members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq
... Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations ... United Nations Security Council Resolution 678 (1990) authorizes the use of all necessary means to enforce United Nations Security Council Resolution 660 (1990) and subsequent relevant resolutions and to compel Iraq to cease certain activities that threaten international peace and security ... repression of its civilian population in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 688 (1991), and threatening its neighbors or United Nations operations in Iraq in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 949 (1994)”.
You say that “danger is everywhere in the lands where US troops are assigned” but that is relative, and basically nonsense, of course.
Massgraves website has documented 400,000 dead Iraqi civilians killed by Saddam’s Ba’athists, including victims of the Anfal, the Marsh Arabs pogrom, the Shi’ite suppression, and the various victims of Saddam’s prisons and extrajudicial executions. And that is only the bodies found in mass graves. The total number of missing Iraqi civilians from the Saddam years is something over one million. Doing the math, well over 100 Iraqi civilians were executed daily, on average, for the ~8500 days of Saddam’s Presidency. That does not include the 500,000 dead Iranis and the 500,000 dead Iraqis, plus various other nationalities, that died in Saddam’s aggressive wars. The obvious conclusion is that the Iraqi people are much safer now than when Saddam was in power, and when the Ba’athists and al-Qa’eda are eliminated, they will be safer yet.
You Liberals did not expend two microwatts of energy worrying about Saddam’s mass murders, but you are so cranked up that the Coalition is ending the mass murders. Go figure.
If you wish to regain your lost credibility, you might consider doing something useful, like trying to end the current genocide in Darfur and Zimbabwe. But you really don’t want to accomplish anything good, you just want to complain when the Coalition accomplishes something good. Complaining about the USA is a lot safer and less exerting than stopping real genocide in Africa.
Posted by scorp on Aug 18, 2005 at 6:36 AM
Scorp,
Still stuck on the GOP talking points?
What you fail to understand is that the resolution by which we voted to go to war has now been proven to be a sham. There were no terrorist organizations active in Iraq besides the Baathists, according to the CIA. Now, they state it is a “training ground” for terrorists. Life is FAR worse today for the average Iraqi, especially women.
Sadaam’s mass murders were a concern, but it was a political issue within his own borders and many prior presidents have been reticent to transcend those borders. How can you even say “liberals” didn’t care? In my experience, they were the only ones who did, just like the Dafur and Niger situations have been propelled into the spotlight now by “liberals”.
The point you seem to repeatedly miss is that EVERY reason we were given to invade Iraq has turned out to be patently false. “Spreading democracy” is just was the latest in a long string of “reasons”. When the Iraqi’s are now turning to Iran for financial support and aid in rebuilding, doesn’t that tell you they never got the message about “democracy” being spread to them? I’m sure it looks more like anarchy and fascism to them. We have blown it completely, and we will never have “victory” in Iraq, thanks to the greedy, conscienceless neocons.
Kuya has more going on in one stand of his DNA than you could ever hope to, so why don’t you crawl back into your hole with Rush?
Posted by Susie Q on Aug 18, 2005 at 7:23 AM
Chopper- I’m glad that you’ll take the time to read the links I’ve posted. To be perfectly honest, I don’t care much for Cockburn’s writing or politics. (too evangelical, if you know what I mean) However, there are enough good articles that recurr with some frequency that makes it worth visiting regularly. I also visti the American Conservative website for the same reason. I’ll listen to anyone with a well reasoned argument because I want to understand where they’re coming from. I might not change my mind, but then agian, I might if the evidence is strong enough.
My problem with the media coverage with the ISraeli-Palestinian conflict is that it really puts the onus of the peace process on the Palestinians. I don’t believe that the previous offers were all that generous or sincere. I don’t believe that suicide attacks by jihadists will change their mind either. One of the problems is that Israeli and Palestinian peace groups don’t get headlines. There are a number of them trying to work towards a reasonable settlement, but the American public is constantly getting hammered with the images of suicide attacks and bereaved settlers being ejected from their homes. The debate is being framed along the lines of Israeli security and militant Islam while ignoring any of the moderate views that exist in the middle. That’s why I posted the link to the two wikipedia articles because it talks about the various historical events and the prime movers behind it. The story isn’t a black and white one which is why it isn’t easily solved.
I’m Irish catholic too and never a supporter of bombing dept. stores in England. Was I pissed about the orangemen, sure, but not pissed enough to want to kill anyone over it or have anyone killed.
I think how you and I define terrorism vis-a-vis the Middle East isn’t as important as how the residents of those countries define it. The reason I chose Ethan Allen as an example is that the British view has different criteria then my American view, just as the Islamic view is different than mine. What is more important to the present situation? My opinion of Osama or the opinion of people living in the middle east? My concern all along in this war on terror is the US giving the populace a reason to support him. That’s why understanding the true nature of the threat posed by militant Islam and our participation in creating more of it is so important.
Posted by volvillain on Aug 18, 2005 at 9:27 AM
Lefty,
You need to get some new material. You are using the same insults over and over again. Boy does THAT get boring.
I am wondering if there is a chat site where they let the thinkers and discussers in (being in agreement is NOT a requirment to claim either of those two adjectives) and keep out the small minded who insist that their position on things is the only right one to have and that everyone else by default becomes: a) “a crook or idiot” (lefty) b) “conscienceless murderer (Matilda) or c) you are missing some of your DNA (SuzieQ)
Like, is there a place where intellectualy curious people can exchange ideas, persuade others or become pursuaded, without getting into a high school level food fight?? Jeez guys….Your IQ’s are nice and high, anyone can see that. Your Social/Emotional Quotient,however, is bargain basement material.
Posted by IsThisThingOn? on Aug 18, 2005 at 9:35 AM
Scorp-I must have short term memory loss or something because I can’t recall having obfuscated in any of my posts. Of course, that word is heavily drawn upon and often abused by Rush Limbaugh, the grand craw daddy of right wing cheerleaders. See, I respect Pat Buchanan because he has the nuts to actually DISAGREE with Bush and not rubber stamp his every decree as Limbaugh and other “conservative” pundits have. I don’t respect Rush because he was popping pills like they were chicklets whilst excoriating anyone with a drug problem. I’m learning to not respect you because you don’t bring anything to the table other than insults and an abridged version of 20th century history.
Again, you can’t help but use your grubby little hands to put words in my mouth or opinions in my head that aren’t MINE!
I’m not convinced that Bush is a liar. You simply attempt to pigeonhole me based on the sole assumption that becasue I disagree with you I must have the same opinions as other liberals. Wrong!
What I am certain about is that he surrounds himself with some of the most unsavory characters from the Washington political elite and gives them loads of credibility simply because I think they tell him things he wants to hear and withold things that might be upsetting. The guy doesn’t like to be challenged. He can’t handle it. Apparently neither can you.
Posted by volvillain on Aug 18, 2005 at 9:53 AM
Scorp,
Do you have any knowledge of recent history?
Under which administration did Saddam murder most of those civilians,Iranian and Iraqi?Who was president?Ronald Reagan!
Under which administration did the U.S.sell weapons to both Iran and Iraq?Ronald Reagan’s.
Which administration had several of its cabinet members investigated and imprisoned for deceiving congress about said weapon sales?Ronald Reagan’s.Instead of a Reagan library,a Reagan penitentiary would be more fitting.
Remember Iran-Contra?What was Reagan’s reponse when questioned about misdealings in Iran and Iraq,things that happened on his watch and were his responsibility?
“I don’t remember.”
During the nineties,which party objected strongly and bluntly about sending troops to Rwanda to stop the occurring genocide under the premise that it was not worth American lives?
The Republican party.
Which party showed absolutely no support to former president Clinton when he wished to commit troops to Kosovo to stop the genocide there,namely the filling of mass graves that Republicans now harp about in Iraq?
The Republican party.
The fall of the Soviet Union has been a bonanza to the Republicans.Not only in their bogus claim that they caused its downfall,but also in their ability to access the resources in that region that were off limits because of Soviet intervention and retaliation.Since nukes are the only thing we fear,Iran is trying to build one.Well,surprise!surprise!surprise!
Also,some of us would like to intervene and stop the slaughter in Africa.Guess which party doesn’t want to?The Republican Party.Now if Darfur and Zimbabwe had huge oil reserves…well!Besides,the Republican party’s plate is already full.After we are done with Iraq,we’ll go into Iran next.Hopefully,for Republicans,Iran will have a nuclear program that will justify invasion by then.
That reminds me.Which country sent intelligence operatives into Zimbabwe and the surrounding countries to help undermine governments that weren’t sympathetic to our interests?Betcha can’t guess!Betcha also can’t guess which party controlled the White House at that time.
Why and how does the right-wing have the moral high ground?Simply because they claim to.Sure,whatever.
Moral poseurs.Moral poseurs.
Posted by wwoods on Aug 18, 2005 at 10:47 AM
IsThisThingOn- I like that idea of having a real forum for discussion a lot. I
I’d also like to apologize in advance for wasting precious bandwidth blasting scorp, but I couldn’t help myself.
I do agree in the main with many of the points brought up by Marilda, SuzieQ, etc… I just think that they could do themselves a little more justice by resisting the impulse to flame.
(of course I just did give in to that, but I think that’s a rare outburst for me.)
Posted by volvillain on Aug 18, 2005 at 11:07 AM
Volvillian—
No, I understand that you have your ideology in the same camp as lefty and Suzie Q. You are a Democrat. Thats what you do. I am a Conservative (but strangly, I don’t call myself a Republican) so is Scorp and chopper. Thats what WE do. Thats fine. God Bless America. But its the flaming that tires the bejeezuz out of me. It its so predictable, it actually becomes a bore. “Hey! I can insult you better than you can insult me! HA! Gotcha!”
(yawn)
Now, what is it that you have to say to me that is of substance? What are your pearls of logic, your gems of insight and wisdom, about a subject that I may know something of too? How do your life experiences give me a different way of seeing things? Here are mine.
What is disturbing is that the national political discourse is increasingly detached from reality. The emotionalism and character assassination practiced by both sides—the clamor in the echo chamber around Cindy Sheehan or Iraq or Judicial nominees are only a few examples—is mistaken for “politics.”
What use is the internet if it only used to light the fires of the already barely sane? Can’t normal discourse and enjoying the parry and thrust of a good, civil verbal battle be had by cogent individuals somewhere? Certainly not on these pages. How does one become better or smarter if we think we already have all the answers on any subject matter? Doesn’t “flaming” signify that you have given up listening? Perhaps given up thinking?
Volvillian, I honestly don’t know where to go to engage in civil conversation, with people who are as willing to listen to what the other side says as much as I am ready to listen to them. Chopper? Scorp? Do you know of any place in this wide world of the interenet? Listening to the extreme fringes is a tiring chore. Life is too short to listen to people who actually think you boil and eat small children simply because one prefers a smaller, less intrusive government, or because one thinks that racial preferences are morally wrong regardless of who perpetrates it. Or that you are the devil if you really want to make sure there is a pro-choice Supreme Court nominee that will not try to reverse Roe v. Wade.
Maybe there is a place called NoIdiotsAllowed.com I think I will try that.
Posted by IsThisThingOn? on Aug 18, 2005 at 12:00 PM
See? I think I spotted one.
Posted by IsThisThingOn? on Aug 18, 2005 at 12:57 PM
I just need to go on the record that I’m a registered independant, not a Democrat. I used to be a Democrat, but gave up because of people like Kerry. “I’ll do the same things as Bush, only BETTER!” He didn’t win me over.
At this time, what I have to contribute is that what seems to happen is that people are SO into their position, so into their message that they are essentially deaf to other people. As you pointed out, there is so much clamor in media, internet included, that no one even gives a moment to listen and reflect upon what is said. Its just a mad rush to get out the agenda before the next commercial break, to try to fit your talking points into a 30 second spot. I think part of the problem is that Americans spend so much time trying to make ends meet, trying to get ahead that all they have time for is 30 second spots on CNN or Fox. That has a huge effect on people’s participation in politics and politics is so important because it really is the control of our nation’s wealth and power.
When you mentioned the incident with the Dems and the Boy Scouts, I immediately saw where you were coming from. It made more sense to me than being called ignorant or fatuous. I appreciated your position. I could see how that hypocrisy of the “touchy, feely left” upset you. I know what that’s like. Hypocrisy drives me up the wall too. I don’t think any political group owns the rights on hypocrisy. They’re all guilty of it.
I like the idea of that forum. Maybe I’ll start one and all who are willing to participate within the bounds of respectful discourse will be allowed and if people violate the statutes, they’ll be suspended or something. Of course that could spiral into an on-line dictatorship….
Here’s an idea. Let’s talk about the here and now. Maybe Saddam had WMD, maybe he didn’t.
The real question should be now that we’re in Iraq mucking things up, what should we do?
What should we do about the war on terror?
Should we attack Iran?
I think we should pull out of Iraq and let them figure it out. If the UN wants to broker something, field a presence, then fine. Have at it. People argue that it would cause a collapse into civil war, but in case people haven’t been paying attention, that war is already being waged, albeit from the shadows.
I think the war on terror needs to be handled as a police investigation, not a military offensive.
We shouldn’t attack Iran becuase there is insuffiecient cause. We need way more proof and way more diplomacy. Bush seems WAY too eager to shoot first and ask questions later.
We’ve seen how well that policy has worked for Iraq.
Posted by volvillain on Aug 18, 2005 at 12:57 PM
Vol-
Good thoughts.
OK, your first point:
—I personally am against our involvement in Iraq. That is a new position for me in the recent weeks, as I can see more and more clearly, that the fact that there are 3 different religious factions living there, who have been killing each other for the last 3,000 years over who loves their God the most, and will not now or EVER allow a democracy into their lives, as their religions (all of them)...will not tolerate such an institution within there midsts. They are still Muslims. First and foremost. A democracy is anathema to their way of life or to their thinking, much less to their religion. We cannot win. There is nothing there to win. Especially with our support here in the states waning. If the Iraqi’s want freedom and democracy, they will have to do the fighting and dying themselves, just like we did here to win it from the British. We cannot and ought not do it for them. Would a democratic Iraq be a really good thing? Yes. Certainly. Great idea. Kind of like another democratic outpost in an area where there aren’t any, such as Israel.
Also, it is right next to Iran, where the REAL trouble is going to come from, real soon. Is it feasible though? I am starting to think it is not a winnable hand and I don’t believe any more American lives are worth trying to force democracy down the throats of people who have never fought for freedom and democracy themselves. It just doesn’t make any sense any more. I would think differently if there was a strong chance that this experiment would succeed. But it doesn’t.
—Did Saddam have WMD’s? Almost a moot point. Some of his generals that were captured said they thought he had them, but that he was just giving them to other generals in the field. Perhaps he was making it LOOK like he had them to ensure cooperation from his military if he were to go to war again. Or, he had a few, then sold them to Syria at the last minute, knowing his hand was blown. The point is, most of the world THOUGHT he had them. Even Clinton, the UN and the French. So when they say “Bush Lied” is clearly a fantasy, but after we attacked saddam, the next step was to “play it by ear” I think. He was thinking that a legitamate coalition of native Iraqi’s would step up to the plate and get their government going. Enthusiastically step up. No one did. Saddam was still out there, and still able to inflict terror on his own people. Suddenly everything fell apart. The Syrians and Iranians saw an opening and took it. War is unpredictable. But I highly doubt that Bush knew something that the rest of the world’s intelligence services didn’t. Given the documented multiple screw ups by our own CIA and FBI, I REALLY doubt he knew something everyone else didn’t.
But you know what? I wan’t there in the Oval office when these intelligence briefs were presented. Neither was any of these other dweebs that think THEY know what Bush knew and when he knew it. THEY don’t know, they just hate Bush so much that they PRETEND to know as to make them look cynical, which appears from a distance as “sophisticated” (it’s all the rage) and smart. They also don’t know what Clinton knew. Neither do I. I am going to guess that the most powerful men in the world has some items of intel that we don’t have, and never will have. These air-heads just like to say this stuff because it gives them street cred for the left side of the political spectrum. At least I SAY I don’t know, but they pose themselves as “in the know” when all they are really are stereo salesmen from New Jersey or an IT technician from Lower Sundusky, Ohio.
Let me know if you want to start a web site. I’m in.
Leave laughing boy in the bathroom. That is very likely where he is finding what is so funny.
Posted by IsThisThingOn? on Aug 18, 2005 at 1:53 PM
IsThisThingOn? is whitewashing history to assert that there was near unanimity in the West as to the presence of WMDs in Iraq. Perhaps you are going by the HEADS of these intelligence agencies to justify your position. There certainly were quite a few analysts in the CIA that did not believe there were WMDs in Iraq, despite Tenet’s assertion that the case was a “slam dunk.” Tenet was more interested in courting the president’s favor than with the truth. If there was consensus among CIA analysts, why did Cheney make several visits to the agency in the run-up to the invasion? Such behavior is not only uncommon, it is unprecedented. Seems to me that Dick was twisting arms behind closed doors. Furthermore, why did the DOD create a separate office, the Office of Special Plans, under the purview of neocon ideologue Douglas Feith, to evaluate and collect intelligence regarding Iraqi Wmds that circumvented established bureaucratic channels for gathering such data? Seems like the intelligence was being cherry-picked to satisfy a preconceived policy. The Silberman-Robb commission stated in its findings that there was an atmosphere at the DOD that only favored estimates supporting the existence of Iraqi WMD.
At the State Department’s Intelligence Bureau there was quite a bit of disagreement with the official line that Iraq possessed WMD. Joe Wilson told Cheney that Iraq had not sought uranium from Niger in late 2002 but the president still made the claim in his SOTU speech in January of the following year. State analysts categorized as “highly dubious” several of the charges the administration made about Iraqi WMD. So don’t give that crap that EVERYONE thought Iraq had WMD. I didn’t even mention Hans Blix or Scott Ritter or the IAEA.
With respect to Iran, let me enumerate he reasons why invasion or surgical strikes would be a VERY BAD idea. First, the U.S. has extremely limited intelligence capabilities in Iran. The U.S. has not had a human intelligence asset in that nation since1988, so our policy makers are relying on satellite imagery and defectors to make their claims. That sounds awfully similar to what the administration relied on to buttress its case for the invasion of Iraq. Remember those satellite photographs that Powell said showed Iraqi trucks moving WMDs from a site about to be scrutinized by UNSCOM? Turns out they were firetrucks. Satellite intelligence is only as good as the policy makers whose hands it falls into.
Second, Iran’s nuclear facilities are either underground or hidden in extremely remote parts of the nation. We don’t even know how many there are!
Third, there is historical precedent to the types of actions being contemplated or advocated by Republicans/conservatives: the 1981 bombing of the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq by the Israeli Air Force. Far from preventing Iraqi non-proliferation, the act garnered strong regional support for Iraq’s nuclear ambitions and the country quickly reconstituted its program.
Fourth, the invasion of Iraq has emboldened Iran because it can now not only influence the nascent Iraqi government but not take U.S. threats seriously. Iran knows that the U.S. has severely crippled its offensive capability because of Iraq and its huge financial and human costs. The armed forces are already stretched too thin so a draft would be needed to satisfy the manpower requirements for such an invasion. Iran is not a weak country devastated by a decade of sanctions and constant bombing. Iran has a strong army and many more people than Iraq (70 mil. vs 25 mil). Iran could easily shut down the Persian Gulf if it felt threatened.
Posted by Liberal on Aug 18, 2005 at 4:00 PM
Liberal raises a good point about that I’d like to comment on. I find it disturbing that an administration would create a special office within the DOD that has almost zero oversight beyond the office of the president. An office that consistently sought to undermine existing mechanisms for the analysis and dissemination of intelligence material.
My opinion regarding the Iraq invasion is that it fulfilled several neo-con ambitions.
1) The goal of establishing an irresistable presence in the Mid-east as outlined by the Project for The New American Century
2)Infusing the defense industry and related subcontractors with loads of taxpayer money
3)Positioning US military forces for follow up campaigns in Syria and Iran which, as a consequence would have meant even more military spending and consequently expanding Israeli security and influence.
Perhaps one of the reasons why things did not go as planned is that the neocons didn’t correctly anticipate the forces needed for such a campaign. The believed that firepower alone would carry the day. As a paper excercise it makes a certain kind of sense, but in reality it grossly overstates the capabilities of the US military while at the same time ignoring the unpleasant effects of assymetrical warfare. Seasoned military men knew this, but were ignored. The CIA recommended against it as it would evoke a LOT of sympathy and support for Al-Qaeda as well as other mid-eastern enemies. Thus far they have not been proved wrong.
Posted by volvillain on Aug 18, 2005 at 4:28 PM
Reading ITTO’s responses, I am struck by an overall lack of anything of import in his statements. He is far more concerned with disrupting the thread than in actually saying something that is profound or insightful. Just the same old talking points that America is finally waking up to.
1,600 demonstrations around the country last night. Lots of Vietnam and Iraq vets involved. I heard one Iraq vet say he never felt so supported in his career as since people have started openly questioning the validity of Bush’s justifications for war.
It’s beautiful to see the neocons twisting in the wind.
Posted by Susie Q on Aug 18, 2005 at 5:07 PM
SusieQ-I don’t think you’re being entirely fair to ITTO. I don’t agree that he is being disruptive. I think he’s making a genuine effort to understand where liberals are coming from when they trash the war and president, etc… Talking down to someone isn’t a good way to achieve mutal respect and understanding.
Do you want to be a divider or a uniter?
Posted by volvillain on Aug 18, 2005 at 6:06 PM
Wow again! Some active thread, I’m away for a couple days and it grows like bread dough.
Hello scorp. Please don’t insult. I’ll read your words and figures with interest and respect, whether we conclude the same things about George Bush and the Iraq War or not. And yes, I’m related to Senator Boxer, about as much as I’m related to you, cousin.
Saddam Hussein was a murderous megalomaniac. It sucks that he was our proxy warrior against Iran through most of the 80s. When he was in favor, we did enough business with him and offered him enough arms to carry out one scathing brutality after another. Once he stepped out of line, though, continuing to do much the same thing he had done during the Reagan years, he suddenly became the enemy. I wonder if he had successfully invaded Iran in 1990 rather than Kuwait, would America have done a thing about it. Iran being a sovereign nation and UN member, after all, not to mention a petroleum state.
