Mephisto2

It matters not to whom he was referring, but that sweeping generalization that "the Liberals would claim [Hitler] to be their best buddy".

That's just baiting and complete hogwash. Oh... and completely offensive.

If murals, however tasteless, are basis for invasion, why hasn't the US invaded Cuba or Iran? Because it's not, so making that link is just baiting. Again.

If you want to justify the invasion, an invasion I supported by the way, then use facts or at least well thought out arguments. Not propaganda.

Also, all liberals do not "SUPPORT TERRORISTS", so again that claim is false, provocative, insulting and, once more, just baiting...

So what's good for the goose is good for the gander, eh? I don't think Bush is a war criminal and find those kinds of statements equally insulting. In other words, I can rise above the childish name calling.

I refer you to the statement above.


Mr Mephisto

pan6467

What I truly have no comprehension of is why the GOP has all the power and yet they still feel the need to badmouth the opposition. To try to destroy them..... I really don't understand that.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

roachboy

i offered a schematic explanation earlier in the thread for this, pan, but it was greeted with feigned incomprehension and i reacted by growing bored with the thread.

rove's speech is not about an accurate representation of anything to do with iraq--it is about trying to redraw the line that seperates conservativeland from other spaces, conservatives from other folks, in an effort to find some way to slow the massive leaks in the pollratings of bushworld with reference to iraq.
it was a warm-up act for the charade you will see tonight from fort bragg, during which cowboy goerge will try to same thing.

nothing whatsoever to do with an accurate portrayal of the situation in iraq--but you see this thread as a demonstration that core conservatives operate best in the context of wholly distorted understandings of the war, that their arguments require wholesale distortion to even make sense.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

pan6467

It's not just about Iraq though, it started before Iraq, it started with Clinton and has gotten truly worse. You have what used to be good politicians selling themselves out on issues they don't believe in and when they try to be true to themselves they get bashed by their own party.

Hell, because Dewine was part of the "ceasefire agreement" on filibusters the GOP went after his kid to make sure he wouldn't get elected into office down in Cincy. There's talk of the GOP trying to find a "more conservative candidate" to run against Dewine himself. And the party is doing the same thing to Voinivich. These are 2 senators that are loyal to the party but chose to be true to themselves, not just rubber stamps for the President and the GOP repays them by working against them?

(I'm sure there are examples of Dems. doing the same thing, but I haven't seen it.)

I guess I don't understand the hatred that drives these people to believe and find nothing wrong with what the Limbaughs and Roves say. In fact they defend it.

And yet, when a Dem like Dean or Durbin say something, there is a howl and they have to appologize. And the truth of the matter is, a vast majority of Dems I know don't condone the hate speeches.

Whereas, the Roves and Limbaughs never appologize nor admit they were wrong or twisted facts. Neo-con supporters (NOT ALL GOP) seem to thrive on it and spew hatred and in forums like this resort to name calling treating those who disagree as beneath them or stating things then when asked to prove their sources ignore the requests or say "do your own work".

Are we not a nation that wants to better ourselves and yet our leaders on both sides (although as stated above one side is far far better at it than the other) are trying very hard to divide us..... one has to ask why?

Both sides want this nation to be the best, to have prosperity and freedom for all right?

I truly don't understand why people who supposedly love freedom and civil liberties go to such extremes to destroy each other, and work to take rights away from those who disagree with them or worse yet, stand there and degrade, denigrate and verbally assault them.

