The US blocks any resolution that reflects badly upon itself or Israel.
Saddam handed over a 10,000 page report detailing their destruction of WMDs, and since we have only found ridiculously small quantities of mustard tipped artillery shells, I would say he was telling more truth than our own government.
Saddam was megalomaniac, and kicked the UN out to piss the US off. Unfortunately for him, he didn't realize or believe that the top levels of government were filled entirely with lunatics who consider the Christian God part of their foreign policy. I really wish I was making that up.
If you really value UN resolutions, as other posters have said, we should be paying reparations to Nicaragua for war crimes, yanking funding and military support for Israel, and perhaps even helping people in Darfur. Unfortunately for those in Darfur, there aren't billions of barrels of easily obtained oil under their feet worth trillions of dollars. Otherwise we might pretend to care for them as well.
The point is, really, that Bush has no morals. His ethics are fucking meaningless, and in my opinion that sentiment fills the whole executive branch, the CIA, the FBI, and probably a majority of the congress and judiciary branches as well.
The American government has not only lost touch with it's own constituency, it actively goes out of it's way to ignore their will through gerrymandering, spreading bullshit during their campaign, and using wedge issues to divide the country for their own benefit. You have swallowed that empty rhetoric hook, line, sinker, and reel.
But hey! Welcome to the Repocratic Party! Enjoy your jetski, and keep shopping.
I don't know why people don't make the connection, but corporations thrive on inefficiency. It makes more money.
The caloric value of a gallon of gas would get you a ridiculous amount of mileage if you used your legs on a bicycle instead, and it would save our society resources because you'd be healthier for it. The only problem with this kind of transportation is that you're not using enough stuff. No brake pads, transmission fluid, tires, stops at the Kwik-E mart...
The real flaw of American capitalism is that corporations have corrupted and infiltrated the government and created totally unnecessary wants purely to make a profit. Remember GM and the tire companies buying and dismantling mass transit after WWII?
Just think about this. According to popular convention, these are two different entities: Road and Highway Budget: Necessary for the maintenance of our infrastructure. (In fact, a transportation subsidy.) Mass Transit Subsidy: Government assistance given to subway systems. (In fact, a transportation subsidy.)
And what are subsidies? The result of a radical idea that money collected from taxpayers should be used to benefit taxpayers! Totally communist/socialist/liberal bed-wetting propaganda if you ask me! These lies and half-truths are marketed to us by the media, because the media's TRUE clients are corporations and their advertising revenue. Corporations win, everyone else loses.
Just keep in mind that Wikipedia is a heavily Western centric encyclopedia that's barely seven years old.
Societies tend to skip over their own sins, either due to a lack of self-awareness or a genuine desire to cover up their own atrocities. You're unlikely to find a Roman document questioning their treatment of subjugate populations, and mainstream American culture is no different.
I do believe the lands were divided up before anybody knew there was oil there or I am sure the imperialist United States would have took the land from the poor people of the time. You do understand that the dreadnoughts that comprised the British, American, and German navies were powered by oil, right? In fact, the first all-oil British fleet was commissioned in 1912. Around that time the Germans were planning a railroad from Baghdad to Berlin, in order to secure their supply of oil. This is well before the supposed start of WWI by the assassination of Ferdinand.
Britain did divide up the empire without regard to tribal and religious lines to make those areas easier to subjugate.
Who says Israel should be completely destroyed and all Jews killed (genocide). There are nutcases on both sides. The Israeli army has killed many thousands of Palestinian civilians, and demolished their homes as they continue to illegally build more communities on occupied territory. Palestinians have more bark, and Israelis have more bullets, helicopter gunships, jet fighters, and tanks.
Who lobs rockets into civilian cities in Israel killing women and children? Who sends suicide bombers to kill innocent woman and children on school buses and markets? Who does the same thing with far superior military equipment?
Who has given up land, moved it own people out of legitimate cities all to accommodate the enemy in the hope for peace. Israel, you imbecile Israel is taking land right now as we speak, building a wall that will cut off Palestine from the arable land and water resources, against the declarations of the UN. These facts are not disputed by anyone in the Israeli government.
Please tell me what U.S. Military bases are in Israel today? Every Israeli military base is available for use by the US military. So, I'd say the entire country.
Is this your feeble attempt to justify the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. If so, go to hell, in my humble opinion we should have nuked Iraq, Syria, and any other country that attacks us So, once they have nuclear weapons, it's alright for Iran to retaliate to our attack with a nuclear strike?
Also, Iraq and Syria have never attacked the United States. Ever.
Islamic dog... And then you quote Norm Chomsky a noted Communist, what gall coming from a fascist Oh, shit. Just say earlier in your rambling and meaningless post that you're insane. It will help me avoid wasting time on discussing facts and history with someone who's unable to deal with such entities.
And for the record, it's Daniel Pearl, who was murdered by cruel and vile people. Your solution is to kill anyone who looks or seems to agree with the murderers. The correct solution is to bring justice to the people who actually committed the crime, and not kill their neighbors instead.