I can remember the elder Bush saying, “It’s a matter of good or evil, right or wrong.” If Saddam was so evil (and he was), was it righteous for us to have sponsored him? I feel it was just cynical realpolitik all along.
I must ask you, is there a clear reason why the whole Iraq episode really ought to be seen as other than cynical realpolitik also? Not just as a gesture of patriotic good faith, but objectively so?
When you say I speak nonsense, I respond by saying it’s much worse than nonsense to begin a pre-emptive war without ironclad evidence of an immanent threat. It’s worse than nonsense to divide your fighting force between two potential quagmires, Afghanistan and Iraq, rather than to finish the job of punishing and weakening al-Qaeda in the places they were known to be. It’s worse than nonsense to mislead the public into thinking Saddam was instrumental in bringing about 9/11, tricking them, playing off their fear and anger.
This isn’t about hate for Bush. Frankly, I don’t allow him to provoke such poisonous emotions in me, although I do think the progress of American civilization took a giant step backward when he and his team gained power. I believe you and I will both live long enough to see history evaluate his adminstration as a time when America’s standing in the world took a body blow.
But I could be wrong, I hope I am. I feared in March 2003 that invading Iraq would make America look bad and divide the country, and sometimes it sucks to be right. So yes, I hope I’m mistaken in thinking we’ll be damaged by this episode in our history. However I’m not wrong about these things: The primary if not only justification for invading Iraq turned out to hold no water. The vast majority of the world’s governments as well as the UN didn’t support it and still do not. The countries that did support it do not have the blessings of the majority of their citizens for having done so. And in Iraq alone, never mind Afghanistan for the moment, the innocent civilian death toll on the heels of the war is 30 times the death toll of 9/11. Not forgetting for a second the US and allied death toll, with more each passing week.
Did I read correctly in your post that things are safer in Iraq now? They are?
I don’t think Iraq will be safe for years to come, not for foreigners and surely not for Iraqis. And US troops on the ground there only provides a conundrum, their presence provoking hatred and murder, their departure carrying the risk of an even more violent insurgency against the new Iraqi government, which will be hard-pressed to avoid being seen as an American puppet.
This is not an enviable position for America to be in. It’s not unpatriotic to say that it was a horrifying, bitter mistake. It was mistaken legally, morally, and historically, and we haven’t yet seen all the bloody fallout from it. I despair that my country is involved in it. Started it.
Worse than nonsense by half!
Posted by Kuya on Aug 19, 2005 at 5:45 AM
Oh and thanks for the backup, Susie Q.
Posted by Kuya on Aug 19, 2005 at 5:46 AM
Please pause a moment, reflect back, and take the following multiple
choice test. The events are actual events from history. They actually
happened!!!
Do you remember?
1. 1968 Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed by:
a. Superman
b. Jay Leno
c. Harry Potter
d. a Muslim male extremist between the ages of 17 and 40
2. In 1972 at the Munich Olympics, athletes were kidnapped and massacred by:
a. Olga Corbett
b. Sitting Bull
c. Arnold Schwarzenegger
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
3. In 1979, the US embassy in Iran was taken over by:
a. Lost Norwegians
b. Elvis
c. A tour bus full of 80-year-old women
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
4. During the 1980’s a number of Americans were kidnapped in Lebanon by:
a. John Dillinger
b. The King of Sweden
c. The Boy Scouts
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
5. In 1983, the US Marine barracks in Beirut was blown up by:
a. A pizza delivery boy
b. Pee Wee Herman
c. Geraldo Rivera
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
6. In 1985 the cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked and a 70 year old
American passenger was murdered and thrown overboard in his wheelchair by:
a. The Smurfs
b. Davy Jones
c. The Little Mermaid
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
7. In 1985 TWA flight 847 was hijacked at Athens, and a US Navy diver trying to rescue passengers was murdered by:
a. Captain Kidd
b. Charles Lindberg
c. Mother Teresa
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
8. In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed by:
a. Scooby Doo
b. The Tooth Fairy
c. Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
9. In 1993 the World Trade Center was bombed the first time by:
a. Richard Simmons
b. Grandma Moses
c. Michael Jordan
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
10. In 1998, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by:
a. Mr. Rogers
b. Hillary Clinton, to distract attention from Wild
Bill’s women problems
c. The World Wrestling Federation
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
11. On 9/11/01, four airliners were hijacked; two were used as missiles
to take out the World Trade Centers, and of the remaining two, one crashed into the US Pentagon, and the other was diverted and crashed by the passengers. Thousands of people were killed by:
a. Bugs Bunny, Wiley E. Coyote, Daffy Duck, and Elmer Fudd
b. The Supreme Court of Florida
c. Mr. Bean
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
12. In 2002 the United States fought a war in Afghanistan against:
a. Enron
b. The Lutheran Church
c. The NFL
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
13. In 2002 reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by:
a. Bonnie and Clyde
b. Captain Kangaroo
c. Billy Graham
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
Nope, ..I really don’t see a pattern here to justify profiling, do you?
So, to ensure we Americans never offend anyone, particularly fanatics
intent on killing us, airport security screeners will no longer be allowed to profile certain people. They must conduct random searches of 80-year-old women, little kids, airline pilots with proper identification, secret agents who are members of the President’s
security detail, 85-year old Congressmen with metal hips, and Medal of Honor winning and former Governor Joe Foss, but leave Muslim males between the ages 17 and 40 alone, lest they be guilty of profiling.
Posted by IsThisThingOn? on Aug 19, 2005 at 5:52 AM
ITTO- Two things. First, Sirhan Sirhan was Catholic. A lot of people make the assumption that he was Muslim because of his nationality. Nice try, but false.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirhan_Sirhan
Secondly, lists of this nature give the appearance of legitamacy without the benefit of cross examination. I might just as easily make a list of US or Israeli crimes that conveniently ignores their historical context or crimes commited by Muslims. Lists can be compiled to support any cause you might wish. Haven’t you heard the old expression “figures don’t lie but liars can figure?”
Posted by volvillain on Aug 19, 2005 at 7:01 AM
PS- I want to add that it is, of course, ridiculous to assume that profiling is not a useful investigative tool, but like any tool it can be abused. I don’t think that is reasonable in a democracy to restrict non-white people of possibly mid-east descent to searches. Of course I think it is reasonable to put under surveillance anyone acting suspicious. The case of the Brazilian electrician is compelling when you realize how wrong things can go when profiling is abused. That’s why prosecuting the war on terror in an intelligent and egalitarian way is so important because you don’t want to sacrifice any more lives or liberties than you have to in the pursuit of justice. Nor do you want to radicalize moderates of Islamic countries. The time for heavy handed techniques has long since passed. (Hasn’t anyone heard of “the iron fist in the velvet glove?”)
Posted by volvillain on Aug 19, 2005 at 7:09 AM
ITTO -
Your multiple choice test was taken directly from a Larry Elder article published in Town Hall and elsewhere. You will kindly give proper attribution when you use other people’s stuff.
Posted by scorp on Aug 19, 2005 at 8:32 AM
Yeah? so?
You think that I was trying to claim that this was MY own production? I had it e-mailed to me, without attribution by the way. I did NOT assume that the sender of the e-mail was trying to lift someone elses intellectual property or try to make it seem it was his original work. It was just a friggin e-mail that I thought might generate conversation. I didn’t think my stearn headmaster from college was chatting with me. Do you think I should tell you who I get my e-mails from? Who cares? There is a lot of stuff that ends up on these pages that are from other places. Most of the stuff I hear from you guys is from the DNC daily “talking points”. Do I ever hear an attribution to them??
This isn’t a college class paper that needs a bibliography. This is simply a post that is designed to stimulate a discussion on profiling in the war on terror. If I TELL you or imply that it originated from me, then by all means hold me to the standard of original composition. Otherwise, relax dude. My issue is one of how we go about identifying potential terrorists. I believe that we should include physical, racial and behavioral characteristics in trying to stop these people from getting on a plane, or other vulnerable scenarios. Outright racial profiling is dumb, but it is even dumber to NOT include it in the list of things we have to look at.
Now, what are your thoughts?
BTW, Sirhan is listed as Roman Catholic, but his Palestinian background is less clear. He killed Kennedy because he felt Kennedys policies towards the Jews was a betrayal to “him and his people” (That does not sound Roman Catholic to me) The point of this little test was just to point out that the vast overwhelming acts of terror have been committed by a certain religion, age group and gender demographic. Do we use that information or do we pretend that we didn’t notice any pattern here? Police work depends on spotting trends and suspicious behavior. Is it a perfect methodolgy? Hell no. That poor Brazilian that got killed in London is an example. He acted suspiciously and that brought the attention of the police to his door.
He further made the situation worse when he fled. Innocent guy? You bet. A tragedy? Absolutly. A side effect of the terror that the bombers inflicted on London, not once but twice? Yes. All the more reason to be able to catch these morons as fast as we can, and if that means insulting a certain racial or religious group, I say insult them. Its the price we are going to have to pay if we want to walk the fine line between an open society, and marshal law. There has got to be “give” somewhere, and since the results of our failure to do this is more innocent deaths, I say check out everybody and anybody that fits the profile of a bomber intent on killing my family or yours.
If that means long lines in an airport, great. Sign me up.
Posted by IsThisThingOn? on Aug 19, 2005 at 9:10 AM
Kuya -
Welcome back.
“Please don
Posted by scorp on Aug 19, 2005 at 10:19 AM
Hey man, I’m right there with you on the airline lines. I’d rather sit at the airport for two hours then be dead. However,I find the coninuing permutations of the De menezes’ case to be somewhat troubling. Here’s a link to the BBC’s coverage concerning a leak from police internal investigators.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4157892.stm
What worries me is the idea that people are so anxious to find a terrorist that they commit a greater crime in their haste to protect us.
I’m all for checking some one out, but I draw the line at summary executions. As the article I linked to states, there is more evidence coming to light that indicates that what happened may not have been as described in official versions of events. Truth is vital to the welfare of a democracy, and I hope that the truth, good or bad, comes to light.
Posted by volvillain on Aug 19, 2005 at 10:20 AM
Scorp-Hmmm… I think maybe you tell people your opinions in a way that has the similar abrasive qualities of 20 grit sandpaper. Calling it truth and the only truth, like you own the patent or something on it, is bit of a stretch. My opinion is that a lot of US policy has been machiavellian in nature. (Machiavelli is not considered to be much of an advocate for democracy.) Or maybe another term that someone else profered, realpolitik. Trading expediency for values isn’t necessarily a good bargain in the long run. One of the recurring themes with our role in regime change and nation building is that a popular leader gets elected, challenges some of the finer details over a strategic national resource or geography. We stand firm. So does the new guy. Tensions escalate. The new guy doesn’t back down. Neither do we. Finally, we sponsor a coup, have the guy thrown out and voila! New pro-US government. Reverts to status quo with everyone happy. We’ve got someone we can do business with (someone willing to exploit and opress his own people) The only real losers in this repeated drama would be the people of the country we’ve just regime changed. The resource that belongs to them is sold at a fraction of what they need to build up a robust economy while whatever income they do receive is squandered by our new friend building palaces and armies. Everybody lives happily ever after. Or do they? I posit that if scorp was handed a deal like that by some super power, his talk of the rule of law would suddenly change to revolution. Possibly a violent kind? Or would he in the name of respecting the “rule of law” allow his friends and family to be starved, tortured or disappeared ad infinitum? I doubt it.
I’m all for protecting America. Where scorp and I disagree is in the methodology. He’s okay with making shady deals with dictators. Whatever gets the job done, because the results are what matter. But to me, the methodology is just as important as the reults because the methodology is what seperates us from history’s great mass murderers. Do we become the monster that we’re fighting? Is the overall price worth it? I find it humorous that in the 50’s we spent a lot of money essentially destroying the communist party of Iran. Fine. (I don’t like communism. It doesn’t adequately address human realities. I’m also an opponent of laize faire capitalism, because it has equally reprehensible vices) But we did it without even contemplating any unintended side effects. Like nature abhoring a vacuum. Once the commies were safely disposed of, we moved on. The hardline fundamentalists moved into the void. They spread their tentacles through out the country until the revolution in ‘79, when they struck. There was no alternative party of any significance to oppose them. So, this is our bed. We made it. We have to lie in it. Have a nice day!
Posted by volvillain on Aug 19, 2005 at 10:55 AM
Vol-
You might have more information than I on that poor guys’ plight. If there was police incompetence involved, I can’t say I am surprised. If there is more to it than that, such as a conspiracy to kill him or out and out malice towards an innocent person, I say that is just as wrong as what we are fighting against. I will follow your link. However, the BBC is NOT to be taken at face value. Truth IS vital to the welfare of a Democracy…agreed.
The BBC is not known for its unbiased coverage.
Posted by IsThisThingOn? on Aug 19, 2005 at 11:01 AM
What media outlet these days has unbiased coverage? If you find one, let me know. *lol*
My personal opinion is that the officers involved were SO focused on finding a terrorist their expectation got the better of them. I don’t think they honestly believed they were about to gun down an innocent man. If they did indeed succumb to their expectations and then attempt to alter their events to evade responsibility, then that is certainly a crime of greater magnitude and a criminal idictment levied against them.
(I’ve been following this case a lot because I think it represents the very real pitfalls in prosecuting a war against terror.)
Posted by volvillain on Aug 19, 2005 at 11:11 AM
ITTO- hear is what hapened to the Brazilian man brutally gunned down in a London subway station: Scotland Yard had been monitoring this guy’s apartment building because a suspect in the attacks lived there. When the Brazilian left that building, the police mistook him for the suspect, so they had no business following this man in the first place. The blood of this man is on their hands. While they were killing this guy, the real suspect could have been off planting another bomb. Appearances CAN be deceiving. The way to fight terrorism is not arbitrary search and seizure but through intelligence gathering that respects civil libertires. Such tactics uncovered two of the 9/11 hijackers before they attcked, but policymakers were not interested in them. THe system worked fine before 9/11 so let’s not go apesh*t and prejudge anyone who is from a region that stretches from Mauritania to Indonesia. Terrorists can adapt. In NYC, every 12th bag is searched. All the terrorist has to do is be the 11th person in line. Or, these people will just change tactics. The U.S. has been focusing on airline hijackings, meanwhile Al-Qaeda has switched to bombing trains and buses. These guys WILL find another way to attack us. So let’s not throw away our hard won freedoms out of paranoia.
Finally, the BBC is not biased, it just does not take the statements of politicians at face value, nothing wrong with that. In fact, their pre-war reporting was some of the finest in the world in terms of shedding doubt on coalition assertions that guess what, turned out to be false!!!!
Posted by Liberal on Aug 19, 2005 at 3:05 PM
Liberal’s post reminds of something… How come not one single person has been reprimanded or fired as a result of 9/11? What’s up with that?
Another BBC article references a picture leaked to them of the deceased electrician and he is wearing a snug jean jacket and jeans. So much for the big jacket story…
Posted by volvillain on Aug 19, 2005 at 3:50 PM
Mitilda- Actually I don’t think that speech by Hitler settles the debate at all. Hitler also made some specifically anti-Christian statements later in his career (read Alan Bullock’s book “Hitler, A Study in Tryanny”). Also, the historian Paul Johnson considers Hitler to have been anti-Christian. Probably like many politicians Hitler spoke out of both sides of his mouth depending upon who he was trying to win over. In 1922, when he made that speech, Hitler was leading a small party whose prospects were not at all promising in a nation that was at least nominally Christian. The idea that that speech mirrored Hitler’s true sentiments is highly dubious at best.
Posted by chopper on Aug 19, 2005 at 6:51 PM
Matilda- First, apologies for mis-spelling your name in the last post. Actually, I think I did get your posts, I just disagree with them. Perhaps the Iraq war “didn’t need to happen” as you write, but that still doesn’t put George Bush on the same moral plane as Nazis who executed civilians at random, not when our military takes pains to avoid civilian casualties. I agree that in practice Stalin and Hitler had many similarities (people forget that Nazi stood for the National Socialist party), I just don’t think they really have much similarity to conservatism (which is by no means monolithic, there are several different political philosophies under that name) as it exists today in the United States. In fact many liberals, with their quasi-socialistic programs, are closer in spirit to facism than most conservatives.
In practice the left uses facism to smear anyone they disagree with. It is time to give the word a decent burial.
Posted by chopper on Aug 19, 2005 at 7:06 PM
Lefty- with the left’s program of state control over the economy, I’d say they fit the definition of facism pretty well.
Posted by chopper on Aug 19, 2005 at 7:07 PM
IsThisThingOn,
Nice of you to lend your insight into justifying profiling.
Now let’s look at some other questions.Since I hate grading multiple-choice tests,they are not indicative of real world knowledge which you either have or don’t,and a tritely smarmy way of sounding smarter than one’s actual capacity, let’s take another quiz.Ready?
In the case of each,describe the age group,ethnicity,and political prty of each of the following terrorists.By strict definition of the term,those who use fear and violence to further a political agenda.
Paul Hill:murderer of doctors who perform abortions?
Timothy McVeigh:Oklahomea City bomber.
Eric Rudolph:Bomber of abortion clinics and gay bars,oh,he also bombed the 1996 Olympics.Most provincial right-wingers forget that one.
If,in each case,you answered White male,Christian,Republican,between 18 and 50 years old,guess what?You’re right!
Profiling,another way for a negligenty government to obfuscate domestic issue and misdirect the public into a useless paranoia venue.
Shame on the right and raspberries to those stupid enough to believe their trickery.
Posted by wwoods on Aug 19, 2005 at 9:55 PM
ww
Cute. But irrelevant.
So, why are we patting down little old ladies?
Your three examples are one-off idiots, working alone or in small groups.
The Jihadists number in the thousands, have millions of dollars in backing, and have a very large support and propaganda base behind them.
Posted by scorp on Aug 19, 2005 at 10:30 PM
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Reader Comments
Amazing. Truly amazing.
What is global hedemony anyway? It’s just another word to mask stupidity when it comes to political thinking. After all the twists and turns of Zizec’s loopy abstractions, it all comes down to that one phrase. Why even bother writing an article at all? You would’ve been more honest to simply state that you think Iran needs nukes to stop U.S. global hegemony. But then if you did that, you wouldn’t have been able to fool all those other people into believing you had an actual thoughtful piece of writing to share.
Maybe that honesty would have been too much for you? Maybe you didn’t even realize the absurdity of you own thesis, hiding it even from yourself? Surely, even you have enough common sense to realize the absurdity of suggesting that nuclear proliferation is a good thing? Especially to a country with such a wonderful record when it comes to respecting human life and dignity?
Or maybe I’m just over thinking this one? Was this meant as irony? It’s not even a good joke.
Perhaps you should substitute one word here to get a feeling for just how naive this article truly is. Try
I find it humorous that many Americans have the mentality that we’re are the only ones who can be trusted to have nukes because somehow we posess the necessary moral fortitude to act responsibly. Some how I find our historical use of unrestricted bombing, over-seas intervention, etc… rendering any argument about our moral supperiority specious. Of course, I wouldn’t expect anything less if the tables were turned and China were the world’s sole super power. Even so, I still can’t completely shake this feeling that we SHOULD be better than that when much evidence indicates that we are not.
The US is not perfect. But other than ending a particularly nasty war that was forced on us, we have not nuked anyone either. We have no history of suicide bombers.
Muslim crazies cannot be trusted with nukes. This seems to be pretty obvious. An ongoing worry is that they could possibly obtain suitcase nukes (from the old USSR) and use them in a terrorist attack. Does anyone really doubt that these fanatics would, if they could?
This article reads like a 14 year old kid explaining to his father why he should be given the keys to the corvette (but dad, i never even had an accident!!!). Funny, but in an ironic way.
One other thing I forgot to mention is that fear or expediency doesn’t excuse the killing of De Menezes by British police. Many of the facts as stated by the authorities are in dispute and not only by his relatives. One question I had was whether or not it would be possible for anyone wearing a bomb belt to vault a turn style as easily as the deceased has been described doing. How heavy or encumbering is such a suicide device?
Another question I had is what kinds of doors does this open if someone can be more or less sumarily executed without due process merely upon the suspicion of being a terrorist? I know that in many circles the security of the nation state trumps the rights of individuals, but what if YOU were one of those individuals mistakenly slain by those sworn to protect? Would kind of suck being you, wouldn’t it? But what if I told your grieving family that it was a tragic accident, and that we were just doing our jobs? Do you think that they would accept that and move on? I suspect not. But instead what you have seeping into the media is that somehow because he was living in the UK illegally that he some how deserved to be killed. He shouldn’t have run. He shouldn’t have this, he shouldn’t have that. What I think really happened is the same thing that causes a lot of hunting accidents and that is that if people are really expecting to see a white tail deer, they will. They were expecting a terrorist to walk out of that apartment building. They were expecting that they would have no choice but to use deadly force because they could expect no mercy or no quarter themselves. And such is the insidious nature of escalation. We have to be MORE vicious and deadly then the enemy in order to defeat him, but by doing so we only become like our enemy. This is a victory for terrorists as this strikes at the very heart of democracy. If we have to give up all of our rights because someone might have a bomb, if we are executed because we might be a threat, then the very society we claim to be protecting will cease to exist. It will be no better than Stalinist Russia.
Wolf, Muslim extremists did not appear out of thin air. We created them through direct and indirect means. And like Frankenstein’s monster, they came back seeking to destroy their creator. Ultimately the trend of escalating violence from the Middle East is a consequence of various failures in U.S. policy from the 2nd world war to the present. We did what we had to do for the sake of short term goals. We had to win the Cold War and we needed strategic partnerships. Regardless of whether or not they were democratic. Regardless of their brutality. All we wanted was people who’d stand up to communism and people who would do business with us. Truth, Justice and the American way didn’t even enter the equation.
As for the nuclear suitcase bomb, I think that we are making it easier for them to get their hand on it rather than harder. For example, by engaging in a war in Iraq we are generating massive amounts of sympathy for the Wahhabist cause in the world at large. Sympathy can be exploited as we have seen with many muslim “charities” acting as money laundering schemes for various terrorizt organizations. In essence we have been trying to solve a problem militarily than cannot be solved in that way. It can only be solved by a combination of economic means, undercover work and strategic alliances with other countries’ covert agencies. Invading countries is quite simply put a waste of time, materials and lives.
If American’s would take the time to consider why it seems reasonable to some people that Iran should have nuclear weapons as a deterant against them, then they would be a whole lot closer to winning their “War on Terror”.