We are 1 nation people and we better start getting along and working for the same common good or we will eventually destroy that which we love and Left or Right will have noone to blame but themselves.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

Mantus

roachboy, your concpet of concervative transposed racism was a very intresting read. Thanks for posting that.

roachboy

this is something i tried to address earlier, pan:
i think the basic mode of conservative argument is about self-definition first--you are either with "us" or against "us" a priori. this is NOTa typical mode of argument in a democratic context...this reduces politics to identification and identification to a matter of faith.

a short digression on the public mode of deploying neocon ideology: i think the neocons are people more like wolfowitz, what has been labelled the mayberry machiavellian trend within the administration--the wider right ideology is not identical with that--it is a complicated collage of rightwing tropes, some of which come from evangelical christian ideology, some from old-school american first types spaces, some from a kind of populist know-nothingism pioneered as a seperate ideological position by pat buchanan. end digression.

anyway, the arguments particular to rovethought work this way--he tried to rehearse the line that seperates "us" from "them" with a series of arbitrary assertions about what conservatives are not. the claims about iraq follow from this, and are shaped not by their analytic power (there isnt any) but by the identification with a far-right "us" first and foremost. this type of argument has been a constant feature of conservative ideology in its present form since the clinton period, you are right--it is a central feature of limbaugh "thought" which seems to have devolved alongside the wider ideology.

conservative ideology is not about a coherent description of the world. it is about defining a group as "us" and on that basis adding features that inflect this identification one way then another.

the other main feature is projection: take the example of "liberal media biais"--this is obviously false analytically--but it functions in conservativeland to make the fabrication of a completely ideological alternative media structure seem like a defensive response, when the fact is that it is the right that is seeking to change the rules of the game of journalism and conflate information with politics in a wholesale manner. presented as a positive argument, there is no way this would have flown--presented as a reaction, it does (it appears to redress a prior imbalance, when the fact is the opposite)--this only functions logically--politically--on the basis of the core conservative ideological move--identification as one of "us"

i think the responses from conservatives on this thread are perfect exemplifications of this process--they asserted themselves with considerable bile in an entirely fantastic manner on the basis of elements of rovethought, which operated to affirm their status as conservatives--on that basis, the various features of the delerium that accompanies continued support for bushwar got reasserted one after the other.

this is how rovethought works. this is how conservative ideology works.

and it is par for the course that when you say as much, conservatives pretend they do not understand.

it must be difficult if you work in the manner outlined above and hold your core political beliefs as a matter of faith routed through identification with a category to process dissonance. in fact, it appears close to impossible.--again, just read through the conservative responses on this thread alone for evidence.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

pan6467

Gotcha Roachboy, maybe some others will start to see...... one can hope.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

Hardknock

Yet another reason why this board is so broke....

tecoyah

Were I to venture a guess, I would say Hardknock is unhappy with the TFP.
Truthfully...this board is a nonprofit....but you can call it broke if you wish. Or perhaps you mean Broken.....In some ways it is broken, usually by negativity projected by members.

This we know how to fix though.....

__________________
Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

Hardknock

First of all, it seems to me that no one over there wants "freedom" as you've described it in the first place. It's funny how none of the people in Iraq are standing up to fight for their freedom. Being forceful is just digging ourselves into a deper hole. Since none of the Iraqis are trying to take their country back from the insurgents, we can begin to assume that one, they either want us to do all the dirty work, or they just aren't interested in our version of freedom. Without a clear cut exit strategy, without a plan to turn over control of Iraq to it's people, we will just maintain the status quo of Iraq being a haven for terrorists. Which is worse off than when Saddam was in power.

America will be better off indeed.

maximusveritas

The politics board is just a reflection of what's going on in politics.
When you hear crap like this from Karl Rove, one of President Bush's top advisors, it's tough to expect anything better from the members of this board.
I know some will say that politics has always been like this, but I personally can't remember a time when there has been this much division. I'm sure alot of it has to do with 9/11 and I'm not sure it's going to get any better.

spectre

The reason this board is "broke" is because no one uses this ( and in two of the styles)button. If you see something is wrong, report it. Otherwise, don't complain because you're not doing anything to help solve the problem.