It couldn't be that democracy is a superior idea that become popular through it's own merit? Or are all good ideas only spread by the tip of a bayonet?
Most democracies arrive at the will of their own people instead of the military intervention of the U.S. Next time, try linking to a vast set of animated American flags. It will really change my mind.
Use the fucking Google. I'm not expressing any idea that isn't accepted by the vast majority of modern historians. It's even on Wikipedia for chrissake. Here are some keywords:
If it was a legitimate military target, why was there such furor over that attack? Why did it cause Ben Gurion to eliminate Moshe Sneh and others from participating in the new government?
The Irgun and most Zionists that followed killed Arabs and Brits who stood in the way of their belief that they had a right to immigrate into Palestine, gain a majority, and declare a Jewish state. That seems to be fine with you.
Palestinians kill Israelis who stand in the way of their belief that they have a right to have military and civil control over the places where they have lived for hundreds of years. This seems to be a problem for you.
Arab nations keep Palestinians in perpetual refugee status for their own political gain. As does Israel and the US. I can't do anything about the governments of Jordan, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia. I can try to affect change in my own country, so we stop participating a political system no different than apartheid.
The Arab world collectively could have moved on from all of this but seem unwilling or unable to do so. This is not saying that those that really have a sense of nationhood couldn't be counter-zionists in their period of disaspora. However, there is no good excuse for them living like animals in other Arab countries. If you live in an Arab country, then that would be relevant to you. The best thing I can do as an American is give Palestinians and all Arabs equal footing and a fighting chance to determine their own lives by reducing the atrocities of my government and it's client states in the Middle East.
There are other options besides covert military action. None were tried because we didn't care about the Afghani people, we cared about bleeding Russia dry.
It's time to get the petroleum monkey off our backs just so we can go back to ignoring these people. It's what we do with all other suffering societies. Off the top off my head at the moment: Moldova, Tibet, Myanmar, Darfur, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Ethiopia, Chile, Bolivia, Haiti...
What does all of their suffering have in common? They are nowhere near valuable resources, or if they are, they're too close to the Russian Federation or China.
I am responsible for American actions as an American citizen right now, not a hundred years ago. The misdeeds of long forgotten empires appeal only to people grasping at straws to justify their immorality.
The reason there's no democracy in Iran is because we destroyed it in it's infancy in 1953 because they tried to nationalize their oil and take profits away from British and American companies.
The reason there's no democracy in Iraq is because we propped up Saddam Hussein. He was our new ally against the Ayatollah. The Ayatollah was in power because the Shah we was the leader of a repressive government.
It's a familiar pattern. The arrival of American intervention has often signaled the end of democracy for Arab nations, not the beginning.
Your irrational fear of Islamic military rule is so improbable it's ridiculous. It's only possible if we continue to subject millions of people based on their religious and ethnic identities to violence and repression.
In 1953 Iran dared to nationalize their natural resource, and tried to throw the Anglo-Persian oil company out. The US/UK response was to lead a coup and install a brutal dictator, restoring Anglo-Persian Oil to Anglo-Iranian Oil and eventually British Petroleum (now known as BP).
That's one direct example of us taking oil away from a country.
Iraq is pretty much the same deal. The new, and of course, completely independent Iraqi government has decided to allow foreign companies (hint hint) exploit their resources and pay them a very small fee of 12 or 13 percent. Recently, Venezuela demanded and received 50 or 60 percent.
America isn't the only country that stands to gain, but our companies stand to gain the most. Consider more than 100,000,000,000 (yes, that's one hundred billion) barrels of oil at $130 just to start. It's not a game of small stakes.
Read something about the history of the Middle East before you spout such bullshit: Wikipedia is your reference? My, you are educated.
The Middle East was a social and political dump before the Europeans got involved, and it still is. An eloquent statement. That's a common European attitude to consider anyone who doesn't live an exactly western lifestyle as inferior. It's only a few hundred years old.
And given Arab aspirations for re-building their empire and imposing their religion on others, I don't even particularly care that the West imposed its rule on the region. First, please list all of the aggressive 20th century Arab invasions you can think of or have reference to.
Second, it's sad that you don't believe in the same Republic that the founding fathers did.
First of all, the Europe you see today was largely constructed by the US; if it had been up to the French, British, and Russians, they would have repeated the mistakes of WWI and we'd have had WWIII by now. Funded, not constructed. The US did do a good job of stabilizing the world in the wake of that disaster, but it was through diplomacy and economic incentive, not inane foreign policy and secret police.
I'm proud of most of our post-war work, if not some of the terrorism we committed during the war. It was our inability to control the machine that we created that has led to our current situation, just as Dwight Eisenhower predicted.
Furthermore, you really have no clue about the attitudes or motivations behind European politics. Because?
Well, I can tell that you are an uneducated lout. I'll be sure to look that word up on my new guide to education: Wikipedia.