If the editors are wondering why this magazine is stumbling so badly I would suggest you reflect on the bizzare last sentence of the article. It is the most perfectly asinine closing statement I think I have ever heard by a “professional” writer.
I read your magazine b/c I have been occasionally influenced by it on some topics. But truly, this is beyond absurd. I would normally like to have a good debate on the points of an article. But to do that for an article like this would be like arguing with a child (more like a mini-Chomsky wannabe really, but without the vocab command).
ITT does a great job on some things. Labor relations, race relations, environmental issues, etc. etc. And I hope y’all can stay in business. Unfortunately, this article happens to suck big time.
The obvious difference between secular-minded, this-world-centered powers and other-world-oriented powers like religious revolutionaries is that those whose emphasis is upon this world are more willing to ponder the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons, both upon their victims, the natural environment, and in retaliation against themselves. If you think that’s an unfair formulation, consider the readiness of suicide bombers motivated by religious zeal to kill themselves and dozens of innocents. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t fully trust reason to prevail even with the more secular-minded bunch, but I find it much more plausible to imagine that people whose focus is upon Heaven or some other post-death realm would consider the use of nukes in this world to be a less scary proposition. Maybe they’d think their pathway to Paradise would be smoothed by unleashing a holocaust against the infidel du jour.
And aside from all that, it just doesn’t make sense to suggest that the proliferation of any kind of weapon makes that weapon less likely to be used in the future. The frequent role of guns in American crime is an example.
As for American hegemony, I think that will be mitigated better when other powers gain economic and cultural influence, rather than by way of a new incarnation of the nuclear arms race.
Nightmarish.
I should have reread my previous post. This does seem to make some sense now. This is the paper that publishes articles from a pretty Anti-Semitic pen (and a strong supporter of Jew haters like Farrakhan).
Anybody who wants to see the destruction of Israel, or just wish to see them feel pain, know that the only truly massive threat to them would be the acquistion of nuclear weaponry by fanatical Muslim states (be them Persian/Arab/Sunni or Arab).
With the recent Iranian election of a radically conservative president over Khatami this is the perfect time for rags like this to promote more nuclear weapons in the region and around the globe (or did you pen this out before - just joking! of course you didn’t).
ITT-
Fine, block off my registration from now on. You are the idiots that think more nuclear weapons are a good idea.
What a lot of people seem not to realize is that the more countries that have nuclear weapons and pose a threat to America, the more domestic tax dollars end up eventually in the pockets of the rich. Here’s how it works…
For the super rich in this country probably the greatest way to transfer dollars from the pockets of ordinary working people to those at the top is via government spending on the military and related industries.
We spend so much on the military in this country, many times more proportionally than any other nation on earth. But the fact that this happens has nothing to do with the actual defense of our country, it has more to do with the redistribution of wealth from the general public to the already wealthy.
Sound crazy? Well read on.
Rather than discourage nuclear proliferation George W. Bush and his cohorts have indirectly encouraged it. Everyone in the world (except for conservatives in America) knew that Sadam did not in any way pose an actual nuclear threat. To everyone else in the world it looked as if Iraq was invaded precisely because it did NOT have nuclear weapons.
To make this point clear, Pakistan, the actually hiding place of none other than Usama Bin Laden, quietly slips under the radar of serious U.S. attention. Surely Pakistan would be the perfect place to take the fight to Bin Laden. But there is a problem, a nuclear problem. Mess with Pakistan and you could end up with a very serious black eye.
Iran and North Korea see this, and despite conservative propaganda, are not just ‘evil’. Their original reasons for desiring nuclear weapons are pretty much the same as ours, to be the big boys on the block, but the current situation is different. They think to themselves a very simple thought. To stop America from trying to invade my country, I now NEED a nuclear arsenal. Fare enough. Horrible, but logical.
So how does this play into the hands of Bush and his supporters? Well it is actually really simple. The more credible threats you create in the world via nuclear proliferation, the more a super inflated military budget will be absolutely guaranteed for the at least the next few decades. Anyone with shares, or a financial interest, in Lockheed Martin, Halliburton, Boeing, and many, many others have an almost unimaginable source of future income to look forward to.
As a beautiful side effect (for the bastard conservatives) all our hard earned tax money, which could actually be used to fund a national health system, a better education for our children, and programs to help the poor, is actually wasted on a fictional defense, to a problem we ourselves have created.
The neo-cons have been trying to find anyway they possibly can to dismantle the majority of FDR’s New Deal. That is how far their resentment goes, that is how much they hate the idea of people being helped by other people. Spending ludicrous amounts on the military and other related industries is just one way to justify spending less on the things that should have money spent on them, like social programs to help the poor and disadvantaged. It also makes some very rich people much, much wealthier into the bargain.
Still sound crazy? Well, we shall see.
Clarification of Iran’s intentions: Under the headline, “RAFSANJANI SAYS MUSLIMS SHOULD USE NUCLEAR WEAPON AGAINST ISRAEL” the Iran Press Service reported the following comments of former president Rafsanjani in December, 2001:
“If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world”, (Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani speaking to the crowd at traditional Friday prayers in Tehran).
Stalemate indeed. But the population disparity, when calculated along Jewish vs. Muslim lines, makes this a bit different from India and Pakistan or the U.S. and the former U.S.S.R.
Maltida: “For the super rich in this country probably the greatest way to transfer dollars from the pockets of ordinary working people to those at the top is via government spending on the military and related industries.”
Tell that to Sam Walton (difficult since he’s dead, tell his heirs) and Bill Gates. Defense contracting is a business that can be somewhat lucrative, but so other types of businesses can be considerably more so.
If we can prevent Iran from getting nukes, it is a no-brainer that that is in the best interests for the world and especially the Middle East. Crazies with nukes - can’t we all agree it is a bad idea. (Personally i like the idea of global disarment, with the US *slowly* shedding its stockpile.)
I have one small gripe after re-reading the article:
” (Iran is the only large Arab state which not only does not diplomatically recognize Israel, but resolutely denies its right to exist as a state). “
Iran is not ethnically Arab. In fact, Arabs are roughly only 3% of the population in Iran.
to misterk: So the situation with a nuclear armed Iran stalemated with Israel would more resemble our situation with China.
(For more on this, refer to an article by Paul Craig Roberts http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts08112005.html)
I agree with wolf’s statement about moving towards global disarmament. I doubt that this will happen any time soon given the level of distrust that exists between many of the nation-states, however, it is a noble and worthy goal.
Also, I think the point Matilda Gatsby was trying to make about the Military Industrial complex is that unlike the Waltons and Bill Gates, Boeing, BAE, etc… are direct beneficieries of government spending where as Wal-Mart and Microsoft depend more on private sector money. Excepting any tax breaks or loopholes, of course. :)
It is astounding that neither Slavoj Zizek’s piece, nor any of the subsequent comments, even mention the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).
The exchanges here would be elevated considerably if they were informed by a careful reading of that rather important treaty, and the obligations it places on those who have signed it; as well as by a better understanding of why not only the United States and other nations, but also the NPT’s watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), are deeply troubled by Iran’s pursuit of uranium enrichment and other civilian nuclear activities that can be used to bring a nation close to building a nuclear bomb.
Let’s push Zizek’s logic to what I find to be its rather absurd logical conclusion: If the world would be stable with a nuclear-armed Iran, wouldn’t it be safer if even more nations built nuclear weapons?
I think not.
If Iran builds the bomb, this may sufficiently encourage Saudi Arabia to follow. Which may enrourage Syria to follow. Which may encourage Turkey to follow. And so on.
Do we really want to live in that world?
I think not.
Iranians are Persian. They are completely different from Arabs. Nice point out Volvillian. This article just keeps on giving!
I could see how Zizek would completely flub up the very important religious, ethnic, and historical differences between the various people of the Middle East.
But again, a statement like this makes it through the editorial process of this paper?! Do you guys post online before going to the press? I really hope you do! With Ivins putting out the most embarrassing recant in recent memory I hope the Progressive press can find a new process to vet material to limit embarrassing errors.
Speaking of the NPT, it’s nice to know that Israel never signed, yet Iran did. What’s up with that? Oh, I know, how it works. Anyone says one word about Israel in a way they don’t like and outcome the anti-semite accusations. Okay, I’m ready for my punishment. Come and get me Mr. Dershowitz.
Thanks for the Kudos MiddleRoad!
My dream is to one day be a bad ass copy editor, but now a days it seems like proof reading and research of facts take a back seat when one is too busy pushing an agenda rather than facts!
Saddam, of course, had no interest in toppling the Iranian government—he just wanted the Iranian oil fields. Actually overcoming and attempting to control a country full of Shiites would be his worst nightmare. Later on, he finally figured out that Kuwait was an easier target: he really didn’t expect the western powers to take action. Yet another grievous mistake of his.
A previous poster insinuates that the Iranian regime is like a cancer. This is a good analogy; unfortunately, when we could have taken care of the cancer at an early stage, the physician in charge (Mr. Carter) was afraid to deal with it. Its malignancy continues to be a severe problem.
It is quite rational that the Iranians can, through a 3rd party, deliver nuclear strikes on the U.S. without great fear of military repercussion. They’ve stated that they want to do something such as this, and I have no reason to doubt them. Simply believing that they won’t do it does not make it so.
One method of dealing with Iran might be to actively enlist the support of the Russians, whom we have tried hard to antagonize the past decade or so. Enlisting their support would likely mean we’d get serious about helping them with their Chechen problem, though, which is probably why it hasn’t happened yet.
The War on Terror, unlike the despicable War on Drugs, actually does have an enemy. The U.S. really has been attacked multiple times by Middle Eastern terrorists, who still assert that they intend to attack again. Surely one cannot think that they’re simply going to fade away becuase we would like that?
Matilda-
You said:
“Rather than discourage nuclear proliferation George W. Bush and his cohorts have indirectly encouraged it. Everyone in the world (except for conservatives in America) knew that Sadam did not in any way pose an actual nuclear threat. To everyone else in the world it looked as if Iraq was invaded precisely because it did NOT have nuclear weapons.”
I am not certain how closely you followed the goings on prior to the invasion of Iraq, but here are a few examples of the “Bush Cohorts”
who were convinced that Iraq had come close to aquiring nukes: Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Kofi Anon, the British, German AND French security agencies, as well as Isreal’s Massad. And, oh yeah, the Congress of the United States. The UN Security Council passed 17 resolutions calling for Saddam to give up the pursuit of his weapons of mass destruction. By that, they didn’t mean tanks and planes. Boy those slimey Bush cohorts, huh? Oh? We didn’t find any WMD? Next time you can’t find your wallet or car keys, just tell yourself that they really never existed.
Iraq was invaded because the best time to stop a madman from getting nukes is BEFORE he gets them. A philosophy lost on Clinton who sold nuclear technology and material to the North Koreans because they promised to be good boys.
Iran should be hit hard if they continue to persue nukes before they get them. After they obtain nukes, an obvious position to point out, (except to conservatives in America)...its too late to stop them…BECAUSE THEY NOW HAVE NUKES.
See how it works?
Bad guys get nukes, they become untouchable.
Why must we wait til they actually get them? We have to make a decision in this world: Are we going to let bad guys get nukes? I thought you guys on the Left were AGAINST nuclear proliferation. Hell, I know I am.
Everyday I thank GOD Bush beat Kerry.
Henry B,
Unfortunately we have tackled the problem of terrorism as if it is in and of itself the sickness. The reality is that terrorism is merely a symptom of a set of other problems. Of course our conduct of this war on terror has only excacerbated the conditions which spawn suicidal religious zealots, so we have even more global instability to look frward to. Just the kind of world I’d like my daughter to grow up in. Thanks to the clowns on both sides of the aisle that mask their agendas with anemic platitudes and empty talk of freedom, democracy and liberty. Hey, any fool can open his mouth and espouse a set of ideals, but few ever put them into practice. If we were serious about eliminating terror, then by default we’d have to be serious about justice and ethics and humanity, but those things have just become screen words used to keep the citizenry of the US from barking to loudly and upsetting the imperialist ambitions of our government. Democrats included!
Ms. Gatsby -
“Everyone in the world (except for conservatives in America) knew that Sadam did not in any way pose an actual nuclear threat.”
“Everyone in the world” is a lot of people. Can you be a little more specific and name three of them?
In 1998, the House of Representatives passed the Iraq Liberation Act 360-38. The Senate passed the Act by unanimous consent. President Clinton signed the Act into law. Regime change in Iraq has been a matter of USA law since 1998.
Iraq’s refusal to cooperate with the UN weapons inspectors was one principal reason for the Act. Many Democratic politicians, including Clinton, Gore, Daschle, Pelosi, Reid, Kennedy, Levin, and Rockefeller (not to mention a few Republicans) were quoted, at the time and subsequently, that Saddam had WMD and nuclear programs, and that he was a threat to the world and to the United States. Even Hans Blix and Mohammed El-Baradei, in their final reports to the UN before hostilities began in Iraq in March 2003, referred to the ongoing presence of “illegal” weapons in Iraq.
Both Congressional chambers passed the Iraq War Resolution in 2003 with big majorities.
AFTER hostilities began, there commenced serious questions about the existence of WMD in Iraq. Kevin Drum, then writing as calpundit, explored the Internet and asked for input about WMD. In Drum’s extensive research, exactly two knowledgeable people questioned the presence of WMD in Iraq BEFORE the start of hostilities: Vladimir Putin and Scott Ritter. Probably not coincidentally, Putin and Ritter were both indirect recipients and profiteers of Saddam’s bribery in the Oil for Food scandal.
Not a single US politician nor any of the Western intelligence agencies stated before March 2003 that Saddam had no WMD.
Since you think that “every one in the world” knew that there was no threat, would you please identify any credible quotes that you have predating March 2003 in support of your position? I would be ever so grateful.
In the absence of supporting documentation, would you kindly refrain from talking nonsense?
Perhaps instead of imprisoning Eric Rudolph, we should seek to understand the root causes of killing abortion doctors? The reality is that killing abortion doctors is merely a symptom of a set of other problems (and really, when you think about it, it is really more noble - at least they target the “offending” people, rather than just random civilians). If we were serious about eliminating abortion doctor killers, then by default we
Volvillian—
I understand your angst, but you said:
“If we were serious about eliminating terror, then by default we
Scorp—
Have you wondered where the Left and the press would be on this Iraqi war thing if Clinton did the invading instead of Bush? Not a word was spoken when Bubba went into Bosnia…WITHOUT a vote from Congress or permission from the UN. But Viola! He was a “GREAT president”, and Bush is likened to Hitler and the very terrorists he fights. Both World Wars One, & Two and Vietnam were all started by Democratic presidents. A Democrat president dropped not one but two atomic bombs on the Japanese. Maybe we should just let the Dems start all the wars, and we could demonize THEM for being war-mongers.
Things that make you go “hmmmm”
IsThisThingOn- I see the point you are making. I suppose that I could have been more specific in my original post, but I was operating under the possibly misguided notion of trying to be brief and not offer up too rambling a monologue. To be blunt, what I was trying to convey is that when we talk about justice as Americans there is a more definable range than say what Justice might mean for someone from a different culture. At the risk of being pilloried, I’d say that the majority of Americans deplore murder. However, as you rightly point out there are many instances that someone would call murder and another would call justice. That can be applied to Death Penalty cases, abortion bombings, etc… Now, my own background on this is that I believe that killing innocent people is a bad thing, whether it is suicide bombers, police, soldiers, etc… Now where my conflict with America is that “unintentional” killing is part of the norm. Like, the need to break a few eggs to make an omellette, which is fine if you’re living comfortably in Massachussetts, but not so well if you happened to be a resident of Fallujah or Jenin. In essence, I perhaps naively believe that the ends doesn’t justify the means, that there are alternatives to direct military intervention. For example, the difficulties in Northern Ireland didn’t subside because of “Shock and Awe” but by agreeing to meet and try to work out the differences between the involved parties. I know it doesn’t have the same dramatic effect of a daisy cutter or bunker buster, but hey, life isn’t perfect.
The other thing I want to mention since you brought up Bubba Clinton is that I am not a blind devotee of some party, be it Republican or Democrat, green or libertarian. There are politicians that I think are fools and then there are some that I respect, regardless of what party affiliation they claim. By and large US policy hasn’t differed much more than a few degrees regardless of whether there was a mule or an elephant at the helm. It’s all about the Benjamins.
How many times did Clinton change his story about the reason he went to war? Do we know the real reason for Bush yet? Will we ever?
Bush administration officials, who estimated that Iran was only five years away from such a weapon.
Has bush admin. been right on anything?
any nation that gets the nuke bomb, U.S.A. will leave them alone. That is why it is so important to get the bomb when you live in that neighborhood.
Iran knows that we can’t attack them. We can’t start another war because iraq is kicking are ass.
america freaked out when india,and pakistan got the bomb. Iran and north korea are next to get the bomb and there is nothing the U.S. can do about it, but bitch and promise sanctions.
bush is nothing like hitler, hitler was a great public speaker.
clinton went to war with bosnia, but 10% were american troops the rest were nato troops that’s 90% non american troops. It did not cost 1.3 billion dollars a week and I don’t remember any U.S. troops dead. Clinton was nominated for the noble peace prize for his efforts.
Vietnam,U.S. gave money, guns, supplies, and training to south vietnam. The reason to fight the north vietnam people who were commies. When the south built their army up enough to fight the north commies we the U.S. would stand down and come home.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Thinking we’d be better off with the fanatical terrorists who run Iran being armed with nuclear weapons is not an example of clear thinking. If there must be a hegemon, we should be it.
IsThisThingOn, Saddam is not a mad man, sorry, we are actually the aggressors, and you can thank God all you like, he doesn’t exist.
Am I the only person in America with the guts to admit that ordinary Iraqis were better off under Saddam than they are now? Cold-blooded murderer that he was he doesn’t have half the blood on his hands that we do. A hundred thousand dead and civil war on the horizon, what thanks does Iraq really owe our ‘brave’ boys. Maybe in a decade or two ordinary Iraqi people will benefit from the removal of Saddam, or maybe another Saddam will take control, a fundamentalist Muslim Saddam, one who will really help the terrorists.
We are the real bad guys in this situation. For goodness sake act like real men, stand up and take responsibility for this atrocity. To hear conservatives squeal and squirm and justify the killing of so many thousands of people like used car salesmen, it makes me sick. All in the name of freedom, what a repulsive joke.
To all you knuckle headed, conscienceless conservatives out there, read my first post again and allow yourself to ask the obvious question. Who benefits from this situation, who definitely benefits no matter how it turns out? You guys just cannot see the wood for the trees can you?
Lastly, just because you managed to fool a lot of otherwise well meaning people into believing your lies doesn’t mean you can smear them with your shit now. WAKE UP!
Another thing, democrats did not start world war two, I was always under the impression that was Germany and Japan.
And yes, any democrat who acts like a conservative is as bad as a conservative.
The democrats in our country are actually a center right political party, in opposition to an extremist far right political party. Real liberals often support the democrats because the alternative is the murderous republicans. Unfortunately the democrats are often half in bed with the ultra right wing in this country, so what can ordinary people do?
Republicans have the moral values of fascists, just without the balls. Any democrat who drops an atomic bomb is actually a wannabe conservative.
Chopper- Are you really prepared to pay what it actually costs to be a hegemon? Usually when someone makes the statement that they want US imperialism, they are the last people who want to do anything to support it, other than running their mouths. I guess it is far easier spending other peoples money, killing other peoples kids, etc… Talking tough and being tough are two different things and if you want to put your money where your mouth is, enlist, volunteer, whatever.
Another point is that if we wan’t to prevent nuclear proliferation, we need to stop threatening to invade other countries to initiate regime change. If our leaders didn’t routinely threaten Iran as often as they do, there might be more room for a negotiated settlement.
Also, do you really believe that every Muslim, in every country is a fanatic poised to strike at the US? That Iran would really risk even an indirect nuclear strike against us? As it is they are in our cross hairs with minimal provocation. So what do you think our knee jerk reaction would be if a nuke was used against us by a terrorist group. Whether or not the attack was affiliated with Iran, Iran would get nuked. It’s just that simple. So really, wouldn’t it really be in Iran’s best interest to not give terrorists nukes? But to hedge their bets they might want a few of their own to deter an invasion.
How on earth can you invoke MAD with a nation like Israel? They are too small, they don’t have submarine based missiles, they don’t have something like SAC 24 hour coverage, they just don’t have the retaliatory capability that the US and USSR did during the Cold War. MAD doesn’t work here.
4-8 nukes would destroy the entire nation (so even if they were able to lob a few at Iran post launch it wouldn’t do a whole lot of good).
You didn’t even mention Osirak and what the Israelis would have to inevitably do if Iran begins production of UR235 or plutonium big time. What do you think the consequences of such an action would be?
Iran is one of the few states to have admitted to engaging in state sponsored terrorism. Hey, give the Lockerbie bombers and Hezbollah funders the bomb (their proliferation of plastique explosives, shaped charges, and remote detonation just aren’t enough)! Brilliant!
What a sick mind, uniformed mind. But it does prove, as long as you are “Progressive”, that you can get published!
Slavoj Zizek makes a lot of valid points regarding Iran’s attempt to be included into the nuclear armed states. Clearly, Pakistan and India will be tempted to use their own nuclear weapons if border conflicts rage out of control and the issue of Kashmir escalates further.
Besides, once Bush announced his policy of preemptive strikes against countries that may or could be threats down the road, it makes perfectly good sense that other nations, whether we like them or not, can justifiably use the same rationale to attack their perceived opponents as well.
A convincing argument can be made that anyone today can get hold of nuclear and/or biological weapons on the black market quite easily. Russia’s impoverished nuclear scientists and physicists, many of whom were tossed out of work after the end of the Cold War, can and have sold their nuclear knowledge expertise to other countries. It is also a well-established fact that Pakistan’s rogue scientist, A.Q. Kahn, provided nuclear secrets to both Iran and North Korea.
Israel, though not officially included in the exclusive club of nations in possessing nuclear weapons, nonetheless has those weapons in spite of the fact they have not declared them openly. Fat chance that if Iran ever attacked Israel for any reason, even with conventional weapons, that Israel wouldn’t retaliate aggressively by using their nuclear capabilities to repel any attack by Iran.