__________________
"Fuck these chains
No goddamn slave
I will be different" ~ Machine Head

Hardknock

You're absolutely right. This division in America will be our downfall as far as I'm concerned. Our inability to work together will continue to divide us, nothing will get done, and we will remain vulnerable. This board clearly reflects this as it is a very good example of where America is right now.

tecoyah

So.....maybe we can begin to work towards some level of understaning in here......isnt that the point of this place, I for one, certainly hope so.

Otherwise I am wasting my time even trying.

__________________
Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

shakran

And Bush has come up with "We need to claim we're tough on terrorists, while invading someone who didn't attack us and as a result not having the resources to get the guy who did."

We DO need to understand that if we continue to act like the world's cop, people will be pissed and they might just try and hurt us. That doesn't excuse the actions of the terrorists, but it does explain them.

Lemme put it another way. If you starve your rottweiler and then give him a steak and then reach down and try to yank the steak away, he'll probably bite you. Now, a dog should NEVER bite his master, but the master bears some responsibility in that he orchestrated the events leading up to getting bitten.

pan6467

.



It is interesting on my way to Mansfield today I heard a little bit of Limbaugh and he was talking how there are several articles coming out that point to the partisanship and how people have never stuck closer to their beliefs and are becoming more polarized. I didn't hear it all and he didn't say much about it, but it was the most interesting thing he had to say in a very long time.

Of course according to him the Conservatives have never moved and Liberals are so mad that they lost power that they are the ones polarizing.

He did say Rove was right and started to quote Rove but stopped REAL FAST.

As I have stated in this thread and others, it goes from leadership down and neither side trusts nor is willing to compromise. Why?

Because those on the right who do try to compromise find themselves attacked by the Right and possibly out of a job (IE Voinivich and Dewine). McCain is the only one that gets away with it because he has such a following. They tried, I remember Limbaugh used to skewer the man and talk about how he might be nuts from being a POW. But it didn't succeed.

Those on the Left when they try get burnt. How many times do we have to hear how Kennedy wrote the Education bill only for it to be purposefully underfunded?

The Right seems to be ok with attacking the Left calling us Nazis, commies, whackjobs and so on. YET, when someone from the Left tries to the Right cries and feigns innocence.

The Right couldn't stop attacking Clinton over any move he made, yet when the Left so much as questions a Bush move, they are attacked, their patriotism questioned and the Right does everything to smear and change the subject or warp it.

Newsweek was forced to appologize because of the story they ran about Gitmo and the Right demanded that it was wrong and lies...... and yet within 2 weeks other reports came out from other sources (not all biased to the Left) and the Pentagon never denied the flushing of Korans and abuse in Gitmo.

The Right now uses Gitmo as a joke and says the world is against us.

Now I do have a serious question for the right........... after 9/11 every country in the world offered to help and do what they could but between then and now they seem to distrust us and are against us...... my question is.... what changed??????

The Right is so power hungry instead of working to change laws they go after the one branch that so far has been neutral and they cannot control as of yet, the Judicial. They are claiming how far off the Justices THEY put in are.

There is no doubt in my mind the Right works to divide so that they can keep power. When your party's prominent figures do not debate, do not argue facts, incite hatreds and even say they refuse to listen to anything the Left has to say, you cannot tell me they are working to truly better the country and bring us all together as Americans.

This all trickles down, especially when you have people like Limbaugh, Coulter, Beck, Hannity, O'Reilly and even the politicians egging their followers on to literally hate anyone with differing viewpoints. Who do the Dems have that can be heard everyday nationally doing the same thing????? NOONE.... Dean may get blurbs every so often, but the Right get to pound EVERYDAY with no competition.

You go to a party and you act like a king and demand everyone do as you tell them and you'll find yourself isolated and probably kicked out real fast..... that is what the Right is doing not only to the Left but to the rest of the international community...... and yes, it will be what destroys us..... because we are no longer looking at each other as brothers and fellow American citizens equal under government, law and God, but we see each other now as left or right and if you are on the wrong side you are hated and bullied.