Wikipedia! Providing accurate histories of both sides of Western thought since 2001!
Al Queda would almost certainly not exist if we hadn't gathered the most extreme Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan and then trained them in guerrilla style warfare to fight the Russians.
Al Queda would definitely not exist if we had no military presence in the middle east.
This is hindsight, of course. But looking at the cases of Lebanon, Iran, and Iraq, I take my cue from Reagan who "redeployed" troops out of Lebanon after the terrorist attacks there. We don't understand Arab culture, and it's probable that we never will.
Instead of just saying it, that fact should be a part of an energy policy and foreign policy to keep us uninvolved as much as is possible.
Except for the Jewish terrorists that blew up the King David Hotel in 1948 that was housing British soldiers? There were a hundred casualties, and officially of course, were renegades operating outside the "true" leadership of the Zionist movement. (Though I do believe Ben Gurion wasn't involved.)
Ask an Ariel Sharon style hawk if he would attack US interests if he believed it would save his homeland. I wouldn't be surprised by his response, but maybe you would.
A one-state solution could have worked in the 50s or 60s, but the Zionists have sown something they will never want to reap. Generations of repression, poverty, and victims genocide are coiled into a space that is a fifth of it's former size. And people are shocked that they fire homemade rockets at the civilians who piloted the tanks and bulldozers the previous day?
Israel kills Palestinians with American weapons, and keeps their economy afloat with American funds. Over one hundred billion dollars thus far (close to 150 billion with interest, I believe.)
Palestine has received less than four or five billion in the same period if my guess is right, with the added bonus of our veto of any United Nations resolution in their favor.
Sure, and why not? It's not like there was a flourishing democracy there, or an outpouring of mutual aid. In the first half of this century, ideas of fascism, Arab nationalism, and empires were widespread. There were flourishing democracies with vast untapped resources threatening to break free of the bonds of colonial Europe.
Why not divide up the middle east? Because it doesn't belong to us, and we lack the cultural understanding to effectively govern it.
They have merely proved that the US isn't perfect. That should come as no surprise if you look at US history. Look at how the US behaved relative to Mexico or the Phillipines. The US has always thrown its weight around and taken what it wanted. That's what American voters want their government to do. And why not? Are you a hedonist or a Nazi? I can't really tell.
No, it is actually a better place than it was a century ago or even half a century ago. There is less racism, less torture, less unjustified military intervention, less empire building. Less racism because of civil leaders and people like Martin Luther King who the FBI considered "the most dangerous Negro leader in America." I'm not sure if that was before or after they assassinated some of his colleagues.
The Japanese, Germans, and other prisoners of war were not tortured, as far as I'm aware, in WWI or WWII. Torture in the War on Terror is officially approved as long as you don't call it torture.
There's been no decline in military spending since WWII. We have hundreds of more military installations around the world, and we're building many permanent installations right now in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have not left any significant amount of the bases we established nearly seventy years ago.
Every single improvement in American life since WWII has been the result of popular movement, and the government has been dragged with it kicking, screaming, and killing it's own citizenry in the process.
Throughout its history, the US has primarily looked out for its own interests and improved lives for its own citizens. True until recently. The current government does not care about it's citizenry. That's why it's acceptable not to pay attention to polls or popular votes (presidential or involving medicinal marijuana).
Occasionally it has tried to do a little bit for other nations when it was convenient to do so. Example?
That may not be much, but it is still a whole lot more than you can say for most other nations. Except every other developed western nation since WWII (which I consider a definitive paradigm shift worldwide.) The whole of Europe have learned their lesson. For some reason we don't seem to get it.
That's not quite true. We supported Israel in 1947, not because of terrorism, but to counter-balance the presence of Islamic governments in the Middle East (as opposed to the colonial governments before them). Also, we didn't want Jewish refugees in our backyard. Neither did Europe.
We had bases in Saudi Arabia in case Saddam invaded again, which probably would have happened if we weren't there. We've justified a military presence in various parts of the Middle East without terrorism for at least 50 years... will say, though, that our policy pales in comparison to the British policy towards controlling its oil and other interests You're making my head spin. We're better than Imperial England? How many times have we been unsupportive of their foreign policy in the last hundred and ten years? We ARE Imperial England, as far as everyone in the Middle East is concerned.
The old reason we allowed ourselves to rule over the Middle East is because we believe those resources belong to the West, and not to the inhabitants of territory that "rightfully" belonged to the colonial powers. After WWII nearly destroyed Europe, they couldn't hold on to their subjugate territories, so we attempted to hold on for them. As many people began to realize that greed was our true motive, it became the containment of the Soviet Union. After that began to fail to seem reasonable, it became terrorism.
As opposed to our outstanding foreign policy in Latin America, Africa, Asia, etc. We pretty much fucked the goat on middle east foreign policy, no argument there. We only care about justifying our Middle East policy anymore because of the resources we're trying to take from them. I'm sure we have some interesting plans for Venezuela in the near future, and when we start running of things like clean water and arable land, I'm sure we'll be suddenly interested again. I didn't miss the story about establishing AFRICOM late last year. Did you?