I am also convinced that G. W. Bush will launch air strikes against Iran with or without Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s support. Why do I believe this? Because before 9/11 Bush’s approval ratings were already heading south, hovering somewhere around 50%. They shot up to over 90% during the Afghanistan bombing and the ousting of the Taliban and remained in the stratosphere even longer than his father’s 85% during the height of the Gulf War. Bush puts his own vainglory ahead of anything else, including the welfare and interests of America. His thirst to be admired and revered completely overwhelm all other considerations.
Germany’s foreign intelligence chief August Hanning said recently that terrorism is radiating from Iraq and further attacks are expected around the Middle East. Hanning stated, “We fear developments in Iraq are radiating outwards.” This comment flies in the face of Bush and his military commanders’ claims that, like moths drawn to a flame, the U.S. is defeating terrorism in Iraq so that we don’t have to confront them elsewhere.
Once the USA Patriot Act with its renewed executive powers is rammed through the gutless, lapdog Republican-controlled U.S. Congress later this year, we will hear a heightened rhetoric and more saber rattling to bomb Iran. The biggest question that has yet to be answered is whether or not Bush will try to invade and occupy Iran with ground troops. It is unlikely with an already stretched-thin all-volunteer U.S. military that that is feasible.
The only recourse will be for Bush to use his executive edicts to reinstate the Selective Service draft, even if it’s only temporary, to accomplish one of the linchpins in toppling another Middle East Islamic government and replace it with a Bush-mandated puppet regime as he has done in Iraq. And would Bush use nuclear weapons? I believe he would, but only if he had the same certitude that God Himself appointed him to smite the enemy as his “moral values” acolytes have asserted.
In that case, if Bush times it right, it will solidify his power in Congress in 2006 once the solid phalanx of evangelical extremists are convinced that this event would bring about their much-craved-for Armageddon and End of Days biblical prophecy.
Lefty, yup, all that and more I agree with you. But, I had to pare down my rant since I pushed beyond my allocated word count re ITT limits. Oh, how wordy I can be. Ha, ha.
Matilda Gatsby writes “...The democrats in our country are actually a center right political party, in opposition to an extremist far right political party….”
After I stopped laughing at this, I began to wonder if ‘Matilda’ was heavy into peyote. The Democratic Party, at least since the early 1980’s, is basically a totalitarian party along the lines of Stalin (but w/o the death camps for its enemies [yet]). It worships communism and UTTERLY HATES individual liberty. Its rhetoric to the contrary reminds me of countries with the word ‘Democratic’ in their titles: virtually all are dictatorships. To describe the Democratic Party as “center right” is utterly ridiculous.
And now back to our main topic, Iranians with nuclear weapons. Iran under the current wacko Muslim regime IS TO BE TRUSTED: it says that it wants to kill us, and it WILL attempt to do so. These are fanatics: they are not like the Russians of the 1950’s, who would say such but only mean to bluff. If there is no regime change in Iran, then for our own preservation, SOMETHING MUST BE DONE. These are like folks down the street stating that they’re going to drop by to kill you one of these days…if you ignore them, you’re likely to end up prematurely dead.
Glad I made you laugh HenryB. You are just a stupid guy, but hey, it won’t be the last time someone on the far right will be called stupid, so take heart.
There is no real left wing in this country, and of course people who think Bill O’Reilly is fair and balanced are going to consider the democrats to be on the political left. Anywhere else in the world the democrats would be considered a center right party and the republicans would be considered neo-fascists.
But it is totally wrong to compare the American conservatives to the Nazis, I mean the Nazis were invading countries without a legitimate reason and threatening others… wait a minute.
Also, HenryB, I am sorry to hear you are so afraid of Iran, it must be quite tiring to have to live in constant fear, and how dare our government only spend $400 Billion on defense a year. You sound to me like a bit of a coward, shaking in your boots over such a small country. Stand up straight and find some backbone, only cowards strike first out of fear.
Or does the thought of thousands of people being blown to bits in the Persian Gulf kind of turn you on?
The only reason our ultra right wing government doesn’t want other countries to have nukes is because then it cannot invade them whenever it feels like it. If any other nation ever nuked one of our cities it would be immediately flattened by an overwhelming counter strike, and they definitely know this.
As for individual terrorists, well at some point we are just going to have to arrest them all (impossible) or else make peace using genuine diplomacy, like the British did with the IRA. The British spent thirty years trying to smash that organization, but looked what happened when they finally stopped trying to flatten the IRA and started addressing some of their genuine concerns. Peace eventually broke out. Today we have a different situation with the Islamic Fundamentalists, but not so different that we can’t at least look at the things we are doing that causes them to take arms against us.
There are very few real madmen in this world, and most of those can’t even dress themselves, let alone build an atomic bomb.
We are all a lot safer than the conservatives in this country want us to feel, because how else are we going to let them spend so much on the military. Gee it must be great to have no conscience, to be totally unclouded by right and wrong, and for the murder of tens of thousands of people to be okay as long as it makes you ‘feel’ better.
The ends do not always justify the means. Get over it, and GROW UP!
Hey Matilda, It’s nice to see someone else out there that believes that security and peace can be achieved sans armed intervention.
The Democratic party is totalitarian, in the sense that a minority center-right cabal controls the money and sets the course. I believe most democrats are more left leaning, but not of the Stalinist vein. Hate to disappoint HenryB and his Bill O’reily talking points, but most grassroot Dems want decent wages, universal health care, envoirnmental protection. They don’t want death camps or pogroms. Unless they’re the quasi-fascist Senator Libermann, that is. How he can even be called liberal, I just don’t know….
volvillaian, you should have read my post more closely. Nowhere did I accuse all Muslims of being fanatical terrorists. What I said was that the rulers of Iran WHERE fanatical terrorists. They’ve given ample evidence of this. You are assuming they will behave rationally. They won’t. I didn’t even say we should be a hegemon, I merely said if there has to be one we should be it. As for your personal attack (the usual all purpose tiresome charge made by those on the left) I did try to enlist in the Service many years algo. I was rejected for medical reasons (bad knees).
bush is a joke.everyone who voted for him are getting what they deserve.
Volvillain,
Agreed! Terrorism is brought about by other problems. I suppose we can say the same about any variety of crime.
Poverty, ignorance, superstition, hunger, greed, prejudice, retaliation
Chopper- You’re right, you didn’t say that all muslims were terrorists. my mistake, but I would continue to challenge your assessment that they are fanatical terrorists unable to act rationally. Certainly they adhere to a strict form of Islam and have a strong anti-west bias, but their recent conduct certainly doesn’t strike me as being irrational. Quite the contrary if indeed Ahmed Chalabi was their means of getting us embroiled in Iraq. I’d say if that was their gambit, that that would be quite Machiavellian of them, but not crazy. Crazy would be us, taking the bait, hook line and sinker.
Sorry that you took the charge of not enlisting as a personal attack. I happen to know MANY people who espouse a pro-imperial agenda that are in good helath that say they can’t enlist because they have a career, family, etc… Like our men in uniform don’t have any of those things. But let’s get back to my original question… Do you really know what that will cost us to be a hegemon? Are you prepared to make some other kind of sacrifice to get us there?
Volvillain, I’m not saying we should necessarily be a hegemon, at least not in the sense that we should attempt to dominate every other nation on earth & take action against them every time they do something we don’t like. And I stand by my statement that the mullahs running Iran are fanatics. Certainly they are cunning & would be smart enough to avoid a direct nuclear attack against us (but they may directly attack Israel). They are known supporters of terrorism and I find it entirely crediable that they would help a terrorist organization detonate a bomb in the United States and then disavow responsibility. Many problems can be solved sans armed intervention, but not all of them. The attacks against us on 9/11 demanded a military response, for instance, or we would just have invited more of them.
HenryB,
If you think the Democrat Party in the US is Communist, you need to get out and about more my friend. This kind of rave, complete with capital letters, just serves to prove to people from other democracies that there is something skewed about US right whingers. You are so out of touch with the real world, that means the 95% of the world that doesn’t actually live in the US that it would be laughable if it wasn’t so scary. Wake up and smell the coffee.
The US doesn’t have a social democratic party of the kind notable in the UK and Australia and New Zealand. What it has it seems to everyone else, is two versions of the same party. Now unless you want to argue that Australia and the UK and New Zealand are stalinist regimes, carting the battling little business people off to the Gulags, you will need to take an aspirin and have a good lie down otherwise you are in danger of being carted you off to the funny farm. You guys scare me sometimes, especially when I remember you have nukes. You and the people like you are simply right wing nutters - no more, no less.
So, chopper, the attacks on us on 9/11 demanded a military response did they? And what will happen if Saudi Arabia decides to attack us again? I suppose we’ll invade Norway shall we, or perhaps France? That would make about as much sense as invading Iraq.
Also, what do you think will be the long-term results of our unprovoked invasion of Iraq?
If you kill three thousand New Yorkers then a reasonably large number of people will perhaps know someone who knows someone who was lost.
If you kill a hundred thousand Iraqis then every single person in the country will have lost loved ones, or else know someone who died.
What do you think the survivors will end up feeling, especially the orphans? Will they love America, or will grow up despising America? I think its fair to say that a percentage of them will consider taking up arms against us eventually, in one way or another. Wouldn’t you? If America were invaded by another country, say China, and your family were shot or blown to bits, or otherwise killed in the chaos? You’d be hell bent on revenge, wouldn’t you? Sure, some people would eventually forgive and forget, but many would not. Violence really does beget violence.
Iraqis are people too, and they do not recognize us as their superiors in anyway. They are Human Beings the same as us, proud, defiant and intelligent. Some of them will undoubtedly try to take revenge on America, and terror groups like Al Qaeda will be around to help them do it. Bush has made the future of our country generally less safe, not more, while setting in motion events that have claimed the lives of more innocent people than Saddam or Bin Laden were able to kill combined.
Bush and the neo-cons are guilty of murder and should be held accountable in a court of law. Unfortunately they are the law. There was no justification for the invasion of Iraq, not 9/11, not supposed weapons of mass destruction, not ‘regime change’, nothing. Iraq was not a threat to us, and in no shape or form was the killing of its citizens justified. To think anything else is to indulge the morality of fascism.
Meanwhile Bin Laden goes free. You need a bad guy after all, otherwise it would not be so easy for Bush to justify his laughable ‘War on Terror’.
More like a war on truth.
Amen Matilda! Rock on with that last post.
Chopper- I don’t agree with your conclusions about Iran because if they so much as blink the wrong way, they’ll get nuked. The reality is that if Saudis attack us again, Iran gets socked. If Pakistanis attack us, Iran will get socked for it. Whether they’re connected to any future attacks or not, if America gets whacked, Iran will pay the price. That’s why Hizbollah in Lebanon has been relatively quiet for a few years. Actually, it looks as though Hizbollah is starting to go the way of Seinn Feinn with fielding elected officials, stepping down the violence, etc… Note to all you hawks out there: Lebanon’s progress didn’t come because of “shock and awe,” or “boots on the ground.” Their progress has been one of dialogue. Has it been perfect? No. Are there still political killings? Yes, but much less then 10 years ago. That’s what happens when you bring everyone to the table, terrorists included, because one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Ethan Allen is one of my heros, but to the Brits, he would have been a terrorist, had the word been in vogue back then.
Oh and another thing… Why do people still talk as though 9/11 occured in a vacuum? 9/11 was a consequence of our various foreign policy sins, including getting Bin Laden his start in Afghanistan against the Russians. Can you say “blow back?” I knew you could!
It’s nice to see that someone out there is cognizant of the term “blow back”. I just am shocked that people like “Isthisthingon” still blindly bow to the altar of the anti-Christ Bush. He is so opposite of Chrisitanity, it is deeply saddening to realize that most Americans bowing before him have no clue what Jesus even said. If they did, he’d be out on his ass.
To go into Iran will only consolidate the bond between the Iraqi Shiites and the Shiite government in Iran. We will only castrate and isolate ourselves further with an invasion. Of course, Bush has already signed off on that as of October, 2004. So I’ve just been watching the buildup since then. Now the rhetoric will get really heavy, just like pre-war Iraq and Saddam.
The ridiculous thing is that the weapons inspections by the UN and the International Nuclear Agency (not the exact name, but I can’t remember it now) WERE working in Iraq. We found exactly what Blix and other told us we’d find—nothing. Now the Iranians are saying that they will offer complete transparency and allow 100% monitoring so they can have nuclear power for their country, but do you read that in the press? No, they make it look shady and threatening.
I know Iran is not our friend and we do have to watch them closely, but who the hell are we to say they can’t have nuclear power even if we are allowed onsite permanently to monitor? The American government and press are going to hide that piece of information from the public so Halliburton can continue to profiteer and Chevron can keep oil prices artificially high.
Susie Q—
What exactly are you refering to when you say you see people like “ISThisThingOn? who “still blindly bow to the altar of the anti-Christ Bush”. I believe that we need to be vigilant about terrorists and the Left and others who want to destroy America. That is a thought of mine long before Bush was elected. Bush is no conservative as far as I am concerned. And he certainly is not Christ like. His only claim to my vote is that he is not an America-hater like the Democrats. Now Pat Buchanan! THERE is a real American. Ain’t bowing down to Bush at all. Nor to Jesus either, as I am not religious in the least. Christ was a sacrificial Lamb in order to be a martyr to the ancient Christian cause. If the Democrats want to be sacrificed like Christ to their cause of a New World Order, thats fine. The world is better off without em’.
But me? I would rather defend my self and my family. It is elementary survival my passivistic friend.
“And what will happen if Saudi Arabia decides to attack us again?”
Is this really fair? If 20 Canadians attacked the US, would that constitute Canada attacking us (and just for fun, whose side would you be on?)?
“If you kill a hundred thousand Iraqis then every single person in the country will have lost loved ones, or else know someone who died.”
True. Saddam and sanctions killed upwards of a million, so it is safe to say that virtually everyone in Iraq has suffered tremedously over the last decade or so. . .
One might wonder if the terrorists who are killing indiscrimately over there are weakening their base, given such arguments.
“What do you think the survivors will end up feeling, especially the orphans?”
Those who remember Saddam may feel relieved that he is gone. It probably depends on whether Iraq is reconstituted as a viable country or not.
“Will they love America, or will grow up despising America?”
A mixture. Do Americans love or hate Hillary Clinton? George Bush? Opinions can be quite diverse.
“I think its fair to say that a percentage of them will consider taking up arms against us eventually, in one way or another. Wouldn
I gotta take umbrage with “IsThisThingOn” saying that the Left wants to destroy America, seeing as I would consider myself leaning left-wards most of the time. I don’t want to destroy America. I don’t support terrorism. Now my beef with Bush AND Kerry is that their both bought and paid for by the monied interests. I’m not in favor of a government that lights its own fires and then tells the public that it is the only entity capable of fighting the fire while dousing that same said fire with gas even as they’re assuring us it is water they’re using. I don’t buy it. It reeks of profiteering. That’s why I’m not a proponent of unrestricted capitalism. Unrestricted capitalism gave rise to the robber barons of the late 19th century and I don’t think we need a reprise. Overall, I’m very suspicious of people who use labels because there are many Dems that I largely disagree with and many Republicans that I do agree with. I’ll gladly admit that I respect Pat Buchannan for sticking to his principals and not bowing to Bush. I agree with him that we should be more isolationist and focus on building up America, not tearing down Iraq. See, this is what makes people like Bush a divider. They use hyperbole and rhetoric to turn us against one another while at the same time justifying their rabid agendas. The last president we had that made me feel as bad as Bush does was LBJ. Manufacturing the Tonkin Gulf incident, escalating Vietnam, using taxpayers money on specious public projects which where really nothing than massive pork. Sound familiar? Well, it should because this Democrat gave Halliburton, Kellog, Brown and Root and company a big leg up with all OUR money. And for what? What did we get for all the money and blood spent in Vietnam? Nada. Zip. Zilch. We were told that we had to stop the red menace or other countries would fall. (Dominoe theory, hah!) So, when we finally pulled out, what happened? Well, since we aren;t writing this in Russian, I’d say that the threat was GREATLY exagerrated. Sound familiar? Oh, but I must have automatically liked him because he was a DEMOCRAT and labels matter, right? No my friend, actions are what count, not words…
Wolf, whatever.
Volvillain, thanks for the encouragement.
Isthisthingon, the left that do exist in this country do not hate America, or any other country for that matter, they simply dislike you, the average conservative.
Conservativism is a hateful little philosophy and is, as far as I can tell, anti-Christian, anti-human, anti-equality and anti-progress. America is a beautiful place, but at the end of the day is just a piece of land. Genuine liberals believe that people are basically good, and that when treated fairly they tend to act fairly. We even believe conservatives were born good, but just like the Taliban or the Nazis to a greater or lesser degree a kind of anti-human sentiment creeps into their lives. Some conservatives are entrenched, others can perhaps be saved, others still without thinking about it too much consider themselves conservatives even though when asked about each individual issue tend to come down on the side of liberals.
So no, we do no hate the piece of land that is America, and we have a lot of time for most of our fellow citizens. It is the conservatives in this country who constantly project their own hate and fear on to liberals. It is the conservatives who basically distrust other human beings. It is the conservatives who believe the ends justify the means and if people get hurt along the way then that is the way it has to be. They will talk about how their heart goes out for the dead in Iraq, but they would do it all again without a second thought. All that matters to conservatives is themselves and their immediate social group. The rest of America, and the rest of the world, can literally go to hell.
You are very much deluded if you think Liberals hate America, we just don’t consider innocent American lives to be any more important than innocent Iraqi lives, and that is what drives you mad isn’t it, that we refuse to play the game of neo-fascism.
Matilda—
Here is why I believe the Dems hate America. I will quote YOU:
1) “America is a beautiful place, but at the end of the day is just a piece of land.”
2) “you think Liberals hate America, we just don
IsThisThingOn- Ouch! That hits a nerve! Now, I don’t want to seem like I’m getting too red around the gills, but the thrust of your argument, that dems are not always the nice, inclusive, touchy feely guys and gals they portray themselves as has some basis in truth.
Nobody is immune to acting like an inconsiderate jerk. Take our buddy Dubya, for example. Why not just diffuse the situation with Mrs. Sheehan and talk to her? Show some real courage and compassion, invite her in for tea, etc…
Anyway, I think people who talk about hating all liberals or all conservatives need to settle down a bit. Yeah, I’m passionate about my political views, but I draw the line at hate. I don’t like Dubya, and I certainly find myself angry with him a lot, but I don’t hate him. Hate is just so wasteful. I mean, will your hate of Dems blind you to anything good they might bring to the table? Will Matilda’s hate of conservatives blind her as well? All I know is that there is so much polarizing language on tv, on the radio, etc… that it seems like we’re forgetting that there are people on the receiving end of our spite. That’s why I try and be respectful of the person, even if I think their position on an issue is wrong. I don’t agree that the reprehensible conduct of the Dems towards the Boy Scouts casts all “progressives” in a bad light. To be honest, I don’t think the upper echelons of the Dem party are all that progressive anyway and many are spoiled blue bloods, just as the Bush version of conservatism, I don’t think is all that conservative. I mean, can you imagine Eisenhower signing the patriot act into law? I don’t think so…
Crying boy scouts or thousands of dead Iraq children, I know which one I think is the actual crime. Jesus Christ listen to yourself.
Hey Matilda, I agree that there is HUGE difference between crying children and dead children. Maybe isthisthingon doesn’t know what’s going on over there. Well, a picture is worth a thousand words or so. Just be careful, because this site is graphic and I cried my eyes out. Seriously. All I could think of was imagining how I’d feel if my daughter died and how I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone. Even Ann Coulter.
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/
Volvillain, I think conservatism in one guise or other is responsible for all human conflict and most human suffering. People who call themselves conservative are to a greater or lesser degree supporting a philosophical system that is in my opinion based on a complete misinterpretation of actual human nature. I do not hate people who call themselves conservatives or align themselves with that worldview, but I am damn angry when they follow through on those beliefs to the point of cold blooded murder.
Volvillian, I looked at the sight you posted, and it occurred to me that how does all this carnage make a second 9/11 less likely?
By the way, my ‘Jesus Christ listen to yourself’ comment was directed at IsMyBrainOn.
Matilda, if 9/11 didn’t warrent a military response, then what does? It was an act of war that killed 3,000 people. You immediately jumped to the conclusion that because I posted that that I also think we should have invaded Iraq. For the record, I was not in favor of the Iraq war, I actually thought it was a distraction from fighting terrorism. I do think we were justified in invading Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda’s base, and destroying it. If we hadn’t done that I think there is good reason to believe there would have been further devastating attacks on US soil. I also question your figures on the amount of Iraqi deaths you say we’ve caused, and there is no evidence that all Iraqi’s are united against us in support of Al-Qaeda. Most of the terrorists (insurgents, if you insist on being politically correct) fighting us are Sunni’s or foreign fighters coming in.
In a historical sense your thinking is off-base, we killed hundred’s of thousands of (actually, probably millions) of German and Japanese civilians during WWII and we weren’t plagued with German or Japanese suicide bombers after the end of the war.
BTW, what is your definition of conservatism? Why do you think it is causing all conflict and suffering? Lenin wasn’t conservative, Stalin wasn’t conservative, Hitler wasn’t conservative, Pol Pot wasn’t conservative, Mao Tse-Tung wasn’t conservative, collectively they were responsible for over 100 million deaths in the 20th century. Your statement makes no sense.
Matilda-I think I see what you’re getting at, but I’d like to clarify, if I may. Are you describing the authoritarian mindset when you mention conservative? Or a scarcity mentality, like there can only be so many winners in the world and I better damn well make sure I’m one of them, no matter what?
Oh and believe me, there was never any doubt in my mind that what we have done and are doing in Iraq will have grave consequences. It’s human nature really. I just have a hard time understanding how any one could think otherwise. Any one care to explain their perspective?
Volvillian, what is this fixation on Saudi attacking us? I realize most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi’s but there is no real evidence that the government of Saudi Arabia had a hand in the planning. There are many things about the Saudis I don’t like, but I don’t think they were directly responsible for 9/11.
The argument about “blow back” is way overdone. Your definition is so huge that almost anything could be listed as “blow back”. I think a fairly good argument could be made that we should have stayed out of WWI, and that the allies and the central powers would have come to a negotiated peace if we had done so. Political conditions in Germany would have been very different and Adolf Hitler probably would never have become Chancellor of Germany. Does that mean we should have stayed out of WWII and allowed Nazi Germany to dominate Europe? After all, this was merely us reaping the consequences of our “sin” of intervening in WWI. We had also cut off Japan’s oil supply six months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, so maybe that attack was also just “payback” for that foreign policy sin, and we should have sent Imperial Japan apologies for provoking them.