Is that truly what America is about? Not understanding each other, not showing each other respect and trying to work together but out to destroy those who in our minds are now our enemies because they have differing viewpoints and ideas.

If that is what America has come to....... then perhaps I need to move to a BETTER MORE TOLERANT NATION.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

Mantus

The vast majority of the public does not have the knowledge nor the desire to make educated judgements on political issues. The curent Republican idiology in no way reflects the real world. The real wold of politics is understood by few and accepted by less. The only responce one would get from the majority of the population if one presents them with the full spectrum of a political issues is confusion, frusturation and finally boredom.

It is also important to note that any group, including liberals, practice idiologies of their own and liberal idiologies are often no closer to reality then the concervative counterpart.

The bizare and often amusing situation occurs when someone attempts to comprehend the political scape though a party catered idiology. What one gets is something akin to a person attempting to explain away the modern world though religious dogma - absurdity.

pan6467

There's a huge difference between what you say and what is happening today though.

There is no middle ground, no debate, no trying to discuss and find compromise for the good off all...... which is healthy and forward moving for all.

But today, it is just divisiveness, hatred, pandering to extremists and trying to destroy each other........ which does nothing but create more apathy and from the people in the middle a feeling of hopelessness that they truly aren't being heard and eventually the end to all forward movement and civility.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

moosenose

So what you're saying is that we're screwed either way, right? If we play "World Cop" by smacking bad people down, people will hate us, but if we don't play "World Cop" to smack down bad people, people will hate us.

Saddam committed many acts which qualified as casus belli. We literally could take our pick. These include documented cases of Saddam sheltering terrorists who had killed US citizens, cases of Saddam subsidizxing suicide bomber attacks on a US ally, Saddam shooting at US planes flying in the "no fly zone", and many more.

You say we shouldn't have invaded Iraq. Does that mean we should have invaded Pakistan? That is, after all, where most people think Bin Laden is hiding out, right?

From my perspective, we've made one big foreign policy mistake over the past 60 years. We've tried to be friends with everybody, instead of making them try to be friends with us.

moosenose

That's because we have been down that road many, many, MANY times before. The Gun Control Act of 1968, an excellent example of this, was supposed to be the "Be-all, End-all" gun control law. We compromised, with the promise from the anti gunners that they would stop demanding things from us. As soon as it passed, what happened? They started demanding more from us. For a very long time, the Liberals have been expecting the Conservatives to bend over and take it with a smile. Now that the Conservatives are using the same tactics back towards the liberals, the liberals have their panties in a bunch. The Liberals foist off the likes of Teddy Kennedy and John Kerry on us, claiming that they are mainstream when they are in reality extremists of the very worst sort, and then can't understand why "Middle America" tells them to fuck off. Liberals scream "Free Speech!" and claim constitutional protection for what the rest of the country sees as criminal acts. What Liberals call acts of "Civil Disobedience", the rest of us call "felonies". And what the older generation of "liberals" call "mentoring the next generation", the rest of us simply call "conspiracy to violate the law".

shakran

I'm not sure how you got that idea from what I said. The US loves to stick its nose where it doesn't belong. Vietnam, Cuba, Panama, Afghanistan (let's not forget, we trained and armed bin Laden to fight the Russians) Iraq (we trained and armed Saddam to fight Iran), Bosnia, and the list goes on.

We have a great time shoving countries around telling them how they should be, act, and do, and it's not our affair. If during the 80's Russia had come over here and started telling us to convert to communism, and started arming separatist groups who supported that notion, do you seriously think we'd have put up with it? The nukes would have been flying within an hour.

We invaded Afghanistan and I had no problem with that. They were sheltering the guy that attacked us. We told them to hand him over, they wouldn't, that's their problem.

Iraq is a very different story. He wasn't harboring bin Laden, he didn't launch the 9/11 attacks, he didn't have the capability of using those mythical WMD's against us even if he had actually possessed them - his best missile flew about 120 miles on a good day and then more than half the time it didn't hit what it was aiming at, which didn't matter because it didn't explode either.