I was talking about the ones that make use a modern society. Oil will peak within the next 10 years. Natural gas has already peaked, and coal reserves aren't well proven.
As soon as it's clear that there isn't much left, the price will skyrocket. $4 gas will be a wet dream compared to what it will cost in 2040 (inflation notwithstanding.)
Human society will survive, but I'm not sure American society will. It's just like the global warming thing. Sure we'll survive, but how many and under what circumstances?
And yet you make no mention of how many Iraqis must feel every day, and the damage we cause on a scale a thousand times worse just in terms of body count to the Arab psyche?
Every time we destroy a secular Arab society, we end up with another terrorist group. And I'll tell you something, our children will not be dealing with terrorists from Saudi Arabia, but with the children of Iraqis and Palestinians for generations to come.
We need terrorism. Without it, we have no plausible reason to maintain a military presence near valuable US business interests in the middle east.
The real reason all of these stupid decisions are being made is because we have no representation in government. Power is concentrated in the media, which is a for-profit enterprise, the military, which the biggest part of our for-profit economy, and the executive branch, where we have no voting authority over the cabinet that infests it, who also through strange coincidence go on to or come from large corporations who participate in huge government contracts.
Our involvement in the middle east has been a disaster for ONE HUNDRED fucking years. The only thing that's changed in the last twenty or thirty is that they are finally fighting back effectively. As the most powerful and morally hypocritical force in history, we're finding that we have no palate for our own medicine.
England and America have directly been involved in dividing up Arab land and resources since they switched their militaries from steam-powered equipment to oil powered equipment. We've been militarily involved in Iraq since before WWI. We destroyed the democratic government of Iran becuase they dared to demand that they keep the profit from their own natural resources. We formed al Queda when we used them as cannon fodder to fuck around with the Russians. We supplied Israel with capital and military equipment to commit acts of genocide against the Palestinians (mostly because we didn't want Jewish refugees in America) and they allowed us to establish a military base without too much fuss. We helped the invade Lebanon, destroy the entire country, and the direct result was Hezbollah. We funded the army of Saddam Hussein knowing full well that it would be used to murder thousands of his own people. Our military has helped with the slow crush of the PLO, which resulted in Hamas.
So, after a hundred years of oppression and suffering, they strike one blow about a ten thousand times less deadly in the number of dead and about a hundred thousand times less damaging as a matter of culture and economy.
And then they won after they proved that the infidel doesn't have the moral fortitude to give everyone the right to a lawyer, no matter how heinous their crime. They proved that we have no moral superiority when it comes to torture and human rights.
America is not the same place it used to be. All there is to do now is sit back and watch what's left of the power structure squabble over the table scraps until we run out of resources and the next revolution occurs.
But don't pay any attention to this. Listen to the President. Go shopping, and he'll take care of the rest.
Ah, so a police office who, from a safe distance away, shoots a man holding a family hostage is "severely deranged"? It's not "self defense", after all. Seeking cases on the fringe is a pointless endeavor. Civilian self-protection, policing activity, and military action are not the same thing.
Was the instigation by the founding fathers of the American Revolution "nothing less than murder"? Certainly the vast majority of the Colonists were under no threat of death or violence by the British. Indeed I would go so far as to say that most Colonists were quite indifferent about the matter either way. Wow. You may want to read the tiniest bit of history before making a statement like that.
I'm not sure if the social construct at that time would have supported massive civilian demonstration (due to the differences in media and mobility) but that's the only way effective change has been wrought in the last sixty years.
Saying that violence is only legitimized in self defense is a pretty broad statement... is it truly what you believe? As someone who genuinely believes in the philosophy of Christ, Buddha, and other people I look up to, absolutely.
I ask you this: if you stuck a gun in the hand of the Governor of Texas, led him to a roomful of atheists (or Muslims), and told him that he was free to shoot whomever he wanted with no repercussions if he felt they deserved death for not yet being "saved", would he pull the trigger? I think not. He may be a fundamentalist, but I doubt he is a complete and total nutjob. Ask the same person if it's alright to exercise violence that would kill the neighbors of "suspected" terrorists/infidels, as long as those suspected aren't near anyone he cares about, and he'll gleefully approve. Alternately, ask him the same question if he gets $10,000 per body as a reward for his violence.
...that doesn't make them psychotic maniacs. Yes, it does. They believe in something that by all observable measures does not exist.
Nor do I think that the only religious nutjobs are Christian or Muslim. There just happen to be a lot more members of those religions than most others, and they have had plenty of time to get real pissed off... The meek do not inherit the earth. The religions that advocate compliance or death do.
