PERFECTWORLD said:
THE WAR IN IRAQ goes from worse to catastrophic.
Nazi Germany = catastrophic
Pol Pot = Catastrophic
Chairman Mao = Catatrophic
Stalin = Catastrophic.
Iraq = a low intensity conflict.
Hundreds of Iraqis were killed last week, as were two dozen US soldiers.
A tragedy, sure. Anyone have any stats on improvements?
Planned elections in January point less to democracy than civil war.
Non sequitur / contradictory.
Kidnapping has become a weapon of terror on the ground, matching the terror of US air attacks.
Horseshit.
1. Kidnapping and terror are old buddies, ask FARC.
2. American air attacks and beheading civilians are not equivalent.
An American "take-back" offensive threatens to escalate the violence immeasurably.
Or stop the violence, when all the terrorists that this author freely admits exist are killed.
The secretary general of the United Nations pronounced the American war illegal.
I am surprised he had time to do this while still managing to count all the money his organization stole
In the United States, an uneasy electorate keeps its distance from all of this.
I'm not uneasy. You?
Polls show that most Americans maintain faith in the Bush administration's handling of the war, while others greet reports of the disasters more with resignation than passionate opposition.
Wow. Americans have different opinions. This also contradicts the use of "uneasy" above.
To the mounting horror of the world,
Ha. The majority of the world's citizens live in such poverty that reading isn't even an option, much less vociferous opposition to the US's foreign policy. Are we to assume the author concluded this after he asked
1. Chinese rice farmers
2. Indian street beggars
3. Bangladeshi mud hut dwellers
4. One armed African diamond miners
or was this written after consluting with
5. A few angry kids from berkeley?
the United States of America is relentlessly bringing about the systematic destruction of a small, unthreatening nation
We could destroy Iraq in a week. Level it flat, occupy, conquer and enslave its people tomorrow. We're not there to destroy it, that is self evident by our actions. Talk to someone who's been there.
for no good reason. Why has this not gripped the conscience of this country?
Right. Why has the country not decided to sit on its hands and watch the world pass us by? Nice.
The answer goes beyond Bush to the 60-year history of an accidental readiness to destroy the earth, a legacy with which we Americans have yet to reckon.
Doomsday predictions always get the attention of dumb readers. See "Weekly World News". I wonder if the author would accept that he implies it was king liberal FDR that started this policy, or if he ignores all that.
The punitive terror bombing that marked the end of World War II hardly registered with us.
I guess we were too upset about the 400,000 US dead and too happy about destroying Germany and Japan to get mad about that. This is really some twisted bullshit from your author.
"Punitive terror bombing" after WW2. WHo started the war? The greatest war of all time? Who? America? Did we invade Poland? Did we bomb Pearl Harbor? No and No. But other barbaric leaders did. And now this moron who wrote this article indicts us for "punitive" actions against these nations which plunged the world into war. Bizarre.
Scarier still is people support this horseshit.
Then we passively accepted our government's mad embrace of thermonuclear weapons.
Funny how being at war for 5 years wants to make you prepare to destroy the next enemy, huh?
While we demonized our Soviet enemy,
We demonized them? I thought it was Stalin rushing peasants to the Gulag and stifling dissent....they demonized themselves. The USSR - the greatest mass murderer of all time, and
we demonized them? LOL!
we hardly noticed that almost every major escalation of the arms race was initiated by our side -- a race that would still be running if Mikhail Gorbachev had not dropped out of it.
Why did he drop out of it? because HIS COUNTRY FELL APART. Because our foreign policy toward the USSR worked!
In 1968, we elected Richard Nixon to end the war in Vietnam, then blithely acquiesced when he kept it going for years more.
Yep. And what THIS has to do with
anything in the rest of this post is anyone's guess!
When Ronald Reagan made a joke of wiping out Moscow, we gathered a million strong to demand a nuclear "freeze," but then accepted the promise of "reduction," and took no offense when the promise was broken.
Yep. Probably because the USSR collapsed.
We did not think it odd that America's immediate response to the nonviolent fall of the Berlin Wall was an invasion of Panama.
As if Noriega had anything to do with Europe and oir policies ever coalesced regarding the Iron Curtain and Panama.
We celebrated the first Gulf War uncritically, even though that display of unchecked American power made Iran and North Korea redouble efforts to build a nuclear weapon, while prompting Osama bin Laden's jihad.