The invasion of Iraq was wrong, it was justified with a network of lies and deceptions, and it's frankly no wonder that people around the world, including the terrorists, would be mad at us.

It's wrong for someone in an American city to kill me, but that doesn't mean I should go find the worst neighborhood, determine what the predominant race is, and then go walking around after dark shouting racial epithets. When they kill me it's still wrong, but it's my stupid behavior that brought the killing on.

And it's the same with the terrorists. When they strike it's definitely wrong, but if we didn't do stupid shit that provoked them, they'd go looking for other targets.



And Iran, Pakistan, and many others have done similar things. Why haven't we invaded them too? The answer is simple - Bush wanted to destroy Iraq to finish what his daddy didn't.



If we can get concrete evidence that he's there, and that Pakistan knows he's there and won't turn him over to us, then yes, we should.

And if Pakistan really doesn't like him as they claim, they should have no problem with letting our forces wander the hills looking for him.

Pakistan is not the wonderful friend Bush makes it out to be.



From my perspective, we've made one big foreign policy mistake over the past 60 years. We've tried to be friends with everybody, instead of making them try to be friends with us.[/QUOTE]

stevo

What do you call the lines of recruits outside iraqi police stations?
What do you call ordinary iraqis fighting back against insurgents? http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...4&postcount=45
Where has the new iraqi army come from if iraqis aren't standing up to fight for themselves?

The exit strategy is to train iraqis to defend themselves. Why does everyone say this is not an exit strategy? What do you want, bush to spit out a date that the last troop will leave? How would that help? It would only give the insurgents a timeframe to rest, recoup, and plan for a takeover once we leave.

We have a plan to turn control over to the iraqi people. They have elected officials, they have a sovergn govt. Their army is being trained not only by US troops, but outside iraq by european nations. NATO is helping to train the new iraqi army.

__________________
"If I am such a genius why am I drunk, lost in the desert, with a bullet in my ass?" -Otto Mannkusser

Hardknock

Lining up outside of police stations and actually performing the duty of one are two very different things. Iraqi police recruitment numbers are way off the mark of what Rice, Cheny and even Bush have bee touting for months.

Refer to my origional statement. Obviously there aren't enough of them standing up to the insurgents to stamp them out. If there were enough ordinary iraqis fighting back they wouldn't have such a stronghold as they do now. But try telling that to Dick.

Again, why aren't the numbers higher? As it stands right now, they arent' defending themselves. At least not very well. Why? Do they not want our version of freedom? Do they want saddam back? Do they just not care?

Becasue that's exactly what this is. When Bush goes on tv talking about how we need to "stay the course" he's besically saying "I don't have a plan, but trust me everything will would out in the end. Your sons and daughters will keep getting killed but things will just play out." A real exit strategy will set a definate timetalbe as to when the iraqi troops are to be trained, how many wil be trained, when they'll go online, when we wil hand over security of the country over to them so our toops can come home. And iraq needs to have their feet held to the fire to get this accomplished. Becasue as it stands right now, we're just fighting a gurella war with no end in sight. Adn iraq is just sitting there watching our soldiers get killed, not lifiting a finger to help. The faster they help, the faster they get their country back. But why would they want to? We're doing the dirty work for them, all they have to do is just sit back and save their own people. Americans are expendable.

Yes. It would help becasue there needs to be a some sort of date of when the handover of security is to take place. This is something that Bush should have thought of before he rushed to war with these guys. But since he had a big boner for war this is but one of the concequences of his actions. The insurgents can wait forever. No matter what we do. We can't stay in iraq forever so eventually, we have to leave. And frankly, they'll probably take over the country anyway so what's the point? Bush is the one who started this never ending war, and he has the balls to go on tv asking me to "stay the course" when he knows damn well he didn't have a any kind of plan to end this.