There are violent Bhuddist monks, and I am sure that you can find a Wiccan or two, somewhere in the world, that thinks their beliefs are worth somebody else's life. There are certainly some Jews (extreme Zionists) that believe that the killing of others is justified in order to set up their version of an ideal holy land. By no means are these views shared by most (or even many) of the adherents of those traditions, but every group has some bad apples that get carried away. The real problem is that it is somehow a negative thing to label them for their true nature. A person who legitimizes violence for any purpose other than self defense is severely deranged, and their leadership in aggressive military action should be considered nothing less than murder.
I'm using the every day definitions - I understand those who adhere to the core of most religions would be peaceful.
However, the evangelicals of America, whether gullible, willfully ignorant, or genuinely stupid, are responsible for voting in the current Administration twice in a row. They are motivated by the issues of abortion and gay marriage, and by virtue of it's mention in the bible, should be as troublesome as the consumption of shellfish.
The abortion issue is more reasonable, as it involves the future liberty of two human beings, but is safe to say that "abortion is murder" and "war is heroic" are not compatible world views to any rational person.
Personally, I don't see how anyone can reconcile the angry tribal desert Gods of the OT with the comparatively liberalized hippie God of the NT. Even if you can somehow accept the suppression and execution of non-dogmatic early Christians by the Roman authorities as a legitimate way to establish what ended up in "the" bible.
You seem to be forgetting the instances where God stops the sun to allow the wholesale slaughter of men, women, children, babies, and animals. Or the same God who rejoices when you smash the children of enemies against rocks (Psalm 137:9) or allows his followers to be tortured in order to prove their obedience.
There are numerous places in the Qu'ran where you are allowed to kill the infidel if he tries to interfere with your faith. They can easily justify killing a woman for not covering up sufficiently, which they view as preventing them for following their faith, and it even explicitly mentions killing the infidel until they stop their wars of aggression...
Just tell a fundamentalist that you listen to God, and they'll believe you. Ask George Bush or bin Laden.
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The US blocks any resolution that reflects badly upon itself or Israel.
Saddam handed over a 10,000 page report detailing their destruction of WMDs, and since we have only found ridiculously small quantities of mustard tipped artillery shells, I would say he was telling more truth than our own government.
Saddam was megalomaniac, and kicked the UN out to piss the US off. Unfortunately for him, he didn't realize or believe that the top levels of government were filled entirely with lunatics who consider the Christian God part of their foreign policy. I really wish I was making that up.
If you really value UN resolutions, as other posters have said, we should be paying reparations to Nicaragua for war crimes, yanking funding and military support for Israel, and perhaps even helping people in Darfur. Unfortunately for those in Darfur, there aren't billions of barrels of easily obtained oil under their feet worth trillions of dollars. Otherwise we might pretend to care for them as well.
The point is, really, that Bush has no morals. His ethics are fucking meaningless, and in my opinion that sentiment fills the whole executive branch, the CIA, the FBI, and probably a majority of the congress and judiciary branches as well.
The American government has not only lost touch with it's own constituency, it actively goes out of it's way to ignore their will through gerrymandering, spreading bullshit during their campaign, and using wedge issues to divide the country for their own benefit. You have swallowed that empty rhetoric hook, line, sinker, and reel.
But hey! Welcome to the Repocratic Party! Enjoy your jetski, and keep shopping.
Seriously.
I don't know why people don't make the connection, but corporations thrive on inefficiency. It makes more money.
The caloric value of a gallon of gas would get you a ridiculous amount of mileage if you used your legs on a bicycle instead, and it would save our society resources because you'd be healthier for it. The only problem with this kind of transportation is that you're not using enough stuff. No brake pads, transmission fluid, tires, stops at the Kwik-E mart...
The real flaw of American capitalism is that corporations have corrupted and infiltrated the government and created totally unnecessary wants purely to make a profit. Remember GM and the tire companies buying and dismantling mass transit after WWII?
Just think about this. According to popular convention, these are two different entities: Road and Highway Budget: Necessary for the maintenance of our infrastructure. (In fact, a transportation subsidy.) Mass Transit Subsidy: Government assistance given to subway systems. (In fact, a transportation subsidy.)
And what are subsidies? The result of a radical idea that money collected from taxpayers should be used to benefit taxpayers! Totally communist/socialist/liberal bed-wetting propaganda if you ask me! These lies and half-truths are marketed to us by the media, because the media's TRUE clients are corporations and their advertising revenue. Corporations win, everyone else loses.
Just keep in mind that Wikipedia is a heavily Western centric encyclopedia that's barely seven years old.
Societies tend to skip over their own sins, either due to a lack of self-awareness or a genuine desire to cover up their own atrocities. You're unlikely to find a Roman document questioning their treatment of subjugate populations, and mainstream American culture is no different.
