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Originally Posted by The_Jazz
Two words - personal. responsibility. I'm responsible for my actions, not that of my government. Never have been. Never will be.
I think that I have a good grasp on the OP, and if I came off as insulting I apolgize for my inadvertent error. Humor and the internet don't always mix.
Wait, what did I just do? Take responsibility for my own actions? I fulfill my civic responsibilities by voting, serving on juries, etc., but blaming everyone who voted Republican in 2004 for the torture that followed is like blaming those who voted for Clinton for lieing about getting a blowjob. They're both lies, host. The only difference is the subject and the degrees. You can't have it both ways.
Personally, I think that we're all arguing vehemintly about a throw-away line at the end of will's post that was out of sync with the rest of his post.
This thread is starting to go south quickly. I suggest that everyone take a deep breath and remember to be nice.
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The thread is not important enough to let your comparison of "what Clinton did"....(and I even know that you have no political or philosophical "bent" towards resorting to it as an example....but I have to react to the triviality of it, in comparison to what is at stake in these times, with regard to the offenses committed..."in our name"....) to what is happening now.....go by without.....a challenge in relation to the scope and implications of the offenses.
If each of us does not say NO, now....after so much death....the destruction of treaties that the world agreed to risk committing to....to minimize war and torture.....after our constitutional right to "due process' has been marginalized into something only accorded us at the "whim" of the "decider", who the **** will say no....and when? How many nights should I go to bed....hoping that in the morning, the rights that the POTUS swore to "protect and to defend", are fully restored....wrenched back from his slimey, intimidating grasp?
How is this argument, not relevant...how are any issues of greater importance, to our society, what it stood for....and for the security of all the people in the world?
Quote:
http://www.counterpunch.org/jensen08172005.html
The Mercenary Society.....
.....Recent polls show that more than half the public believes the United States can't win the war and can't establish a stable democracy in Iraq, but surveys also indicate that many continue to believe that sending the troops was the right thing to do.
This suggests that a majority of the public can recognize that the United States has failed in the stated mission but cannot yet see that the stated mission was a lie. This was never a war about weapons of mass destruction or stopping terrorism (indeed, the war has created terrorism, on both sides), nor is it at heart about establishing democracy in Iraq. The U.S. invasion of Iraq is -- as all U.S. interventions in Middle East have been -- about extending and deepening U.S. dominance in the region with the world's most crucial energy resources.
Part of the barrier to a clear understanding of this is the belief that the United States, by definition, always acts benevolently in the world. But also standing in the way of an honest analysis is the reality that the brutal imperialist U.S. policies, while devised by elites, are being carried out by ordinary Americans. Can we in the United States come to terms with the fact that we are the "good Germans" of our era, routinely allowing pseudo-patriotic loyalties to override moral decision-making? Can we look at ourselves honestly in the mirror when so many of us are implicated in the imperialist system?
From the people who make the weapons to the military personnel who use them -- and all the other people whose livelihoods or networks of friends and family connect them to the armed forces -- most of the U.S. public has some relationship to the military. Any talk of closing a military base sparks almost automatic resistance from neighboring communities that have become dependent on the base economically. Large segments of the corporate sector rely on military or military-related contracts, and executives and employees alike understand what that means for profits and wages.
As U.S. anthropologist Catherine Lutz put it in her book "Homefront", an insightful study of the effects of the militarization on American life: "We all inhabit an army camp, mobilized to lend support to the permanent state of war readiness Are we all military dependents, wearers of civilian camouflage?"
The problem is not just that the United States now has a mercenary army but that we are a mercenary society.
The problem is not just that our army fights imperialist wars, but that virtually all of us are in some way implicated in that imperialist system. ......
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I'm using a pen, not a sword....to draw "my line" in the sand....and I ask you again....both of you.....if this is not enough, for you....what would be, and if not now, when?