Whose officals are still being executed on the streets. What does that say to the average iraqi? I have a stable government if my elected officials are being killed on the street?


I seem to remember when Bush told NATO to pretty much fuck off when he started this war in the first place. America's credibility is in the toilet and all those countries in the world that were behind us after 9/11 are now against us since Bush pissed that unity away with his little illegial war. The reality is, we're the only ones "training" the iraqi troops over there and recruitment numbers are in the crapper there just as it is here.

On the other hand, there's always Poland.

meepa

Okay this sounds very Zen and wise, but could you elaborate to me on how one would go about accomplishing this?

Hardknock

The response to this (if any) will mostly likely be along party lines.

Pound the shit out of them and make them see that the American way is the only way.

Mantus

I think it is unrealistic to be asking for a timetable at the moment. One has to remember we had a timetable earlier. The Iraqi army was supposed to have been in command this spring. It didn't happen. The insurgency is too strong. The situation is far from contained, until that happens plans are very unrealistic.

On another note. If Bush orders a troop pull out before the job is done then he is branded as a failure and the Dems win the next election. If he sets a time table for post 2008 then the Dem candidate will be able to use "bring the troops home" as leverage to win the next election.

host

This is already over......from the standpoint of financing, the neocon centric foreign policy is unsustainable, and the U.S. is akin to a "dead man walking", but no one has told the condemned, apparently.

How much longer will the suppliers of 13 million barrels of crude oil per day, accept an inexhaustible stream of fiat script that is printed up constantly to pay the bill? The answer is that the suppliers' reluctance is already manifesting itself in the rise of the price to $60, lately. That's $780 million, every day, $285 billion for the next year.

Spending at least $600 billion per year on military related activities and items, to "make us safe", including off-budget expenses in Iraq and Afghanistan, is not accomplishing that mission, and it presses further on the price of oil, as fiat script is printed out of thin air to finance military spending as well.

This past week, for the first time in 20 years, the price of gold rose against the Swiss Franc, perceived to be the soundest paper currency, with 40 percent gold backing. U.S. currency is backed by faith in the fear mongering propagandist who performed last night at Ft. Bragg, and the political and financial structures that he fronts for.

One of the fuckers who have positioned this country where it is today told congress,
The numbers and the policies as they are publicly proclaimed by these thugs, do not add up. The financial costs to sustain the 'way of life" that too many of us perceive as "our right", along with the military and other governmental obligations that we face, cannot be maintained by the economic base of the U.S. private sector. In 2004, China had a GDP that is about 2/3 of U.S. GDP,
and re-invested 46 percent of it (according to the CIA world fact book), and the U.S. re-invested just 15 percent of it's GDP. France re-invested 19 percent, and has a trade deficit of just $300 million, vs. the U.S. trade deficit that is now on a $700 billion annual pace. France has a poverty rate of 7 percent, vs. 12.5 percent in the U.S.

By any financial measure, and by observation of the trends in place, the U.S. is in dire straits if it intends to continue to import 13 million barrels of oil per day, and maintain it's military spending, even if it has not intention of paying back the debt that it has already accrued. The ominous direction that I see us headed towards, is a neocon stragedy of simply using the military to confiscate foreign oil fields form the hands of their current owners, or to dicatate the price that the U.S. will pay at the point of a gun or a nuke.

For some of you, I can predict your answer to the question, "is that how you want to live"? For the rest, what can we do about it? How do we live life in a country with a government that is an example to our children and to the world, when we cannot afford to do it morally or honsetly?

moosenose

You are joking, right? You do realize that the Vietnam anti-war movement was largely funded by and answered to the KGB and their people, don't you? Read up on Armand Hammer when you have the time.

He did harbor terrorists that did kill US citizens. He did pay people to conduct suicide bombings against American allies. He did shoot at US planes. He did plot to assassinate a former US president. Any ONE of these was casus belli to kill him.