Chopper- Criminal fringe groups cannot really declare a war. It was stupid of us to elevate their act of mass murder to that status. That only served to give Al Qaeda more credibility in the muslim world. Instead we should have done snatch and grabs of top members like what the Israeli’s did with Eichman. Not collective punishment, which essentially the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are. Also, if we’re serious about lasting peace, we have to get serious with Israel. We have to stop giving them carte blanche when it comes to the peace process. Here’s a good read for ya on that topic.
http://www.counterpunch.org/christison08152005.html
Volvillian, I would say a conservative (and I’m not entirely satistifed with the word, it has been overused and abused, just as the word liberal has) is someone who believes that human nature doesn’t change much, traditions are there for a reason, (although we shouldn’t become slaves to tradition) and the government can’t solve all problems, and may make them worse by attempting to do so. Also, life is inherently unsafe, none of us really knows as much as we think we do, and some people aren’t going to like you (or will actively hate you) no matter what you do.
As for the authoritarian mindset, that is at least as prevalent on the left as it is on the right, plus many people on the left in trying to create a heaven on earth instead create hells on earth (ie: see The French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, Mao Tse-Tung’s China, the list goes on).
Volvillian, I don’t see how snatch and grabs in Afghanistan would have worked. I really don’t think we had any other options there. Iraq is a different story, but now that we are there we can’t just pull out and leave it in chaos.
Saudi fixation? I don’t believe I’ve mentioned them, so I don’t see how you’re connecting me to any comments or allegations that their government was responsible. I don’t believe that the Saudi Arabian government had a hand in 9/11. They didn’t have anything to gain from it. In fact, we’re old buddies with the house of Saud. Go way back. I’d sooner believe the French had a hand in 9/11 then the Saudi government. (Now their citizens, well, different story…)
My definition of blow back is huge and vague? I think that the connection is pretty firm. Did we help provide material support to Al Qaeda during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, support that included teaching infiltration, clandestine operations, sabotage, guerrilla tactics etc..? I think you know that we did. It appears as though they were good students too, judging by their handywork.
Actually, the best thing that could have happened the end of WWI was if the US forced a fair settlement between the Allies and the Central Powers. We had the leverage with England and France being exhausted. Unforunately, the US congress made sure that we retreated into the shell of isolationism a bit prematurely and pretty much let England and France have thier way with Germany, Austria and the Ottoman Empire, thus, setting the stage for the sequel. God, Americans love sequels! See, you mention our witholding of oil from Japan as a catalyst, but you’re not doing the full disclosure thing. WHY did we decide to withold oil and scrap metal shipments from Japan? Because we’re mean people? No. It was China! We’d gotten fed up with Japan’s little adventure in China and Manchuria and thought that we might reign them in a little bit. (In hindsight, what do you think we’ll do to Venezuela if they decide to withold oil from us? hmmmm…) But that tactic backfired, (obviously) because, tada, Pearl Harbor. So, that was a nice little straw man that you built to torch in an effort to invalidate my argument, but did it work? Did anyone reading actually think that I held those opinions that you inferred were mine before consigning them to the flames? Before you attribute opinions to me, you might want to ASK what they are first! (You presume that I am anti-war through and through, but I undestand that sometimes one must fight, I just don’t think we’ve had to fight the fights we’ve fought for the past 30 or so years.)
Chopper- Here is where things get tricky. I don’t believe that government can solve every problem. In fact, the government that governs least, governs best in many ways. I think that there has to be a happy medium between government protection and free enterprise. Instead hat we have is pork fest every year at the legislature and Dubya there ladling out gravy. If you had a choice between spending taxpayer dollars on overseas missions vs. domestic security, what would you pick? Well, we’ve picked overseas adventures, adventures that are REALLY expensive in terms of human life, energy and money. Adventures that are LIKELY to create more chaos, death and destruction. If we pul out now things might get worse, or they might not. However, I think we lost the opportunity to effect a favorable outcome a long time ago, so why not get out? A lot of people didn;t want to exit Vietnam, because they thought a Red avalanche would follow. It didn’t. We were operating on the assumption that our communist enemies were united in their cause. They weren’t. Turns out that the Vietnamese were also afraid of Chinese interference. China was suspicious of the USSR. They weren’t one big happy family ready to pounce. Same thing in the middle east. All these Islamic countries have pretty complicated tribal and ethnic tensions. If we leave, they aren’t likely to follow us accross the ocean. Besides, that’s what the navy is for, right?
P.S. Senator Joe Lieberman and Ms. Feinsteinn are proof enough that authoritarians are amongst the left.
PPS: Well, the snatch and grab didn’t have a chance once our administration started blathering about Afghanistan and Al qaeda and blah, blah, blah. The element of surprise is essential and if we had real people in charge, people who weren’t spending all their waking moments trying to mint political capital, then we might have had a chance. I guess I don’t understand why doing things quietly is such a bad thing.
Volvillian, both you and Matilda mentioned the Saudis, perhaps Matilda made the more explicit accusation and you may have just mentioned them in passing (it’s getting late & I’m about ready to go to bed soon, I’ll re-read the posts tomorrow). I’m also well aware of why we cut off oil and scrap metal to the Japanese (in fact I think we were right to do so), but it did precipitate their decision to attack us. A war with Japan was probably inevitable at some point anyway. We were also allied with the Soviet Union during WWII, in spite of that the cold war ensued afterwords. More to your immediate point, we supplied weapons and training to insurgents fighting the Soviet Occupation, we didn’t supply Al Qaeda directly (I don’t think Al Qaeda even existed at the time). Bin Laden happened to be one of the insurgents who benefitted. Allies falling out among themselves after the end of a war is a very old story, Rome and Carthage were originally allies.
My point in all of this is that it is impossible to see all the ramifications of your actions, sometimes you have to go ahead and act anyway. I still believe we were right at the time to assist the insurgents fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, just as we were right to ally with the Soviet Union during WWII in spite of the inevitable Cold War that followed.
All I meant by bringing up the Saudis is that if fifteen of the eighteen 9/11 hijackers had been North Korean than you had better believe we’d be in North Korea now.
Saudi Arabia was treated like a revered friend after 9/11 when fifteen of their citizens had just killed three thousand of ours. For heavens sake THINK about that. Doesn’t that seem weird to anyone, I mean really very inconsistent?
And what did Iraq have to do with 9/11, nothing. In fact I think I’ll repeat that, nothing, not one single thing. In fact Saddam was despised by the radical islamacists because under him Iraq was a secular state, not a Muslim one. Bin laden himself vowed to kill Saddam, on video. I guess we Americans saved him the trouble, and made it much easier for fundamentalist Muslims to take control of Iraq in the future. America doesn’t really care if Iraq becomes a Muslim state, after all Saudi Arabia isn’t a shining star of freedom and democracy and yet there is no problem there as long as they keep playing the game.
What I am about to say next may sound totally incredible, and I know that.
Both Bin Laden and Bush wanted very much to get rid of Saddam, and that is what has happened. America and Saudi Arabia seem to be better friends than ever post 9/11, and Usama Bin Laden, we cannot forget, is Saudi Arabian.
(Does this even begin to look fishy to anyone other than me?)
Usama Bin Laden’s main problem with America is that it has military bases in Saudi Arabia.
Invading Iraq has opened up the possibility of permanent American air bases being stationed there instead of Saudi Arabia. Once again Bin Laden may be on course to get the very thing he has been fighting for. Bush was looking for an excuse to invade Iraq, and Bin Laden gave him one. Bin Laden benefits, the Saudis benefit and America benefits. And hey, what are three thousand lives to a government that would happily sacrifice a hundred thousand?
And, finally, if the Bush administration’s rhetoric about freedom and democracy actually meant anything then Saudi Arabia would have been one of the best places to start. Sure the Saudis have made small token steps towards a democratic system, but this, it seems to me, is being done so as not to embarrass the Americans.
American neo-cons and the Saudi royal family are friends, that means they rub each others back, they look out for each other, they help each other.
Right now a little voice in most of your heads is going ‘they wouldn’t, that’s impossible’. But it could be our very lack of imagination that is causing us to not be able to see our nose in front of our face, and be blind to one of the greatest crimes in history.
I deeply hope that I am wrong, but anyone with eyes can see that something here just doesn’t add up. Something could be going on behind the scenes here, the shear audacity of which guarantees it could never be taken seriously.
Imagine it a different way, let’s take a totally fictional example. What if the Mafia in this country were to infiltrate the White House, say it took them thirty years but they managed to do it? The president was a real live crook. How would we know, how would we really know if people who were willing to do and say ANYTHING found their way into office?
Okay, get on with it, I can see the conservatives in the audience getting warmed as I speak, ready to take everything I say literally, and show off their brain washed allegiances into the bargain.
I don’t know what all of this means exactly, but I do know that the official version of this story is a pile of crap.
So, ‘Bring it on”.
Matilda-
Your straw man choice between “Crying Boy Scouts” and “10,000 dead Iraqis” is a feint or “head fake” that is taught in most basic debate classes. Neither of the two are related, but you stretch a point to try to make them related in order to show the foolishness of the opponent that you are debating. The problem is, it must be done in such a way that is not so transparently nonesense in order to work. You didn’t even try to make a case. I illustrated my loathing for the Left with a trivial story. It was a watershed moment which showed me how the Left is anathema to American values. How is that trivial story related to the deaths of 10,000 Iraqi’s? You fail to illustrate the reader. It is an artifice that is used with begining debaters who don’t know any better. Now,...if you can succesffully tie in the two, let me see how you make them a choice bweween the two, you might be given a grade above a “D” in debate class. Otherwise, your “either-or” effort is weak and amaturish.
Your moral equivilance is showing. Which is fine, if you can rise above your seething impotent rage to explain your logic. Oh wait, you’re a Lefty. You don’t HAVE any.
I could debate you under the table, but I don’t have to. My watershed moment was the invasion of Iraq. That’s the moment I became sure the conservatives in this country were criminals. What planet are you on, I could win a ‘debate’ with you in my sleep.
Also, real debates only happen productively between equals, and by defending Bush you have already displayed your caliber. I am happy to share my numerous opinions, but I would no more sit here and argue the toss with you on your distorted, brainwashed terms than I would indulge the fantasies of a mental patient.
Call it liberal hypocrisy if you like, I prefer to call it reality.
I am sure that somewhere deep down in you there is a real human being, but conservatism is an evil doctrine and all those who follow it to some degree or other have turned off their brains and their hearts. Petty back and forth with conservatives can only serve to distract from the important truths of any situation.
The real issues here are not open for debate, not really. All people matter, the ends do not justify the means, people are basically good not bad and the world is basically a safe place to live not an unsafe one. I find conservative values so completely distorted that I cannot honestly debate anything with you. We would have to agree on our terms first and that will never happen, believe me. So feel free to listen and possibly learn, but debate with you, a conservative, I would no more do that than debate with a Nazi about the pros and cons of the Holocaust.
Iraq was an act of mass murder. All those who supported and voted for Bush in his second term are in effect accessories to murder. Still want to debate? Wash the blood off your hands first, you, and all your compatriots disgust me.
I do feel rage about what has happened and is happening in my name, and I do feel powerless to stop it, impotent you could say. But all political ground swells start with certain amount of indignation, and a deep sense of rebellion towards the gross injustices of the age. I could write volumes explaining myself to conservatives for whom the basic truths of this world will forever prove elusive. Or I could just get on with expressing my views in ways that most regular people will relate to by virtue of their already humanistic disposition. Most people care about other people, and hate to have done to others what they would not like to have done to themselves. Get it? No, I didn’t think so.
Holy Smoke!
Did I make a direct hit or what? My “evil” soul is so happy I made you spit blood.
Lost your composure dear. When you want to play with the big boys, lemme know. Otherwise, practice your invectives on a doll or something you have laying around your bedroom that doesn’t fight back. You could probably out debate that. ...or maybe not.
Poll Date Approve Disapprove Spread
RCP Average 7/29 - 8/15 43.8% 51.4% -7.6%
bush sucks
Matilda - Re: 7:43 post
At the most profound level, you have touched on the basic difference between Liberals and Conservatives:
” ... people are basically good not bad and the world is basically a safe place to live not an unsafe one ... “
This thought is pervasive in Liberal/ left-wing philosophy, from the latest Democratic Party platform to the Communist Manifesto to the Constitution of the Soviet Union. It is also utter nonsense.
The Soviet Constitution reads as if it were written by Pollyanna or the DNC, but millions of Soviet citizens died during collectivization (five million in the Ukraine alone) and the Great Purges BEFORE WWII started. Not to mention the thirty million who died in China, and the one-third of the Cambodian population that died, all in pursuit of your “people are basically good” crap. A total of 100 million innocents died in pursuit of the communist dream/nightmare, and now poor Russia is suffering from a small (and declining) population.
We Conservatives know that people are capable of great evil, and that the rule of law (rather than the wish for good feelings) is the basis for a successful society. The United States is the most successful large nation in the history of the world, and the Soviet Union was the least successful. The Constitution of the United States is based on the knowledge of a long history of tyranny and oppression in the world. The Bible itself recognizes the capacity for evil, and the need for laws to control that evil.
The hatred and “disgust” you have displayed toward Conservatives would be acted out if you had the political power to do so, and people like me would be purged. But in their infinite wisdom, the founding fathers gave us, not only the rule of law, but the Second Amendment. So you are free to say anything you want, no matter how silly, but don’t try to act out your pathetic ideology. It won’t work in a free nation such as mine.
Matilda -
By the way, you said (several days ago) that “Everyone in the world (except for conservatives in America) knew that Sadam did not in any way pose an actual nuclear threat.”
I challenged that, and requested a single verifiable quote from a Western politician or a Western intelligence agency dated before March 2003 to the effect that Saddam did not have WMD.
No luck? I thought not.
Scorp-
You hit several nails right on the head. The whole essence of the Left winger “thought” process, is that if we were just to hold hands and sing something written by Sting, all the bad guys would put down their world domination plans and come over to our side. What Matilda and other lefties don’t seem to realize, to make this point more focused, is that the radical Muslims who are in the process of bombing the crap out of anyone that disagrees with their wierd version of praising God, that they have a plan of world domination by their religion, one way or the other. Its called the “Caliphate”. Lefties THINK it is all caused by George Bush or some other fancifull neo-con conspiracy,...but thats because this terrorist activity is sort of a “tabla rasa” or Rorshach test to project their hatreds for those people who value America and what she stands for, onto. What is actually happening is that the mullahs want to do to the world what Hitler and Stalin wanted to do. But, just like the lefties of the 30’s and 40’s, they don’t see this and somehow twist their little brains into intellectual knots and want to support their evil work, just as they are doing now with their support and justification of the terrorists. The terrorists attck US, we fight back and somehow, just like bullies in the school yard who get angry with you for hitting them back, the Islamacist fanatics get angry at the idea that we can fight them back. So when they get angry at us for fighting back, the Lefties all scream in unison: “Hey! Look at what we are doing to THEM!! We deserve this slaughter!”
Matilda: Do you know how many different groups of unfairley treated, oppressed people we have in this world? Hundreds! How many of them are bombing innocents at random? With few exceptions, just the Muslims. By your self-rightious thinking, the blacks and the hispanics ought to be taking up bombing people too! Don’t forget the Turks and the Greeks! Sudanese? I could go on all day. What a “people are essentially good” philosophy you have! Why don’t we just all bomb each other out of existance? Everyone is justified if you examine their plight deep enough, right? Everyone has screwed over someone else in this world, right? I’m Irish. My people were discriminated against when first coming to America. I should go bomb people too! Come on everybody! Lets all go kill people that have oppressed us sometime, somewhere in history! Lets all be Left wing nut bars! everything is justified! Justice! Justice! Death to everyone that doesn’t think like me! We lefties have 100 million or so souls socked away…lets get the rest of them! God Bless the Left! wheeeeeee!
Why isn’t the US the hero of the Muslim world? Our motto should be “remember the tsunami!” (and what the US military did to help).
Do you have to be a soldier to be in favor of this (or any) war? Do you have to be a surgeon to be in favor of surgery?
Scorp - nice post.
Lefty, why don’t you try engaging in actual debate instead of throwing out mindless insults? Even though IsThisThingOn and Matilda both (IMHO) go over the top sometimes at least they mostly stick to the issues.
Lefty—
“An arguement that is filled with name calling above, belies a weak arguement underneath”
-August Winslow
Actually, as I have stated numerous times here already, I believe that Muslim terrorists are a symptom of decades of flawed US foreign policy, including a blanket endorsement of Israeli hard line Zionism. So, how are the hardcore Zionists, Christian Millenialists and Fundamentalist Muslims different from one another? They want what they want because GOD told them so. (Guess I didn’t get the memo!) In my opinion, they are all dangerous because they can’t be reasoned with. Fortunately, they represent a REALLY small minority of their “host” populations. Of course that has never stopped any one from exagerrating a threat to make political hay before.
The thrust of my argument is that agression of this nature cannot be countered by armed occupation and agression. I’d have thought that years of watching Israel cracking down time and again only to have the more murders would present a strong enough message that bombing and assasination campaigns do not make peace. It comes down to making a solution in which both parties benefit. Would you agree to live under the conditions that Israel is mandating with their wall if you were Palestinian? I doubt it.
Another thing is that if America respected the rule of law 1/2 as much as they profess, then we wouldn’t have invaded Iraq unilaterally. (I mean, with our “coalition” partners.) We also wouldn’t have attempted to overthrow the elected government of Venezuela. We’d also support the ruling by the world court that the security fence Israel has put up is illegal. There are tons of things we wouldn’t have done if we were actually intersted in fairness.
Something else I find interesting is IsThisThingOn?‘s statement that liberals are pissed about slaughtering terrorists. I’m not pissed about that. I’m pissed about the loss of human life that is so euphemistically characterized as “colaterall damage.” I can see it now… “Oops! Oh well, I guess its a good thing Arabs have such large families. At least they ALL didn’t die when we sprayed their house with machine gun fire by mistake…” How many errors in that kind of judgement would you accept if you were Joe Iraqi? This “Spray and pray” mode doesn’t reinforce our image as the good guys. Sorry. But I don’t blame the troops for trying to stay alive. I blame the people who put them there in the first place.
” ... I believe that Muslim terrorists are a symptom of decades of flawed US foreign policy ... So, how are the hardcore Zionists, Christian Millenialists and Fundamentalist Muslims different from one another?”
I know one way that they are different. Mohammed founded the Muslim religion before his death in 632 CE. From the start, Islam was spread by terror and war. Within one hundred years after Mohammed’s death, Islam had spread east to India and west to Spain. Islam has always been spread by terror and stopped from spreading by opposing religious forces.
So your statement that “Muslim terrorists are a symptom of decades of flawed US foreign policy” is fatuous and ignorant; terror and warfare are typical of Muslim geopolitics during its expansionist phases. Muslims were practicing hideous forms of terrorism before America was discovered or the USA was founded.
And while al-Qa’eda was forming and developing, the USA was protecting Croat and Kosovo Muslims from Christian Serbs, was providing emergency relief to Somalia, and was supporting Afghani Muslims against the Soviet Empire.
You Liberals may be Elite, but you are not very bright. Your flawed ideology leads you into error.
Scorp- That’s very kind of you to stoop to personal attacks. Did I say something to offend you earlier? Anyway, that was quite a moving piece about how Islam has always been spread by terror and agression and America always champions of the poor and down trodden regardless of race, religion or creed. I know, if it wasn’t for us treasonous liberals, America could get on with the noble endeavour of civilizing the rest of the world.
Of course your screed did ignore some of the finer points of christian history. Take the biography of this guy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torquemada
Quite the sweetheart.
Or maybe the Crusades are maybe more your speed?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_(1099)
I find the following excerpt to be quite enlightening:Once the Crusaders had breached the outer walls and entered the city almost every inhabitant of Jerusalem was killed over the course of that afternoon, evening and next morning. Muslims, Jews, and even any remaining Christians were all massacred with indiscriminate violence. Many Muslims sought shelter in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, where, according to one famous account in Gesta, “...the slaughter was so great that our men waded in blood up to their ankles…” According to Raymond of Aguilers “men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins.”
Characterizing my statement as “fatuous and ignorant” doesn’t make it so. Selectively sampling all the bad things Islam has done while only acknowledging the good we have done is not truth. Just a sad mockery of it. Furthermore, I don’t subscribe to a particular ideology. Ideologies are for people who aren’t clever enough to have their own opinions.
vv -
How many religions do you know that make a ritual and sacrament of human sacrifice and head-hunting? The Thuggees, Jivaro, Incas, Aztecs, a few other mostly isolated groups - and Muslims. Anybody else?
How many religions do you know that make a ritual and sacrament of murdering their own believers? Only Muslims.
I have some knowledge of the Crusades. You are aware, I hope, that the al-Aqsa Mosque you referred to was built on the site of the ancient Jewish Temple of Solomon, and that the construction of al-Aqsa was therefore a gratuitous insult to Jews and Christians and all people, like the destruction of the Bamayan Buddhas were an insult to Buddhists and all people. The Crusades were a savage piece of work, but no more savage than similar efforts of the era, and hardly the fault of the USA, your original point. Stay on topic.
“Selectively sampling all the bad things Islam has done while only acknowledging the good we have done is not truth.”
I defy you to find a single instance of my ever having done such a thing. I spent five years in Saudi Arabia, and I have a good appreciation of Muslims and Islamic culture. The subject is Muslim terrorists. Stay on topic.
I am well aware of the shortcomings of various peoples, including my own. But Muslims were preaching and practicing terrorism long before America existed. “I believe that Muslim terrorists are a symptom of decades of flawed US foreign policy”, is therefore an absurd idea, and an idea that is repeated ad nauseum by Liberal ideologists. Stay on topic.
So if you “don’t subscribe to a particular ideology” and you believe that “Ideologies are for people who aren
Volvillian, why should we be supporting the World Court’s ruling against Israel? The United States is a soveriegn nation, we aren’t bound by World Court rulings as we would be by an act of Congress or a Supreme Court ruling, and I see no particular reason why we should blindly follow what has proven to be in many cases an anti-US body anyway. As for the Israeli wall, it has proven effective in reducing terrorist attacks, concessions and negotiations with the Palestinians has not. Israel has a right to defend itself, even though the European left is always upset that she does.