Britain did divide up the empire without regard to tribal and religious lines to make those areas easier to subjugate. Who says Israel should be completely destroyed and all Jews killed (genocide). There are nutcases on both sides. The Israeli army has killed many thousands of Palestinian civilians, and demolished their homes as they continue to illegally build more communities on occupied territory. Palestinians have more bark, and Israelis have more bullets, helicopter gunships, jet fighters, and tanks. Who lobs rockets into civilian cities in Israel killing women and children? Who sends suicide bombers to kill innocent woman and children on school buses and markets? Who does the same thing with far superior military equipment? Who has given up land, moved it own people out of legitimate cities all to accommodate the enemy in the hope for peace. Israel, you imbecile Israel is taking land right now as we speak, building a wall that will cut off Palestine from the arable land and water resources, against the declarations of the UN. These facts are not disputed by anyone in the Israeli government. Please tell me what U.S. Military bases are in Israel today? Every Israeli military base is available for use by the US military. So, I'd say the entire country. Is this your feeble attempt to justify the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. If so, go to hell, in my humble opinion we should have nuked Iraq, Syria, and any other country that attacks us So, once they have nuclear weapons, it's alright for Iran to retaliate to our attack with a nuclear strike?
Also, Iraq and Syria have never attacked the United States. Ever. Islamic dog... And then you quote Norm Chomsky a noted Communist, what gall coming from a fascist Oh, shit. Just say earlier in your rambling and meaningless post that you're insane. It will help me avoid wasting time on discussing facts and history with someone who's unable to deal with such entities.
And for the record, it's Daniel Pearl, who was murdered by cruel and vile people. Your solution is to kill anyone who looks or seems to agree with the murderers. The correct solution is to bring justice to the people who actually committed the crime, and not kill their neighbors instead.
It couldn't be that democracy is a superior idea that become popular through it's own merit? Or are all good ideas only spread by the tip of a bayonet?
Most democracies arrive at the will of their own people instead of the military intervention of the U.S. Next time, try linking to a vast set of animated American flags. It will really change my mind.
Use the fucking Google. I'm not expressing any idea that isn't accepted by the vast majority of modern historians. It's even on Wikipedia for chrissake. Here are some keywords:
Islamic Revolution
Anglo-Persian/Anglo-Iranian/British Petroleum
Here's a link to TIME's coverage of the new oil policy that directly benefits American and British oil companies:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1576593,00.html
There's more information out there that you can shake a stick at, it's all easily available, and it's not very hard to understand the pattern.
If it was a legitimate military target, why was there such furor over that attack? Why did it cause Ben Gurion to eliminate Moshe Sneh and others from participating in the new government?
The Irgun and most Zionists that followed killed Arabs and Brits who stood in the way of their belief that they had a right to immigrate into Palestine, gain a majority, and declare a Jewish state. That seems to be fine with you.
Palestinians kill Israelis who stand in the way of their belief that they have a right to have military and civil control over the places where they have lived for hundreds of years. This seems to be a problem for you.
like animals in other Arab countries. If you live in an Arab country, then that would be relevant to you. The best thing I can do as an American is give Palestinians and all Arabs equal footing and a fighting chance to determine their own lives by reducing the atrocities of my government and it's client states in the Middle East.
What does all of their suffering have in common? They are nowhere near valuable resources, or if they are, they're too close to the Russian Federation or China.
I am responsible for American actions as an American citizen right now, not a hundred years ago. The misdeeds of long forgotten empires appeal only to people grasping at straws to justify their immorality.
The reason there's no democracy in Iran is because we destroyed it in it's infancy in 1953 because they tried to nationalize their oil and take profits away from British and American companies.
The reason there's no democracy in Iraq is because we propped up Saddam Hussein. He was our new ally against the Ayatollah. The Ayatollah was in power because the Shah we was the leader of a repressive government.
It's a familiar pattern. The arrival of American intervention has often signaled the end of democracy for Arab nations, not the beginning.
Your irrational fear of Islamic military rule is so improbable it's ridiculous. It's only possible if we continue to subject millions of people based on their religious and ethnic identities to violence and repression.
In 1953 Iran dared to nationalize their natural resource, and tried to throw the Anglo-Persian oil company out. The US/UK response was to lead a coup and install a brutal dictator, restoring Anglo-Persian Oil to Anglo-Iranian Oil and eventually British Petroleum (now known as BP).
That's one direct example of us taking oil away from a country.
Iraq is pretty much the same deal. The new, and of course, completely independent Iraqi government has decided to allow foreign companies (hint hint) exploit their resources and pay them a very small fee of 12 or 13 percent. Recently, Venezuela demanded and received 50 or 60 percent.
America isn't the only country that stands to gain, but our companies stand to gain the most. Consider more than 100,000,000,000 (yes, that's one hundred billion) barrels of oil at $130 just to start. It's not a game of small stakes.
Second, it's sad that you don't believe in the same Republic that the founding fathers did. First of all, the Europe you see today was largely constructed by the US; if it had been up to the French, British, and Russians, they would have repeated the mistakes of WWI and we'd have had WWIII by now. Funded, not constructed. The US did do a good job of stabilizing the world in the wake of that disaster, but it was through diplomacy and economic incentive, not inane foreign policy and secret police.