Why don't we give them therapy, too? Hell, why don't the Democrats run THEM for office?

No, they're next if they don't behave...

moosenose

Simple. You stop giving them stuff, unless they come to us and beg for it. Then, you say "and what will you do for us in return? Land for military bases might be nice..." These people are not our client states, and just giving them shit so that "maybe" they'll like us is wrong.

moosenose

Well, there's always Canada, and I hear the cost of living is pretty cheap in the Former Soviet Union...

shakran

In case you're not up on your history, the vietnam war did not take place in the 1980's.





He did not attack us on september 11th. The man who attacked us on september 11th is still running around free. He did not have WMD's. The justifications used before the war were that he had WMD's and would use them against the US. He didn't have them, and didn't have the capability of hitting us with them even if he did.





Why don't we stop worrying about running other countries and start running our own? And why don't we stop with the partisan horseshit? There isn't one true democrat out there who sides with the terrorists. Stop spewing this bullshit that we do. There ARE democrats out there, however, who do not hold a Rambo-esque view of the world. We realize that, while we may not like what the terrorists are doing, they are doing it because they are pissed off at us, and maybe instead of killing off our soldiers by the hundreds fighting a nebulous enemy that is in the end impossible to defeat, we should instead try running our own country, stop doing things which we do not NEED to do for our own welfare, but which piss off the terrorists when we do them, and start being a good neighbor rather than the neighborhood bully.






Spoken like a true world conquest supporter. If you want to take over the world, just say so. But stop acting like every other nation has to act exactly like we do or we're justified in invading them. It's time the US accept that some cultures have different ways of doing things, and it's time for us to realize that forcing democracy is not only stupid, it's not even democratic. The reason OUR democracy has lasted as long as it has is because WE chose it. Forcing it on other nations is not going to have the same result.

Elphaba

I would encourage you to start a thread on this because it is news to me and I suspect most of the other Boomers that were there and protesting. Dang, I never saw a "red" dime.

j8ear

Very reasonable and sound thought processes Moosenose.

I must commend you on a particulary well debated thread.

Aside from a comment or two by Pan, perhaps a snip of Shakran, and a dash of Stevo....your is but the lone voice of reason in this thread so far.

Well done,

-bear

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It's alot easier to ask for forgiveness then it is to ask for permission.

tecoyah

Hmmmm.....care to play the nice game

No

OK....I dont care to either


Time to tone it down Moose

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Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

moosenose

Actually, I wasn't trying to be mean. I saw his point as being that basically the costs of being an American were too high for him, in that he feels that he can't live morally or honestly in the US because of our government. I would never want him to feel that he could not live morally or honestly, but at the same time don't want to advocate that he commit another felony so that he could "feel better". (Remember, advocating that others commit a crime is generally a crime in and of itself, and "mass pardons" are much harder to come by nowadays then they were in 1976-1980.) What completely legal and morally acceptable alternatives does that leave for him? It's obvious that he cannot legally get Bush out of office before 2008 (and talk of impeaching Bush is laughable, we'll see government-subsidized legalized pot being given away in grocery stores before Bush gets impeached) , so he might very well feel more comfortable in a "safe" country.

As people keep pointing out, there are lots of "civilized" places people can live if they choose to that do not happen to be within the United States. If they don't want to, they generally don't even have to give up their citizenship, so coming back home after the '08 elections wouldn't even be a problem.

BTW, Canada is a very nice country, but the cost of living there can be pretty steep if you cannot legally be employed because you are a foreigner, especially if you are on a fixed income. I have friends who are currently living in the former Soviet Union, and they tell me that the cost of living in reasonable comfort is much, much lower there than in Canada, Europe, and much of Asia. Turkey, believe it or not, is also supposed to be a good place to live cheap.

moosenose

I suspect that was because you were not married to Jane Fonda at the time, or in a high enough position to profit from it.