Scorp, how many people say they are Christians, but then kill tens of thousands of people for no reason? Let me think…
That would be Adolph Hitler and George W. Bush. Both claimed to be Christians, and both now have invaded countries that were not threatening them, killing thousands of people in the process.
In fact lets compare a few more statistics. George W. Bush will go to his grave having instigated the killing of more innocent civilians than Usama Bin Laden, the Columbine shooters, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy or the IRA during 35 years of terrorist activity. What a ‘good’ Christian Bush is, God must be very pleased indeed.
IsThisThingOn, what makes you think that because I consider Bush to be a piece of shit that I somehow think killing by terrorist groups is okay? You must need your head examining. I assumed it went without saying, but I can be against Bush and Bin Laden at the same time. It is only your lot who seem unable to think outside of supposed polarized opposites. Of course what this sort of thinking is really suppose to do is to discourage dissent. Well good luck.
There are a percentage of Americans who will always think for themselves, it’s the very essence of what it is to be American, and your type will never crush them. America was built by liberals, people who wanted to leave behind the conservatism and dogma of the old world. Looking around me I have to think they may have failed. I like to think that freedom of thought will always win out, but my God it’s being given a run for it’s money by the powers of darkness in this country, by those who would literally set us back three hundred years in the name of a ‘good’ book they themselves do not truly believe in. Bush says the jury is out on Evolution, and a lot of people who know nothing about it shout amen! What an idiot, what a damn fool. Are you proud of him, really?
Bush says he is a Christian, but like a lot of right wing ‘Christians’ I very rarely hear him quote the New Testament. More often they quote the Old Testament, the cruel, unforgiving book of the law that Christ himself actually contradicted with his teachings. ‘An eye for an eye’ is replaced by ‘turn the other cheek’ for instance. Christ said ‘do unto others as you would have done unto yourself’, the very opposite of conservative thinking. George W. Bush being a Christian makes as much sense as Adolph Hitler being a Christian. It’s an outright lie, a delusion at best.
Nobody, in any religious tradition, thinks it is a sin to defend yourself, but it is a sin to attack and kill others out of greed, fear or anger. My point being that Bush contradicts his own professed faith, and tramples on the beliefs of others into the bargain. This is not a strong man, this is a coward. Nelson Mandela was a strong man, who after 27 years of imprisonment led his country to peaceful reconstruction, not vengeful blood letting. Or there was Mahatma Gandhi, who using peaceful means removed the British from India. These men are and were strong, truly strong. They were real men, not pathetic facsimiles of a leader going through the motions, bullying everyone around them so as to appear in control.
In occupied France during the Second World War, if the French resistance killed one of their soldiers, the Nazis would pick out ten civilians at random and shot them in revenge. That is all Bush has done in Iraq. Not quick witted enough to catch the actual criminals he has simply lashed out at random, killing a disproportionate number of Arabs in revenge. This is how the right wing mentality works, be it in occupied France sixty years ago, or occupied Iraq today. To ordinary people it makes no sense. To wannabe fascists it represents the illusory iron fist of the strict father, das fuhrer.
Finally I have to say that I aim so much criticism at George W. Bush and his cabal, because I am an American, and as an American I have a duty to keep my own house in order. I have no say in Iraq or Afghanistan, or Pakistan or Britain. But here I am in my own country, and part of being a responsible citizen is keeping a check on what we as a nation are doing at home and in the world. If I disagree with what I see, it is not only my right but also my duty to say so. I do not hate America, quite the contrary, I love it and our world more than you will ever be able to know, blinded as you are by hate and fear and greed. Conservatism truly is your religion, and you belong on the margins, despised by all real human beings. Why bother trying to argue with me, why don’t you just go out and kill someone? Or is the great shrub doing your killing for you at the moment, getting you hot with the drop of each bomb, the killing of each Iraq child.
vv -
You are off topic again.
“Scorp, how many people say they are Christians, but then kill tens of thousands of people for no reason? Let me think
Scorp- I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t respond as though Matilda and I are the same person. She has her own statements. I have mine. Further more, the “off topic” comments would be right at home if you were the stern headmaster and I the cowed and frightened pupil. Fortunately, that is not so.
US policy has consistently undermined populist movements not only in the mid-east, but South Asia and South America as well, largely because of concerns that such movements had been infiltrated by the communists. Our support for undemocratic regimes has unfortunately tended to push people of those nations to greater and greater extremes and my concern is that the longer we pursue such schemes, the more extreme will be the response. Human beings like the idea of self-determinism and many people in other countries believe that our support of certain opressive governments interferes with that desire. Look what we did to the Pan-Arabism movements of the 50s and 60s. They were largely secular and very nationalistic, but they were people that you could more easily negotiate with. Negotiating with a mullah is probably as easy as neogtiating with a hardcore evangelist. There is very little room for manuever. We helped the trend towards extremism. We are continuing that fine tradition in Iraq. Do you honestly believe that the Iraq campaign is achieving stability or security for either it’s residents or ours? I ultimately believe that Iran and their version of Shia will ultimately be the beneficieries of our enterprise in Iraq. I think Al Qaeda will benefit some as well because we’ve demonstrated our willingness to invade Muslim countries as he has long advertised to other Muslims.
Chopper- I don’t think the creation of Palestinian ghettos really qualifies as self-defense any more than the Nazis use of ghettos during the early phases of the Holocaust did. Can you reference for me an instance of anti-us sentiment in the world court? I thought they ruled correctly that mining Nicaraguan waters was illegal. Or was that action permissible as an act of self-defense? (I have a hard time imagining the Nicaraguan navy as being all that menacing.)
Basically one of the things I have a hard time with is the idea that we should relentlessly pursue US interest with blatant disregard for the sovereignity of other countries. Self defense is a fine justification, but a bit over used. The same goes for “National interest.” What if I used threats and intimidation to get a better price at the gas pump or at the grocery store, how would I be viewed by society at large? “Hey, it was in my own interests to pay the the least amount possible, consequences be damned.” I don’t think that’d make for a very compelling defense in criminal court. How does it look if we use similar standards to justify our actions on the world stage? Do you really think the world court hates us for our values? Because we love freedom and they don’t? What if the freedom we’re talking about is the freedom to exploit any weakness that we can find? Is that just or humane? (cont.)
I’m not advocating caving in to extremists. I’m advocating that we act a little more neighborly towards other countries. That doesn’t mean giving stuff away or sitting around a campfire singing songs pretending that we’re great buds. That’s one of the problems I have with how the foreign policy debate is framed. It presents a false dichotomy of only two courses of action. Getting “tough” or being “soft.” Of course tough means bombing or shooting the f**k out of anything that even remotely resembles anything threatening where as being “soft” is throwing open the gates to our country and buying every Haji, Muhammed and Achmed wearing a bomb belt a one way ticket here. I love America. I don’t want those guys here, but I don’t believe that “fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here” is an accurate representation of our choices. There are alternatives to fighting, but that takes a different kind of courage. The kind of courage to really listen to what people have to say. Sure, you’ll hear a lot of bullshit along the way, but that takes a kind of strength long since lacking in our choices of presedential hopefuls. I agree with Matilda that Nelson Mandela didn’t celebrate his ascension to power by cutting a bloody swath through South Africa’s white population, a la Zimbabwe. That is a harder path, resisting the call to vengence and righting wrongs with even more assasinations, executions or torture. (As if spilling that blood will somehow miraculously right all previous wrongs.) But the benefit is that South Africa isn’t wracked by sectarian violence. Compared with the rampant instability and violence in other African countries, South Africa is a utopia by comparison. Is it still perfect? Probably not.
And I certainly won’t give scorp the satisfaction of moving to another country because I’m obviously “unhappy” here. That’s a funny notion, that by participating in a debate about foreign policy I must somehow be unhappy with America. I know what I’m about to say will stun many of you, but I LOVE AMERICA. I love the fact that I can disagree with scorp and not be hauled beofre some secret court. That’s why I complain, because I don’t want that to change. I don’t want any more Patriot Acts. I don’t want there to be nuclear suitcase bombs here. I don;t think scorp want that either. I just disagree with how best to defend our country. Sometimes, defending it doesn’t mean you shoot someone. Sometimes it does. Furthermore I’ll go on the record stating my fervent support for the bill of rights, in its entirety. I’m not like some liberals or conservatives that prune out the parts they don’t like, like the separation of curch and state and the right to bear arms. I want to have the right to own as many guns as I want. I want to be able to go to what ever church I want. I want scorp to have the right to attempt to belittle and indimidate as many liberals as he likes. Conversely, I want to poke as many holes as I can in his logic. I expect nothing less in return.
Which brings me to one last question: Scorp, for the sake of argument let’s suppose that you are completely right about Islam’s connection to terrorism. What should the US do about it? What would you do about it?
Should we be surprised,in light of our current foreign policy,that Iran is attempting to build a nuclear weapon?That is,of course,if we are to believe this administration or that Iran isn’t simply bluffing.Assuming the intelligence is true,why in light of our current invasion of Iraq,would they do this?Precisely because we invaded Iraq to seize their resources.Iran is realizing,like other countries,that the only way to curtail the Bush administration’s opportunistic invasions is to develop a nuclear deterrent.
I also see that we have the standard anti-liberal(translation:anyone who disagrees with Bush)being spewed on this thread.According to the right,all liberals are a bunch of peaceniks singing kumbaya and wearing sandals.Pathetic.It may surprise the right to know that there are many left-wingers who are veterans or actively involved in public service out of a sense of patriotism.Despite their wishes,the right can’t trademark patriotism.
Something else the right needs to think about:suppose it’s Europe and Russia that decides to pre-emptively invade and occupy Iran this time,what with our hands being full with Iraq.I wonder how many Republicans will support Iranian invasion then?
Incidentally,has anyone gone to the little green football site?Unbelievable.Never have I read more vacuous and trite discourse—like a bunch of adolescents.Then again,that’s right-wing political discourse for you.
I checked out “little green footballs” and most of what was there could accurately be described as “bumper sticker” mantality. No real discussions, mostly re-cycled internet jokes. Quips about how Muslims blow up other Muslims and how stupid that is. I mean, it IS stupid, but no more stupid than Christians killing Christians (i.e. Northern Ireland, Eric Rudolph, Tim McVeigh)
Scorp, you are not the sharpest tool in the box are you. Or perhaps your misreading of my posts is deliberate.
No one gets a free pass, but this is now, and we are here.
I think I’ll repeat that for the slow ones, no one gets a free pass, but we do not live in Japan for instance and it is not 1941. I could just as easily have compared Bush’s actions in Iraq to Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack but the German comparison is a better fit due to the reasons Hitler used to justify the invasion of Poland to his own people. He told them it was a pre-emptive act of self-defense, because Poland was in the hands of the Jews and they were preparing to attack Germany. Of course the story was completely false but how else do you think Nazis got the majority of Germans to support the invasion. Sound familiar Scorp?
Also, America has been involved in many ambiguous or down right illegal wars since the Second World War. None of which have been true wars of self-defense. The Second World War was a true war of self-defense, a reaction to an aggressor and an act of genuine liberation. The first Gulf War was also justified. Yes, Kennedy has blood on his hands also, but it
In fact, Scorp, I was just thinking, what the hell does the phrase ‘free pass’ mean anyway? That makes it sound like we are the teachers and the world is full of good and bad children some of whom have to be ‘disciplined’. Very weird.
Matilda, Hitler did not claim to be Christian, in fact the Nazis were almost as anti-Christian as they were anti-Jewish, they just didn’t have the ability to move against Christianity in the same way the moved against the Jews. Also you state that Bush “instigated the killing of more civilians than Usama Bin Laden, the Columbine shooters, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, or the IRA”. It is interesting how you frame that statement, our military actually takes pains to minimize civilian deaths more than probably any other military in history. It is also interesting that you didn’t through Franklin D Roosevelt in the mix, because our military killed at least several hundred thousand “innocent civilians” in WWII, of course then we didn’t take such pains to minimize civilian casualties and in fact sometimes deliberately inflicted them.
You have a generalized animus against conservatives without really defining what you mean, you seem to believe that if any doesn’t think like you that they are incapable of thinking for themselves. Also, trying to enlist the founding fathers on your side is more than a bit of a stretch, I don’t think many of them would recognize what passes for liberalism today as a viable political philosophy. I pointed out in an earlier post how the truly great mass murderers of the 20th century weren’t conservative at all (Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, Pol Pot, Lenin, the list goes on), so your statement that conservatism is the cause of all evil is demonstrably false.
Interesting Volvillian, I checked out the Daily Kos and had much the same reaction to it that you had to little green footballs.
Did you write (Iran is the only large Arab state which not only does not diplomatically recognize Israel, but resolutely denies its right to exist as a state)?
I do agree prety much with your logic in this article but am a bit confused to know that Iran is an “Arab state”! Pehapse you mean Arab state because it is run by an Islamic ideology which is rooted and originated in a land we call Saudi Arabia today!
Some clarification will indeed add to my understanding of the country that I was born and grew up in.
Actually Matilda, by your interperation of Scorps logic it would make more sense for us to invade China than China to invade us. China is a dictatorship without freedom, we are a democracy with still a large amount (but diminishing) freedom.
Lefty, what is “corporatism”? How is it the same as facism”? (A much overused word by the left). What evidence, if any, do you have for your accusations? Hitler’s economic program was actually similar to the New Deal. Do you consider FDR to have been a facist?
Chopper-This may come as a great suprise to you, but I agree that the Daily Kos is pretty much the mirror image of little green footballs. Heavy on quips, lite on content. (Oh, all this HEAVY thinking is just bummin’ me out man!)
Matilda, in one of your posts you state (more or less accurately) that the Nazis would kill 10 civilians for every German soldier killed by the resistance in occupied France (the accomplishments and depth of the French Resistance in WWII have been way overblown, but that is for another day) & then you say that is what George Bush has done in Iraq. Do you have ANY evidence for this? That US troops are executing 10 civilians chosen at random for every American casualty? Your analogy seems absurd. If you can back up your charges I’d like to see the evidence. I’m not holding my breath.
Matilda-I think Scorp is into B&D or something, because in one post he kept mentioning “stay on topic” half a dozen times, trying to “discipline” me. As if he has any say on the format of this debate!
Anyway, do you think he and Jeff Gannon are related. :p
Volvillian, do you mean that the building of the wall is creating Palestinian ghettos? What exactly is the Israeli government supposed to do? The wall works. Concessions didn’t. It is not at all comparable to what the Nazis did. The left and most of Europe gets upset with everything Israel does, even when they target known terrorists. Dead Israelis don’t seem to bother them at all.
I also take issue with your “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” statement. I don’t believe Ethan Allen deliberatly targeted women and children. Perhaps I’m wrong about this, I haven’t studied his campaigns in detail.
Chopper-Whether or not some one is a terrorist or a freedom fighter is in eye of the beholder, really. I don’t believe that Ethan Allen ever deliberately targeted women and children. Regardless, the British would have hanged him as a traitor just the same. I think has was a patriot. Some people think Bin Laden is a patriot. I don’t. Who’s opinion is right?
I don’t know what your background is on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, but the matter isn’t as black and white as it is being portrayed. It’s easy to say “Israelis good, Palestinians bad,” but that is simply not true. (But it sure does fit really well on a bumper sticker, if you know what I mean!)
A very good detail of the history of this conflict is available here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli-Palestinian_Conflict
I like wikipedia a lot because for the most part the articles are high on content and “lite” on rhetoric.
Another related article is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism
Every time an Israeli settler mows down a Palestinian or a Palestinian blows up an Israeli, the peace process suffers. Again, I might be shocking a lot of people tonight, but I’d like to point out this other article that I think is spot on about how Clinton botched the peace negotiations. I find it most compelling. Enjoy!
http://www.counterpunch.org/christison08152005.html
(The “concessions” you mention are discussed in detail, and again, I think the author is correct in that they were essentially worthless offers.)
P.S. Yes, I meant that Israel’s gerrymandering wall is creating Palestinian Ghettos. I still believe that there are alternatives to creating “Bantustans” for the Palestinians. (Why on earth Sharon thinks he can make this work where the white regime in South Africa failed is beyond me.) The US needs to act as an honest broker that considers solutions that would be equitable for BOTH peoples. Of course that would take a lot of courage because of the strong influence hard right Israelis have in Washingon. The gravy train should stop!(In a perfect world all of Palestine would be a single secular entity with equal rights for Palestinians and Israelis alike.)
Mathilda -
“Or perhaps your misreading of my posts is deliberate.”
Ah, a direct response. I am glad to hear it. It sometimes seems that, when I try to hold a conversation with you, and you can’t find a reasonable reply, you then ride off in all directions: obfuscation by overload.
Six days ago you made the following statement that I found quite remarkable:
Wow, so many posts. So much ideology, I almost get high off it.
Iran’s mullahs having control of nukes is one scary proposition to me. I lived in Pakistan at the time when it and India were testing warheads in 1998. Pakistan is not nearly as controlled by religious wackos (nor even secular wackos) as most people believe, but knowing that I was living in perhaps the 2nd most likely target of a nuclear strike in the world at the time was truly frightening. I figured New Delhi was 1st most likely. After all, they have at least 5 times the conventional military might of Pakistan.
As for Iraq and WMDs, I continue to see the current war as tactically foolish given the previous actions in Afghanistan, as well as unilateral and almost entirely unsupported with respect to the UN SecCon, most of the nations on the planet, and most of the citizens whose governments supported the Coalition of the Willing. It could have had a justification, perhaps, if WMDs had been found, but alas…
What’s mystifying to me is the lack of regret. Why is it not shameful to have begun a pre-emptive war that turned out to have been without justification. Whether GWB suspected there were no WMDs or, maybe he sincerely thought there were. But there weren’t. Where’s the recoiling in horror at such an action. Why aren’t more people filled with sadness that it has played out the way it has. That’s the saddest commentary of all, whether the President is a liar or truly believed he was on the right path.
In March 2003, as I sat watching embedded reporters telling the stories of the invasion, I feared that the US would alienate much of the world with its actions, but I hoped, in a gesture of straw-grasping wishfulness as a person with a strong attachment to America, that WMDs would actually be found. How’s that for a desperate f’n emotion!?! When they weren’t found and the administration admitted that they were unlikely to exist after all, I found myself hating the fact that my fears had been well-grounded after all. Sometimes it sucks to be right.
I suppose I could work longer on this post, to sharpen up my ideological rhetoric and lucidity of prose. But in the end, we’re in two wars at the same time, danger is everywhere in the lands where US troops are assigned, and my country appears entrenched and facing the very possible humiliation of failing at its goals and failing at upholding its dearly held ideas, while at the same time being responsible for more than 30 times the innocent death-toll as compared to 9/11.
Fuckin’ dismal!
Volvillian- Agreed, Ethan Allen very could have been hanged as a traitor if the Revolutionary war had turned out differently, but that doesn’t make him a terrorist. Terrorism doesn’t relate to the cause one is fighting for but the tactics one uses, ie. specifically targeting non-combatants. That’s not the same as what is now called “collateral damage” (which happens in every war). Some of the tactics the “Islamists” or “radical Islamists” or “facist Islamists” (I don’t want to accuse all Muslims of supporting such people) such as suicide bombings (especially when the suicide bombers are youths or women brainwashed or forced into carrying out such operations) are truly disgusting. It is difficult to have any sympathy at all for a people who employ such tactics. Likewise, the tactics of the IRA were terroristic. Even though I’m Catholic and am well aware of the historical injustices perpetrated by the English upon Ireland I have little sympathy for the IRA, at least in its modern form. I believe it was Mitilda who pointed out that the British pursued negotiations with the IRA, which is true, but at the same time they continued to hunt down and imprison IRA killers.
Also, I don’t have any simplistic view such as “Israelis-good, Palestinians-bad”, but if one side’s objective remains the complete destruction of the other side how are you supposed to negotiate?
BTW, I’ve read some articles in Counterpunch before, & I’ll read the one you reference, but any magazine run by a neo-Stalinist such as Alexander Cockburn I tend to take with more than a little grain of salt.
IsThisThingOn, I haven’t got a clue what you are rambling on about, so I have to conclude you are crazy.
Chopper, you make me laugh, you didn’t get what I was talking about at all, but never mind. The china thing was a metaphor, as were my comments about the French resistance, designed to illustrate certain attitudes.
Also, innocent people being killed in a necessary war is not the same as people being killed in a war that didn’t need to happen. So FDR is not a criminal, but George W. Bush definitely is.
Are you listening yet?
I agree with you that invoking the founding fathers is a bit of a stretch, because I wasn’t there, but I would be willing to bet they didn’t have anything as extreme as the neoconservatives in mind when they wrote the constitution. The spirit of the constitution is fairness and justice, qualities that are in no way embodied by modern conservatives. But this is really a side issue on which we will have to agree to disagree. The founding fathers after all were not divinities (as they sometimes seem to be invoked) but just a group of men trying to do their best for everyone, given the situation they found themselves in. We should be doing the same. Besides, I wasn’t talking so much about the founding fathers as the ordinary men and women who came here to make a new life.
As for my thoughts on the true nature of the right wing mentality, conservatism as a philosophy emerges in many different contexts through out history. Stalin for instance acted as if he had the same moral code as Hitler, and indeed he did. Conservatism is watered down fascism, the reward and punishment moral framework of both is the same. The fact that Stalin was supposed to be representing a system where the moral values were completely in opposition to fascism did not stop him in the end from acting like a fascist. Conservatives often feel comfortable in a system were there is one rule for them and another for everyone else, and Stalin embodied this.
Many people who say they are conservative actually agree with the traditional liberal position when asked about individual issues. Some professed liberals act like conservatives, Tony Blair being a moderate example. The common denominator is conservative values, and often the fact that someone calls themselves a conservative, or a communist, or anything in between, is not the whole story.
I am actually encouraged by the fact that you say this doesn’t make sense to you, rather than just tying to trash what I am saying. It almost sounds like you’re curious.
I could write volumes about this subject but for now I am tired and going to bed.
One last thing
Am I going too fast for you Scorp? The truth is on my side so I’m not so bothered about spelling things out for someone whose conscience does not simply tell him the obvious.