I'm proud of most of our post-war work, if not some of the terrorism we committed during the war. It was our inability to control the machine that we created that has led to our current situation, just as Dwight Eisenhower predicted. Furthermore, you really have no clue about the attitudes or motivations behind European politics. Because? Well, I can tell that you are an uneducated lout. I'll be sure to look that word up on my new guide to education: Wikipedia.
Wikipedia! Providing accurate histories of both sides of Western thought since 2001!
Al Queda would almost certainly not exist if we hadn't gathered the most extreme Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan and then trained them in guerrilla style warfare to fight the Russians.
Al Queda would definitely not exist if we had no military presence in the middle east.
This is hindsight, of course. But looking at the cases of Lebanon, Iran, and Iraq, I take my cue from Reagan who "redeployed" troops out of Lebanon after the terrorist attacks there. We don't understand Arab culture, and it's probable that we never will.
Instead of just saying it, that fact should be a part of an energy policy and foreign policy to keep us uninvolved as much as is possible.
Except for the Jewish terrorists that blew up the King David Hotel in 1948 that was housing British soldiers? There were a hundred casualties, and officially of course, were renegades operating outside the "true" leadership of the Zionist movement. (Though I do believe Ben Gurion wasn't involved.)
Ask an Ariel Sharon style hawk if he would attack US interests if he believed it would save his homeland. I wouldn't be surprised by his response, but maybe you would.
A one-state solution could have worked in the 50s or 60s, but the Zionists have sown something they will never want to reap. Generations of repression, poverty, and victims genocide are coiled into a space that is a fifth of it's former size. And people are shocked that they fire homemade rockets at the civilians who piloted the tanks and bulldozers the previous day?
Israel kills Palestinians with American weapons, and keeps their economy afloat with American funds. Over one hundred billion dollars thus far (close to 150 billion with interest, I believe.)
Palestine has received less than four or five billion in the same period if my guess is right, with the added bonus of our veto of any United Nations resolution in their favor.
Why not divide up the middle east? Because it doesn't belong to us, and we lack the cultural understanding to effectively govern it. They have merely proved that the US isn't perfect. That should come as no surprise if you look at US history. Look at how the US behaved relative to Mexico or the Phillipines. The US has always thrown its weight around and taken what it wanted. That's what American voters want their government to do. And why not? Are you a hedonist or a Nazi? I can't really tell. No, it is actually a better place than it was a century ago or even half a century ago. There is less racism, less torture, less unjustified military intervention, less empire building. Less racism because of civil leaders and people like Martin Luther King who the FBI considered "the most dangerous Negro leader in America." I'm not sure if that was before or after they assassinated some of his colleagues.
The Japanese, Germans, and other prisoners of war were not tortured, as far as I'm aware, in WWI or WWII. Torture in the War on Terror is officially approved as long as you don't call it torture.
There's been no decline in military spending since WWII. We have hundreds of more military installations around the world, and we're building many permanent installations right now in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have not left any significant amount of the bases we established nearly seventy years ago.
Every single improvement in American life since WWII has been the result of popular movement, and the government has been dragged with it kicking, screaming, and killing it's own citizenry in the process. Throughout its history, the US has primarily looked out for its own interests and improved lives for its own citizens. True until recently. The current government does not care about it's citizenry. That's why it's acceptable not to pay attention to polls or popular votes (presidential or involving medicinal marijuana). Occasionally it has tried to do a little bit for other nations when it was convenient to do so. Example? That may not be much, but it is still a whole lot more than you can say for most other nations. Except every other developed western nation since WWII (which I consider a definitive paradigm shift worldwide.) The whole of Europe have learned their lesson. For some reason we don't seem to get it.
The old reason we allowed ourselves to rule over the Middle East is because we believe those resources belong to the West, and not to the inhabitants of territory that "rightfully" belonged to the colonial powers. After WWII nearly destroyed Europe, they couldn't hold on to their subjugate territories, so we attempted to hold on for them. As many people began to realize that greed was our true motive, it became the containment of the Soviet Union. After that began to fail to seem reasonable, it became terrorism. As opposed to our outstanding foreign policy in Latin America, Africa, Asia, etc. We pretty much fucked the goat on middle east foreign policy, no argument there. We only care about justifying our Middle East policy anymore because of the resources we're trying to take from them. I'm sure we have some interesting plans for Venezuela in the near future, and when we start running of things like clean water and arable land, I'm sure we'll be suddenly interested again. I didn't miss the story about establishing AFRICOM late last year. Did you?
I was talking about the ones that make use a modern society. Oil will peak within the next 10 years. Natural gas has already peaked, and coal reserves aren't well proven.
As soon as it's clear that there isn't much left, the price will skyrocket. $4 gas will be a wet dream compared to what it will cost in 2040 (inflation notwithstanding.)
Human society will survive, but I'm not sure American society will. It's just like the global warming thing. Sure we'll survive, but how many and under what circumstances?