BTW, did you ever hear Jane Fonda wax rhapsodic on the positives of Communism? I recall something about "pray on your knees to become Communists"... "On your knees", indeed...

moosenose

You're right, it didn't. It ended around 1975, IIRC. So you're saying that the Communists in the US packed up and went home after Vietnam?

Oh. So you are saying that we should support a war on terrorists that actually attacked us on 9/11, and not on any other terrorists?

I thought all 19 of them died? What kind of a war on terror are we going to have when the terrorists we need to kill have all died while attacking us before the war is declared?

So you can say who is a "true Democrat" and who isn't? Is Sen. Byrd a "True Democrat"? How many more times does he need to use the "N" word for him to no longer be a "true" democrat? How about Zell Miller and Joe Liebermann? Are they ""True Democrats"? How about Cynthia McKinney and her crowd?

It is far better for the American people to send our military to Iraq to kill foreign-born terrorists there, at the cost of under 2,000 American dead in the past few years, than it is for our military to sit back and wait for the NEXT September 11 to take place in the US, with the thousands of attendant American casualties in a day. It's not like they have an endless supply of suicide bombers, is it? 19 suicide bombers killed close to 3,000 Americans on 9/11. We've killed or caused to be expended many times that number of suicide bombers in Iraq, at a fraction of the American body count.

They don't have to act like us. But if they harbor our enemies, they become our enemies, and they have to understand that being our enemy carries a price. If they chant "Death to America!", they should be able to expect death FROM America. And their whining about it is just pathetic and exposes their impotence to the world.

Cynthetiq

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I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

Mantus

The difference between the one line and three paragraphs: none. Infact it only got worse...

shakran

So then what was your original point in using a McCarthyian viewpoint of the vietnam war to dispute a point about the 1980's?





Uh, yeah, pretty much. It's our job to defend ourselves, not to arrest anyone doing any wrong anywhere in the world. If they want to blow shit up in CountryX, then it's CountryX's job to take care of them. It's our job to take care of them when they hurt stuff in OUR country.




Your grasp on current events is not very good then. All of them did not die. Moussaui is still alive and in jail. Many of the planners and instigators, including bin Laden, are still alive and running free. Only the operatives died on the planes. Those guys are the foot soldiers. Theyr'e expendable, and there's lots more where they came from. If you want to stop this group you have to cut its head off, and that means getting bin Laden. How can you possibly justify this "war on terror" when the president sees no need to capture the terrorist that started all this?





You come up with 4 people and use that as a basis to reject a party of millions? Gee, let's see. McCarthy, Nixon, Ollie North, and Limbaugh. There's 4 nutjob republicans for ya. I guess we can reject that party too. What exactly is your point here?




that's delusional, plain and simple. You're deluding yourself into thinking that we can protect ourselves by running around the world killing people while leaving our boarders wide open, our ports unprotected, and our airport security still not catching knives going through the scanners. And added to that we've got the entire world angry with us. How exactly is what we are doing protecting the American people?


Um, yeah, actually, they pretty much do. That's why so many suicide bombers are still blowing things up nearly every day.



Wrong again. They were not suicide bombers. They were kamikaze terrorists. They didn't blow themselves up, and they didn't have bombs.

If you have a nest of 2,000 cobras, and you kill 80 of them, the remaining 1,920 will still bite and kill you.





OK. You advocating invading pakistan and afghanistan again? Because that's where bin Laden is. And since Iraq wasn't harboring any of the 19 terrorists, or their bosses, why are you still such a supporter of the invasion?


You are frightening. You want to kill people for voicing an opinion? Freedom of speech is one of the pillars of our democracy, and you want to kill people for exercising it? I don't give a crap if they chant death to america as long as they don't act on it. You, apparently, want to go on a killing spree any time anyone looks at you wrong. That kind of militaristic rambo crap is NOT the way to safeguard our country.



People protest unjustly being killed by Americans, and you call it whining? I don't think that even merits a response.