Bush railroaded the international community into half agreeing to this war, reluctantly. Even in Britain, our number one ally, they were not really sure. You’ll never hear this in the American press but most of the world considers this an illegal war, one that went ahead without real UN backing.
Who are you that I should have to dance to your tune anyway? You find the evidence to contradict me, that’s how it works. As I have said earlier I am not going to have a real debate with a supporter of murder and terror. It is up to you to defend yourself.
I don’t care what Mossad, or the CIA or MI5 were hinting at, they got it wrong, and in my opinion this failure of intelligence is one of two things; either complete incompetence, or else a set up, motivated by a political agenda. They, and you, should be defending themselves, not the other way around.
Hans Blix and his team got it right, and do you remember how ridiculed he was in the mainstream press here, truly pathetic. In fact I think I will say that again, HANS BLIX WAS RIGHT! Are you listening Roger Ramjet? Funny how some of us had the wisdom to trust him over our ‘beloved’ leader.
So, we go off in all directions do we, does little Scorp want to cry? I will talk about any damn thing I choose. You don’t set the agenda here. I am simply expressing my opinions. You can agree or disagree but you had better be sure that although I am addressing you by name, this is not a dialogue. Real debate happens between equals, moral as well as intellectual equals. Now you can take what I say and try and use it as an example of what all liberals are like, but it will only really be an example of what I am like.
Are you getting the message, con boy?
Anyway back to the carnage. In my opinion you cannot commit yourself to killing tens of thousands of people in an invasion unless you have absolutely irrefutable evidence. Oh, and I did a quick search, which I present here in order to taunt you rather than because I have to.
This is from politicalaffairs.net:
“beside Australia no other country’s intelligence service made claims about Iraq similar to those of the US and UK. And of course, Australia had few if any sources beyond what they were told by America and Britain.”
Hmmm, could it be that a conservative is once again talking complete crap? No, surely not. I guess the world looks very different when you stray from the cozy confines of Fox News. The French intelligence services were convinced that Saddam had biological and chemical weapons, but only because America had sold them to Iraq twenty years earlier, they had no actual current intelligence. Jacques Chirac, being a bit wiser than Bush and Blair, decided it was nowhere near good enough and opposed the war. I guess that means HE was right to.
Of the large number of tiny nations that actually supported the war most had some sort of aid or trade deal to maintain with America. No sooner can you say ‘duress’ than you have yourself a ‘coalition’.
This whole thing would be a comedy if it hadn’t been for the death and destruction that followed.
One more thing, if Saddam had possessed chemical and biological weapons, that would still not have been a legitimate reason to go to war. As I pointed out in an earlier post (one which all the conservatives readers very conveniently ignored), Saddam was despised by the fundamentalist Muslims in the surrounding region, and he would no more help them than cut off his own face. The supposed Saddam connection to Al Qaeda is so ridiculous as to beg belief that it would even be suggested.
But, Saddam didn’t EVEN have those weapons, which makes the case for George W. Bush being a murderer an extremely strong one indeed. As for the hidden weapons theory, why would Saddam not use his weapons when he had the chance, fighting for his very survival during the invasion? Logic stings, doesn’t it?
I cannot remember who said it but another Bush supporter earlier compared the rationale for the invasion of Iraq to there being a family down the street who were out to kill you. Do you just sit by, or do you do something about it before they have a chance?
Well, to follow through on that metaphor, what has happened is that we have gone and slaughtered the people down the road, searched their house and found no weapons at all. The local police show up and say, that’s okay, you thought there was a threat, so we’re not going to arrest you for murder, good day.
Can you see why a lot of people in this country are as mad as hell about this? It doesn’t matter if we liked the people in the house or not, you just can’t go around murdering people simply because it makes you ‘feel’ better, simply because you might ‘suspect’ they are out to get you. By doing so America has in effect put itself above the law.
But just think about it, the neoconservative rationale for going war would put most paranoid lunatics to shame.
Spilling a drink is a ‘mistake’. Killing tens of thousands of people for no logical reason is murder.
Are we waking up and smelling that coffee yet?
Volvillain, I agree with you about Scorp!
Scorp,
The Clinton administration did believe that Hussein may have had WMD’s,but The Bush administration,in 2001,stated that he didn’t and negated him as threat.In 2003,The Bush administration said that he did have them.
So,were they terribly mistaken,were they lying to us,or was the Bush so terribly negligent that Iraq was able to get WMD’s under our noses in the middle of our war on terrorism?
Also,I don’t remember hearing republicans mention once during the Clinton administration that Saddam was such a threat that invasion of Iraq was necessary.
Liberals may be wimps,at least to conservatives,however,republicans play tough guy only when they can’t be hit back.You call that type of person a bully or even a toady.You wnat a country with an oppressive dictator and wmd’s?Try North Korea.Not a word has been said about restoring democracy there,at least not by republicans.
If you also remember,prior to the farce,I mean war,in Iraq,the Bush administration held its intel cards very close to its chest and right-wing media was VERY quick to call any questioning of Bush treason.Sort of makes it difficult to express dissent or question motives.
Reading Scorp and IsThisThingOn’s responses make me laugh. How easy it is to call everyone who disagrees with this Administration a “liberal”. We know that we’ve been lied to via the DSM’s and the Plame affair. It will be fun to see all the filth come out in the laundry as time goes on.
How wrong you are ITTO, to believe I am a pacifist. I am not. I would have gladly gone myself into Afghanistan with our troops to catch and quarter Osama bin Laden. But at 47, that’s not too likely. I own several guns and love to shoot non-living things. Nothing’s better at a hockey game than a great fight. But I believe there are “just” wars and “unjust” wars. Iraq is a baseless war of aggression and corporate greed—plain and simple. It is “unjust”. Therefore, I don’t support it. Ultimately, our troops and thousands of innocent civilians will have died to establish a Islamic theocracy which walks hand in hand with Iran. Let’s face the truth here.
Unlike the hypocritical Americans with the yellow ribbons on their SUV’s, I do actually support our troops. I support them by insisting they only be sent into wars for real reasons and that they be properly trained and outfitted when they go.
In fact, I am so patriotic that I find it an offense of greatest magnitude that the Conservatives in this country would rather be faithful to an evil, anti-democratic and lying band of leaders and a party rather than stand up and fight back. That’s what real patriots do.
Remember, the Nazi’s supported their troops, too.
Kuya -
Are you related to Barbara Boxer? Ms. Boxer is widely regarded as the dimmest bulb in a big collection of dim bulbs, the United States Senate. Ms. Boxer insisted that the only reason that the Coalition invaded Iraq was the WMD. This in spite of the Iraq War Resolution, approved by the US Senate, listing many reasons for the invasion (partial list):
” ... supporting and harboring terrorist organizations ... violating resolution of the United Nations Security Council by continuing to engage in brutal repression of its civilian population ... refusing to release, repatriate, or account for non-Iraqi citizens wrongfully detained by Iraq ... failing to return property wrongfully seized by Iraq from Kuwait ... the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its continuing hostility toward, and willingness to attack, the United States, including by attempting in 1993 to assassinate former President Bush and by firing on many thousands of occasions on United States and Coalition Armed Forces engaged in enforcing the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council ... members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq
... Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations ... United Nations Security Council Resolution 678 (1990) authorizes the use of all necessary means to enforce United Nations Security Council Resolution 660 (1990) and subsequent relevant resolutions and to compel Iraq to cease certain activities that threaten international peace and security ... repression of its civilian population in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 688 (1991), and threatening its neighbors or United Nations operations in Iraq in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 949 (1994)”.
You say that “danger is everywhere in the lands where US troops are assigned” but that is relative, and basically nonsense, of course.
Massgraves website has documented 400,000 dead Iraqi civilians killed by Saddam’s Ba’athists, including victims of the Anfal, the Marsh Arabs pogrom, the Shi’ite suppression, and the various victims of Saddam’s prisons and extrajudicial executions. And that is only the bodies found in mass graves. The total number of missing Iraqi civilians from the Saddam years is something over one million. Doing the math, well over 100 Iraqi civilians were executed daily, on average, for the ~8500 days of Saddam’s Presidency. That does not include the 500,000 dead Iranis and the 500,000 dead Iraqis, plus various other nationalities, that died in Saddam’s aggressive wars. The obvious conclusion is that the Iraqi people are much safer now than when Saddam was in power, and when the Ba’athists and al-Qa’eda are eliminated, they will be safer yet.
You Liberals did not expend two microwatts of energy worrying about Saddam’s mass murders, but you are so cranked up that the Coalition is ending the mass murders. Go figure.
If you wish to regain your lost credibility, you might consider doing something useful, like trying to end the current genocide in Darfur and Zimbabwe. But you really don’t want to accomplish anything good, you just want to complain when the Coalition accomplishes something good. Complaining about the USA is a lot safer and less exerting than stopping real genocide in Africa.
Scorp,
Still stuck on the GOP talking points?
What you fail to understand is that the resolution by which we voted to go to war has now been proven to be a sham. There were no terrorist organizations active in Iraq besides the Baathists, according to the CIA. Now, they state it is a “training ground” for terrorists. Life is FAR worse today for the average Iraqi, especially women.
Sadaam’s mass murders were a concern, but it was a political issue within his own borders and many prior presidents have been reticent to transcend those borders. How can you even say “liberals” didn’t care? In my experience, they were the only ones who did, just like the Dafur and Niger situations have been propelled into the spotlight now by “liberals”.
The point you seem to repeatedly miss is that EVERY reason we were given to invade Iraq has turned out to be patently false. “Spreading democracy” is just was the latest in a long string of “reasons”. When the Iraqi’s are now turning to Iran for financial support and aid in rebuilding, doesn’t that tell you they never got the message about “democracy” being spread to them? I’m sure it looks more like anarchy and fascism to them. We have blown it completely, and we will never have “victory” in Iraq, thanks to the greedy, conscienceless neocons.
Kuya has more going on in one stand of his DNA than you could ever hope to, so why don’t you crawl back into your hole with Rush?
Chopper- I’m glad that you’ll take the time to read the links I’ve posted. To be perfectly honest, I don’t care much for Cockburn’s writing or politics. (too evangelical, if you know what I mean) However, there are enough good articles that recurr with some frequency that makes it worth visiting regularly. I also visti the American Conservative website for the same reason. I’ll listen to anyone with a well reasoned argument because I want to understand where they’re coming from. I might not change my mind, but then agian, I might if the evidence is strong enough.
My problem with the media coverage with the ISraeli-Palestinian conflict is that it really puts the onus of the peace process on the Palestinians. I don’t believe that the previous offers were all that generous or sincere. I don’t believe that suicide attacks by jihadists will change their mind either. One of the problems is that Israeli and Palestinian peace groups don’t get headlines. There are a number of them trying to work towards a reasonable settlement, but the American public is constantly getting hammered with the images of suicide attacks and bereaved settlers being ejected from their homes. The debate is being framed along the lines of Israeli security and militant Islam while ignoring any of the moderate views that exist in the middle. That’s why I posted the link to the two wikipedia articles because it talks about the various historical events and the prime movers behind it. The story isn’t a black and white one which is why it isn’t easily solved.
I’m Irish catholic too and never a supporter of bombing dept. stores in England. Was I pissed about the orangemen, sure, but not pissed enough to want to kill anyone over it or have anyone killed.
I think how you and I define terrorism vis-a-vis the Middle East isn’t as important as how the residents of those countries define it. The reason I chose Ethan Allen as an example is that the British view has different criteria then my American view, just as the Islamic view is different than mine. What is more important to the present situation? My opinion of Osama or the opinion of people living in the middle east? My concern all along in this war on terror is the US giving the populace a reason to support him. That’s why understanding the true nature of the threat posed by militant Islam and our participation in creating more of it is so important.
Lefty,
You need to get some new material. You are using the same insults over and over again. Boy does THAT get boring.
I am wondering if there is a chat site where they let the thinkers and discussers in (being in agreement is NOT a requirment to claim either of those two adjectives) and keep out the small minded who insist that their position on things is the only right one to have and that everyone else by default becomes: a) “a crook or idiot” (lefty) b) “conscienceless murderer (Matilda) or c) you are missing some of your DNA (SuzieQ)
Like, is there a place where intellectualy curious people can exchange ideas, persuade others or become pursuaded, without getting into a high school level food fight?? Jeez guys….Your IQ’s are nice and high, anyone can see that. Your Social/Emotional Quotient,however, is bargain basement material.
Scorp-I must have short term memory loss or something because I can’t recall having obfuscated in any of my posts. Of course, that word is heavily drawn upon and often abused by Rush Limbaugh, the grand craw daddy of right wing cheerleaders. See, I respect Pat Buchanan because he has the nuts to actually DISAGREE with Bush and not rubber stamp his every decree as Limbaugh and other “conservative” pundits have. I don’t respect Rush because he was popping pills like they were chicklets whilst excoriating anyone with a drug problem. I’m learning to not respect you because you don’t bring anything to the table other than insults and an abridged version of 20th century history.
Again, you can’t help but use your grubby little hands to put words in my mouth or opinions in my head that aren’t MINE!
I’m not convinced that Bush is a liar. You simply attempt to pigeonhole me based on the sole assumption that becasue I disagree with you I must have the same opinions as other liberals. Wrong!
What I am certain about is that he surrounds himself with some of the most unsavory characters from the Washington political elite and gives them loads of credibility simply because I think they tell him things he wants to hear and withold things that might be upsetting. The guy doesn’t like to be challenged. He can’t handle it. Apparently neither can you.
Scorp,
Do you have any knowledge of recent history?
Under which administration did Saddam murder most of those civilians,Iranian and Iraqi?Who was president?Ronald Reagan!
Under which administration did the U.S.sell weapons to both Iran and Iraq?Ronald Reagan’s.
Which administration had several of its cabinet members investigated and imprisoned for deceiving congress about said weapon sales?Ronald Reagan’s.Instead of a Reagan library,a Reagan penitentiary would be more fitting.
Remember Iran-Contra?What was Reagan’s reponse when questioned about misdealings in Iran and Iraq,things that happened on his watch and were his responsibility?
“I don’t remember.”
During the nineties,which party objected strongly and bluntly about sending troops to Rwanda to stop the occurring genocide under the premise that it was not worth American lives?
The Republican party.
Which party showed absolutely no support to former president Clinton when he wished to commit troops to Kosovo to stop the genocide there,namely the filling of mass graves that Republicans now harp about in Iraq?
The Republican party.
The fall of the Soviet Union has been a bonanza to the Republicans.Not only in their bogus claim that they caused its downfall,but also in their ability to access the resources in that region that were off limits because of Soviet intervention and retaliation.Since nukes are the only thing we fear,Iran is trying to build one.Well,surprise!surprise!surprise!
Also,some of us would like to intervene and stop the slaughter in Africa.Guess which party doesn’t want to?The Republican Party.Now if Darfur and Zimbabwe had huge oil reserves…well!Besides,the Republican party’s plate is already full.After we are done with Iraq,we’ll go into Iran next.Hopefully,for Republicans,Iran will have a nuclear program that will justify invasion by then.
That reminds me.Which country sent intelligence operatives into Zimbabwe and the surrounding countries to help undermine governments that weren’t sympathetic to our interests?Betcha can’t guess!Betcha also can’t guess which party controlled the White House at that time.
Why and how does the right-wing have the moral high ground?Simply because they claim to.Sure,whatever.
Moral poseurs.Moral poseurs.
IsThisThingOn- I like that idea of having a real forum for discussion a lot. I
I’d also like to apologize in advance for wasting precious bandwidth blasting scorp, but I couldn’t help myself.
I do agree in the main with many of the points brought up by Marilda, SuzieQ, etc… I just think that they could do themselves a little more justice by resisting the impulse to flame.
(of course I just did give in to that, but I think that’s a rare outburst for me.)
Volvillian—
No, I understand that you have your ideology in the same camp as lefty and Suzie Q. You are a Democrat. Thats what you do. I am a Conservative (but strangly, I don’t call myself a Republican) so is Scorp and chopper. Thats what WE do. Thats fine. God Bless America. But its the flaming that tires the bejeezuz out of me. It its so predictable, it actually becomes a bore. “Hey! I can insult you better than you can insult me! HA! Gotcha!”
(yawn)
Now, what is it that you have to say to me that is of substance? What are your pearls of logic, your gems of insight and wisdom, about a subject that I may know something of too? How do your life experiences give me a different way of seeing things? Here are mine.
What is disturbing is that the national political discourse is increasingly detached from reality. The emotionalism and character assassination practiced by both sides—the clamor in the echo chamber around Cindy Sheehan or Iraq or Judicial nominees are only a few examples—is mistaken for “politics.”
What use is the internet if it only used to light the fires of the already barely sane? Can’t normal discourse and enjoying the parry and thrust of a good, civil verbal battle be had by cogent individuals somewhere? Certainly not on these pages. How does one become better or smarter if we think we already have all the answers on any subject matter? Doesn’t “flaming” signify that you have given up listening? Perhaps given up thinking?
Volvillian, I honestly don’t know where to go to engage in civil conversation, with people who are as willing to listen to what the other side says as much as I am ready to listen to them. Chopper? Scorp? Do you know of any place in this wide world of the interenet? Listening to the extreme fringes is a tiring chore. Life is too short to listen to people who actually think you boil and eat small children simply because one prefers a smaller, less intrusive government, or because one thinks that racial preferences are morally wrong regardless of who perpetrates it. Or that you are the devil if you really want to make sure there is a pro-choice Supreme Court nominee that will not try to reverse Roe v. Wade.
Maybe there is a place called NoIdiotsAllowed.com I think I will try that.
See? I think I spotted one.
I just need to go on the record that I’m a registered independant, not a Democrat. I used to be a Democrat, but gave up because of people like Kerry. “I’ll do the same things as Bush, only BETTER!” He didn’t win me over.
At this time, what I have to contribute is that what seems to happen is that people are SO into their position, so into their message that they are essentially deaf to other people. As you pointed out, there is so much clamor in media, internet included, that no one even gives a moment to listen and reflect upon what is said. Its just a mad rush to get out the agenda before the next commercial break, to try to fit your talking points into a 30 second spot. I think part of the problem is that Americans spend so much time trying to make ends meet, trying to get ahead that all they have time for is 30 second spots on CNN or Fox. That has a huge effect on people’s participation in politics and politics is so important because it really is the control of our nation’s wealth and power.
When you mentioned the incident with the Dems and the Boy Scouts, I immediately saw where you were coming from. It made more sense to me than being called ignorant or fatuous. I appreciated your position. I could see how that hypocrisy of the “touchy, feely left” upset you. I know what that’s like. Hypocrisy drives me up the wall too. I don’t think any political group owns the rights on hypocrisy. They’re all guilty of it.
I like the idea of that forum. Maybe I’ll start one and all who are willing to participate within the bounds of respectful discourse will be allowed and if people violate the statutes, they’ll be suspended or something. Of course that could spiral into an on-line dictatorship….
Here’s an idea. Let’s talk about the here and now. Maybe Saddam had WMD, maybe he didn’t.
The real question should be now that we’re in Iraq mucking things up, what should we do?
What should we do about the war on terror?
Should we attack Iran?
I think we should pull out of Iraq and let them figure it out. If the UN wants to broker something, field a presence, then fine. Have at it. People argue that it would cause a collapse into civil war, but in case people haven’t been paying attention, that war is already being waged, albeit from the shadows.
I think the war on terror needs to be handled as a police investigation, not a military offensive.
We shouldn’t attack Iran becuase there is insuffiecient cause. We need way more proof and way more diplomacy. Bush seems WAY too eager to shoot first and ask questions later.
We’ve seen how well that policy has worked for Iraq.
Vol-
Good thoughts.
OK, your first point:
—I personally am against our involvement in Iraq. That is a new position for me in the recent weeks, as I can see more and more clearly, that the fact that there are 3 different religious factions living there, who have been killing each other for the last 3,000 years over who loves their God the most, and will not now or EVER allow a democracy into their lives, as their religions (all of them)...will not tolerate such an institution within there midsts. They are still Muslims. First and foremost. A democracy is anathema to their way of life or to their thinking, much less to their religion. We cannot win. There is nothing there to win. Especially with our support here in the states waning. If the Iraqi’s want freedom and democracy, they will have to do the fighting and dying themselves, just like we did here to win it from the British. We cannot and ought not do it for them. Would a democratic Iraq be a really good thing? Yes. Certainly. Great idea. Kind of like another democratic outpost in an area where there aren’t any, such as Israel.
Also, it is right next to Iran, where the REAL trouble is going to come from, real soon. Is it feasible though? I am starting to think it is not a winnable hand and I don’t believe any more American lives are worth trying to force democracy down the throats of people who have never fought for freedom and democracy themselves. It just doesn’t make any sense any more. I would think differently if there was a strong chance that this experiment would succeed. But it doesn’t.
—Did Saddam have WMD’s? Almost a moot point. Some of his generals that were captured said they thought he had them, but that he was just giving them to other generals in the field. Perhaps he was making it LOOK like he had them to ensure cooperation from his military if he were to go to war again. Or, he had a few, then sold them to Syria at the last minute, knowing his hand was blown. The point is, most of the world THOUGHT he had them. Even Clinton, the UN and the French. So when they say “Bush Lied” is clearly a fantasy, but after we attacked saddam, the next step was to “play it by ear” I think. He was thinking that a legitamate coalition of native Iraqi’s would step up to the plate and get their government going. Enthusiastically step up. No one did. Saddam was still out there, and still able to inflict terror on his own people. Suddenly everything fell apart. The Syrians and Iranians saw an opening and took it. War is unpredictable. But I highly doubt that Bush knew something that the rest of the world’s intelligence services didn’t. Given the documented multiple screw ups by our own CIA and FBI, I REALLY doubt he knew something everyone else didn’t.
But you know what? I wan’t there in the Oval office when these intelligence briefs were presented. Neither was any of these other dweebs that think THEY know what Bush knew and when he knew it. THEY don’t know, they just hate Bush so much that they PRETEND to know as to make them look cynical, which appears from a distance as “sophisticated” (it’s all the rage) and smart. They also don’t know what Clinton knew. Neither do I. I am going to guess that the most powerful men in the world has some items of intel that we don’t have, and never will have. These air-heads just like to say this stuff because it gives them street cred for the left side of the political spectrum. At least I SAY I don’t know, but they pose themselves as “in the know” when all they are really are stereo salesmen from New Jersey or an IT technician from Lower Sundusky, Ohio.