We fought that war to protect Muslims, specifically Saudis and Kuwaitis. Iran's theocratic regime wanted a bomb long before that. What is even funnier in this article is that the author admits it is OK for Iran and NK to want a nuclkear bomb after Gulf War I, but when the US wanted nukes post WW2, we were on a "mad craze". Illogic, anyone?
The Clinton administration affirmed the permanence of American nukes as a "hedge" against unnamed fears, and we accepted it.
OK for Iran, bad for us? LOL!!
We shrugged when the US Senate refused to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, with predictable results in India and Pakistan.
Shall we assume the US Senate has dominion over the actions of India and Pakistan?
We bought the expansion of NATO
An odd quarrel, given that unilateralism is later derided.
the abrogation of the ABM Treaty, the embrace of National Missile Defense -- all measures that inevitably pushed other nations toward defensive escalation.
Defensive escalation? Defense against who? The US? Ha! The US represents the first empire in the history of the world that can truly conquer the entire world.
There is no defense; the difference between our forces and the rest of the world is unthinkable. Ten aircraft carriers! Russia alone has more than two, and they are in disrepair. We could build more tomorrow. If the US assumed a militaristic posture, we'd conquer the world. There is no "defensive escalation". Our military seems tame because we are bending over backwards to not be fierce in Iraq.
Note: I don't advocate American militarism for the sake of militarism. It is a credit to our nation that we do not seek to grow our empire through military conquest. But we could own the world pretty fast.
The war policy of George W. Bush -- "preventive war," unilateralism, contempt for Geneva -- breaks with tradition, but there is nothing new about the American population's refusal to face what is being done in our name.
Our contempt for geneva equals our enemies. If you want to fight a war, you bring it to them.
This is a sad, old story. It leaves us ill-equipped to deal with a pointless, illegal war.
If you don't think this war is warranted, then you believe the Middle east is fine. If you believe the Middle east is fine....you must be deaf and blind.
The Bush war in Iraq, in fact, is only the latest in a chain of irresponsible acts of a warrior government, going back to the firebombing of Tokyo. In comparison to that, the fire from our helicopter gunships above the cities of Iraq this week is benign. Is that why we take no offense?
Is this guy actually arguing that we should not have firebombed Tokyo? To him I say, "Bataan Death March"
Something deeply shameful has us in its grip. We carefully nurture a spirit of detachment toward the wars we pay for. But that means we cloak ourselves in cold indifference to the unnecessary suffering of others -- even when we cause it.
This contradicts the statements above. If the author writes
Polls show that most Americans maintain faith in the Bush administration's handling of the war, while others greet reports of the disasters more with resignation than passionate opposition. then how can he say we are indifferent?
We don't look at any of this directly because the consequent guilt would violate our sense of ourselves as nice people. Meaning no harm, how could we inflict such harm?
I think we do mean harm. We mean harm to terrorists, theocracies, Islamic dictatorships etc. We are nice people, nice enough to know that these systems of government are inherently bad, and nice enough to bring about their demise.
In this political season, the momentous issue of American-sponsored death is an inch below the surface, not quite hidden -- making the election a matter of transcendent importance.
One second we don't care, it's OK, we've been doing this for 60 years, NOW this is an issue of transcendant importance? Did it become that today? yesterday?
George W. Bush is proud of the disgraceful history that has paralyzed the national conscience on the question of war. He does not recognize it for what it is -- an American Tragedy. The American tragedy.
Destorying Japan and Germany: Not a tragedy
Destroying the USSR: Not a tragedy
Removing the greatest killer of Muslims since the Crusades: Not a tragedy
John Kerry, by contrast, is attuned to the ethical complexity of this war narrative. We see that reflected in the complexity not only of his responses, but of his character -- and no wonder it puts people off.
Yes, the answer to a problem with humanity is contained in a Senator from Massachusetts. Amazingly it is the same guy who oted for the war, against the war, said he would not remove Saddam, then he would.....yep, sounds like just what we need. And just for good measure, Kerry will throw some extra controls on business too.
Kerry's problem, so far unresolved, is how to tell us what we cannot bear to know about ourselves. How to tell us the truth of our great moral squandering. The truth of what we are doing today in Iraq.
I honestly cannot understand how anyone can take this sort of self-contradictory, illogical, and untrue nonsense and consider it seriously.
this is complete and total bullshit. And it is poorly written. And illogical. And wrong. And contradictory.
Think for yourself orb, I don't have the time to urinate on your posts inch by inch anymore.
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