And yet you make no mention of how many Iraqis must feel every day, and the damage we cause on a scale a thousand times worse just in terms of body count to the Arab psyche?
Every time we destroy a secular Arab society, we end up with another terrorist group. And I'll tell you something, our children will not be dealing with terrorists from Saudi Arabia, but with the children of Iraqis and Palestinians for generations to come.
We need terrorism. Without it, we have no plausible reason to maintain a military presence near valuable US business interests in the middle east.
The real reason all of these stupid decisions are being made is because we have no representation in government. Power is concentrated in the media, which is a for-profit enterprise, the military, which the biggest part of our for-profit economy, and the executive branch, where we have no voting authority over the cabinet that infests it, who also through strange coincidence go on to or come from large corporations who participate in huge government contracts.
Our involvement in the middle east has been a disaster for ONE HUNDRED fucking years. The only thing that's changed in the last twenty or thirty is that they are finally fighting back effectively. As the most powerful and morally hypocritical force in history, we're finding that we have no palate for our own medicine.
England and America have directly been involved in dividing up Arab land and resources since they switched their militaries from steam-powered equipment to oil powered equipment. We've been militarily involved in Iraq since before WWI. We destroyed the democratic government of Iran becuase they dared to demand that they keep the profit from their own natural resources. We formed al Queda when we used them as cannon fodder to fuck around with the Russians. We supplied Israel with capital and military equipment to commit acts of genocide against the Palestinians (mostly because we didn't want Jewish refugees in America) and they allowed us to establish a military base without too much fuss. We helped the invade Lebanon, destroy the entire country, and the direct result was Hezbollah. We funded the army of Saddam Hussein knowing full well that it would be used to murder thousands of his own people. Our military has helped with the slow crush of the PLO, which resulted in Hamas.
So, after a hundred years of oppression and suffering, they strike one blow about a ten thousand times less deadly in the number of dead and about a hundred thousand times less damaging as a matter of culture and economy.
And then they won after they proved that the infidel doesn't have the moral fortitude to give everyone the right to a lawyer, no matter how heinous their crime. They proved that we have no moral superiority when it comes to torture and human rights.
America is not the same place it used to be. All there is to do now is sit back and watch what's left of the power structure squabble over the table scraps until we run out of resources and the next revolution occurs.
But don't pay any attention to this. Listen to the President. Go shopping, and he'll take care of the rest.
I'm not sure if the social construct at that time would have supported massive civilian demonstration (due to the differences in media and mobility) but that's the only way effective change has been wrought in the last sixty years. Saying that violence is only legitimized in self defense is a pretty broad statement... is it truly what you believe? As someone who genuinely believes in the philosophy of Christ, Buddha, and other people I look up to, absolutely.
...that doesn't make them psychotic maniacs. Yes, it does. They believe in something that by all observable measures does not exist. Nor do I think that the only religious nutjobs are Christian or Muslim. There just happen to be a lot more members of those religions than most others, and they have had plenty of time to get real pissed off... The meek do not inherit the earth. The religions that advocate compliance or death do. There are violent Bhuddist monks, and I am sure that you can find a Wiccan or two, somewhere in the world, that thinks their beliefs are worth somebody else's life. There are certainly some Jews (extreme Zionists) that believe that the killing of others is justified in order to set up their version of an ideal holy land. By no means are these views shared by most (or even many) of the adherents of those traditions, but every group has some bad apples that get carried away. The real problem is that it is somehow a negative thing to label them for their true nature. A person who legitimizes violence for any purpose other than self defense is severely deranged, and their leadership in aggressive military action should be considered nothing less than murder.I'm using the every day definitions - I understand those who adhere to the core of most religions would be peaceful.
However, the evangelicals of America, whether gullible, willfully ignorant, or genuinely stupid, are responsible for voting in the current Administration twice in a row. They are motivated by the issues of abortion and gay marriage, and by virtue of it's mention in the bible, should be as troublesome as the consumption of shellfish.
The abortion issue is more reasonable, as it involves the future liberty of two human beings, but is safe to say that "abortion is murder" and "war is heroic" are not compatible world views to any rational person.
Personally, I don't see how anyone can reconcile the angry tribal desert Gods of the OT with the comparatively liberalized hippie God of the NT. Even if you can somehow accept the suppression and execution of non-dogmatic early Christians by the Roman authorities as a legitimate way to establish what ended up in "the" bible.
You seem to be forgetting the instances where God stops the sun to allow the wholesale slaughter of men, women, children, babies, and animals. Or the same God who rejoices when you smash the children of enemies against rocks (Psalm 137:9) or allows his followers to be tortured in order to prove their obedience.
There are numerous places in the Qu'ran where you are allowed to kill the infidel if he tries to interfere with your faith. They can easily justify killing a woman for not covering up sufficiently, which they view as preventing them for following their faith, and it even explicitly mentions killing the infidel until they stop their wars of aggression...
Just tell a fundamentalist that you listen to God, and they'll believe you. Ask George Bush or bin Laden.