Let me know if you want to start a web site. I’m in.
Leave laughing boy in the bathroom. That is very likely where he is finding what is so funny.
IsThisThingOn? is whitewashing history to assert that there was near unanimity in the West as to the presence of WMDs in Iraq. Perhaps you are going by the HEADS of these intelligence agencies to justify your position. There certainly were quite a few analysts in the CIA that did not believe there were WMDs in Iraq, despite Tenet’s assertion that the case was a “slam dunk.” Tenet was more interested in courting the president’s favor than with the truth. If there was consensus among CIA analysts, why did Cheney make several visits to the agency in the run-up to the invasion? Such behavior is not only uncommon, it is unprecedented. Seems to me that Dick was twisting arms behind closed doors. Furthermore, why did the DOD create a separate office, the Office of Special Plans, under the purview of neocon ideologue Douglas Feith, to evaluate and collect intelligence regarding Iraqi Wmds that circumvented established bureaucratic channels for gathering such data? Seems like the intelligence was being cherry-picked to satisfy a preconceived policy. The Silberman-Robb commission stated in its findings that there was an atmosphere at the DOD that only favored estimates supporting the existence of Iraqi WMD.
At the State Department’s Intelligence Bureau there was quite a bit of disagreement with the official line that Iraq possessed WMD. Joe Wilson told Cheney that Iraq had not sought uranium from Niger in late 2002 but the president still made the claim in his SOTU speech in January of the following year. State analysts categorized as “highly dubious” several of the charges the administration made about Iraqi WMD. So don’t give that crap that EVERYONE thought Iraq had WMD. I didn’t even mention Hans Blix or Scott Ritter or the IAEA.
With respect to Iran, let me enumerate he reasons why invasion or surgical strikes would be a VERY BAD idea. First, the U.S. has extremely limited intelligence capabilities in Iran. The U.S. has not had a human intelligence asset in that nation since1988, so our policy makers are relying on satellite imagery and defectors to make their claims. That sounds awfully similar to what the administration relied on to buttress its case for the invasion of Iraq. Remember those satellite photographs that Powell said showed Iraqi trucks moving WMDs from a site about to be scrutinized by UNSCOM? Turns out they were firetrucks. Satellite intelligence is only as good as the policy makers whose hands it falls into.
Second, Iran’s nuclear facilities are either underground or hidden in extremely remote parts of the nation. We don’t even know how many there are!
Third, there is historical precedent to the types of actions being contemplated or advocated by Republicans/conservatives: the 1981 bombing of the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq by the Israeli Air Force. Far from preventing Iraqi non-proliferation, the act garnered strong regional support for Iraq’s nuclear ambitions and the country quickly reconstituted its program.
Fourth, the invasion of Iraq has emboldened Iran because it can now not only influence the nascent Iraqi government but not take U.S. threats seriously. Iran knows that the U.S. has severely crippled its offensive capability because of Iraq and its huge financial and human costs. The armed forces are already stretched too thin so a draft would be needed to satisfy the manpower requirements for such an invasion. Iran is not a weak country devastated by a decade of sanctions and constant bombing. Iran has a strong army and many more people than Iraq (70 mil. vs 25 mil). Iran could easily shut down the Persian Gulf if it felt threatened.
Liberal raises a good point about that I’d like to comment on. I find it disturbing that an administration would create a special office within the DOD that has almost zero oversight beyond the office of the president. An office that consistently sought to undermine existing mechanisms for the analysis and dissemination of intelligence material.
My opinion regarding the Iraq invasion is that it fulfilled several neo-con ambitions.
1) The goal of establishing an irresistable presence in the Mid-east as outlined by the Project for The New American Century
2)Infusing the defense industry and related subcontractors with loads of taxpayer money
3)Positioning US military forces for follow up campaigns in Syria and Iran which, as a consequence would have meant even more military spending and consequently expanding Israeli security and influence.
Perhaps one of the reasons why things did not go as planned is that the neocons didn’t correctly anticipate the forces needed for such a campaign. The believed that firepower alone would carry the day. As a paper excercise it makes a certain kind of sense, but in reality it grossly overstates the capabilities of the US military while at the same time ignoring the unpleasant effects of assymetrical warfare. Seasoned military men knew this, but were ignored. The CIA recommended against it as it would evoke a LOT of sympathy and support for Al-Qaeda as well as other mid-eastern enemies. Thus far they have not been proved wrong.
Reading ITTO’s responses, I am struck by an overall lack of anything of import in his statements. He is far more concerned with disrupting the thread than in actually saying something that is profound or insightful. Just the same old talking points that America is finally waking up to.
1,600 demonstrations around the country last night. Lots of Vietnam and Iraq vets involved. I heard one Iraq vet say he never felt so supported in his career as since people have started openly questioning the validity of Bush’s justifications for war.
It’s beautiful to see the neocons twisting in the wind.
SusieQ-I don’t think you’re being entirely fair to ITTO. I don’t agree that he is being disruptive. I think he’s making a genuine effort to understand where liberals are coming from when they trash the war and president, etc… Talking down to someone isn’t a good way to achieve mutal respect and understanding.
Do you want to be a divider or a uniter?
Wow again! Some active thread, I’m away for a couple days and it grows like bread dough.
Hello scorp. Please don’t insult. I’ll read your words and figures with interest and respect, whether we conclude the same things about George Bush and the Iraq War or not. And yes, I’m related to Senator Boxer, about as much as I’m related to you, cousin.
Saddam Hussein was a murderous megalomaniac. It sucks that he was our proxy warrior against Iran through most of the 80s. When he was in favor, we did enough business with him and offered him enough arms to carry out one scathing brutality after another. Once he stepped out of line, though, continuing to do much the same thing he had done during the Reagan years, he suddenly became the enemy. I wonder if he had successfully invaded Iran in 1990 rather than Kuwait, would America have done a thing about it. Iran being a sovereign nation and UN member, after all, not to mention a petroleum state.
I can remember the elder Bush saying, “It’s a matter of good or evil, right or wrong.” If Saddam was so evil (and he was), was it righteous for us to have sponsored him? I feel it was just cynical realpolitik all along.
I must ask you, is there a clear reason why the whole Iraq episode really ought to be seen as other than cynical realpolitik also? Not just as a gesture of patriotic good faith, but objectively so?
When you say I speak nonsense, I respond by saying it’s much worse than nonsense to begin a pre-emptive war without ironclad evidence of an immanent threat. It’s worse than nonsense to divide your fighting force between two potential quagmires, Afghanistan and Iraq, rather than to finish the job of punishing and weakening al-Qaeda in the places they were known to be. It’s worse than nonsense to mislead the public into thinking Saddam was instrumental in bringing about 9/11, tricking them, playing off their fear and anger.
This isn’t about hate for Bush. Frankly, I don’t allow him to provoke such poisonous emotions in me, although I do think the progress of American civilization took a giant step backward when he and his team gained power. I believe you and I will both live long enough to see history evaluate his adminstration as a time when America’s standing in the world took a body blow.
But I could be wrong, I hope I am. I feared in March 2003 that invading Iraq would make America look bad and divide the country, and sometimes it sucks to be right. So yes, I hope I’m mistaken in thinking we’ll be damaged by this episode in our history. However I’m not wrong about these things: The primary if not only justification for invading Iraq turned out to hold no water. The vast majority of the world’s governments as well as the UN didn’t support it and still do not. The countries that did support it do not have the blessings of the majority of their citizens for having done so. And in Iraq alone, never mind Afghanistan for the moment, the innocent civilian death toll on the heels of the war is 30 times the death toll of 9/11. Not forgetting for a second the US and allied death toll, with more each passing week.
Did I read correctly in your post that things are safer in Iraq now? They are?
I don’t think Iraq will be safe for years to come, not for foreigners and surely not for Iraqis. And US troops on the ground there only provides a conundrum, their presence provoking hatred and murder, their departure carrying the risk of an even more violent insurgency against the new Iraqi government, which will be hard-pressed to avoid being seen as an American puppet.
This is not an enviable position for America to be in. It’s not unpatriotic to say that it was a horrifying, bitter mistake. It was mistaken legally, morally, and historically, and we haven’t yet seen all the bloody fallout from it. I despair that my country is involved in it. Started it.
Worse than nonsense by half!
Oh and thanks for the backup, Susie Q.
Please pause a moment, reflect back, and take the following multiple
choice test. The events are actual events from history. They actually
happened!!!
Do you remember?
1. 1968 Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed by:
a. Superman
b. Jay Leno
c. Harry Potter
d. a Muslim male extremist between the ages of 17 and 40
2. In 1972 at the Munich Olympics, athletes were kidnapped and massacred by:
a. Olga Corbett
b. Sitting Bull
c. Arnold Schwarzenegger
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
3. In 1979, the US embassy in Iran was taken over by:
a. Lost Norwegians
b. Elvis
c. A tour bus full of 80-year-old women
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
4. During the 1980’s a number of Americans were kidnapped in Lebanon by:
a. John Dillinger
b. The King of Sweden
c. The Boy Scouts
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
5. In 1983, the US Marine barracks in Beirut was blown up by:
a. A pizza delivery boy
b. Pee Wee Herman
c. Geraldo Rivera
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
6. In 1985 the cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked and a 70 year old
American passenger was murdered and thrown overboard in his wheelchair by:
a. The Smurfs
b. Davy Jones
c. The Little Mermaid
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
7. In 1985 TWA flight 847 was hijacked at Athens, and a US Navy diver trying to rescue passengers was murdered by:
a. Captain Kidd
b. Charles Lindberg
c. Mother Teresa
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
8. In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed by:
a. Scooby Doo
b. The Tooth Fairy
c. Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
9. In 1993 the World Trade Center was bombed the first time by:
a. Richard Simmons
b. Grandma Moses
c. Michael Jordan
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
10. In 1998, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by:
a. Mr. Rogers
b. Hillary Clinton, to distract attention from Wild
Bill’s women problems
c. The World Wrestling Federation
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
11. On 9/11/01, four airliners were hijacked; two were used as missiles
to take out the World Trade Centers, and of the remaining two, one crashed into the US Pentagon, and the other was diverted and crashed by the passengers. Thousands of people were killed by:
a. Bugs Bunny, Wiley E. Coyote, Daffy Duck, and Elmer Fudd
b. The Supreme Court of Florida
c. Mr. Bean
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
12. In 2002 the United States fought a war in Afghanistan against:
a. Enron
b. The Lutheran Church
c. The NFL
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
13. In 2002 reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by:
a. Bonnie and Clyde
b. Captain Kangaroo
c. Billy Graham
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
Nope, ..I really don’t see a pattern here to justify profiling, do you?
So, to ensure we Americans never offend anyone, particularly fanatics
intent on killing us, airport security screeners will no longer be allowed to profile certain people. They must conduct random searches of 80-year-old women, little kids, airline pilots with proper identification, secret agents who are members of the President’s
security detail, 85-year old Congressmen with metal hips, and Medal of Honor winning and former Governor Joe Foss, but leave Muslim males between the ages 17 and 40 alone, lest they be guilty of profiling.
ITTO- Two things. First, Sirhan Sirhan was Catholic. A lot of people make the assumption that he was Muslim because of his nationality. Nice try, but false.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirhan_Sirhan
Secondly, lists of this nature give the appearance of legitamacy without the benefit of cross examination. I might just as easily make a list of US or Israeli crimes that conveniently ignores their historical context or crimes commited by Muslims. Lists can be compiled to support any cause you might wish. Haven’t you heard the old expression “figures don’t lie but liars can figure?”
PS- I want to add that it is, of course, ridiculous to assume that profiling is not a useful investigative tool, but like any tool it can be abused. I don’t think that is reasonable in a democracy to restrict non-white people of possibly mid-east descent to searches. Of course I think it is reasonable to put under surveillance anyone acting suspicious. The case of the Brazilian electrician is compelling when you realize how wrong things can go when profiling is abused. That’s why prosecuting the war on terror in an intelligent and egalitarian way is so important because you don’t want to sacrifice any more lives or liberties than you have to in the pursuit of justice. Nor do you want to radicalize moderates of Islamic countries. The time for heavy handed techniques has long since passed. (Hasn’t anyone heard of “the iron fist in the velvet glove?”)
ITTO -
Your multiple choice test was taken directly from a Larry Elder article published in Town Hall and elsewhere. You will kindly give proper attribution when you use other people’s stuff.
Yeah? so?
You think that I was trying to claim that this was MY own production? I had it e-mailed to me, without attribution by the way. I did NOT assume that the sender of the e-mail was trying to lift someone elses intellectual property or try to make it seem it was his original work. It was just a friggin e-mail that I thought might generate conversation. I didn’t think my stearn headmaster from college was chatting with me. Do you think I should tell you who I get my e-mails from? Who cares? There is a lot of stuff that ends up on these pages that are from other places. Most of the stuff I hear from you guys is from the DNC daily “talking points”. Do I ever hear an attribution to them??
This isn’t a college class paper that needs a bibliography. This is simply a post that is designed to stimulate a discussion on profiling in the war on terror. If I TELL you or imply that it originated from me, then by all means hold me to the standard of original composition. Otherwise, relax dude. My issue is one of how we go about identifying potential terrorists. I believe that we should include physical, racial and behavioral characteristics in trying to stop these people from getting on a plane, or other vulnerable scenarios. Outright racial profiling is dumb, but it is even dumber to NOT include it in the list of things we have to look at.
Now, what are your thoughts?
BTW, Sirhan is listed as Roman Catholic, but his Palestinian background is less clear. He killed Kennedy because he felt Kennedys policies towards the Jews was a betrayal to “him and his people” (That does not sound Roman Catholic to me) The point of this little test was just to point out that the vast overwhelming acts of terror have been committed by a certain religion, age group and gender demographic. Do we use that information or do we pretend that we didn’t notice any pattern here? Police work depends on spotting trends and suspicious behavior. Is it a perfect methodolgy? Hell no. That poor Brazilian that got killed in London is an example. He acted suspiciously and that brought the attention of the police to his door.
He further made the situation worse when he fled. Innocent guy? You bet. A tragedy? Absolutly. A side effect of the terror that the bombers inflicted on London, not once but twice? Yes. All the more reason to be able to catch these morons as fast as we can, and if that means insulting a certain racial or religious group, I say insult them. Its the price we are going to have to pay if we want to walk the fine line between an open society, and marshal law. There has got to be “give” somewhere, and since the results of our failure to do this is more innocent deaths, I say check out everybody and anybody that fits the profile of a bomber intent on killing my family or yours.
If that means long lines in an airport, great. Sign me up.
Kuya -
Welcome back.
“Please don
Hey man, I’m right there with you on the airline lines. I’d rather sit at the airport for two hours then be dead. However,I find the coninuing permutations of the De menezes’ case to be somewhat troubling. Here’s a link to the BBC’s coverage concerning a leak from police internal investigators.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4157892.stm
What worries me is the idea that people are so anxious to find a terrorist that they commit a greater crime in their haste to protect us.
I’m all for checking some one out, but I draw the line at summary executions. As the article I linked to states, there is more evidence coming to light that indicates that what happened may not have been as described in official versions of events. Truth is vital to the welfare of a democracy, and I hope that the truth, good or bad, comes to light.
Scorp-Hmmm… I think maybe you tell people your opinions in a way that has the similar abrasive qualities of 20 grit sandpaper. Calling it truth and the only truth, like you own the patent or something on it, is bit of a stretch. My opinion is that a lot of US policy has been machiavellian in nature. (Machiavelli is not considered to be much of an advocate for democracy.) Or maybe another term that someone else profered, realpolitik. Trading expediency for values isn’t necessarily a good bargain in the long run. One of the recurring themes with our role in regime change and nation building is that a popular leader gets elected, challenges some of the finer details over a strategic national resource or geography. We stand firm. So does the new guy. Tensions escalate. The new guy doesn’t back down. Neither do we. Finally, we sponsor a coup, have the guy thrown out and voila! New pro-US government. Reverts to status quo with everyone happy. We’ve got someone we can do business with (someone willing to exploit and opress his own people) The only real losers in this repeated drama would be the people of the country we’ve just regime changed. The resource that belongs to them is sold at a fraction of what they need to build up a robust economy while whatever income they do receive is squandered by our new friend building palaces and armies. Everybody lives happily ever after. Or do they? I posit that if scorp was handed a deal like that by some super power, his talk of the rule of law would suddenly change to revolution. Possibly a violent kind? Or would he in the name of respecting the “rule of law” allow his friends and family to be starved, tortured or disappeared ad infinitum? I doubt it.
I’m all for protecting America. Where scorp and I disagree is in the methodology. He’s okay with making shady deals with dictators. Whatever gets the job done, because the results are what matter. But to me, the methodology is just as important as the reults because the methodology is what seperates us from history’s great mass murderers. Do we become the monster that we’re fighting? Is the overall price worth it? I find it humorous that in the 50’s we spent a lot of money essentially destroying the communist party of Iran. Fine. (I don’t like communism. It doesn’t adequately address human realities. I’m also an opponent of laize faire capitalism, because it has equally reprehensible vices) But we did it without even contemplating any unintended side effects. Like nature abhoring a vacuum. Once the commies were safely disposed of, we moved on. The hardline fundamentalists moved into the void. They spread their tentacles through out the country until the revolution in ‘79, when they struck. There was no alternative party of any significance to oppose them. So, this is our bed. We made it. We have to lie in it. Have a nice day!
Vol-
You might have more information than I on that poor guys’ plight. If there was police incompetence involved, I can’t say I am surprised. If there is more to it than that, such as a conspiracy to kill him or out and out malice towards an innocent person, I say that is just as wrong as what we are fighting against. I will follow your link. However, the BBC is NOT to be taken at face value. Truth IS vital to the welfare of a Democracy…agreed.
The BBC is not known for its unbiased coverage.
What media outlet these days has unbiased coverage? If you find one, let me know. *lol*
My personal opinion is that the officers involved were SO focused on finding a terrorist their expectation got the better of them. I don’t think they honestly believed they were about to gun down an innocent man. If they did indeed succumb to their expectations and then attempt to alter their events to evade responsibility, then that is certainly a crime of greater magnitude and a criminal idictment levied against them.
(I’ve been following this case a lot because I think it represents the very real pitfalls in prosecuting a war against terror.)
ITTO- hear is what hapened to the Brazilian man brutally gunned down in a London subway station: Scotland Yard had been monitoring this guy’s apartment building because a suspect in the attacks lived there. When the Brazilian left that building, the police mistook him for the suspect, so they had no business following this man in the first place. The blood of this man is on their hands. While they were killing this guy, the real suspect could have been off planting another bomb. Appearances CAN be deceiving. The way to fight terrorism is not arbitrary search and seizure but through intelligence gathering that respects civil libertires. Such tactics uncovered two of the 9/11 hijackers before they attcked, but policymakers were not interested in them. THe system worked fine before 9/11 so let’s not go apesh*t and prejudge anyone who is from a region that stretches from Mauritania to Indonesia. Terrorists can adapt. In NYC, every 12th bag is searched. All the terrorist has to do is be the 11th person in line. Or, these people will just change tactics. The U.S. has been focusing on airline hijackings, meanwhile Al-Qaeda has switched to bombing trains and buses. These guys WILL find another way to attack us. So let’s not throw away our hard won freedoms out of paranoia.
Finally, the BBC is not biased, it just does not take the statements of politicians at face value, nothing wrong with that. In fact, their pre-war reporting was some of the finest in the world in terms of shedding doubt on coalition assertions that guess what, turned out to be false!!!!
Liberal’s post reminds of something… How come not one single person has been reprimanded or fired as a result of 9/11? What’s up with that?
Another BBC article references a picture leaked to them of the deceased electrician and he is wearing a snug jean jacket and jeans. So much for the big jacket story…
Mitilda- Actually I don’t think that speech by Hitler settles the debate at all. Hitler also made some specifically anti-Christian statements later in his career (read Alan Bullock’s book “Hitler, A Study in Tryanny”). Also, the historian Paul Johnson considers Hitler to have been anti-Christian. Probably like many politicians Hitler spoke out of both sides of his mouth depending upon who he was trying to win over. In 1922, when he made that speech, Hitler was leading a small party whose prospects were not at all promising in a nation that was at least nominally Christian. The idea that that speech mirrored Hitler’s true sentiments is highly dubious at best.
Matilda- First, apologies for mis-spelling your name in the last post. Actually, I think I did get your posts, I just disagree with them. Perhaps the Iraq war “didn’t need to happen” as you write, but that still doesn’t put George Bush on the same moral plane as Nazis who executed civilians at random, not when our military takes pains to avoid civilian casualties. I agree that in practice Stalin and Hitler had many similarities (people forget that Nazi stood for the National Socialist party), I just don’t think they really have much similarity to conservatism (which is by no means monolithic, there are several different political philosophies under that name) as it exists today in the United States. In fact many liberals, with their quasi-socialistic programs, are closer in spirit to facism than most conservatives.
In practice the left uses facism to smear anyone they disagree with. It is time to give the word a decent burial.
Lefty- with the left’s program of state control over the economy, I’d say they fit the definition of facism pretty well.
IsThisThingOn,
Nice of you to lend your insight into justifying profiling.
Now let’s look at some other questions.Since I hate grading multiple-choice tests,they are not indicative of real world knowledge which you either have or don’t,and a tritely smarmy way of sounding smarter than one’s actual capacity, let’s take another quiz.Ready?
In the case of each,describe the age group,ethnicity,and political prty of each of the following terrorists.By strict definition of the term,those who use fear and violence to further a political agenda.
Paul Hill:murderer of doctors who perform abortions?
Timothy McVeigh:Oklahomea City bomber.
Eric Rudolph:Bomber of abortion clinics and gay bars,oh,he also bombed the 1996 Olympics.Most provincial right-wingers forget that one.
If,in each case,you answered White male,Christian,Republican,between 18 and 50 years old,guess what?You’re right!
Profiling,another way for a negligenty government to obfuscate domestic issue and misdirect the public into a useless paranoia venue.
Shame on the right and raspberries to those stupid enough to believe their trickery.
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Cute. But irrelevant.
So, why are we patting down little old ladies?
Your three examples are one-off idiots, working alone or in small groups.
The Jihadists number in the thousands, have millions of dollars in backing, and have a very large support and propaganda base behind them.
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